Escaping the Endless Scroll Part Four: I'm Bad at Obituaries

CW: suicide.

So now I've lived here in this small town for close to exactly three years. The world has grown much stranger and the internet more hostile. We have an unstoppable cacophony of AI drowning out our voices and sometimes we just have no mouth and must scream.

Sometimes that scream sounds like a thousand unread posts on social media. 

Sometimes that scream sounds like a suicide. 

Last summer my dearest friend Shelli Minton died of despair. I found her and called 911. I did CPR just in case there was a chance that I could restart her heart. I've had enough training as a first responder to know there wasn't a chance. I did it anyway because even with her despair I tried to have hope. 

It hurts so bad to have her gone. For me and for many others. She was a beloved friend and an absolute light in my world.

Even if I don't know what the final straw was, I know her field of fucks had become fallow. What was important to her had been taken away, piece by piece. And more was demanded, even when she had less than nothing left to give. 

She was a veteran with the kind of PTSD you get from being a woman in the military and not the kind you get from active combat. She had problems with her eyesight and by the time I met her in 2017, she had already started losing it. Her husband died of cancer in 2022 and his pension had been spent on his medical bills.

She was an artist but people saw no value in the act of creating art. People were using AI to generate slop and saying that artists need not apply.

Last year she had lost her vision completely in her left eye and that made a lot of things harder. On top of it, the world had become worse. Not only did we have fascists in the government, they were actively cutting spending to programs that people depended on. They prioritized the greed of the few over the good of the many. They were killing people. They are killing people.

Shelli wasn't an exception to that. She posted again and again on social media, cries for help, cries to be seen. Cries for someone to give a fuck. 

I gave a fuck but it wasn't enough, it wasn't what she needed. She needed society to see her, to value her work. Not because she was a "productive member of society" but because she was worthy as a human. I was one voice when she needed a cacophony. But even her choir was too small. There weren't enough of us to provide her the support she needed. Her choir was drowned out by the endless indifference of the world around us.

What do you do when you are told again and again you are worthless? What do you do when nothing you can offer is valued? What do you do?

I understand her decision. Even though my heart is still absolutely broken by her loss. But this is not another sad story. This is me getting to the point.

Shelli's memory is a blessing. 

She was an amazing artist. The painting at the top of this post is hers. She taught me that I could be an artist, even if I didn't believe I could. She told me my stick figures were great and meant it. She taught me that art is creation and creation is joy. 

Every time I draw or paint or doodle, I think of her. I think of how she wanted to teach art to the community here. How she wanted to bring her amazing gifts and share them with anyone who would come.

She read this blog diligently and was excited when these Endless Scroll posts came out. She had wanted to read this part and wanted to know the next part of my journey. She never got to read this part and this is the part I was writing for her.

Saying the internet is all bad is to discount the experiences of people who would be lost without the connections they've made online. Online community helps disabled folks who may not be able to leave their homes have friends and resources. We can use it to talk about our special interests with people across the world. We can use it to organize and provide resources to fight against the despair. We can use it to give people in cults information that can broaden their worldviews. We can use it to tell queer and trans folks that they are whole and beautiful and worthy of love.

I have been able to escape the worldview of my conservative "I was tradcath before it was cool" family. It has given me hope and helped me feel connection when I really needed it. I've made so many friends online who have helped me feel seen. Some of them are reading this (hi, love you).

But being online isn't like that any more. I wish it was. I wish social media was better at helping us see each other. There are so many ways I could rant about it. There are so many ways Shelli and I ranted about it over coffee. 

Unlike me, Shelli was on social media. She sold paintings on Instagram. She found events for us to go to on Facebook. She told me about all the weird nonsense she saw on TikTok. I relied on her to go look at something with one of her accounts, even if it was an announcement by a local restaurant. 

Since I went offline, social media has become account gated. Even if I wanted to look at community events, it's hard for me to find them or access them without an account. Shelli was how I was able to connect with people and events. I trusted her to let me know when something cool was happening, or even to share a funny meme about orcas.

With her loss, I don't have a good way to connect with people and events. So I have to find other ways to find community.

I go and stare at the river by my house. I tell dogs they are the best dogs when I see them on my walks. I run out to take photos of the sky when it's especially pretty and sometimes when it's not. 

These are all lonely things and with her gone, I have become much lonelier. 

I'm trying to make friends the old fashioned way and to be honest I'm terrible at it.

I'm still trying. 

I pay more attention to fliers in coffeeshops and at the library. Sometimes I remember to go to the events. I try to go to them even if they aren't my cup of tea because the more people go to those events, the more likely they are to be held again. 

I try to do new things every week, going to museums, trying to find one weird old thing that brings me joy in junk stores. I write letters in cursive, sometimes even to strangers (with their permission, of course). When my letter recipients can't read cursive (or at least my cursive), I write my letters on the typewriters in my growing collection. 

I'm hoping to go hiking more, but we'll see if I can manage it with my nerve pain. Still, I do like going so I can take pictures of mushrooms and bugs and cool leaves in just the perfect ray of sunshine.

Not a lot of the things I do require an internet connection. I wouldn't have believed that I could do this before the stroke. Not being online felt like not having oxygen. Now? I feel like I can finally breathe.

I don't have a solution to save this darkening world. I don't even have a way to save folks like Shelli. I can't be a superhero, and being a superhero wouldn't help anyway. We don't need a savior. We need community.

So what can I do?

I can be brave and risk rejection when I talk to strangers and ask them to be my friend. I can hold potato parties at my house because why the heck not. Everyone loves potatoes. Everyone is me in this case. If you don't love potatoes or potatoes don't love you, you probably still have a food that brings you joy to share.

Meals build community. Talking to strangers builds community. Potatoes build community, because why not.

When we build community, we see each other. We don't even have to like each other for this to work. We just have to be willing to sit down at a table and eat a meal, or go next door to make sure our neighbor is ok, or even tell someone they have a cute dog.

Shelli's legacy isn't the way I grieve her loss. 

Her legacy is giving me the courage to be offline. To be analog trash and find joy in it. To recklessly make art and to be joyously terrible at it.

One of my favorite poems is by Ray Bradbury: We Have Our Arts So We Don't Die of Truth. 

Every time I think of her, I think of that poem. I think of how she gave me the courage to find joy in stick figures and to know that talent doesn't matter nearly as much as diligence. She encouraged me in improving my photography and now I have photos I am ridiculously proud of. She enjoyed my poems and always wanted to read more.

And if I can say anything about this journey to this place, to this world where offline is more comfortable than being online, it's that it's taught me just how much we need each other.

So here's my challenge to you.

Write bad poems and read them at open mic nights. Do stick figures in sidewalk chalk that will wash away tomorrow. Sing off key as you do yard work. Write short stories about cats and put them on bulletin boards. Cook meals even if they don't involve potatoes and share them with people. Go to jigsaw puzzle meetups. Find groups of people to play board games with.

Do whatever. Do art and do it badly. Do it badly and with reckless joy. 

Then encourage others to do so as well. Being bad at something and choosing to do it anyways is a way to be human.

And we are valuable and worthy because we are human.

Full stop.