I’m completely off of Twitter

I know that it’s pretty lame to announce your departure. But I’m kind of done with social media. I used to be pretty serious about it, but it’s basically gentrification for the Internet. The problem with Twitter is that it has a lot of influence for a platform with something like 400 million users world-wide. That sounds like a lot, but it’s basically the population of United States. Imagine the U.S. having that much cultural control over… everything. I guess it’s not *that* hard to imagine.

I took a couple of mental health breaks from Twitter and I didn’t really go back. I got active on it for a short while when the Ukraine war began, but I just couldn’t keep it up. Now that Elon Musk owns it, there is no reason for me to go back. I used to be a pretty serious advocate for Free Speech. The problem when straight white dudes talk about Free Speech, they usually mean freedom to act like an asshole without repercussions. I am all for fucking around, it’s just that I am also in favor of finding out. I have done a fair amount of finding out in the past couple of years. I think about (and read about, and listen to other people talk about) anti-racism and intersectionality, and I have basically come to the conclusion that the world doesn’t need Yet Another Mediocre White Dude talking about things. Except maybe other mediocre white dudes. Elon Musk is the ultimate Mediocre White Dude.

Instead of talking, I have decided to do things. I go to protests and marches. I go work as an election official. And I hang out with queer people. Turns out, queer neuro-divergent people *LOVE* Dungeons and Dragons.

Mad Max is the ultimate Dark Hero

I love stories about dark heroes: characters that do good, but whose methods are harsh and violent. Basically the antithesis of Captain America. The bright hero story is usually a good guy that always does the right thing, even when it compromises the mission.

Probably the most mainstream dark hero is Batman. I was a huge fan when I was a kid. Especially the Frank Miller era, like Year One and Death in the Family, where Batman is basically a criminal that follows a code to just target other criminals. The trouble with Batman is that his stories, however dark, are confined by the cultural norms of comic books. I have mostly enjoyed Batman on film, but even there, the legacy of the comic books hinders the portrayal on film.

Enter Mad Max. Maxwell Rockatansky’s begins as a cop who is conflicted over the violence of his job. The iconic “Special Interceptor” is a bribe from the police captain to get Max to stay on the force. He tells his captain that if it wasn’t for his badge saying what side he is on, he’d be no different than the bandits they are supposed to stop. When a gang kills his family, Max steals the Interceptor and hunts them, like animals. Unlike Batman, this loss doesn’t solidify him into a crusader, it has the opposite effect: he just walks away from everything. In the subsequent films, Max takes risks to help other people and losing everything in the process. He is a hero, but he never acts like one; he just does things.