Status Updates From La presentación de la perso...

Don't even get me started on this running joke about the fucking crofters of Shetland Isle. This is the least illustrative example of a microcosm of social values to ever be printed onto paper.

I'm trying to take this book seriously, but it keeps not letting me:
Women's friend groups are apparently nothing like men's friend groups, because unlike the mutual respect of individuality men have for each other, women merely exchange tales of childbirth and cooking recipes; "deriding the men's desires or clumsiness, questioning the moral and intellectual superiority of their husbands and men in general."

If all that Goffman writes is true and completely ordinary, then I am the one who is dead from the neck up. If every man and woman in my life is so transfixed, gazing into my eyes, only so that they may see their own reflection, then I'm sorry, I cannot play this game of infinite pretense. If I am to only see myself in what others think of me, then put the bullet in my gun and let me have my peace, you animals.

If there ever was a book to signify that death is the only appropriate response to life, this would be it. Erving Goffman's work is as dry as sawdust, and rejects the true presentation of the self as possible or anything remotely valuable. Layers of approximations upon simulacra - masks and performance art - disingenuous pursuits of social status. Re-define as many words as you want - you're dead from the neck up.