Perennial discourse topic: evil characters in fiction. The hot-take argument is that bad guys are often portrayed as the hero or too sympathetically (Breaking Bad is an oft-cited example). The poster will try to spin out of this some conclusion about how this proves the fundamentally evil/patriarchal/colonial mentality of the author/reader/culture.

There is a standard counterargument to this complaint about evil characters in fiction. It goes like:

1. Something something empathy, common humanity, need to understand the evil just a little so you have hope of recognizing it and shutting it down when it happens IRL.

That counterargument is sappy and overwrought. The better, less-common counterargument is:

2. Sorry, but fiction where the evil is clearly delineated and the bad guys have no sympathetic motives sounds boring as fuck.

Healthy people should stop here, but I am going to throw my weight behind yet a third counterargument:

3. I stan problematic fictional characters because I am not a good person. I don’t want good things for others, I do selfish and idioatic things somethings, I repeatedly self-sabotage because I fucking suck. I hope that clears things up.

More seriously: Counterarguments #1 and #2 fail to satisfy me because they accept the flawed premise that I must prove my moral worth through my choices of what media I consume and how. The “see no evil” argument commits this fallacy by assuming that readers resemble the problematic characters they read about.

Counterargument #1 commits the fallacy by requiring readers to make (at least internally) a sort of disclaimer: “I like Breaking Bad, but just so you know, I also recognize that Walter White might not be an awesome dude, so please don’t cancel me.”

And counterargument #2 commits the fallacy by eschewing literary criticism all together: It’s just for fun, man! It’s just a joke, man! This is faux-aloofness; it is in fact a very bold statement about one’s media consumption, one that ultimately seeks validation from other faux-aloofers.

Don’t be like them. Be like me. Embrace the fact that you suck.

On the metro yesterday, a young couple (maybe college kids) sat facing me and began to engage in a bit of fairly disruptive “puppy play.” Young folks around here already have a sort of bad rep for playing music/videos or talking too much on public transit, but this was a level above.

The girl would jump up on her boyfriend and put her “paws” on his shoulders and bark, and then he would be like “good girl” and stuff. This went on for a few minutes, then for a moment they seemed to stop, and I thought we were out of the weeds until the girl started a new round. “Woof!”

More like “ruh-roh” as the kids say. It was just reflex: I said “Alright” and made a “settle down” gesture with my hand. I think I was emboldened by my recent success in shushing a full adult on a plane ride last month. These kids on the train reacted in almost the exact same way—with looks of pure bafflement, but then puppy girl did the “calm down” gesture herself, and explained to her boyfriend, in the manner of a precocious child seeking approval, “That means calm down.” Smart puppy.

And they did! Sort of. No more audible barking, but she kept jumping on him. I wonder how long they went on for after I got off.

I think this might have to be my new thing—just not giving a fuck and telling people when they need to rein it in. Life is too short, and I am already spending too damn much of it commuting.

My new hobby is riding the train, headphones on, just watching the scenery go by. My new job is fully in person, which can be fun (now I have office banter instead of doomscrolling) but also a bit overstimulating (especially when there is actual work to be done). My priority each weekend is essentially just to find some peace and quiet, and the train is my best shot at that. Well, at least until we pass through the vicinity of a sports arena and all the drunk guys show up.

In honor of Labor Day, here are my workplace rules of engagement:

1. I try not to suck. I have not “quiet quit.” I have a personal investment in my work and hope to be known as a quality professional.
2. At the same time, I won’t be consumed by my work. I’m here for a long time, not a good time. I employ various psychological and technological devices to ensure my work life doesn’t interfere with all the other things I want to accomplish.
3. Accordingly, if we find ourselves working together and you approach me with warmth, openness, and collaborative energy; treat me as an equal; and take my actions in good faith, then I will do my best to match your stance.
4. And if you approach me with a clinical, detached attitude; or try to initiate status transactions against me; or signal that you consider my perspective to be a nuisance; or sexually harass me, you creep, then I will activate an appropriate set of defenses. You might not experience the closeness or humor that I share with other colleagues.
5. My defenses do not necessarily represent a judgment against you. Your detachment and pretend objectivity may be a reasonable adaptation to our environment in light of your temperament and life goals.
6. But you also can’t count my guardedness as a mark against me. I am only fighting for my life.

xkcd 1357 is the famous “Free Speech” meme about how getting banned from a Facebook group or college campus doesn’t count as a violation of free speech because, legal reasons:

This xkcd is from 2014, and it had the right take for the Tea Party/Obama era, when the Free Speech Defenders™ were mainly interested in using their First Amendment rights to espouse racism and homophobia. It made sense to provide some pushback and point out that people should be able to create little private enclaves where they can police speech a bit more aggressively.

Unfortunately the world has shifted, and the problems have shifted. These same transactional exceptions to free speech (“Sure, you can say that, but I will impose X consequence”) are now leveraged against people who don’t suck. I think this makes it clear that xkcd’s allegiance to the letter of the law in 2014 was a bit shortsighted, and lacked reflection on why we actually have a First Amendment and what we are actually trying to protect.

In my opinion, in 2026, we … don’t really have free speech. Maybe we have it in a narrow, legal sense—your boss can’t say “You’re fired and by the way it’s because of your political beliefs.” But I don’t think we have real free speech of a form that would impress any of the Enlightenment thinkers.

There was a viral post recently called “Being kicked out of the tech industry.” TL;DR, OP has been laid off from every job and is struggling to find a new one. These posts are, unfortunately, getting more and more common and I will not attempt to contradict the broader reality that the job market in tech kinda sucks right now. Nor do I find “kicked out” guy to be 100% sympathetic–actually, his post evinces a strong tendency to blame others for his circumstances and he comes across as a bit hardheaded and difficult to work with (just my intuition, sorry).

However, someone in the lobste.rs comments managed to write a response to the post that attacked it in, IMO, the most soul-crushing way possible. “I would probably never be able to hire you,” went the comment, because you post too much about politics on your blog. Not “during working hours,” not “using company IT,” just: “your website.” “Sorry no one told you before,” the commenter concluded.

(Seriously, what’s with the epidemic of this narcissistic, condescending tone online? You see it in both sides here. “never be able to hire you” dude, just say you wouldn’t hire him, no need to play the stupid “my hands are tied” game.)

This is pretty sad, right? In my opinion, if you can’t post your political beliefs without risking unemployment, you don’t have freedom of speech. I don’t care if the law doesn’t technically protect kicked-out guy because the politics weren’t cited explicitly in rejecting him; that’s a problem with the law. This is a clear case of society failing to create the kind of open commons necessary in a free society.

And by the way, reforming the legal implementation of freedom of speech doesn’t have to mean nobody can have safe spaces of the sort portrayed in the xkcd. The point is to pursue a middle ground between utter free speech absolutism and “free speech winter,” which is what we currently have, where everyone’s afraid to speak their mind because they don’t know what the consequences are anymore. Don’t even get me started on the abysmal speech policing of immigrants, who aren’t even covered by the fig leaf of legal protection offered by the First Amendment.

Right now it’s easy to make this argument because we’re in a right-wing moment, thus it seems especially urgent to protect the speech rights of those not in power, i.e. the left. But in a few years (🙏🙏🙏🙏) the pendulum will swing back, and we need to remember not to fall back into the xkcd 1357 trap of assuming that the legal framework is exactly as strong as it needs to be.

OK??