a word on creative connection « @PamelaCouncil

This tweet from @PamelaCouncil caught my eye:

It’s very easy to have a creative connection/vibe with someone and think it’s a sexual attraction.

—Pamela Council (@PamelaCouncil) January 24, 2017

She introduces to the contemporary catch-phrase, “creative connection.” I like it. I see that this phrase is used quite often—especially among young people. I think that this phrase includes the world of ideas—that there are people all over the world—and when I say “people,” I am usually referring to women with strong African features who are yearning (in the bell hooks sense of the word) to write to people (to correspond in the old-fashioned sense of the word) about this world of ideas—their world of ideas.

This means that I can look to social media as the garden where this correspondence is blooming. Failing that, I can look at, say the timeline of the @PamelaCouncil Twitter feed, and find at least a screenshot representing an excerpt from this sort of creative connecting. (BTW: the actual guy that invented Twitter intended it for this purpose.) Maybe there is a link to a YouTube video where creative people are on a panel or in an interview. I should see signs of these creative connections online. I should be able to find people exchanging ideas and developing a positive addiction for each other, openly.

Nope.

I have been on the Internet before there was a World Wide Web and I have never seen people—especially young people forming creative connections around ideas—especially when words are the fundament. Not audio, not video… just words. What has happened instead is the meme—and the site 4Chan.org has been the primary engine of online-generated memes. But, let’s go back to my definition of people and 4Chan.org starts to fade away.

Out of my continuing, decades-long research, the for colored nerds podcast is the only example I can present of a creative connection on record and available for digital download. Their episode #31 with Kim Drew (@museummammy) is close to what should be everywhere. And @PamelaCouncil would be pleased to know that the hosts of the show are not sexing each other up.

Now, way down here in this paragraph lies my real motivation for writing this Blog post: whining of course. I have spent years sending incredibly clever, insightful and truly inspired words to people (remember my definition of people) and have gotten mostly nothing as a response. I am sticking my whining way down here to easily make the point that these non-responses are not really personal. The only thing that is personal is my particular approach to interacting with people online.

After years of reaching out online, I can barf up a list of reasons why people fail to respond to me:

• The recipient has a small, mobile device with an annoying keyboard and is generally reluctant to respond to anyone (my generation and older).
• The recipient is no longer active on the social media account I am trying to contact.
• The recipient has too many contacts and cannot effectively monitor their social media accounts.
• The recipient receives my message but does not “know” who I am—and my social media profile is socially unacceptable—so no response is necessary.
• The recipient knows exactly who I am and has so much respect for me that they feel unworthy to respond (I am not being sarcastic here—the @PamelaCouncil tweet explains why).
• The recipient thinks they know I am (through the ironic prejudice of gender politics) and decides that it is safer to not respond to me at all (the @PamelaCouncil tweet explains why).
• The recipient thinks they know I am (through the ironic prejudice of gender politics) and decides that it is safer to respond to me with a terse response (like the classic response from Saul Williams: “huh?”—even though he is not my definition of people).The way my people are treating me when they think they know me betrays their ignorance. Often when I attempted to open a dialog with my peoples (remember my definition of people), I would open it with words about ancient African women. I do this deliberately to avoid the @PamelaCouncil misunderstanding. Now I understand that most of the people I have interacted with under this ancient-knowledge umbrella fail to connect their contemporary creativity with this ancient root. Even those that did understand where I was coming from responded to me like a person that has made a New Year’s resolution about losing weight, eating right and taking more exercise—and all I did is remind them of that resolution. Such a reminder is not pleasant and aversion is the easy way out.

Let’s get back to that ignorance thing in the previous paragraph (and @PamelaCouncil’s tweet). A woman-centric, pro-African man cannot by the sake of his ideals be a sexist predator, seeking to dominate people. So I must have reached out to a person that is not well culturally educated (my fault) or something else is going on… It follows that these have been some of the reasons (apart from the aversion mentioned previously) I have come up with to explain why my advances are non-remembered:

• People are largely socialites and a socialite will measure worth based on its social gravitas. “Everybody” knows that ancient African women have less than zero gravitas in the socialite ‘space’—even contemporary women from the continent of Africa make this calculation and find no interest or value in my approach.
• In the same manner that we Black people do not “allow” non-Black people to say “nigger” in our presence, my peoples will not “allow” a male to socially intercourse with them about any topic related to women—especially when I fail (and I will fail) to send acridly strong signals of gender “fluidity.”
• My approach was formed in an academic setting and I have failed to understand what has happened in the academic world since the early 1980s: this world is not as egalitarian as it once was—so I must be qualified in some way before my words are actually read.
• My approach is multi-dimensional (confusing) and my online presence in general is easy to misunderstand because it is not branded into simplicity (e.g. kintespace.com should be called AncientAfricanWomen.com)—moreover, my approach is itself becoming historical (I am getting too old to reach new peoples).
• My approach is deliberately based on the need to have a positive relationship with unknown which flies in the face of billions of media dollars spent every year to associate fear with the unknown. (This basis will never change by the way.)
• Mufukkas are just plain lazy—especially when you are giving away nothing but ideas.The most horrible reason to not respond to me (which I have found from kintespace.com entering the lives of people that I actually know in person) is because you know the white folks are not going to “accept” me (which is really going back to all that stuff I wrote about being a socialite). In effect, you know that I am going to die—so what’s the point? This attitude reveals the self-censorship that many of my peoples have flaunted for decades. Now that Don Trump has offended your “white friends” suddenly you have permission to say a little more but not too much.

I have always known from the beginning that kintespace.com is “too much.” I realize that I am asking too much when I start an online relationship based on creative connection through ideas born in words. Words such that the definition of word itself becomes alien in a traditional social media context.

Now that this little thing is written down. I can find closure and move on to other approaches. Let us watch again how my people will respond/non-respond.

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