15 Comments

There is not going to be a way to avoid the showdown they are forcing. Even for those of us who prefer private life.

Expand full comment

Brilliant! I enjoyed this so much. I've had the creeps since March, 2020.

Expand full comment

Thank you Walter. This is an excellent piece, and I love the way you have expressed your perspective this year, tying it to things that are so visceral from childhood. My first impression as I read is that you are responding to lies, ultimately, to knowing you are being lied to, and in an environment like the one you had as a kid around Mr. Weirdo teacher. I so understand the lies that we're meant to say to ourselves that everything is okay, although we know they are lies. This essay is great. And it also makes me extremely sad.

Expand full comment

"Washington DC, that vast granite mausoleum of democracy." I am in awe of your turns of phrase and skill with language and imagery, Mr. Kirn. Please write more often, if you can. The world needs men like you more than ever.

Expand full comment

I remember the creeps; and I try not to. I've enjoyed your writings whenever I see them, and I'm glad to have found your substack offerings. Maybe I'll be able to withstand the coming battle if I read your and other like-minded writers' views on our dire situation and how to cope.

Expand full comment

I imagine everyone will respond to some different element of this piece. But something about reading how even a child's ghostly bedsheet was dragging at the prospect of drinking Mr. M's kool-aid jumped out at me.

Expand full comment
founding

This really hits deep. I didn’t much notice the creeps as a kid (1970s). But now, after this fairly recent onslaught of weirdo creepers are now demanding to not only be noticed, but celebrated, and demanding our sweet innocent school children to play with them, I realize who the oddballs were around me as a youngster. Even those around me in my twenties. I am glad I didn’t notice them when I was young. I could not have handled it. Today’s youngsters are being poisoned by these radical sickos. And many parents are allowing it.

Expand full comment

More metaverse musings that I think you'd enjoy (by techie, Antonio García Martínez):

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/youre-already-living-in-the-metaverse

Expand full comment

Great portrait of the world's creepiest MetaCreep, Mark Zuckerberg, the creepiest mofo in Creepdom. I perceive your creeped-out feeling as a mark of your innate sanity. Thanks for sharing and being honest. Nobody but a first-class Creep would appear in public with a haircut like that.

This post made my day, Walter. You've been laying low all summer and I was wondering if you were still in the Substack game. If it wasn't for Substack and writers like you and Matt Taibbi, we'd all be lost in the Metaverse and that would be beyond Creepy!

Expand full comment

I couldn't help it.

Why the duplicate post?

The creeps => THE CREEPS

sudden bursts of wrath => sudden bursts of anger

I do not wish to enter this vivid digital limbo => I did not wish to enter this vivid digital limbo

It doesn’t help that they sometimes appear in masks. => It doesn’t help that they sometimes put on masks.

America this Halloween gives me the creeps. => In America this Halloween I have the creeps.

Expand full comment

Goodness touched a nerve, you did! As children we were wary of those too friendly elders. Perhaps they were really kind people but their actions often seemed, well, creepy, as you so well describe. As adults these seeming friendly politicians promise the candy with a smile but they really seem to wish we would just go away. They are the serious ones, you know, and they know better what we need. Some of us really believe, and some just can't be bothered but many understand that they aren't thinking of us.

Expand full comment