nihilism and some good things
hard things: (CW: death/body)
I've been working in West Baltimore schools and community centers this summer teaching art classes, mostly for kids who did not choose to be in art class. The younger kids are sweet and excited and do things like yell "I LOVE PAINT" and that's a great energy.
The older students do not care about anything but TikTok. I know I'm not avoiding the old man yelling at cloud allegations, but this is not the "I don't care" middle school attitude I remember. It's literally not being able to hear a teacher two feet away from you for more than one minute before you pull out your phone. Their classroom teacher for the summer said they can't hear you unless you holler a few times a day - otherwise they space out. They cannot sustain attention. They cannot spell or write and feel so embarrassed by it that they avoid writing completely.
A couple do talk to me. Some sleep through my class. Some keep headphones on. Some try to do projects if no one is looking, but as soon as someone sees them they pull out their phones to watch TikTok.
Baltimore isn't the Wire anymore - murder and crime rates are dropping and the population level is stabilizing instead of hemorrhaging residents. But generations of people have been in this city since right after the Civil War, coming for hope and jobs that have disappeared, and each generation is worse off than the one before it. In some ways it's a microcosm of where our economy in the US overall feels headed, with my generation worse off than my parents' generation. This is what four or five generations of downward mobility can lead, and combined with unregulated and addictive technology, nihilism and hopelessness is my greatest fear. Black communities have just felt these effects first because of structural racism, but everyone will be feeling it soon.
It's not just with these kids, who I don't fault one iota and still hope to reach. It's doomerism from educated white progressives in the first generation of downward mobility. The "lol you think we'll ever have an election again?" Reddit comments that at a certain point have to be boosted by bots. It's my fellow leftists deciding ContraPoints and Ezra Klein are the enemy instead of the Heritage Foundation.
I'm not playing that game. And you know what? One of my "I hate art, football is life" boys actually admitted he draws at home yesterday. And nobody called anybody a bitch-ass and nobody went to the office for throwing things. And I'm not giving up. I am not accepting downward mobility as a given - for anyone.
Also yesterday - on my way to the school, my uber driver had to call 911 after a passerby banged on her window to say the man who appeared sleeping at the bus stop was dead. My uber driver was unfazed. I worked in hospitals and I've seen a lot of bodies, but never someone dead on the street. I am still processing it. This generation of kids finds an escape in TikTok, and for some older generations of Baltimoreans it's opiods. About a quarter of the bus stops I pass have someone sleeping or nodding off at them, and I don't think I can look at them the same way without worrying if they are alive or dead.
I promised some good things though
- Small Web July is going great for me. I've learned the basics of the command line interface, which has been good. I'm playing around with 11ty and getting it closer to working. I am moving from "follow this step-by-step tutorial" to messing around with things and breaking and fixing them. SWJ, for me, was about orienting away from the nihilism and frenzy and lowest-common-denominator content from the wider web, and that's been successful.
- I was able to use the CLI in the wild to install Koreader (an alternative UI) on my Kobo e-reader. I don't love it like so many people do for regular epub books, but it is objectively better at reading PDFs and I can get RSS articles directly on my e-reader. I can flip back and forth to the stock UI for epub books. Works on Kindles too.
- I am finally listening to the new Tune-Yards album and it's especially good music to put on while you scramble eggs.
- A pool that has adult swim hours! With new friends!
- After 30 very long days, we get to drive one of our cars again. Errands can happen. Thrifting can happen. Not using uber is going to be great. And we never have to move states again and screw up by changing our insurance a week too soon and losing our cars for 30 to 45 days while title paperwork moves from state to bank to state.
- I am starting an archive of my mediocre cemetery photos, styled as a museum and gift shop so it can house some of my Victorian grave pixel art as well. It's very much under construction.
- Related: The Fraser Mortuary Chapel
and a neutral thing:
I've been on my computer a lot! Mostly learning, staying in the areas of the internet I planned to stay in, but it's been a lot of time online. I've also been carless in a heat wave in a distant part of a city with miserable public transportation. I hope that shifts as I get to explore more in areas that are more walkable.