Snowflakes

Convenience Stories: Chapter 9

I saw a truly mind-boggling t-shirt today. Printed in all caps, centered, in some cheesy grunge font: HEY SNOWFLAKE / IN THE REAL WORLD / YOU DON’T GET A PARTICIPATION TROPHY / NOT EVERYBODY IS A WINNER / THERE ARE NO “SAFE” SPACES / SCREAMING DOESN’T MAKE YOU RIGHT / NO ONE OWES YOU ANYTHING / CRYING DOESN’T SOLVE PROBLEMS / NOTHING IS FREE IN THIS WORLD / PEOPLE ARE GOING TO SAY THINGS THAT YOU DON’T LIKE AND / YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL

Of course, this is a red-state culture warrior’s conception of “liberals,” shot like a laser out of the gaping maw of Donald Trump’s brain, through the prism of Facebook, then entering the eyeball to bounce around the skull a few times before being typed up and printed on a sweatshop Gildan t-shirt, superimposed on an American flag graphic. The person described on the t-shirt doesn’t exist, but the wearer must feel pretty badass for calling them out so publicly anyway.

America has become a total unfettered consumer democracy. It may not be a political democracy, or democratic in the enlightenment sense, but it’s democratic in the way that truly matters: As long as they have the credit, Americans can buy whatever the fuck they want. And these disposable products reflect American’s wishes more closely than ever before. America’s new mass-cultural products are the work of Red State^tm content creators and Chinese AI-Temu A/B test large language models divining whatever the hell is going on in the average working person’s mind. Maybe ChatGPT can’t write convincing literature or poetry yet, but it knows what to write on a t-shirt after the word “snowflake.”

I was thinking about this because I’ve been noticing all these bonkers t-shirts that break every rule of graphic design. Some have entire paragraphs printed on them, every phrase in a different font—Comic Sans, calligraphic script, the “wine mom” font, whatever—incorporated into designs with airbrushed wolves and clip art six shooters and shit. We have a generation of people who can’t tell the difference between an Eames lounge chair and the stuff for sale in the front entrance of Hobby Lobby, between network television and some guys sitting in a cheesy Austin, Texas man cave/podcast studio. Or the difference between network news and Matt Walsh. And this is what they wear when they dress themselves.

The Scientific Games PHDL terminal

Walmart is probably the most annoying retailer I have. It’s not the employees’ fault. They’re super-busy, the store is always understaffed, and it takes forever to find a manager to get the keys to the lottery machine.

Once I got all that sorted out, I spent five minutes listening to the manager, a large woman in a blue vest on top of a black hoodie with dancing cartoon skeletons and a name tag that said KEYLANI, describe the problem in excruciatingly drawn out, monotoned detail. One specific row of bursters (the things that spit out the tickets) went offline when you opened its drawer, indicating a bad cable. This meant I had to remove the drawer, a huge hassle. It took an hour or so, but I eventually got it done.

While I worked, a stout, elderly greeter named William complained to me about how nobody wants jobs anymore because they’re woke. “All us old people have to work,” he said, oblivious to the fact that there were at least half a dozen employees in their early to mid-twenties in the immediate vicinity. And just to be sure that I knew where he stood, he showed me his t-shirt: WOKE / turns everything / into / SHIT

At one point during our conversation, a pair of teenage girls in thrift store wedding gowns and what looked like Kabuki makeup walked past with a shopping cart full of watermelon.

“I guess Caspar is getting married,” he said. He thought his non sequitur was hilarious.

When I left the store, I saw William talking to some young skaters in the parking lot. They were busting his balls: “Hey man, cool shirt!” “Hey man, where’d you get that sweatshirt?” “That’s a dope shirt. I’ll give you twenty dollars for it.” William loved the attention. He loved the fact that he was like a cool guy with a cool shirt that the teenagers coveted. And eventually, he comes up with a doozy retort. He says: “I’d give you the shirt off my back, brother, but not this one.”

I suppose there’s no real moral to this story. Just the fact that it’s nice that human nature is still human nature, and teenagers are still teenagers, and skaters are still rebellious brats. Which is, you know, the way it should be. 

The author, ca. 1989