This was great, I hope you got some kind of kickback off the mediocre white tote bags. It always struck me as odd that of all the things various white men have done over the years, being kinda-ok at your office job was what got singled out. It's probably no coincidence that the gender criticism most compatible with corporate productivity culture took off.
Absolutely no kickbacks lol, not even for the phrase I was credited for. Overall I’d say coining a viral slogan has nothing to recommend it unless you use it to launch some speaking-tour grift, which I was never savvy/shameless enough to do.
I was enjoying your writing on this post and then you dropped the Dunedin reference, and once I knew you were a Kiwi, I immediately subscribed (unpaid), I'm a cautious paid subscriber but it bodes well for you.
Why write a whole post trying to take credit for a joke away from a Black woman only to erase the race and gender elements that made it funny in the first place?
i know it’s inconvenient to people still clinging to 2010s identity politics that the “mediocre white men” joke originated with a mediocre white woman, but that’s the truth! or do you think Hagi’s formulation was something totally new?
I dunno people have tweeted a lot of things. If you search for confidence + white + guy you find tweets with a very similar to format to this before both of yours. I’m more like why does it feel so important to claim ownership of this joke especially if you don’t have a new idea to share that is relevant to the topic (i.e., it’s the white-supremacist patriarchy specifically that makes us all feel dumb as hell).
i find your insistence that i’m desperate to take credit for this phrase weird given i didn’t for 10 years and only do so now, with mild embarrassment, because it was a good way into a story that’s about the enduring pain of being called average, which is, i think, an idea actually worth exploring
This was great, I hope you got some kind of kickback off the mediocre white tote bags. It always struck me as odd that of all the things various white men have done over the years, being kinda-ok at your office job was what got singled out. It's probably no coincidence that the gender criticism most compatible with corporate productivity culture took off.
Absolutely no kickbacks lol, not even for the phrase I was credited for. Overall I’d say coining a viral slogan has nothing to recommend it unless you use it to launch some speaking-tour grift, which I was never savvy/shameless enough to do.
Yes truuuuue
I'm sorry to say that I thought this essay was great. Thank you for sharing it.
hahaha thank you. i’ll take it
I was enjoying your writing on this post and then you dropped the Dunedin reference, and once I knew you were a Kiwi, I immediately subscribed (unpaid), I'm a cautious paid subscriber but it bodes well for you.
Why write a whole post trying to take credit for a joke away from a Black woman only to erase the race and gender elements that made it funny in the first place?
i know it’s inconvenient to people still clinging to 2010s identity politics that the “mediocre white men” joke originated with a mediocre white woman, but that’s the truth! or do you think Hagi’s formulation was something totally new?
I dunno people have tweeted a lot of things. If you search for confidence + white + guy you find tweets with a very similar to format to this before both of yours. I’m more like why does it feel so important to claim ownership of this joke especially if you don’t have a new idea to share that is relevant to the topic (i.e., it’s the white-supremacist patriarchy specifically that makes us all feel dumb as hell).
i find your insistence that i’m desperate to take credit for this phrase weird given i didn’t for 10 years and only do so now, with mild embarrassment, because it was a good way into a story that’s about the enduring pain of being called average, which is, i think, an idea actually worth exploring
Agree to disagree on that one, take care!