{"id":162657303,"date":"2025-05-14T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T12:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=162657303"},"modified":"2025-05-14T05:44:37","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T10:44:37","slug":"on-nonparticipation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=162657303","title":{"rendered":"On Nonparticipation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“More and more [voters] declared, if only by nonparticipation, their alientation from the political system. In 1960, 63 percent of those eligible to vote voted in the presidential election. By 1976, this figure had dropped to 53 percent.”- Howard Zinn, ‘A People’s History of the United States’<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

It only seems fitting that my first Wednesday column on the new website should be about non-participation, right? I mean, I was initially enthusiastic about a tech company dedicated to blogging.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I’m never enthusiastic about tech companies, but you know what I mean. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hey before we get started\u2014listen to Burgers Or Tacos?<\/a><\/em>, maybe? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"an<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So you know how there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism? You know how life in the contemporary United States is a series of compromises and tough choices? It’s hard to live a life that makes you feel “hey, when my actions in life are weighed on the cosmic scales of justice, I’m definitely coming out as ‘good guy,'” when you live in the U.S. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s hard to, say, buy entirely thrifted\/ethically made clothes. It\u2019s easy to recycle. It\u2019s hard to live without a car, unless you\u2019re in very specific area of the country (it was easy for me in Rogers Park\/Edgewater, for example, it\u2019s very difficult in West Ridge, and those are all neighborhoods in the same city). It\u2019s easy not eat Chick Fil-A. Some things are easy until they\u2019re not\u2014I can happily boycott Target and Wal-Mart, but that summer I went to camp in Martin, TN? I was lining Sam Walton\u2019s pockets. I resisted getting a smartphone until a job made not having one untenable.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That does not mean you should forget about values entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I live and work on the Internet. An argument could be made that a nobler life would be going back to working restaurants and start making zines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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WANNA READ A ZINE (credit:\u00a0a nun frightened by a ghost playing guitar, page 65 from the \u2018Images of Spain\u2019 album, Francisco Goya<\/a>)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Substack was something I was thinking about for a while before I lost my Cracked.com<\/em> contract\u2014except, no it wasn’t. Blogging<\/em> was on my mind, I first thought up “THE LAZY & ENTITLED BLOG” in like 2015 and then Brendan and I decided to use the name for, uh, something different. Anyway, I wanted to blog. Substack, as I first heard of it, meant two things: laid-off basketball writers like Kelly Dwyer<\/a> or Tom Ziller<\/a>, or the MattYyyyglesiuss\/Harper\u2019s Letter<\/a>\/BigBrainSoftHands<\/a> crowd. I obviously love the former and hate the latter\u2014those willing fascist collaborators, the Bari Weiss and Jesse Signals of the world. I\u2019m not fixing any typos in their names, that\u2019s how much I hate the jagoffs. But in a “why should I change, they’re the ones who suck” spirit, I figured if I shared Twitter with them, I could share Substack. Then, like Twitter, Substack became explicitly, happily pro-Nazi. Time to go!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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