Community post

Big Ben's Introduction/Preemptive Apology/Simple Request

A hearty hello to the STEEM community! Big Ben here, but you can just call me Ben (I assure you, the nickname is far less arrogant than it seems). I've been curious about this site for quite some time now, and now that I've joined, I'm kicking myself for having waited so long. I look forward to the STEEM experience, and I'm confident that my feverishly hyperactive prose will entertain and educate in equal measure.

To offer some context to future posts, here's a bit about me:

"Who am I?"
-Aaack, the impossible question, the one I ask myself daily. At the risk of sounding obtuse, I struggle to answer this myself. But just as a quick primer: I'm a young US male, trudging towards a university degree part-time, working in the bartending scene and living as hubristically as possible. I grew up in a military family, with its rugged on-base lifestyle, and its constant, nigh-yearly moves to new states and new lives: As all army brats know well, the life makes you rootless and resilient, but destroys your capacity for long-term socialization & habituates you to social ostracism. When you're always the new kid, you get used to the role.

I spent my schooling dabbling in as many pursuits as possible: Scholastic competition, debate, theatre, prose/poetry, even the inanities of choir, but my passions were always in contact sports. Football was my paramour, and wrestling its complement. But college athletics took a backseat to my academic scholarships, and I trudged through my university years largely uninspired. But financial hardship & family drama forced a transfer from my expensive private college to an affordable public college; in hindsight, this crisis became a valuable source of wisdom. Thus here I stand today, fallen but not vanquished, older but much wiser.

"What will I be posting?"
-Everything. Quite literally, anything and everything. The cultural significance of Norwegian Black Metal's explosion in the early 90s, the history of Haile Selassie's Imperial Ethiopia, a rant on how terrible my local underground thrash-punk shows are, perhaps even a theory of Frank Herbert's Fremen being analogous to Mujahideen. I find the myopic focus on a small sphere of subjects to be an insult to the human mind. In fact, I find it uniquely insightful to choose heretofore-unknown subjects to explore and analyze and self-immerse, and I'm sure it will show in my posting. But as a general rule, my posts will be political, cultural, historical, or philosophical in nature about 75% of the time. The rest will be personal anecdote or unintelligible gibberish or rants about music/film.
"Why should I care?"
-You probably shouldn't. If you aren't a fan of hyper-opinionated, esoteric diatribes on things no one cares about, my advice is to avoid ol' Big Ben and his shitposts. But if you defiantly rebuff this advice, I applaud your bravery, and I sincerely hope you're enlightened or inspired or consoled (or get your jimmies rustled) by something I share. And most importantly, I love feedback on what the community would like to see me explore next.
"You said there'd be an apology?"
-Oh, that's right, I almost forgot. I preemptively apologize to any/all who will be offended, angered, enraged, perturbed, disgusted, or otherwise negatively influenced by my posts. Because I've got an arsenal of opinions, an argumentative nature, and a habit of saying uncomfortable truths, and an acquired immunity to giving a shit.

But all humor aside, I'm excited to interact with each and every reader, and I'm sure I'll be learning the nuances of this platform for quite some time. Feel free to reach out to me anytime! I'll be adding another intro post soon w/ a picture greeting, so stay tuned.

"Your life is a blade; may it never dull."

-Big Ben