We are all Zack Morris

 The internet sucks now.

Or actually, it has sucked for a long time, but it really sucks now.

Everything is controlled by algorithm and repetitive images that force their way into our brain. You ever see Billy Joel's music video to "Pressure"? Well, it is sort of like that, except we are "willing" participants in it all.

Racism has existed the moment we could see a difference in one another, and utilize that difference to set ourselves apart. Sure, I am white, but I am fat. That makes me different. I have dark hair with a thinning top. That also makes me different. As kids, we are taught to understand that everyone is different but the same, so we can all be equals. So we can all love and respect one another. As an adult, you are now fed variances on platters, and are asked to make yourself feel validation by judging what is different. Your algorithms command it. If you use Facebook, or Twitter, or BlueSky, or TikTok, or anything where you click that box saying "ACCEPT COOKIES", you are fed this, like it or not. You eat the shit and then get angry about it tasting like shit, and then you spy on comments to ensure that everyone ate shit who just saw what you saw. If someone says it tasted like honey, you question it. You grow annoyed, because you just ate literal shit, and they said it was honey.

That is why I wanted to write this piece, and here of all places. My goofy little blog that I have left vacated, but the glass for "Emergencies ONLY" now needs to be smashed as I continue to grow tired of the same trends.

Social media is making people more intolerable than ever before, and at an accelerated rate due to the current administration, political climate, and so on. When did we get so stupid as a species?

I really want to highlight a few things here, as I could go on about this topic for ages but there are a few "key phrases" that have really been thrown around as insults, when they are anything but. 

The first is "woke". The word "woke" was first used in a mainstream way when protesters grew tired of African Americans being killed for petty crimes. They became educated by looking at evidence, and seeing that a white man can steal a car and get arrested, while a black man can do the same crime and be shot to death with his hands up in the air. A white child can rape a girl half his age as a teenager, and walk away free, but a black kid can just be walking home from school with a drink and candy and be shot to death for crossing the path of the wrong person on the wrong day. It was called woke because it meant educated and informed. They see what is going on. You get the idea? You don't have to agree with the concept on good versus evil in any argument, but do you get it? WOKE. 

Over time, Black Lives Matter became a movement to bring a voice to this, and that heightened the term's usage, so much so that the right-wing community started using it as a way to describe "different" people as intolerable, without saying that word that was dancing on the tips of their racist little tongues. You know the word.

When the trans movement also pushed forth (especially during the pandemic), we got more of that. People were fighting to simply exist on the same platform as everyone else, and them and anyone who supported them became "woke". Then the word got used to describe LGBT communities, Mexicans, people with colored hair (yeah, that always strikes me as odd), and so on. If you were different, you became "woke". It was a buzzword that could be used to deface a dialogue that could solve an issue but ignorant people. "Woke!" said the random Youtuber, or passerby. "Those Grammy's sure are "woke " today, Henry!" said the random man at the water cooler of the job his dad gave him. Its all WOKE WOKE WOKE. Its funny that modern culture caught on to the word so quickly, and really tried to paint a narrative on it for things they didn't want to see or hear.

The next word is our new flavor of the week, which is DEI. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Now this was a big one after the protests. After the hate crimes. After Trayvon Martin, and after Ahmaud Arbery. DEI has actually been around for a lot longer, but not like you remember it. This is what large companies did to diversify their platform, so they would grow a larger base of consumers. You would hire qualified ethnic groups to join your team to add diversity. Sure, the effect decades ago was very one-dimensional and did little to improve the lives of that minority, but it would look good on paper, and lead to more acceptance in the workplace as we grew more accustomed to seeing a variety of people. DEI became a focus after 2020 because people wanted to ensure more representation was not only on paper, but also visible to the public, so the federal government, the entertainment industry, and just about every large business made commitments to display this. They hired more DEI people, which they would then stick in major positions that they were qualified to be in. 

The sad part of it all is despite qualifications and doing exceptional work, they were kind of pushed to the front for all to see. Its like you are watching a play, and someone would come in and say "and come on out black and brown people, take a bow", despite the fact that those people may not have been in the production at all. Giving opportunity turned into trying to mascot people who were educated and intelligent to being jesters for a play. There was heart in the original concept, but it became eating rainbow Oreo cookies and drinking "Black History Month Dr. Pepper", because useless suits just wanted to highlight a facade of tolerance, rather than simply show the natural intelligence and equality we all shared. 

Eventually, the term DEI got associated with fakeness for those who it was aimed to represent, and of course for the intolerant who opposed the notion. Much like "woke", the term is used as a slander towards any black, brown, disabled, or simply different person who got a job, even if it was on their own merits. The ignorant have hi-jacked the term and flew it straight into a racist cesspool of the internet, where hatred as turned it upside down. Now these people who were hired on real merits are being dismissed. People who simply exist and have already proven themselves are having their degrees, experience, and merits doubted - all because algorithms have re-taught the mainstream audience that DEI is suddenly a bad thing. 

 

You ever see that episode of Saved by the Bell, where a girl in a wheelchair ends up on a date with Zack, and then he finds out she is handicapped? He then panics, and spends the episode parading her around like some sort of tool to show people how tolerant he is of the handicapped - only before she eventually breaks and melts down on him, stating "Don't treat me like I'm Broken!!" Its a wild ride. He even hosts a fucking handicapped basketball game to cover up his guilt.

That is a weird pivot to make on this topic, but its kind of what America (and the entire world) has kind of done with DEI hires. Zack loved this girl on the phone, and connected to her because he liked her. When he saw her, his standard insecurity burst out and he was afraid to look intolerant, so he smiles big and treats her like an object. We, as a country are right there in this story. We haven't gotten to the moral of the story yet, and we probably won't at this point as the current administration have pulled the plug on the television and told us "SEE! HE ONLY WAS WITH HER BECAUSE OF HER WHEELS!". We relate to Zack because that is how we are. We are born insecure. We are born defensive. We yearn for knowledge and discovery, so we become "woke" to understanding that people are all people and maybe we should love everyone the same. And we chose not to.

DEI becomes the second coming of "woke", and the ignorant bathe in their pool of misinformation. Now you can't even see a black person on television without some smug fucker in a comment section saying "ha, DEI!" or "WOKE". It even effects the handicapped. If you are disabled or autistic, you are in the same boat. You either ham it up and be a pity party, or people scream "WOKE". I don't even care about Wicked. You know, the musical with the singer that licks donuts. That one. Well, they did try to cast a very lovely actress who was naturally disabled in it, and of course, it has become "WOKE" or "DEI! DEI!". I don't know the intention of the writers or directors, but I am sure some kid who is disabled felt a little more included watching that film, as if one day she may be an actress. Maybe someone who watched Family Matters grew up to write their own sitcom, and maybe that one person who came in as a DEI hire used his company to create jobs for his original community. The power of authentic DEI is limitless, and no one is qualified to verify the authenticity. 

Moving on, this is a weird one, and the last little "poppy phrase for idiots" I will focus on. 

Diddy Party!

Yes, Diddy Parties. In 2024, Diddy got caught in a scheme where he was trafficking females and putting them through hell so he could have crazy sex parties to....keep is ego high? I mean, I honestly do not know much about the story. I know there is shady stuff, but somehow that became a big thing. The clip where he beat the shit out of his girlfriend? Sure, that was big for a day, but this scandal of these fucking parties became the most well-known scandal in recent history, and that little phrase has become bigger than anything Sean Combs has ever done on the internet in real life.

Now when I see a social media post about ANY success a black person has, it is immediately flooded with comments on "Diddy Parties!" or "DIDDY LOL" by some ignorant 50 year-old white man who probably shuts down his run-down bar nightly as he avoids letters from lawyers over unpaid child support. Yep, that's the type, and its just another way the public has decided to be intolerant to black people. 

The whole thing makes me chuckle of how stupid it is, but man do racists absolutely love vilifying people of color by branding them as pedophiles. What a fucked up thing to do. P. Diddy is garbage based on video evidence, and apparently real evidence. But just because you see a random person with a different skin tone, you want to stick that branding on their face without thought? Fuck off.

Woke.

DEI.

Diddy Parties.

These three phrases are just new ways to say the worst things you can think about someone, and get away with it with a cheap, overused "insult" that lacks context or exploration of thought. Its dumb, and I instantly feel like I am dealing with automatic intolerance from anyone who utters those phrases. 

Last year, I launched a nostalgia-driven Facebook page out of boredom, and it isn't getting a lot of traction - but I just kind of do it as a hobby. I already knew that Facebook and other social media sites pay for engagement. They want your clicks, and they want your comments, so they try to piss you off by targeting your insecurities. You view it and stop scrolling? That shit is recorded. That is a view. That is a tick off the checkboxes. You comment? Even better. Another X in the box. Shared? Now we are talking. You just got monetization heading your way, because you are keeping people on those social media patterns. These websites prey on hatred and anger because unless its a picture of a dog or a 200 year old woman baking a fucking cake, it gets scrolled by. If I make a post about an analysis of a Captain Planet episode, I may get 1 like. Maybe. Social media works this way. If I said "Captain Planet proves global warming is real", then we will be in business as deniers would come for my head. If I make a random post about how Disney is going to make Snow White ethnic, then I might want to buy a bucket to catch all of my funds I just earned that day. Hatred sells.

Your mom, dad, sister, brother, and everyone in-between are falling for it, because its real. It doesn't matter if the post was meant with malicious intent. Those leopards are eating faces right now and preying on insecurities in order to monetize hatred. 

So what can you do? Scroll on by, or fucking stop. It kills me to stop trolling these people. It eats me inside to see that hatred, but the more you interact, the more you feed the machine that grows this stuff. I am an empath and it hurts to see people hurt. I say that as a hypocrite because when I see a meth head at a convenience store, I immediately think about the danger they may cause, not that they were once a real person who laughed at jokes, who had dreams, and who got caught up in drugs. I guess everyone is like that, and that is why were are the way we are. Being a bigot isn't the answer. We need more woke people. We need more, authentic DEI. We need more Didd--- well, maybe not that one. But maybe we should stop punishing people for sins of someone else. 

Sure, this is a long post and may have taught you everything you already knew, but I think its time we unplug more. Don't go touch grass, go post something positive. Call out monetization if you want to comment. Be change. Stop this fucking racism that is masked under trends.

It's stupid, and we are all better than that, right? Zack Morris always was trash, but he wasn't by the end of the episode. Let's get there.

P.S.

Beyonce deserved that award because she made a country album that was voted on as better than the other four options, per the Academy that voted.