I’ve been banned from quite a few places in my life. There was the Blanton Museum in Austin for example, when I was 18 and stoned (my first day working there), where I incorrectly assured a crowd on opening day that a priceless exhibit was interactive and they proceeded to ruin it (that was a 10 year ban). Then there was the Taco Cabana on MLK street in Austin, when I was 21, where I maced an unruly after-bar crowd and cleared the restaurant (only 2 years). Then there was Facebook Marketplace a few months ago where I attempted to buy young adult blood for a looksmaxxing transfusion (that one seems indefinite).
After every one of these bannings, even if I didn’t agree with them, I at least understood why they happened. I swallowed my pride and let it go. But my latest one… I don’t have a damn clue.
A couple weeks ago I was recommended a post from r/houstoncirclejerk where somebody had posted a sign outside of a Torchy’s in the Houston neighborhood of Rice Village that guilt-tripped customers into tipping their underpaid staff:
The comment section seethed. How could they be so patronizing? Why does it fall on the customer to pay for your selfish capitalist ways? In Europe they pay hospitality a living wage! And on and on.
I agreed with these sentiments. After all, I’d worked for tips as a valet when I was in my twenties, before being banned from the Marriott hotel in Austin for driving a Fiat 500 through the lobby to win a bet. There was just one small issue with this pro-worker, anti-Torchy’s post: it wasn’t the Torchy’s in Rice Village.
How do I know this? Well, my house is four blocks away from it, and I’ve eaten a few gallons of hillbilly queso on its patio, which looks nothing like what’s reflected in the glass. That perfect, streak-free glass. With that perfect masking tape holding up that perfect sign inked with a tense, bold font.
The sign was A.I. But not the production level A.I. that companies who give half a shit use, and not the satirical A.I. that people who can’t give a full damn use. This was more akin to scammer quality. So naturally, having spent too much time on Reddit, I swooped up my keyboard and went to save the day, proclaiming all of the things I just relayed to you here.
People couldn’t believe it. My comment shot to the top of the post. The mods apologized for the A.I. slipping through, and the commenters in the thread started having a conversation about the dangers of snap judgements and not pausing to think critically.
I’m kidding! It’s fucking Reddit. Nobody cared. And after about five minutes, neither did I. So I walked out the front door and went to lunch at a local taco place.
It was two weeks later when another circlejerk post was pushed to me. The user was different, but the target and substance were the same:
At this point I realized there was a conspiracy, with only two possible explanations:
- The staff at Torchy’s were deeply upset with their employer’s use of self-serve kiosks in their stores, which not only cut jobs, but also slashed their tips. Or,
- Taco Bell was waging a guerilla PR campaign against a rival who doesn’t immediately induce explosive diarrhea with every order.
Again, I tickled the keys and warned of what was happening. I said the post was A.I. I pointed out the card reader and the garbled text. I asked why a manager would leave that up in a store. I laid out my argument reasonably. I watched my inbox fill with this message moments later:
The reason for the ban was “We do not allow AI in this sub.” What. I didn’t understand. Were they banning me for pointing out there was A.I.? Did they mistakenly think I’d posted A.I.? It didn’t make sense. I relayed this confusion to the Mod who’d banned me, and even showed the Torchy’s post I’d seen two weeks earlier which was a clearer use of A.I. than this one. This was the conversation:
I’d been done up on all fronts. My ears were hot. The Mod was obviously a troll.
Rage flowed, but not from the act of trolling. I’d long ago learned to ignore and even embrace that. No, it was because the sweet act of satire was fumbled. A circlejerk forum is supposed to be self-deprecating, hyperbolic, tongue-in-cheek. It needs to dance dangerously with stereotypes and tropes but never fall to them because the jerk understands the absurdity in believing them to be objective fact. The ability to straddle that line and make it broadly funny so that more than just the poster is in on the joke is a uniquely human thing. It can’t be taught. It can’t be machine learned.
These posts were just trolling. Lazy trolling. An observation I confirmed when I got a hold of the Torchy’s poster from two weeks before:
At this point I felt old. It’s not lost on me, as someone who reads more than Daily Beast headlines, that language changes. Humor evolves. That “somebody take my wife” jokes morph into Chapelle’s hilarious transgender jokes that don’t even need punchlines. You eventually reach a point where someone younger shows you something funny and you just nod and go “that’s nice.” Perhaps this ban is my Rubicon. Maybe I just don’t understand what truly makes a great circlejerk anymore.
No, this can’t possibly be. My literary cerebral goo points me to something deeper, the existentialist section, the layer underneath history, or perhaps woven in the molecular fabric between it. I recall Nietzsche’s words, that observation that compliment’s Hesse’s thoughts on the river symbolizing life’s unending flow and Ecclesiastes view that there is nothing new under the sun:
Time is a flat circle-jerk.
Eventually the plot is lost. People forget what satire is. They descend into cruelty, oafishness. Trolling. The jerk forums are abandoned, they burn down, the wind blows them away. And then sometime, perhaps many years or days later, a perfect post is made. Something with thought, commentary. Humor. Life breathes anew, balance is restored. The forum is restored.
No, Aaron. You’re not wrong. And neither is DoritosDewItRight. Just look at his name. Both of you are living the lives you’re supposed to live, the lives you’ve lived a thousand times before. He’ll do what he does, you’ll do what you do and get banned. This is the way it’s decreed.
I opened up the r/austincirclejerk subreddit, starting to feel better. There were solid posts everywhere. This was good. Soon though, a CheetosCokeYouUp or SunChipsAwaySanity would make their move, and I would be there, ready.
