It’s almost hack, but you know what I just can’t get off my mind? The psychological terror of in a room full of superrich goons at a tech conference. How mother fucking punk is Bill Gates?
If authenticity holds even a sparkle of possibility in this world, undercover punks have a fucking monopoly on it. America turns out tons of clambags who love to promote themselves as “totally weird” without being weird, and you can never trust a person over the age of 16 who throws out too many cultural signifiers at once, embarrassing beacons of identity they’re compulsively driven to display. You think Bill Gates gives a shit if he makes you a little bit uncomfortable? No Pist patch necessary.
What’s so great is the laughter. It’s been haunting me. It’s that good. It’s at first a panicked response, then tapers off slightly as the action absorbs into their collective psyche. It’s real, not a joke, and all the abstract terror they’ve been listening to about brown people in very far away locales that their checkbooks know more intimately than they do can actually be their terror, too. Rationally, they understand it’s harmless, but that doesn’t matter–symbolically it’s a psychic invasion of the highest order.
Finally, there is the cherry on top: the applause. Has their fear dissolved? No. There are awful little parasites in the room ready to feed, too few to recognize in such dim light. The threat is invisible. Somebody-who? which one?-will be a hometown buffet, and that has a tremendous dissonance for a man in a cummerbund. The audience deflates this tension, normalizing the situation by fucking clapping. They must diffuse the gravity of death by turning it into a recreational terror. That’s the natural response, of course–but what a play! Ha ha ha, suffering.
Were I there, I’d have done the same. But how filthy would I leave that conference feeling? I laughed. Was it funny? I have the luxury to laugh. Is that funny? What’s so funny? What is funny?
