28 June

Kidult culture is a culture of the ‘feels’. Everything is about feelings. And about ‘support’ for those feelings, in others. “I Stand With [insert cause]” is its imitation of adult life, symbolic performance plays of one’s feelings. A person can be attached to the most toxic idiot nonsense, as I think most trans culture is, but what’s important is that we ‘support’ them in that journey down the rabbit hole. I notice Ukraine has benefited diddly squat from all the ‘standing with them’ emotive ‘look at me’ people did on the socials. I thought about this ocean of twee sentimentality we’re all swimming in when reading this article today, about masses of marine life choking to death on toxic algae caused by us boiling the oceans with our wankpanzer and recreational travel jet fuel emissions, in our permanent adolescent gap years from reality. The only human action described in the piece? ‘Eco-grief’ counselling sessions for those apparently traumatised by seeing the dead sea life. Gotta look after the feels. I was a high school teacher, they’re experts in adolescents. I saw teenagers collapse in great imitative weeping heaps of ‘support’ for people experiencing challenges in life, often people they didn’t even like. What was important was them using that difficult time somebody was having as a stage to launch symbolic performance plays of their own feelings. In earlier times it would have been ruthlessly shut down by actual adults focused on strengthening these adolescents into adults. It’s no coincidence that the teacher is one of the most ignored, abused and disrespected of all professions now. You can feel that gap in adult life, now dominated by adolescent culture unleashed. Some find me abrasive, but that’s the teacher in me, refusing to play any of these idiot games. The best teachers have a brutality about them, they take the job of socialising people into adulthood seriously in a way others don’t have the balls to do. Now they’re under assault from kidult parents, they’re raising children, not just teaching them. I’m calling it as I see it, society is a giant unending high school now. Literally, not by analogy. We live inside social media bubbles, which are modelled on high schools. Likes and followers. Performative ‘feels’.