Existentialism: The State of Formerly Having Been an Istential
I was excited to write an article for the Herring, but then I was told the topic: existentialism. I think it goes without saying that existentialism is a difficult subject for anybody to write about. This is particularly true for me, because it runs in my family. My grandmother died of an existential overdose one day when considering whether to eat a second hot dog at a lunch barbeque. Her father suffered an even more gruesome fate. He was caught by the Nazis and sent to one of their philosophical camps, where he and almost 200 other rationalists and empiricists were forced into a crowded room and simultaneously had their belief in an ordered universe shattered. Hell, just last week a cousin of mine was committed after being found disemboweling his cat, Kierkegaard, and screaming, “WELL, FUCKER?!? HOW CAN THERE POSSIBLY BE A GOD?!? NIETZSCHE FIGURED IT OUT, WHY THE FUCK CAN’T YOU?!?” Before anyone gets worried, though, I have already made the appropriate calls, and Heather Munroe Blum’s poodle, Friedrich, is fine. Thank goodness for that poodle’s quick philosophical judgment. 
Because of my family’s unfortunate history, I’ve always been too nervous to learn much about existentialism. I know some of the basics, like that existentialists believe that humans create their own meaning in existence, but that’s about it. For the sake of this article, though, I decided that it was time to get serious about existentialism. Then I changed my mind, because this is meant to be a comedy article. Then I tried to be funny. Then I wrote some self-referential stuff and explained myself too much. Then I got lost as to where I was going with this paragraph. Well, it’s too late to change anything now: I haven’t used the backspace key in 7 years, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to start today! I am not going down that path. That key is a slippery slope if I’ve ever seen one. One second you’re correcting a simple spelling error, and then the next thing you know you’re using square brackets and actually understand what that vertical line character is for. I fucking hate that line, it has no purpose. It needs to stop waiting for things to happen for it, and start… constructing its own meaning! Ha! Didn’t think I could pull that one back to the topic, did you, you bunch of backspace-using shit-heads? Looks like I didn’t need to delete this paragraph after all. Me: 1, Normal Methods of Editing: 0.
It seems to me that the internet should be the perfect place to find out about existentialism. The internet is all about people creating meaning. Blog entries let us construct and reflect on our existence. YouTube videos let us watch our existence. MySpace pages let us misspell our existence, or maybe put our existence to mediocre music because our parents don’t understand us. Facebook profiles let us make sure that our friends can’t forget our existence, no matter how hard those fucking bastards try. It just doesn’t get much more existentialist than the internet. The internet can even make you into an existentialist yourself. Like yesterday, I googled “scat” without my safe-search on, and now I’m fully certain that there is no god. In other news, I forget what it feels like to be aroused and not feel like a deviant at the same time.
So, the internet is all about people creating meaning, and existentialists claim this meaning is the only real truth. If so, then based on my research in several web forums, I am some combination of a “communist,” “Hitler,” and a “faggot.” Thanks existentialists! What? Oh, no, don’t worry. I didn’t need all that self esteem anyways! Hahahaha oh god no one understands my pain; TIME TO UPDATE MY MYSPACE PAGE ROFL.*
The most obvious example of people creating meaning on the internet is Wikipedia. It’s an existentialist’s dream (See pg. 16), a massive online community of people constructing our world as human ideas. Plus, we all know how much Sartre loved spending 9 hours a day arguing over an insignificant 5-character edit, and Camus was a fiend for disambiguation pages.
To better understand how Wikipedia is the very height of existentialism, I looked up existentialism on Wikipedia. Oh man, I just meta-ed so hard that I almost broke my pretentious-bone. Yeah, I don’t think this last paragraph was worth it just for that joke either, but there’s nothing I can do it about it now, remember? Suck it up.
Wikipedia says that existentialism is a cable cooking show that started in November 1997. At least, it has since I vandalised the article a few minutes ago. Apparently, the most successful episode to date was “Heidegger’s Quick-N-Tasty Lasagna!” Fascinating! While I was at it, I also vandalised the article about “The Other Boleyn Girl,” and let me tell you, I really find that Quentin Tarantino’s work has gone downhill since Grindhouse.
There was a time, somewhere around the 23rd Wikipedia account I managed to get permanently banned, that I decided to try to look for greener pastures. My parents’ old copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica seemed like a good bet, and no one seemed to notice when I flipped to Book 14, page 429, and wrote “COCK MUNCHER” in red pen under every picture of William Taft. It seemed like something that would make people at least a bit angry, but I guess I don’t really know anything about him except that he was president of the U.S. at some point. Maybe when he wasn’t in office his actual job was literally sitting around eating penises. I would hate to think that my vandalism could actually increase an encyclopedia’s accuracy, but it’s a possibility I have to consider. Especially given that some parts of the United States have economies that are almost 75% penis-eating-based. It’s true! I read it on Wikipedia.
So, what now? We’re looking for some closure, right? Somewhere at the end of all this there must be some insight into the meaning of existentialism. Well, there was. You never saw it though. It came about 3 paragraphs from now, after some pretty sharp jokes and a beautifully rounded off conclusion. Sadly, all that is gone. You see, I made a spelling error at the very end of my perfect conclusion. I couldn’t write my way out of it, as it was the end of the piece. I buckled. I began using the backspace key, and it is indeed a horrible pit of doom. 1 letter gone, 2 letters gone… suddenly, paragraphs! Three paragraphs gone, never to return. I know what existentialism is, but you will never find out, for the back-lust has me! True, this might just be a bullshit deus ex machina talk to get out of the article because I’m stuck, but for now, I’ll just claim that the backspace is a slippery slope and that now I am addicted.
- Asaf Gerchak
*Ed. note: Asaf has absolutely no idea how to use internet acronyms.
The Red Herring
vol. XIX no. 5
- Digg It!
- Posted on May 14th, 2008
- Articles, Asaf Gerchak
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