THE GOBLIN NEWSLETTER 39

I am aware that I have a unique brain & unique life circumstances. It is with this knowledge that I go into not assuming I know anything about my audience or potential audience. It’s also 2024 & things are topsy turvy. I deliberately don’t go for a narrow assumption & I expect people to be thoughtful with me. The connections I have with people are specific, not broad. HP Lovecraft couldn’t have known that some of his biggest fans were Crust Punks in the East Bay in the 1990s, but that was true. In my art I try to express only what I like, in my writing I express broader social visions frequently. What I come up against more often than I’d like is that some people are so far into their corner as to be difficult to talk to as so much that comes out of their mouth is propaganda. This is just difficult for me to deal with, it’s like they have an infection that makes them unable to see things as they really are. If people have an infection that spreads you are supposed to quarantine them right? The internet allows them to spread their disease all over to all the other people who are mentally ill & eager to slurp their drivel up. This has gone on long enough that most people are assumed to be bad actors & noble ideas like Free Speech & Democracy have been thoroughly tarnished by people taking advantage of the amount of bullshit that is spewed out there & the people who absorb it. I count myself as lucky because my brain cracked open when I was working for the Oakland Public Library & the internet was still a novelty (1999-2002). The materials at the library were vetted to a degree much higher than social media. I was reading the New York Times from 1923, enjoying the speedy feeling of using the microfilm. I did watch the tragedies of 9-11 on CNN online at my library computer however. But I didn’t read the comments.