Today I was speaking with a Julie about the world “failure.”
We were trying to distinguish between the slightly old-fashioned version of the what the word pointed too--I lost the game, I screwed up the test, I did not get the job--and the new version, which has something to do with performance and being impressive rather than being playful and authentic.
Is this an entirely new problem?
No, obviously not, since people have always struggled with the sense they have to be good, have to impress, and so forth.
Still--and this no doubt simplifies--something about social media or just knowing everyone in the world is out there via the internet adds to the pressure one feels to just “be” in the world and makes it much easier to imagine (or mis-imagine) any interaction as fatal, so much so that in a sick extreme you not only shoot people en masse but live-stream yourself doing it, as happened yesterday . . . again.
In part, I write about this in this way because to write about what people say about it in YouTube comments, where they extol their guns and defend such killings and parade their ass-backward racism is just too depressing to narrate or parse.
Anyway, whatever else the shooting in Buffalo points to, it does not point to a society that is well, on healthy terms with its demons or, however you define it, free of failure.