My existential terror is not for sale

Instagram is my drug of choice when it comes to social media. I have given instagram my words, my hopes, my dreams, my need for a job that pays my bills, my need for connection, validation, recognition, belonging, my hope for a better world, my political education, my way of receiving the news, my sense of responsibility toward saving the world from the increasingly terrifying nightmare it is becoming, my desire for rest, to relax, to let go, to check out, my mornings, my evenings, my tiny moments in public places, my sense of identity, my desperate need for relief. I have needed Instagram, wanted Instagram, been unable to stop going back to Instagram. Like every other addict I have swung wildly between loving it, hating it, denouncing it, staying away from it, coming back to it, trying to use it moderately, making excuses about it, resigning myself to it and on and on and on. And I am not alone in this. When I move through the real world, take the metro with strangers, or spend time with loved ones, it is easy to see that I am not the only one being sucked into the void.

The topic is a tired one. We are all sick of talking about it. We are all sick of the books that tell us to turn our phone screens gray, or use timers, or use mindfulness, or ditch the smartphone all together. We are tired of the back and forth inside ourselves, the desire to be rid of it sitting alongside the inability to imagine life without it, and then of course there’s that pressing frenzied compulsive need of the addict, the way our bodies just move of our own accord and make the decision to seek relief regardless of the promises made or the barriers erected against it. We are tired of it and I am tired of it and for a long time I have made peace with resignation, with the love hate relationship, with valuing what seemed good and trying to cut back on the time suck.

But as this dystopian nightmare we call reality progresses, as my newsfeed begins to become only genocide, climate crisis, billionaires doing evil things, atrocity after atrocity, I am noticing that more and more of my time spent on Instagram is spent in what we call a doomscroll. I feel the terror in my body, sharp and bright. It says only one thing to me: emergency. I feel the terror in my body and I feel I am doing some due diligence by scrolling through the horrors because we can’t pretend this isn’t happening. It’s happening. And it’s really, really, really bad. Recently I’ve noticed my doomscrolling won’t let me step outside of the doom. I see something about how extremely fucking out of control the climate crisis is and how no one with any power is doing fuck all about it, and my body tenses, and my mind slips into obsessive rumination, panicking and playing out future scenarios of unthinkable terror. I have a date with my partner and I try to relax into his arms and let my nervous system have some respite but my body and mind are screaming: emergency, emergency, emergency. And it’s true: it is an emergency.

What do I do with this energy of emergency, with this existential terror, with this overwhelming panic, and this abject helplessness? I have to do something and so I scroll. I scroll and instead of the mindnumbing relief I hope for from my social media addiction, I experience emergency and stasis. My body frozen in place, my body passively consuming the horrors, my mind skipping and seeking some course of action, my eyes unwilling to look away because it feels irresponsible to look away. But I am not doing fucking anything when I am in my terrorscroll. I just feel like I am literally about to die and there is nothing I can do about it. And what makes me the most fucking sick about this — is that while I am stuck in this state, while my animal body seeks some solution to emergency in the shiny magic terrorbox in my hand, Mark Zuckerburg, my enemy, and one of the leading authors of this horror show, is cashing in. I am actually at work. This terrorscroll is a job. I am making money for Zuckerburg. I am not getting paid.

Somehow I have found myself at what we call rock bottom. There are many horrifying and disgusting things that can be made normal and acceptable in the course of addiction. I have allowed Mark Zuckerberg to cash in for years and years on all my human wants and needs and dreams. I have known he was cashing in and I have accepted it, because, well what are you going to do. I have allowed him to suck me into his algorithms and I have watched as more and more people begin to speak of the algorithm like it’s a god. I have told myself that my job as an independent writer is absolutely dependent upon me being on Instagram. I have told myself it’s fine to want a little relief. I have made a million little justifications and a million little compromises and I have sold my most precious resources: my attention, my time, in exchange for distraction, dopamine, a fix, a feeling, a dream of connection, a dream of being connected. But my shoulder is all fucked up from constantly holding my phone. And my nervous system and attention span are frayed from constant exposure to information overload. The damage has already been staggering and I have already known.

But this — this terrorscrolling, this emergency, this panic, I cannot let him profit off of this. I cannot allow myself to believe that I am fulfilling my responsibility to the world by “staying informed” when what that means is being existentially alone with the horrors, stuck in stasis, stuck in panic, unable to do fucking anything, as I watch the world die, and one of the men who are killing it is literally making bank off of my terror and paralysis. No. This is what we call rock bottom and it’s where a part of me rises up and says no. No matter how bad things are I am still a human fucking being and I will experience my existential terror in a human fucking way. I will fulfil my responsibility to the world off of Instagram, in the real world, where real things happen. I will not allow Mark Zuckerburg to turn a profit off this too. Some things are not for sale. My existential terror is not for sale. My desire, my need, to be a part of the tide of human beings that steals power back from the ruling class who are killing us IS NOT FOR SALE.

Here is what I am doing instead of Instagram.

For the existential terror I need human experiences. Humans have always experienced existential terror and we process the enormity of this terror in human ways: dancing, singing, gathering, being together, cooking food, eating together, holding each other, looking into each other’s eyes, practicing rituals, telling stories, making meaning. Every week I go ecstatic dancing. On the dance floor, with other human beings, I allow the feelings to move through my body. I feel all the emotions. I allow myself to cry, to shake, to stomp, to rage, to smile, and laugh, and catch the eye of my fellow human beings. Everything is welcome on the dance floor and I bring all of me to the dance floor. I receive comfort, connection, belonging, witnessing, insight, and very good ideas. The experience is alive and dynamic and in motion. It is a much, much better and more productive place to bring my existential terror than the terrorscroll. Here I take care of myself as human beings always have. Here I can face anything. I am seeking as many human experiences in my life as possible, to work with, cope with, witness, transform, and learn from the extreme sensations and emotions that being alive at this time in history evoke. Friendship, love, sex, community, singing, dancing, food, and stories. I am a human and I will do this a human way.

For my responsibility toward this world, I am seeking out and supporting those doing real work locally to change things locally and globally. Last Generation Canada is a climate action group that does civil disobedience to force the government to act on the climate emergency. Alliance Ouvrière is an organization of workers, uniting workers, connecting unions, and coordinating and reviving the labour movement to harness the collective power of the working class. Ici, on boycott Amazon is an organized response to Amazon shutting down all warehouses in Quebec and firing 3,500 workers in response to one of the warehouses unionizing. Instead of terrorscrolling, instead of posting into the algorithmic void, I am wheatpasting for these orgs all over my city, and finding ways that I can be concretely helpful to these organized attacks on the powers that are killing us. Another much more productive use of my time is that I am finally learning French because I live in Quebec where French is the first language of most people, and because speaking French is essential to being an effective collaborator in political struggle where I live. If you live somewhere where a large number of the working class speaks a language you don’t (for example if you are an American anglophone who lives in a place where many of your fellow workers speak Spanish as their first language), learning that language is extremely important political work, and much more important than “staying informed” in the terrorscroll.

I am getting back to my DIY and punk roots by wheatpasting. It feels amazing to spread information outside of the algorithm. On top of wheatpasting for various local political organizations, I am wheatpasting my own political and creative work on various issues. Wheatpasting feels doubly important right now. It is not only materially more effective at spreading information because everyone can see a wall they walk past no matter what algorithmic silo they find themselves in online, but it is also an insistence on the human, an insistence on taking our political movements back from the hungry jaws of capital who profit off our sapped attention as we attempt to spread political awareness in the void. You can make wheatpaste by combining one cup flour, four cups water, bringing it to a boil while stirring constantly until it thickens, then removing it from the heat and pouring it in a jar. Spend one hour wheatpasting posters for local political orgs and/or your own art or writing, and you will do more political good and feel far more human than spending several hours hunched over your phone panicking.

I don’t have all the answers but I know I will not find the answers in the terrifying box in my hand. I know the answers, whatever they are, are human answers. I know we won’t find our way out of the horrors by allowing the architects of the horrors to profit off our horror. I know that human beings are social animals and our best insights come to us when we are in relationship to each other, when we are moving our bodies, when we are making meaning together, when we are harnessing (and strategically withdrawing) our collective labour power. My advice to everyone trapped in the terrorscroll is to put down your phone, go outside, and find out what is happening with other human beings where you live. Do human things and fight back in a human way. At some point every addiction stops offering cherished relief and starts revealing itself as the desperate attempt to address something else that it really is. That time has come. I no longer feel relief from my phone. I have hit rock bottom and I think many of you have too. Nothing changes if nothing changes. It is time to do something else. It is time to face the problems that the addiction was attempting to solve. It is time to do things a different way.

Deeply and sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, fuck you Mark Zuckerberg.

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Announcements

If you need to reach me, dms on instagram are not the best way to do it. I will log on about once a week to check dms and share things to my stories, but if you want me to promote some political work you are doing, or if you need to get in touch with me for some reason, the best way to reach me is through email: clementinemorrigan@protonmail.com.

There is a new episode of Fucking Cancelled! Get in babe we're boycotting Amazon! These criminal American parasites retaliated against workers for unionizing their warehouse outside Montreal by firing their entire Quebec workforce and closing all their facilities in the province. This scorched-earth union-busting strategy is both illegal under Quebec law and an insult to all members of the working class. In Episode 76 we talk to Félix Trudeau, president of the Amazon Labour Union-CSN, and Louisa Worrell, spokesperson of the boycott campaign Içi, on boycotte Amazon, about what happened, what organized labour in Quebec is doing about it, and what you can do to support the workers and stick it to the sick fucks at Amazon.

I have decided to reprint limited runs of some of my old zines, as an homage to my various selves that brought me here. Licking Stars Off Ceilings is a zine I used to write in my late teens and early 20s, in another lifetime. I was 24 when I wrote this issue and it has been out of print for 13 years. It is gorgeous poetic writing about sexuality, spirituality, violence, trauma, power, and madness. It pulsates with life. If you guys think I'm a lot now -- wait till you meet 24 year old Clementine, she's fucking crazy. I love her so much. You can get the zine here.

I am doing another event at Breitenbush Hot Springs in March 2025 called Writing is a Lightning Strike. Last year’s workshop was incredible and I am even more excited for this one because it is about writing. You can register here. There are only a few spots left!

This workshop is an invitation to take yourself seriously as a writer, regardless of how much experience you have with writing or publishing. If you feel the call to write, this workshop will help you answer that call. If you already have a writing practice, this workshop will help you deepen it. Hosted at Breitenbush Hot Springs, you will have the opportunity to soak, relax, and recharge between sessions. As we will discuss in the workshop, your writing practice continues to happen underground in uninterrupted moments such as these.

The energy of forcing, proving, and seeking legitimacy is not the energy that will help you crack open your writing practice. This workshop will go against a lot of conventional advice to simply and consistently show up to the page and will instead highlight how much of the writing happens when we are not at the page. Rigorously anti-shame and rooted in the wisdom of the body and the depths of the unconscious, this workshop will create the conditions you need to approach your writing with curiosity rather than with demands.

Drawing on the work of various underground and outsider writers, as well as our own wild intuition, we will read, write, move, breathe, share, and talk about our writing. Clementine, a longtime independent writer, will share her knowledge and wisdom on how to trust your process and your voice.

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I am a writer, zinester, and literary punk based in Montreal, Canada. I have been making zines since the year 2000 and have probably made more than 100,000 hand stapled zines over the course of my career. My best selling zine, Love Without Emergency, has sold more than 11,000 copies, and I have many other zines besides that. I write essays, literary nonfiction, and philosophy, and am known for my unflinching approach to deep and difficult topics, as well as my accessible, down to earth use of language. I am known for my work on many topics including surviving incest and other forms of trauma, trauma informed polyamory, bisexual women’s sexuality, opposing cancel culture on the left, and finding compassionate, non-punitive approaches to ending the cycle of violence. I have a podcast with my partner Jay Lesoleil called Fucking Cancelled where we develop our thinking on how to build a robust, effective left that doesn’t eat itself alive, and where we’ve had the pleasure of interviewing many important thinkers and writers. I have published six books over the course of my career, Rupture, The Size of a Bird, You Can’t Own the Fucking Stars, Trauma Magic, Fucking Magic, and Sexting. I sometimes teach workshops on various topics. This substack is a huge archive of my writing, a place where I am regularly and consistently producing new writing, and one of the main ways I support myself as an independent, underground writer. Thank you for being here. As well as the archive, make sure you explore my bibliography, my body of work, and the list of interviews I’ve done. Thank you for your support of my work.

I am looking for a literary agent and publishers who are excited about unconventional, underground writing. If this is you, or you have any leads, please get in touch.

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