Besides the Statue of Liberty, the French have given us one other gift: the phrase L’esprit de l’escalier. This translates to “staircase wit”, and is essentially the feeling you get when you think of the perfect reply, but too late to matter. The term is usually used in the context of a witty rejoinder to some kind of insult, but if we use it in a broader sense, then my life is full of L’esprit de l’escalier.

I rarely post on Reddit, Hacker News, or other discussion forums, but I do spend too much of my time on them. There’s the famous XKCD comic “Duty Calls” in which a hapless individual is stuck in an endless cycle of responding to people who are “wrong on the internet.” My problem is a variation of that, but instead of staying up all night writing responses, the offending posts just worm their way into my brain and set up shop. In a way, this is even worse, because when I finally do come up with a response, there’s no way to reply the person whomst was wrong– it’s not like I bookmark every dumb post I see on reddit.

This blog is, in part, a therapy for removing brain worms. Not just “staircase wit”, but also other silly things that I want to expunge, like my recent mac and cheese speedrun post. In the case of responses, it’s unlikely the target of my response will ever read it, but, much like journaling, it’s the writing that’s the important part.