Normalised and ready to roll

My favourite pet peeve at the moment (I shouldn’t have so many, pet peeves are for life, not just for Christmas) is any Instagram comment that begins with ‘Let’s normalise…’

It’s hideous therapy speak of course, let’s normalise not using that for a start, but it’s always followed by an abrasively matter of fact sentiment that’s stuffed with mock offence and passive aggression.

‘Let’s normalise families without big budgets’ starts the influencer who’s decorating her house on someone else’s budget. ‘Let’s normalise taking time for yourself’, says the lifestyle account that’s just spent 15 minutes setting up a tripod to catch a candid moment of them getting cosy on the sofa with a cup of tea. ‘Let’s normalise supporting small artists’ says the aspiring musician who doesn’t have an audience because they’re bad.

Let’s normalise not being normal, shall we? We seem to pushing back to the centre ground, the Platonic ideal of everyday life when it seemed like we’d only just normalised everyone being weird. Normalising assumes there’s a normal that we all need to aspire to, the let’s assumes that we can do whatever we like as long as everyone agrees to it.

Let’s just mind our own business, shall we? Get on with life, be kind, stop winding everyone else up. Let’s get offline every now and then and stop holding ourselves up to an AI-optimised ideal that exists only in someone’s heavily messed with camera reel. Let’s stop listening to stupid people who haven’t earned their platform and let’s stop engaging when it’s transparent rage bait. Let’s all look the other way and wait for the algorithm to wither and die. Normalise that…