Online Whore

Any journalist is a prostitute with the publication they write under. You don’t last long otherwise.

And though the term “online whore” acquired a whole concrete example in the recent years so nevertheless I wonder what it’d mean to apply such shamelessness to blogging online, too.

There’s an interesting excerpt found within the Nag Hammadi (CIA) texts:

When the wanton women see a male sitting alone, they leap down on him and play with him and defile him. So also the lecherous men, when they see a beautiful woman sitting alone, they persuade her and compel her, wishing to defile her.

How strange! That the wish for many is friends of many and yet, you must never break the silent rule: that is, the more watching you so the more they want to invade and simulate some persona otherwise.

And it checks out: there does seem to be this passive ruining for those with too many eyes on them. Quantified and excessive attention destroys. Though the online blogger, in most cases, does not have a tabloid to follow them around, nor a paranoia they’ll be noticed on the street, necessarily. If one is only perusing about, leaving some display or comment exchange, inherently solitary and mildly exposed: can one be defiled merely online? But first, what is the wage of being a whore, honestly?

It is solitude. Amusingly the whore and the monk follow the same path, but perhaps in the latter there are enough circuits and convoluted explanations on how they maintained a dignity, and in some ways they did, maybe, maybe not. Well… the monk at least has his monastery friends, maybe.

Still, a whore is barred from a peaceful union. When one debases intimacy so one can no longer know it: intimacy — in the games of humanity unless you evict your mind wholeheartedly — only holds meaning in its exclusivity, only resists the wages of time through its sanction: why would anyone stick around otherwise? Of course even this “perfect meld” is debatable and but a lapse toward heaven, soothes but does not produce, but I digress.

One could certainly fling about copes on how every relationship is different, but the wages let themselves be known: every time I am with someone new so all the previous moments flash at me. That is, if one finds someone to marry, such days are haunted. You rarely share a moment wholeheartedly, in full presence. Instead I am invaded in an almost mechanical replay. The arcade once infused with color and dream becomes my graveyard as I walk along with another unaware of the hollowness.

Though lately I doubt whatever this intimacy romanticized even exists or if it does, whether it has any tangible value to it. In this respect the monk and the whore are astute: they don’t hold out for someone else to complete them. They don’t hold onto this idea that there is any comfort in this world anyway, maybe. They have abandoned this idea there is any dignity to preserve, because there doesn’t seem to be, beyond applied to the “game” we’re playing. But if your family line ends with you then you’re free to do whatever.

Nevertheless, mind evicted or not, heart hollowed to full, so I wonder how much of a whore I am writing online, how defiled. After all — especially in our tech dominant age, where you mingle with the words and private thoughts of anyone, simulate a sleepover through late night texts, accelerate the delusions of a persistent red-string tied between each thumb before swiftly severed — to have this private message box, or to air one’s private thoughts in such reticence (even if a sensible disposition to the doxxing and swatting) but ultimately a constant mental invasion, letting others into that which is only yours: your mind so again I wonder: what are the wages?

Well, the same as the above: solitude certainly. Perhaps a tad less invaded, doubly so if we realize everyone is being mentally invaded. If you’re more aggressive you could argue that instead you’re invading everyone else. One could certainly twist it around and pretend this is a position of power — the mighty pen! — but that requires some boldface authorship and to be thrown about the same as the Federalist Papers until synthesized into a cult to lead (which means short phrases, talking points, inject the woo of one’s things while stone-faced cold), culminated into a march of our senate deciding the fate of nations.

Which is a joke of course, because internet followings and internet factions or internet anything is a containment chamber, a virtual meadow to build nothing. This is a shoutbox ignoring its submission. My level of contempt and anger waxes and wanes; my empathy peaks to gurgle: but it is ever present, this silent rage, and that’s why I shitpost here. There is nothing here other than a torture chamber in the worst days, fitful daydreams of something better on the others. Becoming a pig and then you realize you’re the fattest among them.

There are no nation decisions here, no city council to assert over in a Ciceronian reenactment; no neighbors to who you’d exchange potato salad, only abstractly, and thus one may stare as the vulture wondering when the next one will show in a handshake of real estates. Shall I attend the estate sale, and now sell my ideas again for the lowest bidder in the driveway?

For a moment one can pretend there is some direction and that these words add up to something, but when you are a whore all words veer the same matching one’s singular worth in half the eyes watching, in the uncomfortable tandem nod of one’s own conclusion: something to hollow. It’s up to you if you really want to agree, of course.

All they can do is watch and all you will do is blog along. Will you prevent destroying yourself? Well, that’s part of the spectacle after all. You’ll succeed only if you find your words especially meant for a public square: nothing too damning even if you find it easy to swerve otherwise.

This is why it’s best to refuse blogging too thoroughly. For following a lifetime you’ll see her go madder, wither, understanding this is all she has left in the marketplace, pleasing the voyeurs and higher bidders, and the heroin at least grants her a quiet exit as the crowd dissipates. So rolls a crumbled dollar for another evening. In the same vein, if all I can do is document a destruction I’ll at least make it hidden:

But let the others yearn just to listen to her voice and to enjoy her ointment, and let them feed from the crumbs that fall from the table

Shying away from the bodies and words exchanged so one’s own eyes won’t dim to the opaqueness often found, as to be an online whore doesn’t necessarily require some writing. One can become a whore through consistent reading. A letter goes two ways, and so all the forum posts — though one could blush — are mingling as well. Parasociality as the mental whore paradigm: each sentence I read now hearkens back to all of the faceless entities trying to shove their thoughts inside my head.

I try not to think about it, but half of the people you’d ever interact with online probably want you dead in some capacity. If the games go on long enough. If the resources get all spent. You can hide behind abstractions and obscured places long enough, never air your true thoughts, but some people do want you dead and you have to play this pretend game that we are amenable and affable even though you’re across the world and the blood realities rise. “But we’re star brothers!” they claim, before demanding the rest of your rations.

If people really knew what you are, instead of this nicely painted face you make all the time, manicured pixels, they would want nothing to do with you; not because there’s something wrong with you, but because there is nothing left for them to fill in and animate out of the persona you present.

Seeing as we are all going to be defiled, blogging online seems to be an agreeable compromise. For if we are all whores, then maybe one could at least find dignity in being the whore who tries to say something or reclaims some of that lost dignity, takes a moment away from the invasive glowie groups, even if you can hear the laughter and disgust in the distance. If we’re going to shove thoughts around ceaselessly then by shoving your own thoughts about you can at least preserve some sanctuary of perception. To keep a solid wall, narrow goal, best to maintain, maintain some stability. Or unplug inevitably. Back once more into the things you’re neglecting, the life you’re neglecting, dodging all the foot soldiers of the latest internet feed.

To answer the original question: can one be defiled online? The same way as an imp on the shoulder whispering you to indulge, most definitely. The unsuspecting have been destroyed; mind viruses jump about far quicker than any book. Unless you are prepared to completely evict yourself from the common emotional paradigm and thus embrace the net as a psychopath playground, as intended.

Choose well, my dear Discord tourist.