I’m opening a can of worms here, friends. Grab a bucket and get ready to grab a few.
My girlfriend recently went vegan. Not necessarily forever, but regardless, that’s what it is for now. We had to lay out some groundrules, as I told her I wasn’t going to do the same. But to be honest, it brought up a lot for me that I really hadn’t thought about in a while.
This all began as a very different sort of diatribe, but I realize all of this is about something else and I luckily caught myself before just tossing it out there.
No, this is about tags. Our current world involves a lot of tags. Price tags, hashtags and what I may call lifetags. It’s odd, isn’t it, the idea that in a world with so many options, we find the need to put a name on everything.
The vegan thing brought this to life, because just last night, on our way home from a networking event, my girlfriend went into what she called “vegan rage.” Which is a great way to say she was craving something like a cheeseburger or cheese dip or whatever she couldn’t have. How funny, right?
She has her reasons for doing what she’s doing and that’s her business. But there’s no vegan police. There’s no one she has to answer to but herself. That tag of vegan, though, comes with a very specific set of rules and if one wants to call themselves Vegan, those rules have to be strictly adhered to.
Now, I have no problem with vegans. How you eat or what you eat is no business of mine and however you go about doing it is on your shoulders. But I have met more than my fair share of self-righteous vegans who want their eating to habits to be my problem. To be my responsibility.
This isn’t just about veganism, though, is it?
We put tags on ourselves and more specifically, the rest of the world all the time. For some reason, a memory sticks out in my head and will go with me forever: I was in a bus station in downtown L.A. late at night, waiting for a bus to take me to Santa Barbara. I was sitting outside, writing in my notebook and smoking a cigarette when this girl sat down next to me and asked to bum a smoke. A few lines into our conversation, she said “You must be punk rock, huh?”
“Not really,” I said.
“Raver guy?” I shook my head. “Not metal…What are you?”
What am I indeed? Not defined by my musical taste, that’s for damn sure.
But we do this every day. Every day we take in a bit of information, slap a tag on it and file it away in the filing cabinets in our heads. One that I’m especially guilty of is damning pop culture. When I see commercials or hear top 40 music or hear about a new movie coming out, I immediately dismiss it as being garbage and wonder how people could be so stupid to like it. “Everyone that thinks Justin Bieber is awesome is a dick.” End of story.
When did I decide that everything the music/film/book/art scene put out had to be “good?” How is it the responsibility of mass culture to have “good” taste? Who thinks my taste blows ass?
There are no rules. I have my own view of things and there is an infinitely smaller group of people who agree with me than those who don’t. But what’s wrong with that? Is there any tag that defines me?
Maybe #individual. But how cliche and dumb is that?
To go Forrest Gump on you for a minute – life is like buying the right pair of jeans (from one of those companies that does it this way): low-rise, slim fit, regular cut. I won’t say no two pairs are exactly alike, but there are.
Or is life like life? Millions of choices, made every day. Some stuck to and some discarded. Endless hashtags can be applied to your life and they may change by the day. No single one describes you in totality, but for some people they might.
Are you a Republican or a Democrat? Or are the issues that face us as a nation and a culture so diverse and wide-ranging that no one word could possibly begin to sum up your thoughts on every topic? It strikes me as being lazy or complacent to simply throw your hat into one ring and figure it covers all of your interests.
What this boils down to is two things, as I see it. One, people want to belong to something. There are all these “clubs” out there and people want to be a part of one or another. This is innate human nature, I think, but when push comes to shove, does anyone really want to speak for an entire group of people? Obviously some do, as there are Leaders and Speakers, representatives of the interests of certain groups. But most don’t.
The other is that we’ve begun to define ourselves not as what we are, but more as what we’re NOT. The simple act of tagging groups of people stands us apart. By pointing to a table full of dudes with beards and girls with teased hair and saying “hipsters” means I’m not THAT. If I was, I would simply see it as a table of people I probably would get along with, right?
If I dress a certain way, it’s a camouflage to some and a uniform to others. And as a practice, it banks on deterring the “wrong” people and attracting the “right” ones.
There’s no judgement here. I’m as guilty as anyone in all of this. But it’s worth thinking about. In a current social culture where everything is compartmentalized before it even gets to you, it’s worth looking at how you tag things and people because it’s also the way people tag and judge you.
We live at the Hater’s Ball, folks. And if we aren’t careful, we may find ourselves ending up like this – to quote Silky Johnson (pictured above) “I hate you. I hate you. I don’t even know you, and I hate your guts. I hope all the bad things in life happen to you and nobody else but you.” #hate
Don't Know Shit About Shit 