Good, Old-Fashioned Self Doubt
Your lil fave could never.
Towards the end of 2024, I was thinking a lot and talking a little about how much Instagram was hurting my feelings. But today I am happy to report that things changed. Not because Instagram started being nicer to me (it hasn’t) but because I stopped caring. And I want to tell you how.
As of this writing, we are a couple of weeks away from the anniversary of the reel above. A reel I made about how much easier white exvangelical men have it when it comes to being platformed in deconstruction. A reel that inspired a certain dumdum to enter my DMs and subsequently my dislike. And here’s the thing (or at least a thing) much like Kendrick’s dismantling of Drake, while a lot of it has happened publicly over the past year, the beef didn’t just begin last year. There’s history and there are bigger themes at play. But wait - you just said your beef started about a year ago. No no, the inciting incident of my irritation with a particular person happened a year ago, but none of what that particular person represents to me is anything new.
When have any of you known me not to be openly wary of and unimpressed with mediocre white men?
And specifically mediocre white men who use the false “authority” granted to them by evangelicalism to enrich themselves financially and feed their ego while avoiding accountability for harm they’ve caused and/or been part of causing? That’s been a spoke of my wheel the whole time. It’s how I entered this space - my issues with Your Lil Fave (YLF), are the same as my issues with Carl Lentz, which are the same as my issues with Brian Houston, which are the same as my issues with Hillsong at large, which are the same as my issues with megachurch culture, which are the same as my issues with evangelicalism in general. I don’t like entitled white men who uphold the status quo. I never have. And people appreciate my passion when I’m training my weapons on targets from the other team, who we can all clearly recognize as harmful, but things get awkward when I start aiming closer to home.
It’s like that target range scene in Men In Black when Agent J (Will Smith) bypasses all the aliens and shoots the cutout of a little girl with books - at first glance, it seems crazy, but when he’s questioned about it, it turns out that not only is his response very reasoned and reasonable, it’s correct. There was knowledge, there was awareness and there was thought behind it. None of which happens instantaneously or overnight. I wasn’t somebody who was wandering around with a head full of thoughts about fuzzy puppies, who had never had a thought about patriarchy or whiteness or power dynamics until EvangeliDrake wandered across my timeline at which point I was suddenly activated and enraged. Be for real. I’ve been enraged the whole time. And in this particular case, I chose not to be quiet about it. Because sometimes numbers matter.
“You’re just jealous.” Meh. Maybe. What’s the word for:
Watching someone who is not as qualified, not as talented, not as thoughtful or conscientious or concerned, who has not done as much work internally or externally, who has not put as much time in and who is not as invested as you are amass a huge follower count and instead of being grateful, instead of having the humility to recognize the way the systems have been set up to benefit them; not only do they feel entitled and want more, they believe they have the power to gatekeep, to do favors and make introductions. “I don’t know if you want to write a book someday, but I could introduce you to…” Bitch, what? You just got here. And if you offer to “connect” me with one more person I already know… Okay. That’s it. We’re done.
What’s the word for that? Is it jealousy? If so, guilty. Did it bother me that YLF and Carl Lentz and Brian Houston all have significantly larger platforms than me? Yes. Is it because I want those platforms for myself? No. [Do you know how much responsibility that is?!] So what’s the deal? Well… it used to bother me a lot because I thought all of those people deserved better. It started to bother me less when I realized that a lot of those people deserved exactly what they were getting and then a few week ago, it stopped bothering me at all when it hit me that everybody has access to better and everybody is seeking out and getting exactly what they’re ready for.
Social capital, is capital. And, just like all capital, it is a manmade construct that rewards conformity, punishes divergence and encourages hoarding.
YLF. Carl Lentz. Brian Houston.
Not one of them has had an original thought interesting enough to merit their followings. (Prove me wrong.)