Taking Greatsociety too seriously. Taking \u201cNacho Sasha\u201d too seriously. It\u2019s a trap that\u2019s caught many people over the last decade. Since April of 2001, this page has seen a steady stream of internet drama. People desperate for community, understanding, or just some sort of emotional purge have stopped by and shit all over the place.<\/p>\n
Friends have been lost, love affairs have ended, family has been horrified, and strangers have become obsessed with battling the essentially meaningless words and thoughts of someone who does not exist.<\/p>\n
The power of Nacho. Women have dated me and, in short order, it became clear that they really wanted to date Nacho and were disappointed to find out that I do not behave in the real world as my alter ego does on these pages. How crazy is it when a woman says, as a relationship falls apart, \u201cI thought Nacho could handle this\u201d? It\u2019s happened more than once over the last decade.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, Greatsociety has forged some of my most important friendships. These friends, both in real life and in the sense of virtual community that has built up in the forums<\/a>, have acted as my only solace in my darkest hours.<\/p>\n So, with both the good and the bad in mind, April is set aside to celebrate Greatsociety\u2019s tenth anniversary<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Those who have struggled with Greatsociety \u2013 those lost friends, confused lovers, and insane strangers — are getting caught up in what we publishers call \u201ccreative nonfiction.\u201d Where does the truth end and the lie begin? I\u2019d love to make more use of the term \u201cparticipatory fiction,\u201d which, like the early participatory journalism of authors such as Pagan Kennedy<\/a>, exists only from the point of view of the author who, themselves, are part of the story. When you tell a story that cuts at the truth, but is intentionally lacking the whole story, lies of omission are simply part of the process. The reader is forced to draw conclusions. The reader is tasked with filling in the gaps. A challenge which, in the modern day, is not often offered to the reader.<\/p>\n Now, of course, Greatsociety is rarely as high brow as all that. But when that\u2019s the start point, it\u2019s easy to take a step in more fantastical directions. Behind the mask of an alter ego, and with a somewhat zealous sense of \u201conly write what you know,\u201d the voice of Nacho Sasha is free to run with any tangent, to indulge anger and bitterness, to celebrate vice and decay, and to challenge reality. The writing becomes an insular sort of play within a play. The author\u2019s personal experience as seen through the eyes of a fictional character. A separate personality manufactured for the sake of the story, and who exists only on paper. Or\u2026whatever. Pixels. The actions and reactions are all what might have been. We all have this same sort of interior monologue. This personal story that occasionally diverges from what really happened.<\/p>\n People have struggled with the voice of Nacho Sasha, and Greatsociety as a whole. How does one describe it? From cutting at the bone of the personal experience, to having a conversation with my penis? From rolling my eyes at the antics of Texas Billionaire Oscar bin Laden<\/a>, to irrational attacks on local businesses<\/a>? Is it satire, is it some promotional stunt, is it the ravings of a crank? I like to think it\u2019s a version of absurdism. The very basic definition of the absurd is that it results from the fact that we, as individuals, constantly seek meaning and importance in a meaningless and trivial world. This endless chasing of our tails is why we\u2019re walking around with credit card debt, and the desire to assuage ourselves with material gain, and become obsessed with the career ladder and the nice house and the nice car. All the trappings of the pathetic one-way street of capitalism are born of our quest for meaning and importance.<\/p>\n But, in the end, we\u2019re a bunch of nobodies.<\/p>\n Albert Camus believed that, in accepting the absurd, we freed ourselves. We essentially answered all of life\u2019s questions by both fighting against and embracing the absurd. Which is, in itself, absurd.<\/p>\n From my viewpoint, life is meaningless. For most of my adult life, I was a chronic pain sufferer. For the bulk of my days on this earth, I\u2019ve lived under the shadow of a broken family that reached beyond the closed doors of the home and ruined the lives of hundreds of people under our employ. A mini-tsunami of human betrayal and horror that still alters coastlines 26 years later.<\/p>\n The questions to struggle with are big ones. Why did these things happen? For most of Greatsociety\u2019s decade, I fought the absurd. I rebelled. Partially, I was avoiding suicide. The chronic pain was of a nature that seemed incurable, and made life unlivable. In fact, what I had is still called \u201cthe suicide disease.\u201d<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t learn to embrace the absurd until 2007, when I finally got the chance to ask \u201cwhy\u201d of something and someone other than the air around me. I confronted my father in his final days \u2013 a man who stole millions and left us destitute and ruined the lives of everyone he came near \u2013 and I asked him, \u201cWhy\u2019d you do it?\u201d<\/p>\n He laughed. Then he shrugged. He replied: \u201cI thought it would be best for you. And I\u2019ve never thought any different.\u201d<\/p>\n It all became clear at that point \u2013 life really is one colossal joke. There is no answer, no reason why, for anything that\u2019s happened to me. Why did I suffer for 12 years with white-hot electric pain coursing through my face? Because I had a biological glitch that\u2019s actually in all of us. Why did my parents go down the rabbit hole into madness?<\/p>\n You can go insane asking these questions. I probably did. Maybe that\u2019s where Nacho Sasha comes from. That part of me that broke sometime around 1985 and can never be fixed.<\/p>\n Absurdism is hard to accept in any sort of written form because it demands that the reader, also, have a sense of the absurd. Not that the reader is required to surrender all belief in meaning, just that they have to see the dark comedy that surrounds all of us. I\u2019ve found, strangely, that the very religious (or spiritual, rather) get me. The sort of believers who acknowledge the madness of the world and see no choice but to simply do no harm and carry on.<\/p>\n The ones who have trouble are the entitlement class. Those who lack belief systems, whose intelligence have been clouded by their own pains and struggles, and who have come to think that they deserve to be uplifted in some way. That they are owed because they were betrayed by family or physiology or psychology.<\/p>\n Greatsociety\u2019s beginnings are deeply entrenched in the absurd. We\u2019ll visit the page as it was in late April of 2001 later this month. We\u2019ll hear from authors who were there at the beginning, and those who joined later. We\u2019ll also spend a week this month battling over the top 20 Sci-Fi movies of all time. Because, beyond this whole philosophical discussion of what Greatsociety is, it\u2019s also an extension of my interests and reactions to the world.<\/p>\n For example — things changed for this innocent page (and all of us) when the Towers came down on 9\/11. Humor heals all tragedy, but something about 9\/11 seemed more tragic than anything that had come before. My reaction (the creation of the character Oscar bin Laden) was poorly received by two of the original authors. That was the first big breakdown in December of that same year.<\/p>\n But what was I supposed to do? Roll up everything and quit? Give up? Those two former friends did. One fled the DC area and squatted in a burned out apartment in Tennessee for months. Shattered by the meaningless world. Our sense of control and security was taken away, and the weaker among us couldn\u2019t understand what had happened.<\/p>\n Welcome to the American Experience. It\u2019s okay if the blacks die, or if the Bengalis are inundated by a flood, or the Chinese get picked off by the tens of thousands in an earthquake. But god forbid good white people in suits get creamed. It was too close to home, I guess. It certainly was a weird day, I\u2019ll give you that. Since then, it\u2019s been a weird decade. And that has been reflected on the page. You simply can\u2019t avoid it. It\u2019s who we are \u2013 all of us. Whether it was my memory of being cast onto the streets of DC amidst the panic of an imagined invasion, or Cassander fleeing Katrina, who we are will always influence what we say to you, the reader. I\u2019m of the school of thought that all fiction is participatory. Is real, to a degree. Whether it features real people and\/or real places, or acts as a soapbox for our beliefs and desires, fiction is merely one way of writing an autobiography. Playing the middle ground between illusion and reality is simply the game of writing. At this level, writing is not a chore. It\u2019s not a business. It\u2019s an outlet. A rant. An interior monologue given voice, and form, and a name.<\/p>\n Voices from our Great Society \u2013 our Sick Society. Not really intended for anyone, they\u2019re just cast out into the world at large. Join us, if you want. You\u2019re welcome. If it upsets you, or you don\u2019t agree. Well\u2026 Fuck off, then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Taking Greatsociety too seriously. Taking \u201cNacho Sasha\u201d too seriously. It\u2019s a trap that\u2019s caught many people over the last decade. Since April of 2001, this page has seen a steady stream of internet drama. People desperate for community, understanding, or …<\/p>\n