Bad habits we should think about kicking in 2017
The trends that I’ve had enough of
Poor George Michael.
He was barely cold when his boyfriend “took to Twitter,” as the ghastly practice is now called, to grieve for him — and, oh yes, make the great singer’s death as much about him, Fadi Fawaz, as it was about Michael.
“It’s a xmas I will never forget finding your partner dead peacefully in bed first thing in the morning,” Fawaz tweeted the day after.
Forget for a minute the sheer magnificent illiteracy — whose partner was it he found? His, mine or yours? — Twitter, and social media of any sort, is not the place to do anything that is better done in private, which means pretty much everything of importance and everything that is fun.
Many of the stories about Michael’s death at the age of 53 also made much of the fact that he died alone, as though that rendered his dying more tragic.
Breaking news, dear cabbages: We all die alone, every single one of us, whether surrounded by weeping loved ones or, as will surely happen in my own case, swarmed by pragmatic cats, who will move in just after the blow flies and who in the ordinary course gaze upon me hungrily at the first signs of a cold.
Using social media to emote didn’t begin in 2016, but perhaps, if there is a merciful God, it will end then.
Other Completely Regrettable Trends and Things of Which I Have Had Enough: ❚ The enormous self-importance that burdens so many of us without a scintilla of supporting evidence, e.g., the hordes who alight upon the bus and immediately begin the most urgent checking of text/email/social media, as though they were all transplant surgeons or president-select expecting the big message. Sweetie, if you or your work were really that critical, trust me, you wouldn’t be on the bus with moi.
❚ Female politicians complaining about cyberbullying and online misogyny. It’s a mean old online world. See “social media” above. IRL, people for the most part remain lovely and kind.
❚ The ritualistic obeisance to First Nations before the start of any political speech, school assembly, or, increasingly, sports event or concert. You know the drill: “We acknowledge we are standing here on the traditional land of the X nation and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work in this territory.” It’s a nice conciliatory gesture and all, but wouldn’t it be more useful to settle all the outstanding treaty disputes and land claims?
❚ No-tip restaurants. Ugh. I used to go to a place where the food was as good as the wait staff; then it moved to a no-tip policy. All the great staff left. The food is the same, but the restaurant isn’t. I tipped anyway, but on the sly; it’s just easier to go somewhere else.
❚ The idea that outrage on social media is a measure of outrage in the real world; it isn’t. If people were actually that angry all the time they would implode. What happens on social media reflects almost nothing in the real world.
❚ The notion that mental illness is an under-appreciated problem. It was, once upon a time. It is no more. What it is, is under-treated and under-served. The last thing we collectively need to do is talk more about it; what we need to do is something, anything, to fix what is laughably called the mentalhealth-care system.
❚ Weed, medical weed, medical weed shops and dispensaries (except the one on Eglinton West in Toronto called Weed the North, the only shop I’ve seen to display even a smidgen of humour), weed busts, weed propaganda, weed proselytizing, weed prescriptions. Do what you will but do also shut up.
❚ The desire for the harshest, swiftest, cruellest punishment always, whether it be for disgraced Toronto District School Board chair Chris Spence (who was of course recently stripped of his teaching certificate for plagiarism, this in a school system where ordinary teachers aren’t allowed to write their own truthful comments on report cards and which has thus institutionalized a culture of dishonesty) or the ordinary Joe before the courts or whatever poor sod most recently misbehaved in non-criminal but somehow public fashion. Two points: One, people need not be utterly ruined and flattened for every offence every time, and two, let she who is without sin, etc.
❚ Expressions such as “going forward” and “reaching out,” which appear to be softened versions of “in the future” and “phoning” or “emailing,” presumably so that no cabbages are harmed in the speaking process. Say what you mean, plainly, cabbages be damned.
You’re welcome, and by that I mean, you’re welcome.