The Punisher

Punisher is my new favourite word. I now have a name for the empath at S11 whose face nearly fell off when I lit up a cigarette. In their best shocked voice they told me I was supporting a multinational corporation. And here was me thinking I had simply found a cool way to end it all, that hyper focused wrong people couldn’t take credit for. Ever since then, extremely right on human keep cups have reinforced my commitment to my search for oblivion. It’s like being chased in a dream. By someone who can’t shut the fuck up.

All the shit that’s annoying about social justice shitfights is the work of punishers. A punisher may even read this and demand a definition of punisher. But punishers, my extremely punishing to talk with friends, no definition will satisfy you, for nothing ever does, or ever will. If a punisher took acid and stared into a mirror, they wouldn’t be normal about it and pull faces and think, “Haha! I’m like a goblin! Heeheehee.” No, they would have profound revelations about how interesting they are. Punishers cannot be reached through their third eye, they can only live long enough, to be themselves punished enough, so they become too exhausted to speak and therefore accidentally hear other people talking for the first time in their lives.

If I was a punisher I would at this point admit to being a punisher, but that’s the kind of shit punishers do to sneakliy escape their richly deserved punisher prison sentence. “Oy noy, baaabe!” the punisher’s cheer squad of other punishers would say. “Yoy are byoytiful!” And there is no chance of anyone reading this and thinking, “I am a punisher.” That’s what should happen, because they are everywhere, but it’s just not the punisher way.

The problem is Australia is a colony of the United States, and the seppos believe in some bullshit called Positivity, and we are subjected to their endless stories about becoming so extremely individual, through the power of some other bullshit called believing in yourself, that you become what you were always supposed to be, which is the best person ever. Dude, you can’t get through the day without feeling hurt and left out by anything you can’t take credit for.

A punisher very gracefully corrects you when you’ve said a thing. You can see how much work they’re putting into super gently and nicely telling you that you said a thing in the wrong way. And the psychic glimpse into how hard they’re working instantly drains your batteries.

These box tickers have done more than their share to keep social change movements small. You could replace everybody currently involved in grassroots everything and they would replaced by even more punishers. Punishers see every desperate situation as an opportunity to Be Heard, which is afuckinmazing. The naysaying they can bring to bear on even the most time sensitive and dramatic unfolding struggle event is just crushing. Try having one meeting without a punisher singlehandedly stopping the flow of history. 

Anyway, what a great word. Use it liberally. I was at a meeting once that was specifically about how we could better communicate amongst ourselves on devices, with a view to growing the movement. A couple of punishers killed all momentum by shitting on the best suggestions and then, when they were asked what they would recommend instead, they said they didn’t know. That is top shelf punishing and what I learned is this: always ask a punisher what they really want. Saves time, which is nice, because we don’t have any.