Hi friends! I hope you’ve been well, and if you haven’t been, I hope you’ve been safe. Just sliding in here before I start the post proper to apologize for the lack of posts lately. I’ve been working on some other really cool writing projects that I look forward to sharing about soon. I hope to eventually have enough of a backlog of content built that I can be consistently publishing even when I’m busy doing other projects or—you know, resting— but at this stage in the process I’m still trying to build the habit of simply writing routinely. Thanks for your patience, and I hope you enjoy this post!
When I was a kid, my parents owned a motel up north. Like a lot of literal “Mom and Pop” motels up north, ours had an owner’s suite, so my folks and I lived where my folks worked. When you’re a kid, whatever your family lifestyle looks like is what’s normal for you, so I spent my early childhood having the run of all the behind the scenes spaces at a thirty room motel and party store. My earliest clear memory is actually in the wood paneled back office scribbling on some paper to “write” like the teachers did on the Peanuts. When I showed my masterpiece to my (busy) mom, declaring that I had written my name, she stopped what she was doing and showed me how to actually write my name.
I spent a lot of time in that back office, meaning I spent a lot of time messing around with office supplies. One of my favorites was the single hole punch. It was a little tricky for my small hands, so I got really good at balancing it on a desk, sliding a piece of paper (or ten) in the “mouth” of the hole punch, and pressing down as hard as I could to punch holes. I was fascinated by this apparatus, and enjoyed experimenting with it to see what I could do with it.
Now, the thing about hole punchers is that they really only do one thing: they punch a small hole through a material. They’re most effective on paper, though I did discover ours was sturdy enough to punch through some fabric—to my mother’s annoyance. If you’re especially creative, you can use them to punch out designs and make use of negative space, but they’re limited for this purpose by the depth of their mouth—the space between the actual punching mechanism and the fulcrum that amplifies the force you put on the handles. It’s only about ¾ of an inch, limiting how far from the edge of a piece of paper you can actually punch. And, of course, you have to be careful how you use this tool with one purpose, because once you’ve squeezed the handles, you can’t undo it. If the hole isn’t precisely where you need it to be, you either have to make do with where it is or punch another hole, meaning you would just have another random, useless hole. It’s a perfectly fine tool for its purpose, but its utility is limited, destructive and ugly if used improperly, and even its creative use-case is severely limited by the very mechanism that makes it fit for purpose. It can be really satisfying to mess around with if you’re bored. I still sometimes reach for one purely for the entertainment value and sensory experience. But I wouldn’t want one anywhere near, for instance, my marriage certificate or my college diploma. Some things are too valuable to mess around with, in no small part because of their very fragility.
We live in a society full of hole punches… these are folks whose whole schtick is in punching holes—in arguments, façades, ideas, even people’s lives… only in this context the word we use is “shitposting.” (I’m actually lumping a whole lot of different kinds of communication into the “shitposting” category that I’m sure others wouldn’t. I may argue that the point here is less the function and more the emotional effect.) The best shitposters on the internet have honed their craft at sick burns, most absurd and ironic sideswipe, and expertly deployed shade. You can have exceptional expertise, good ideas, and effective communication skills, but if you can’t deploy at least the occasional shitpost, the odds of your content breaking into the mainstream of the internet to build a genuine audience are remarkably low. This isn’t new. Shakespeare would be an incredible shitposter. The problem is that we’ve gotten to a point where there are precious few ideas-based occupations where viral shitposting isn’t a primary mechanism of audience building—and in an information-based economy, and especially in a democracy, that’s a problem. When the only way to get attention is by being purposefully destructive, it’s impossible to actually be creative in the truest sense of the word.
Shitposting can be artful. It’s grounded in humor, after all. One of my favorite shitposters is Derek Guy, also known as “Menswear Guy” online. He’s been writing about men’s fashion on the internet for a long time, but his audience (and access to prestige publication platforms) really ballooned after he began crafting brutally effective threads on Twitter analyzing the sartorial sins of fascists and right-wing politicians, demonstrating that for all their power and privilege, none of these men were capable of tasteful dressing or dressing in ways that didn’t highlight their least attractive physical features. Guy still writes a lot of general fashion content, and has increasingly used his platform to lift up causes and businesses that could use the signal boost, but his shitposts are what keeps his audience growing and engaged.
The thing is that the internet is real life, and the folks who are able to capture attention and build audiences most effectively end up being the ones who have access to the most real-world power. We’re seeing in real time what happens when shitposting becomes the normative form of communication, especially by the powerful. When your primary tool is destructive, all you’re really capable of doing is destroying. If all you ever use is a hole punch, the only thing you can really do is punch holes.
You can use other tools to create holes. A pair of scissors has far more flexibility. An awl can punch a hole through a piece of paper, though it requires a bit more finesse. It can also create a hole in a piece of fabric without reducing the structural integrity of the weave. It does this by increasing the space between the fibers, rather than by cutting them. Now, if you pop the handle off an awl, perhaps hone it to not displace the weave so much, put a hole in the less pointy end, and run a length of thread through that hole, you have one of the most useful tools humans have ever crafted: a needle.
Needles are great. They can be tricky to learn how to use effectively, and you have to spend quite a bit of time building the dexterity to work well with them. However, if you have a needle and a bit of thread, you can work all kinds of magic. You can take flat fabric and create all kinds of useful and beautiful three dimensional objects. You can sew together pieces of paper and create a book. You can adjust a garment to have a better fit. You can embroider a plain garment to give it personality and flare. You can repair damaged objects and garments. You can even heal wounds with this simple, but powerful tool.
Another one of my favorite online creators is Bernadette Banner, a YouTube personality who has built a massive following, and her own writing career, by sharing videos where she creates the most historically accurate reproductions of a given era’s fashions, with a deep emphasis on hand sewing. Her work is grounded in an appreciation for the labor and creativity involved in creating beautiful, functional clothing, along with the environmental and social justice impacts of slow fashion, mending, and making do. She’s built an audience by creating beautiful, useful things and—importantly—empowering other people to create their own beautiful, useful things. Bernadette is witty enough that she could easily engage in the kind of shitposting that Derek Guy and others use to build an audience, but aside from the occasional shade thrown in an off-hand comment in a video, she rarely engages in communicative hole punching.
Using a needle instead of a hole punch takes more effort. It’s a slower process, building the skills and finesse to effectively use a needle. Anybody with a basic level of grip strength and big enough hands can use a hole punch with almost no effort at all. But we can do so much more—and do so much more good—with a needle than a hole punch. A hole punch is useful when you need a hole punch, but even when used for creative purposes, there are often other tools that can be used more effectively and artfully.
I don’t know how we can move towards a world with more needles than hole punches. There are very entrenched structural reasons why hole punches are the predominant tools being used nowadays. But I long for a day when what we value and give our attention to is generative, rather than destructive. I pray for times when we empower those who are good at building rather than tearing down. For now, I’m doing my best to resist the temptation to rely on hole punches when they’re not actually needed, even if it means I have to work harder and longer.
I hope you find your own ways to pick up a needle and create something beautiful, whatever that looks like in your life.