While I’ve enjoyed the last few weeks we’ve been together, I’m feeling a bit uneasy about a few red flags.
Specifically, the fact that I have not seen any yet.
I’m sure this may come off as a slightly odd complaint, but I can assure you that it is problematic behavior according to some of the influencers I follow. You have failed to recognize that I, as a very-online comedian and writer, need for you to display at least some sort of overly generalized fault that I can create viral content out of. That you have not done so signals that you don’t seem to care about my growth as a creator.
This trend of behavior goes back to our first date. That night when we met at that bar and I ordered a Manhattan up. At no point did you try to correct me in the way that the drink should be served or lecture me on the correct bourbon I should have them make it with. I even provided you with an ample opportunity to do so when I requested a specific brand of bourbon.
Instead, you simply replied, “Good choice,” and proceeded to order the same drink, only on the rocks. How could you not pick up on those signals? Though, in hindsight, perhaps ordering yours on the rocks was a passive-aggressive attempt at mansplaining despite your claiming that’s just how you always remembered drinking them.
The polite thing to do would have been to behave in the manner that my online friends have led me to believe you would so that I could create a meme out of it or make a TikTok video using a gay friend of mine to play you.
Jesus, at the very least, you could’ve ordered an IPA.
Then, as if you hadn’t done enough already, when we were chatting later that evening and you mentioned playing baseball in high school and I said I was a huge Red Sox fan, you didn’t even quiz me on stats or team history. You just replied that you hated most Boston sports teams, but that it might be fun to go to a game sometime. I had that meme of the guy at the Astros game queued up and ready to go. That would’ve been at least ten likes right there.
I thought maybe you had finally caught on when you held the door open for me as we walked out of the bar to get the Uber; I had a whole bit on toxic masculinity raring to go from that until you just kept holding for those two guys that were coming into the bar as we left. So I guess you’re just polite or something. Not very alpha-bro behavior. I can’t work with that kind of material; it’s too bland.
I thought I could finally milk a few tweets and maybe an entire thread out of you when we ended up back at your place. I saw the David Foster Wallace books and the Tarantino DVDs. I wasn’t going to let the fact that your bookshelf and DVD collection had a pretty diverse library or your mentioning your favorite movie is Before Sunset keep you from giving me the validation and attention from strangers I so crave.
I just don’t get how you couldn’t see that my asking you about Infinite Jest was an attempt to bait you into going off on some pseudo-intellectual rant. You just said it was okay and moved on. What is that? Do you know how much comedic gold I could’ve mined from you just giving me a couple of sentences about how profound that book was for you and then my countering that you should read some non-white cis-male writers for a change? Twitter and TikTok folks eat that shit up. I surely would’ve gotten a recurring stand-up set or some new subscribers from that.
As soon as you said that you don’t really play video games, I knew that it was time to go.
It’s important for me to communicate to you that I need a partner who is going to be supportive of my career. Yes, I could try coming up with new material that actually addresses the real root of the problem rather than just relying on a rehash of the same joke, but who really even has time for that?
I really don’t know what else to say to you at this point. But if this relationship is going to work, I’m going to need you to give me some content based on broad, lazy, and overdone generalizations.
I’ll be wearing a Nirvana shirt on our next date. If you don’t ask me to name three songs, we’re done.