Backwash

Found via My Hungry Years on Banditosyanquis

The conversation turned the other night to things digital and things internet. In effect, things concerning identity. That feedback whereby you settle on an identity, perhaps without you knowing it, a culmination of time spent being you, asking questions about things in a way you've learned to ask them, and someone collects that identity, those questions, asked by the you you are, which is, perhaps without you knowing it, being disseminated in a collectible way, collected with designs on selling something back to you, perhaps without you knowing it, an identity refined a little, tweaked a little until, in the rough, conglomerative ways it has to be, a perceived conglomerated, collated identity, subtly shifted from what your original simple, fluid queries were, your simple fluid identity starting-point, to something more solid, more tangible. And, because the solid and tangible are easier to grasp than the fluid and malleable, you accept the newish boundaries and you, perhaps without knowing it, buy into it, little by little. Not out of conscious laziness perhaps, but in the end, nevertheless out of laziness. And this is where things start to make sense. Where things start to come together in your life. Where the puzzling nature of your initial queries seem juvenile. Because all of a sudden, or maybe over time, you're being offered things that fit and you are working within molds that fit, and you feel buttressed in your beliefs. And all of a sudden, or maybe over time, you feel like you actually belong, like you've got a reason, or a meaning, that there are people like you. And there is something out there that you feel passionate about and you are ready to stand up for it because being passionate about something is really important because that tells us who we are and people who know who they are are good, successful people in whatever they do. And that is really, really important. And now you are ready to stand up for yourself, to your peers, to people who would attempt to quiet your passion or hurt your identity. Enemies. And you have to look out for enemies.