Self Own 1: Put Up Or Shut Up

A spin off of a previous thing except I'm mean to you in this one.

Pictured here: I’m taking it back. I’m taking them all back.

For a while now, people who are obsessed with using language to destroy meaning, sanity, and the universe have popularized a verb: reclaiming. When you reclaim something, you’re “taking it back” from the colonizing white, straight, cis, male thingies that, um… stole it from you, I guess, even though it’s right there and everyone can use it?

Pictured here: Don’t worry, it’s traditional black yoga. They didn’t appropriate it from India. They invented it in barbershops or something.

“Reclaiming” as an arrow in the joyless social justice quiver refers to asserting ownership of aspects of culture that other people are using because they were taught from birth that it’s illegal, immoral, and satanic to not celebrate everyone else’s cultural identities, but they’re still WRONG. The word is frequently used to explain why it sometimes appears that identity groups may be embodying the worst of stereotypes previously leveled at their culture or using language previously considered a slur.

Pictured here: I tried really, REALLY hard to find an image with a nonwhite model wearing this, and I find that hilarious. I’m getting to my point soon, I promise.

This lengthy opening relates to one of the minor but establishing goals of this article, which is to reclaim a phrase: to self-own:

Usage of own in internet lingo conveys the same notion of conquest. In the dog-eat-dog world of Twitter takedowns, knocking someone off their peg is the name of the game. To that sense of own we combine the prefix self-, used in many a reflexive action, such as self-discipline or self-pity or (in a term more comparable to self-own) self-defeating. Therefore, a self-own does the job of owning, or humiliating, a user before anyone else gets the chance.
- Merriam-Webster "Words We're Watching"

---

self-owned:
a plan that rebounds adversely on the originator; has the opposite effect to what was intended, creating public humiliation

backfire, rebound, boomerang
Devin Nunes self-owned himself in magnificent fashion when he filed his case against Twitter.
- Urban Dictionary

So, for those of you previously unfamiliar with the phrase, to self-own is to humiliate yourself through a public display probably intended to dominate or overcome someone else. Also known as self-pwnage.

I’d like to reclaim this phrase to be more in line with the literal meanings of its components, something more along the lines of the similar phrase own your shit, except normal people can use this phrase instead of creepy men’s pickup artist websites and multilevel marketing cults.

When I wrote this recent post, I wasn’t kidding: the core thesis is literally the most important thing I’ve ever learned. Thanks to lots of unlikely experiences, and thanks to incredible life teachers (some intentional, some not), I can identify a lot of individual pearls of wisdom that have helped me make better choices, be a better friend/wife/daughter/student/teammate/etc., but if I found myself allowed to take only one piece of wisdom up out of Helheim, it would be that one.

I'm Sorry You're An Asshole, Part 3: Literally The Most Important Thing I've Ever Learned

Just as in the framing of the original post, if there is only one thing I could teach a future child that would stick- that they would reject everything else out of youthful spite or rebellion but actually internalize this one thing- it would still be that: be completely honest WITH YOURSELF at all times about who and what you really are, because while I don’t think it’s actually a MAP to happiness or success per se, it’s a requirement to actually experience genuine happiness or success.

Just ask anyone living a lie their entire life that looks great from the outside how happy or successful they feel.

I’m finding myself thinking about it again lately as the armies of COVID tyranny appear to be regrouping around the world; they’ve found their footing and are back on the offensive in time for seasonality and new variants. US cities are mandating masks again. Even after Brandon lost his federal vaccine mandate, lower governments are scrambling to mandate them for kids and public employees.

I’m starting to see enraging, depressing shit all over the media that feels like late 2020 all over again: same mindless, repetitive talking points, hammering on the same Narrative 1.0 non-science (notice how much “non-science” sounds like “nonsense”?) about “safe and effective” and “your mask protects me,” and going even harder after our kids now that the vichy FDA and CDC have basically decided there are no fail conditions whatsoever for any COVID-related medicine provided it comes from Pfizer.

I would LIKE to think that this time around, a lot more people are a lot more cynical, mistrusting, awake, and aware: that people will respond to mask and vaccine mandates with mass non-compliance and enforcement with “fuck you.”

I honestly believe- now as for the past 2 and a half years- that this is literally the only way it stops: mass non-compliance and defiance.

And I’m not without hope: like many of you, I recently watched Sri Lankans physically invade their nation’s capital building and eject corrupt leaders and force them to step down after having their economy and food supply annihilated by the aforementioned leaders selling out their nation’s future to the WEF’s fever dreams of ESG-fueled self-destruction. I’m also seeing Germans, Dutch, and Italians swarming cities and highways with cool farming equipment and payloads of poop because their WEF-owned EU government told them to stop making food because it’s bad for the Earth and anyway you should be eating bugs.

I also wonder how all this widespread SUCCESSFUL insurrection is going down for the millions of blue-haired Americans who think that the January 6th FBI-guided tour of the U.S. Capitol building was what rebellions actually look like and was also a personal assault on them personally.

Pictured here: A survivor of TWO separate assassination attempts by white supremacist insurrectionists on the Capitol steps.

So, there are people who have begun to fight.

They’re not who I’m talking about, and they’re not the ones I’m talking to.

My first boss was named Michelle, and it is absolutely appropriate to use the term “boss” because in every way, Michelle was BOSS.

She was nearly 6 feet tall, had a HUGE afro, had a black belt in karate, jiu-jitsu, and savate (French kickboxing), and spent time living on some Polynesian island (I forget which, one of the ones no one ever hears about) studying their local martial art, becoming an “honorary man” in their local religion in the process to allow her to do so (this was back before that was something everyone would get weird and stupid and worked up about). Years later I heard she semi-retired to the Park Service where I imagine she backflipped asshole teenagers that littered or smoked in the woods, and drank beer with brown bears. Basically picture Teddy Roosevelt if he had been a black woman.

She wrote terrible reports but knew how to delegate, so we interacted frequently. Her favorite expression was the old adage, “money talks and bullshit walks.” She would use it constantly- at least once a week. She would use it in contexts where cursing would make middle-aged white women very uncomfortable. She used it with a police officer, once.

She was basically never talking about literal money. She was talking about action.

Here’s a cartoon. Maybe you like Rick and Morty, maybe you hate it, maybe you’ve never heard of it. Here goes:

tl;dw:

Beth: “Jerry, do you want homeless people to have homes?”

Jerry: “Um, yes…”

Beth: “Are you gonna build them?”

Jerry: “Um, no…”

Beth: “Then what good was the ‘yes’?”

Here’s an excerpt from The Office. I couldn’t find a single clip online with this segment:

Michael: Ahh… [Dwight is holding a frozen chicken to his swollen face]
Dwight: Good, good. Keep it on there for another five minutes. Just let the swelling go down.
Michael: Oh thank you. Thanks. I owe you one Dwight.
Dwight: Fire Jim.
Michael: No.
Dwight: I’m cashing in the favor. Fire him.
Michael: What are you talking about–
Dwight: Do it. Promote me. Tri-managers.
Michael: Forget that.
Dwight: Can I have an office?
Michael: No.
Dwight: You know what you can keep your stupid favor. It’s worthless.

What practical purpose does Jerry saying he cares about the homeless serve? What value does Michael’s favor to Dwight have if it isn’t redeemable for anything Dwight actually wants?

We have arrived at the moment in our journey where I start pissing some of you off.

Buckle up, Buttercup.

Jerry would be wise if he said something (to himself, alone, if no one else) to the effect of, “thinking of the homeless makes me sad, but I am not actually motivated to do anything about the problem of homelessness with my time, effort, or money. I do not actually care about the homeless; I am simply sad when I think of the homeless.”

I’m not suggesting that Jerry is required, if he wants to be cool, to go around publicly proclaiming “I don’t care about the homeless!” and breaking the social contract that we’re all supposed to TELL each other that we care about the homeless even if we do about as much as Jerry about them. It would be a really baller move if he did, but it’s not required- Jerry just needs to be honest with himself, if he wants to actually have any integrity, that this is not something actually CARES about- he is merely sympathetic to the IDEA.

So, those of you who have been vaccinated, maybe boosted on top of that, and wear masks, and proclaim that you only do so because of your job kids retirement home education career bank account vacation wedding funeral hospitalized relative public transportation restaurant concert theater.

Guess what. You’re not actually opposition. You’re just a person complaining about a thing that you’ve conceded to do because the circumstances under which you’re doing it are more important to you than your stated principle.

You are in no way La Résistance. You’re someone griping about unpalatable aspects of everyday life.

The logic that “I oppose X” immediately followed by “I only agree to do it under conditions A, B, and C” mean that you do not actually, functionally oppose X.

I want to be clear: this doesn’t make you a bad person. I don’t hate you (not for this, anyway). It just makes you dishonest with yourself (which DOES make me like you less, if I’m being real).

You don’t value your bodily autonomy more than you value your comfort, your career, your income, or your freedom of movement. This is PERFECTLY OKAY- we do not all have the same values- but understand that you do NOT actually value your freedoms more than your health or wealth. BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF (and, preferably, in how you present yourself to others) that you care more about being able to go to your kid’s school play than you do about being injected with a non-sterilizing vaccine that can seriously injure or kill people or that you care more about keeping your job than being forced to cover your face and impair your breathing with an object that is indisputably ineffective at its stated purpose.

Own that the IDEA of freedom and autonomy and “my body, my choice” feel like things you should value and be behind but that your actions do not, in fact, bear that out, and that you value other things more than those ideas. It will serve to either A) make you appreciate those things that you actually value, or B) motivate you to correct this incongruity.

Try to imagine being one of the earliest agitators of the American Revolution- maybe a member of the Sons of Liberty. If you’re caught agitating against the state, losing your friends and family is probably the lightest of consequences you could expect. If you’re punished under the law, losing your job would be getting off light. Realistically, you stand to lose your freedom for a long time, or your life.

Now understand that somehow, people thought that indignities FAR LESS than what have been inflicted on us in the past two years were worth those consequences- that they might not be able to go to a wedding or shop in a supermarket or keep their job- and we ended up with a country that, for all of its many, many problems past and present, has enshrined the concepts of personal liberty better than any other modern nation on earth.

Again, I’m not accusing you of inferiority or lower relative value. I’m just calling you dishonest with yourself if you say things like “I oppose mask mandates and vaccine mandates.”

When I said about two pages back that “this is literally the only way it stops: mass non-compliance and defiance,” I wasn’t talking about tough talk on a comment thread or wearing a cute snarky mask that says “I hate wearing this mask” or “Government-issued slave muzzle,” you edgelord you.

I was talking about REFUSING TO WEAR MASKS OR BE INJECTED. No matter the consequences.

Maybe this describes you, or a past you- it absolutely describes a past me. Yes, I’m owning it- I submitted to wearing masks because I felt that it was absolutely essential to be present in the hospital when my dad was going through vaccine-injury hell. And every single time I did, I walked outside and felt disgusted with myself. Literally nauseous, sometimes. Now, there is literally no (public health-related) reason I will wear one ever again.

No, of course I didn’t WANT to wear it. But functionally, my actions were absolutely no different from someone who loves masks- and just as enabling and supportive of the culture of continuing to force them on us.

It’s really, really important to understand this.

The reason why radical self-honesty (again, this is completely different from oversharing in public to others) is valuable is because it is the only hope we will ever have of changing the things about ourselves that don’t align with our ideal self- we must first acknowledge that that misalignment actually exists, even when this causes us to be really disappointed with ourselves, maybe even painfully so, and feel shame or disgust.

These are the reasons why most people don’t even bother- why they can put a black square on their social media page or write something ridiculous like “Committed To The Fight Against White Supremacy” and live functionally identically to someone like me who literally mocks these ideas daily, and believe they are my moral superior.

Virtue signaling has a powerful self-soothing aspect that is rarely discussed- while much is made of its importance in tribal affiliation, the dirty little secret is that virtue signals allow us to tell ourselves we’re something we’re not, through a series of usually low-effort brags.

You are not a freedom fighter if you allow them to take your freedom.

You do not champion body autonomy if you give yours up.

If you WANT to be someone who are those things, I applaud you. Take the first step by admitting to yourself that currently, you are not, but you want to be.

Understand that you are only truly defined by the things that you do.

Money talks, bullshit walks.