We are all ants.

So here's the thing.

In each of us, I feel like there should be a concept of an ideal person. Who in our heart of hearts we want to be. Not the person we fantasize about- the one that everybody likes, or who does amazing and noteworthy things.

I mean the person you get when you strip away the artifice. The pure being, the meat and potatoes. The person peering out blinking into the light after years of being naked in the dark of your mind; covered in celebrity gossip, conspiracies, and useless trivia like what a tompion is.

The person you'd be if you were able to be completely honest with yourself, the one unencumbered by ego. The ideal, I guess.

That person, you'd imagine, would be open and compassionate. They'd want to listen, and not judge. They would be generous and calm, warm, patient. Available.

But as I've gotten to know myself, and more importantly, other people; I've discovered my pure internal person isn't anything like that. I've been called all of those things in the past, and I admit I used to cling to them quite tenaciously, because they were nice things to hear. Like they were little trophies you get in the friendship Olympics. But friendship is just a lie. It's code for "I'm insecure and need the validation of others." It means you lack the character or strength to see the world and the people in it for what they are- self interested, weak, brainless.

People really wear me down. More and more I've felt like I'm drowning in an endless ocean of stupidity. And just when I think the worst might be behind me, I realise it's just another strain of stupid, and I didn't recognise it in time. 

I guess that makes me the most stupid of all.

I don't mind racists or bigots. They're scared of something, they have their reasons. It doesn't make them right, but I view them as single-celled organisms of a sort. They can't really change unless something amazing and life changing helps them to, and I'm not that thing.

I don't mind rich people/politicians. People who have more money then they could ever spend. They have a sickness, and they need help. I won't help them, to be honest I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire, but I don't mind them. They're just blinded by the fear of not having everything. What an odd thing to be scared of, in a world where most people just hope for something.

The people that make me despair are the hopeful ones. The optimists. The ones who think "Maybe if I vote for another millionaire, this one will be different and will care about my issues." The people who write "No bad vibes" on their social media, and think it's a magical talisman to ward off anyone who might say something honest and critical about their vacuous and conceited excuse for an existence. The ones who campaign for animal rights, while looking for their palm-oil loaded lip balm in a sweatshop hand bag. The vegans who smoke. Anyone religious.

I swear things used to be different. I swear I used to meet people who weren't obsessed and utterly delighted with themselves. People who understood the concept of  'consequences'. People who would do what they said they'd do, who respected others as a default setting. People who could think.  People who didn't treat their lives like an advertising campaign.

 There was a time before you were born, I call it precomposition. It's the opposite of decomposition, and I use it for a reason. Before you were born, you were dead. You didn't exist, your atoms were scattered across existence. You didn't exist, and it was this for an infinite eternity stretching backwards. When you grow old and die, your body decomposes, and those disparate elements that collectively form you are cast back out into the Universe, and that death lasts an infinite eternity stretching into the future, forever.

And in between, in this tenuous breath of existence, we live- slung between two vast eternities full of death. And that makes life precious. A plant is maraculous, your penis is a flower, we are all ants.

When I started this blog 56,500 page views ago, I was a different person. I started writing because it was like a splinter I needed to get out. I needed to express myself, I needed to articulate my way through this mystery I'm in, I needed a part of me to come above ground, to be known.

And through the years people have come and gone through here. Words were left, connections made, we've had some fights- good things.

But I don't want to be known any more. 

I used to curate my profile on the internet, I was everywhere. Forums, Soundcloud, Reverb Nation, Myspace, G+, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, The Guardian, Turntable.fm, Instagram, here... Now only Instagram and this are left, and this is about to die as well. My Instagram is private, and I'm not accepting anyone new. (Edit- I deleted that Instragram, so now I can't see it either.)

I used to believe people were worth reaching out to, that somewhere in these vast oceans of self congratulatory idiocy and comment section pack mentality there would be someone who understood the potential of what we are, who held themselves to a moral and ethical standard just because it was the right thing to do, someone who didn't give a fuck about fads or competitive social media consumerism. Someone you could climb a tree with and talk and listen to the music of the breeze through the leaves, and who wouldn't need to post their location online every three minutes or ignore you while they text a million other people without saying anything that would ever matter. Someone who wasn't completely fake. Someone who understood that the most beautiful things in the world can't be seen with your eyes.

I've given up in increments.

I've been single for almost half a decade. And by single I mean, I dated someone for a fortnight, and didn't sleep with them. And I've defended my independence completely. I came to a point a long time ago where it doesn't matter how good you look, if you have nothing to say, then neither do I. If in a world of infinite possibilities, the only thing you can think of is Instagramming is pictures of yourself, then you're a human black hole. Like, post a picture of a dog just once. Dogs are amazing.

I've had so many conversations with girls who say they want to know me better, to involve themselves romantically, but all they have been able to offer in return are games that aren't fun. And they get so upset when I say no, they can't compute why a guy wouldn't want to bend over backwards, spend all his money and attention on them, or trust them; just because they look cute. They get upset, and then immediately forget they were upset as they throw themselves into something with someone else, showing me, proving to me that they were never an option anyway. Like I needed proof.

I hate every guy that's out there begging for pussy. Every guy that right now is listening to a girl talk about nothing, or is just watching her while she texts her friends or one of the other guys she's fucking. And he doesn't just get up and walk out, because he wants to fuck. There's a word for that, and it's 'simp'. If you stopped enabling horrendous women, they'd cease to exist. If you stopped valuing their physical being over the real them, all of this ho-ass/trap queen/bad bitch/ behaviour would evaporate overnight. They do it because you let them. Like politicians. If women had to start thinking critically for a change, and we all managed to stop trading sex for financial security, maybe then women could reach their true potential. But they fuck for money, and men let them. Kill me.

I hate every person who thinks it's fine to discriminate against LGBTQI+ people, as if they chose to be L,G,B,T,Q,I, or +. As if their sexuality is an option, and they don't deserve human rights because of who they love. Homophobia is hilarious- two people love each other, so we must ostracise and limit them? Pass laws to stop them from uniting publicly in marriage? What the fuck are these people so afraid of? Love?

I hate every third and fourth wave feminist who did a women's studies course at University and then bitches about how they can't get a job in a stem field. I can't either, because I was an arts major. That's how it works! Every stupid girl who thinks logic and evidence aren't necessary, all you need is a belief in 'the patriarchy'.  I'm a white male- and I've been waiting for my privilege all my life. Every retarded Jessica Valenti/Clementine Ford clone from the most entitled class of people on planet earth, who fills Tumblr and The Guardian with endless vomit about how oppressed they are, while making house payments with Patreon money from people they ignore if they meet them socially.

Idiots who support the Catholic Church, and believe it will all be better now. The aspirationally wealthy. The editors at The Guardian. People who think Hillary Clinton isn't a Wall Street shill. Money is a sickness. Humanity is obsessed with stacking paper, but will fight viciously against learning skills that will help them survive because it distracts them from what Drake is wearing. People who think smoking is/was/ever will be ok. The list could go on forever.

So I give up. I've tried to love you all. I've tried to be optimistic too. I've tried to wait it out in the hope some real people would appear one day and we could all celebrate the fact we're not alone. But I'm alone,. I've always been alone. I'm not even upset, to be honest. I haven't cried in years. But I'm internally stripped. I just don't have feels for you any more. I don't care who lives, who dies. I'm done with meaningless words, with trust, with hope.

This is how it is, I've lived long enough to feel supremely confident things are only getting worse, and so if you're one of the people who still reads this and asks me when I'll be posting next, the answer is "When hell freezes over."

In the past I used to think about all the people I was once close to, and how on a long enough timeline, everyone drifts away. I think of all the effort I put into staying in touch and communicating with people, and how through it all, I still ended up alone. And a strange thing happened, instead of viewing being alone as an anomaly, as something uncomfortable and strange; I got used to it. It became normal, and I realised all of this 'trying to be a part of the human group' was just conditioning. 

We don't need each other. And people have proven to me that they don't have anything I want. It's a con. An anachronism. We don't need each other. We never did. Our ancestors, sure. But not us. We're easier to manipulate in groups. Well, you are.  And if we all believe in love, then we all buy things to be more loveable. Women demand you have a nice car, that costs money. Women don't need a nice car because of double standards. Men let women become the gatekeepers of sexuality, and it was all downhill from there. 

We are absolutely manipulated and indoctrinated from the day we're born- from the fairy tales and baby songs we hear, to advertising, and our pointless desire to conform and fit in. And even when people want to rebel against conformity, they do it in predictable ways that legions of others did before them. They validate their individuality by following trends. It's pathetic. 

I was in a Malaysian Airlines flight a while back, just after two of its planes dropped out of the sky, and it dropped what felt like a very long way in a very short amount of time. People screamed, faces white with panic. Some women cried. The rain was slamming against the fuselage, and there wasn't a person among us who didn't believe we were all about to die. When the lights came back on, and we evened out, I realised I was grinning from ear to ear. I was starving for nonexistence.

We're just slightly hairy mammals running around trying to fuck each other, win the most tokens, and stay young forever; and it's stupid.

So have fun with it, but I'm not playing.