New Year, New You, New Tabs

Happy January 6th to those who observe on this, the fourth anniversary of The Day We Lost The Coup. It feels fitting that January 6th, 2021 was the subject of one of the first Tabs in the new era, which I thought I was re-launching after the Trump Age had ended. But now here we are in the Second Trump Age, which seems destined to be somehow both meaner and stupider.

Since we last convened together over posts, I have hiked 1,333 miles on the Appalachian Trail, which is nothing to sneeze at. I wrote about Maine, about feeling bad, about feeling good, about making a difficult decision and about what election day was like alone on the trail in New Jersey and New York, among other things. Some of them were adapted for the Washington Post, thanks to the dedication and hard work of delightful and talented now-former Post Opinions editor Amanda Katz. It was an honor and a privilege to contribute to the final days of a once-great journalistic institution.

Spending several months out in the woods and small towns of Eastern America, much of it alone, has scrambled my life in ways I’m just beginning to notice, let alone figure out how to live with. I left at the end of May unsure if I would come back and resume writing Tabs, and here we are in January, halfway through a new Tabs post, and I’m still unsure. Writing Today on Trail did at least prove to me that I can do other kinds of writing, and that I like to do it and some people like to read it. Five-days-a-week Tabs is an all-consuming research and creative effort that leaves me no energy for anything else, and as we’re all looking down the chute of a very dark and stupid time I think it’s in everyone’s best interest that I don’t try to do this every day. I’m also not going to try to recap everything that happens. Tentatively I’m aiming to try to hit the highlights twice a week, probably Mondays and Thursdays. I’m not sure what this third iteration of Tabs will be exactly, but I’ve never been sure what Tabs is so I guess that’s nothing new.

The garbage time between Christmas and New Year’s is the ‘taint of the year or, as Marie Le Conte called it, “the merryneum.” This year a lot of people’s brain arteries got clogged up with silly goose fat and they started believing that an Elon Musk superfan named Adrian Dittman might actually be Musk himself, posting things like “Elon Musk is a father who has lots of sex” to make himself seem… more pathetic than usual? I’m not sure. The evidence for this belief was as follows:

1. Dittman’s voice kind of sounds like Musk’s on Twitter Spaces and at least one Twitch stream.

2. That’s it, really.

3. There’s some circumstantial stuff but it’s a lot of Pepe Silvia.

Everyone was having a good time believing that Musk might be spending literally all his waking hours cosplaying as a fan of himself, and in everyone’s defense it is the kind of deeply stupid thing Musk, a deeply stupid person, would do.

Not honking on this particular bobo however were maia arson crimew, ryan fae, and regular-name person Jacqueline Sweet, who collaborated to discover that the so-called “Adrian Dittman” is in reality a 20-something German who lives in Fiji and who is actually named: Adrian Dittmann. Sweet published an article in the right-wing Spectator which laid out most of the evidence, but which failed to credit crimew or fae. Crimew posted her own story containing more evidence and the backstory about the debacle of attempting to publish it in an outlet that seems to have been mostly interested in finding a way to use the phrase “BlueAnon conspiracists.” The single paragraph that should convince us all they got the right guy was this one:

There are numerous side quests and rabbit holes I haven’t even mentioned here, such as the Victoria Yerburgh novels, and if you value your time and sanity, you will not go down any of them. Dittman(n) is not Musk, he’s just some guy who doesn’t even sound all that much like him.

VERDICT: You do not need to care about this.

Cozy Time: Snowed in at Britain’s highest pub.

Jude Doyle on “TERFs, Trans Mascs, and Two Steve Feminism.”

Every day we stray further from God’s light:

Rob Dubbin’s ChatGPT to my stupid friend filter. Also Today in Dubbin: Olivia Taters is on Bluesky. Remember when bots were good?

What did you die from in 1665?

And finally I was on “Never Post” with Mike Rugnetta talking about how the internet helped get me through the hike. It turns out that if you look at social media for a few minutes a couple times a day you don’t miss anything and it doesn’t destroy your soul. No one’s gonna do that, I know, I’m just saying. For the record.