If you chat on TikTok and most importantly have friends who chat with you on TikTok, you too are constantly getting videos from arono.mp4, which has just over forty thousand followers, but whatever: on TikTok, see what the algorithm offers you, not what you follow; and if all your twentieth-century friends are amazed by her, the algorithm will suggest you Arono.
We don’t know Arono’s name as her mom, in the video she pinned to her profile above, asks her how they get her to take the university exams when she says it’s Arono and not – and censored at that point the girl named the name with a sound, as that was a female name, since she was born female, and therefore a name that didn’t suit her, as she protested with the confidence of a twenty-two year old “I’m not a woman, I’m a non- binary person”.
The video in which he talks to his mother – a mother whom we sympathize with very much in the twentieth century: it is terrible to have stupid children in years when woe betide you if you say they are stupid – has two hundred thousand little hearts and it’s impossible to know how many there are « you’re right too ‘i don’t consider myself a mammal’ and how many there are omg let me tag this idiot’s video at least i can find it when i need it. (Yes, I know there are other tools for this, but trust Aunt: Hearts on social media are often used as reminders, and Facebook friends aren’t usually the people to pick you up when you have a flat tire at 3 a.m Morning).
We never learned how many of Emilio Fede’s viewers were there in the mid-1990s, thinking Silvio should be sanctified after saving us from Communism, and how many viewed him as an irresistible traffic accident; let alone if we can understand how social views work. A scholar I know says that you start with “Show me how far this moron can go” and then grow to love it.
It seems impossible for me to attach myself to Arono as it is too average. Just ten years ago it would have been impressive to see a girl with pink hair and pins on her face saying she is non-binary but wants to give birth, and the poor mother mildly disagrees: “In my generation, these things didn’t exist here» , and she replies in a tone that would kick her ass to support herself «It’s not true that they didn’t exist, they existed but you didn’t know because there was no information».
Now that there is no information but there is social contagion and they all want to be special and noticed, the Aronos are many. One of them is called Sam Brinton, he has a beard and lipstick, and he too has chosen not to be a mammal: in Newspeak he uses neuter pronouns and describes himself as gender-specific.
Brinton had a dramatic childhood, he was gay and his parents didn’t accept him. Natalia Aspesi wondered on Friday whether or not the non-binary Arono should wear the veil in Iran. Sounds like a question, but it’s an answer.
The great thing about these postmodern antics is how homophobic and misogynist they are: they don’t feel fluid; it’s that they don’t want to be straight gay men or lesbian women or women in a society that has told them these are inferior categories. When the same society decided that being a freak was cool and acceptable and encouraged, they found saying “I’m queer” less tiring, whatever that means (nothing).
Brinton, a nuclear engineer, works for the Biden administration’s Department of Energy. In mid-September, he got on the plane with only hand luggage, walked to the treadmill upon landing, took a lady’s suitcase, took off the name tag and took it with him. The surveillance cameras filmed it there and those from two other airports where he later used the same suitcase. When accused of theft, Brinton first said the suitcase might belong to someone else but the clothes inside were mine, then he said he was very tired and accidentally took it with him, then he was at the hotel and made the mistake noticed but didn’t know what to do and had left the lady’s clothes in a drawer. The government has put him on leave (whether paid or unpaid is not clear).
If society denies you the right to be a bearded guy who dresses up as a woman and believes you belong to a genderless species, then maybe stress can make you do anything, even steal other people’s suitcases , believing that society should compensate you with a free women’s wardrobe. But when society rewards that special being of yours, when the President likes to pretend to be the one who appoints non-binary government officials, when nobody dares to laugh, when you show up shaved bald and wearing heels, what excuse do you have?
Maybe just that. Maybe the drama of Arono and Sam is that when the discomfort was channeled into heroin, any non-criminal person would try to clean you up; When you were being channeled into anorexia, everyone who cared for you tried to get you treated. Well the from psychological discomfort let’s say nice, cool, be yourself, of course gender is a social construct, of course you are entitled to neutral pronouns, we good people are all on your side; Now what zeal do these desperate people have to get the attention they crave? Making fun of the doting mom on TikTok? Are you screwing up your career by stealing suitcases?
Of course I’m wrong, but I don’t think those who have doubts about their sexual identity will have problems in the future: I suspect that the real problem will be the attention-seekers, who make it weird the less willing society is is acknowledging his madness.