Dear Dookie,
Question: Why do you suck so much? You’re the worst. Not one word of your “advice columns” offers valuable advice.
—Not Amused
Dear Pretty Amusing,
First and foremost, congratulations. Scientists have said that higher-level cortical functioning is necessary for the development of language, but you’ve proved them wrong. Maybe your question is like that novel they say a chimp could write if it threw its feces at a computer enough times—but I’d like to believe I’m experiencing a miracle. You, sir, are an inspiration to us all.
Secondly, I’d like to extend further felicitations for your bold idea. You pointlessly and anonymously attacked a Chronicle columnist! And more, it was Monday, Monday! What bravery, what heroism! You’ve truly made an impact on Duke’s campus, and really, the world. Does anybody know if the Nobel Peace Prize is still available? Never mind, they probably already gave it to Obama.
In all seriousness, I didn’t ask for this job. It was offered to me, and I was pretty hesitant to take it. It wasn’t just that satire isn’t my style (as some have pointed out condescendingly, I’m rather blunt—and apparently, comedy and critique don’t exist outside of subtlety). It was that I’d seen Monday, Monday get torn apart for … well … anything. It’s either too raunchy or not raunchy enough. It’s not satire or it’s not GOOD satire or it’s TOO good and indirectly promotes what it satirizes. So many self-appointed, self-righteous critics make the same error: They enter the coliseum with their thumbs down. They’re ready to be offended, searching for something to disapprove of. Worse still, they assume Monday, Monday EVER means ANYTHING they say.
The point of the anonymity of the column, in my mind, is so the author CAN mean nothing. It is so they can be intentionally incendiary in order to cause outrage and conversation in ways that facts, orchestrated discussions, statistics and personal stories continually fail to do. As Dear Dookie, my goal wasn’t to please—it was to provoke. To get people talking—or better, thinking—about important issues that are hard to talk about. Usually, this meant taking an extreme, opposite viewpoint from the one I actually hold in order to point out its flaws or bring its existence to light. I thought this was pretty clearly what I was doing. I literally referred to myself as a piece of s**t. Did anyone really expect valuable advice from a turd? I know—it may be hard to understand. Satire, snarkiness and sarcasm are harder for some people to follow than the plot of a “Dora the Explorer” episode. We’re going through WHAT forest?! Remind me a 12th time. Get Map back out here!
I refuse to believe that satirizing, criticizing or making light of touchy subjects is necessarily destructive. Humor brings to light not only society’s bright spots, but also its scars, bruises and adult acne. It can be offensive and unsettling, but it forces people to think about things by getting at them when their defenses are down. To attempt to censor such provocative speech infantilizes those creating and consuming humor, alienates those whose opinions are not cemented and recesses into a neoliberal bubble that is isolated from how the world really is.
Maybe we’re already stuck in that bubble. Monday, Monday exists to criticize the uncriticizable, but if there’s something I learned in a semester as Double D, it’s that Duke students are horrible at taking criticism. They interpret critique as an invalidating personal attack. They attempt to refute criticism in any way possible—brushing it off as unimportant or trying to explain it through some flaw of the critic. Any recognition of fault is superficial and defensive, serving to try to nullify the criticism instead of face it. These passionate, intelligent students are so self-involved and invested in their own infinite correctness that they never stop to think there might be some merit to the arguments of others or benefit to acknowledging fault. I blame participation trophies.
So as for the Dookie’s final advice? After a semester as a half-closeted Monday, Monday, I could think of many things. There is no benefit to treating those who have different opinions from you as “less than”—in fact, it’s just really awkward. You can tell real friends and mature people by their ability to disagree with you and like you at the same time. No matter how egalitarian you consider yourself, you must watch your bigotry, because when in a liberal environment, it is the liberals who can be the closed-minded ones. Re-evaluate social movements, because as they currently stand, some are more alienating than effective. And if your anonymous advice columnist persona has an email address, do not sync it with your Gmail, because you might accidentally use it to email professors for three straight weeks.
But as for the best piece of advice I can give after a semester as Duke’s most historically criticized columnist? Learn to take criticism. Nothing is perfect, but we forget that this applies to ourselves and the things we are passionate about. We must accept critique both from people we agree and disagree with, because those who think differently are not necessarily wrong. Not every statement against your personal belief is an affront to your humanness and character. And most of all, quit taking yourselves so seriously. Because if you consider your features and flaws so significant that you cannot even laugh at them, how can you expect to confront them? To move forward, we must face criticism with dignity and understanding—or else, eventually, everything will go to dookie.
With love from above all you b****es,
Your Dearest Dookie, Lillie Reed.
Lillie Reed has used the word “pterodactyl” in every single one of her final columns so far. So. Pterodactyl.
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