baptized in the primordial soup
"oh, you're a people pleaser? how come i hate you?"
eid mubarak gang — we back up 🙏🏾
looking into the sun raw so she doesn’t get the ick
your honor, objection he wasn’t outside
america, the only country that claims to be freedom fighters that actually fights freedom 🍉
halal guys implies the existence of haram guys
i’m not a stepdad — i’m the dad who stepped up 2 the streets now on blu ray
y’all linkedin, i’m locked in (false)
just glaaaaaze
day one to top opp pipeline needs to be studied
post-trauma dump clarity
please go in your iOS settings and turn on “be normal when black people around”
call me yaptain phillips — look at me, this is my conversation now
i love how japanese godzilla is a veiled metaphor for the horrors of war, wwii nuclear destruction, created by a man who dealt with his war trauma through the story and american godzilla is like “me v. big gorilla: dawn of justice (also bryan cranston is here)”
in the wrong accent, quesalupa is a slur
“we will always fail at who we are told to be.”
“self-care is just being told to pull yourself up by your emotional bootstraps, an individual prescription to a social affliction.”
“education from a place of shaming is not enlightenment but moral superiority that is attempting to hide its hand”
“people don’t remember what you said but how they feel about what you said” - manny j da gawd
“don’t throw stones if you wanna hide hands because these hands will find you.”
“most people don’t grow up. it’s too damn difficult. what happens is most people get older. that’s the truth of it,” maya angelou
why did i leave social for a few years?
big exhale.
reflecting on my digital life, i spent so much time online since aim/aol days that i genuinely forgot that i used to be completely offline — like deadass climbing trees and shit!
i grew up too fast. why? constant awareness of the horrors of the world with no space to navigate the personal; a common experience for mad black people, immigrants, queer folks, etc. activism, political education, and a simmering rage has been a big part of me since i was like 8 (if you know my upbringing, it all made sense).
i needed to take a real step back to tend to my emotional garden, let some things die, weed parts that needed it, and let some light in. if you need further examples:
my cardiologist told me i had an elevated blood pressure for my age and asked about any stressful situations. i told him “social media and trifling people.” he said to minimize stress so i took care of the situation by quitting social cold turkey and microdosing white people.
i felt like i was poisoning myself every day to build up an immunity and…wasn’t building up an immunity…
grief. i was experiencing so much grief (covid, loss, police violence, expired relationships with others and the self, untended etc) and social was not the place to grieve openly and publicly. we gamified trauma — who’s been through the most, who wins, whose turn is it to feel — and i wasn’t playing around.
i went to touch grass and i liked it so much i didn’t want to come back for a while. i was like “bitch, i love grass, this shit is awesome, lemme get in the primordial soup rq”
i felt like i was losing my voice and perspective in the hot take economy and i wanted to form some opinions in a vacuum — mad people just reflect and project and don’t genuinely process which needs time.
covid social media didn’t make me feel more connected to anyone — being in the streets with the homies did
the social media climate following the george floyd protests and the 2020 election drove me insane — it was like we were learning no lessons from 2016 and i felt stuck in a time loop
some niggas wasn’t doing the mf reading and doing all the talking and i was tired of dealing with that — social is so contextaphobic
i loathe content. i was decent at it at one point, but i was a slave to the algorithm. i didn’t want be a brand, to activism myself into fame — i wanna be a person, period.
i wasn’t making what i wanted to make — all my energy was going to posting, tweeting, retweeting, answering dms, etc and i didn’t finish scripts or ideas. i felt myself becoming all talk and no action and i hate that.
social was a boundary that i kept letting people cross — people were trauma dumping in the dms and i always felt compelled to hear people out but it wasn’t good for me.
some comedians are habitual overfamiliar boundary crossers with no personal compunction to take genuine accountability — i left all my patience for this in my 20s
i wanted to deepen my irl relationships with my friends as much as possible and mission mf accomplished.
the sneak glazing was getting crazy tbh — people was coasting off of ideas they finessed from me and friends of mine and the glazer tag was gettin’ hectic. as a conflict-avoidant person, i wasn’t tryna go to war over tweets and takes. shit changed.
i knew too much about everything and also nothing because social is an intricate matrix of interconnected social dynamics that stress me out — power, cliques, social climbing, agendas, overfamiliarity, sneak disses (in every direction), etc…it’s a lot
that goof ass fake emerald heir bought twitter…i thought we were all leaving…i deleted my account…no regrets but don’t get it twisted — that’s why i ditched it
i see who you gas on these sites and i had nothing nice to say so…as the saying goes…
summed up:
i was tired of doing all the understanding and never feeling understood.
i took time off to navigate my own complicity in that.
where have i been?
disconnecting. writing. living. loving. working. learning. unlearning. reading. travelling. reconnecting. forgiving.
finding therapy in all things.
thinking before reacting and learning to trust my reactions.
rediscovering my voice as a person, a comic, and a writer.
doing my part from the sidelines, sharing resources, breaking bread.
allowing myself to feel a more complete range of emotions and not just the acceptable ones.
finding a release valve for all the anger i have with the world around me.
putting new miles on my new knee by playing soccer.
accepting the full spectrum of the self.
attempting work-life balance, still fine-tuning.
letting the lessons marinate.
made a small account for the real ones.
playing uno (iykyk)
why am i back?
i don’t know yet!!! i still don’t like social, i’m not crazy about tiktok, i feel like i said what i needed to say in 2018, the time suck still feels like a waste of time, and the whole media diet and content machine has shifted so much since i was last on.
i don’t wanna do crowdwork clips or even stand up really (more on this another day) but i guess i wanna participate in social as minimally as possible.
one thing i’m certain of? i got shit to say and if i don’t say it then it occupies too much space in my head and allows too much space in my absence for my perspectives to be misinterpreted, manipulated, taken out of context.
other reasons:
ppl got no object permanence, peekaboo contest - you in last place. i would get tight like “damn people really don’t think i exist when they don’t see me” but i have to own up to my own complicity in that and balance it with everyone having their own shit
i got mad lore to catch up on — genuinely happy to see so much progress in people’s lives and also ready to pack some people up, it’s time
i’m here and i want to have a healthier relationship with social media, secondary and tertiary friendships, and develop what feels like online community and not a million parasocial, quasi-branded relationships, unquestioned mob activities, moral seesawing, iykyk
i wanna share what i’ve been working on, what i’m passionate about, and reflections over the last few years
i finally feel more balanced and planted; family’s good, friends are doing good, jon and haley said i got a good inner world, so i’m ready to branch back out
i’m ready to forgive some people and i’m ready engage with some who ideologically disagree with me again (this was never a problem for real but i was getting exhausted)
y’all really let shaun king really hit another lick with islam and i genuinely said not on my watch
nothing will take the twitter out of your brain like context and independent thought — i needed to go apply that to myself before i hopped on social and felt like i was preaching and teaching from a digital pulpit rather than connecting and clarifying.
i feel like that’s why twitter survives — context doesn’t allow us to put ourselves into a story we don’t belong in and independent thought is work and time — people don’t wanna put in the work and love to be in everyone else’s business, a perfect storm.
i need to use social as a tool and not the base of all my interactions — in my industry it feels like that’s the whole game and…no.
i’m writing, djing, starting to do batches of podcasts, and feeling that silly spirit coming back around.
ultimately, just because i wasn’t online all the time didn’t mean i wasn’t around.
just because i was distant didn’t mean i didn’t think of people fondly (or hate them indiscriminately, you know who you are).
read the loosies back catalog for context, more thoughts of what i’ve been up to, more to come.
some silly, some serious, all me. back to a regular schedule and some new formats coming soon.
too many people to thank. what’s understood doesn’t need to be explained but thanks for keeping me on earth, gang 🌱
all duas up for global liberation, no one free til they all free. ceasefire ain’t enough, freeing hostages ain’t enough, we past that. to my congolese, sudanese, uyguhr, palestinian, kashmiri, haitian cousins (with us on earth or martyred) — we with you 🕊
COMING SOON:
*potential* batch of podcasts with my sister Aiche about navigating first-generation kid anxieties and our 8-year treadmill of healing our sibling relationship 💕
essay + podcast: what the post-endgame marvel cinematic universe should have been 🦸🏽♂️
batch of podcasts: why tv is ass right now 📺
dj mixes: look out for ‘the two steppas’ 🎶
party invites: back in the clubs and doing parties this summer 🎶
batch(es) of podcasts about collective liberation, asexuality, comedy, relationships to religion, spirituality, culture — limited run, i don’t wanna be a podcaster
letterboxd is up and running 🤝
essays: 📝
“slow death of monoculture and media”
“shame roulette: late stage online activism”
“keep it a rack: some of y’all are lying about therapy”
“digital refugees and the decentralization of social”
“where does your history start?”
a bunch of other stuff, lemme know what you like, let’s talk about it
Glad to see you back.