As 2020 comes to a close, I suspect for a lot of us, it’s an opportunity to search for positives in what’s been a fucking dumpster fire of a year. It’ll be easy to get caught up in the social proof that 2020 was a complete write-off, and for you, it may well have been. How the fuck would I know what you’ve been through? I wouldn’t.

For those of you not familiar with the term ‘social proof’ though, it’s basically when you see the people around you confirm something, and take that as proof of truth. When sometimes, it just means the people around you think the same thing you do. Newsflash: people saying or thinking the same thing you do doesn’t necessarily make it true. I mean, lots of people like Pete Evans, right?

Likewise, if you’re a fucking racist, and you hang out with lots of other fucking racists, you might talk about where you buy your sheets from and have ‘social proof’ that racism is cool.

Or if you reckon you’ve had a shit year, and everyone else around you says “yeah, it’s been such a shit year”, you’ll just go with that without ever considering the possibility it hasn’t really been as shit as you think. Even if some pretty shitty shit happened. But when doesn’t it? It’s literally the reason we use the phrase “shit happens”.

If that all sounds a bit dramatic and you’re thinking shut the fuck up Sputty, this is dumb, first of all, you’re probably right, second of all, how about you shut the fuck up, and third of all, if ‘third of all’ is even a thing, it absolutely applies to you in some way. Guaranteed.

Like when as a bit of a joke I started doing a ‘Naked Cooking with Sputnik’ segment on my Instagram Stories. My Echo Chamber told me it was a good idea so I kept doing it for a while when I really, really shouldn’t have.

And that’s the problem with echo chambers. Surrounding yourself with like minded people is important. It’s the whole ‘find your tribe’ thing and those people can support you and lift you up and help you pick up the pieces, in all kinds of ways. And that’s a beautiful thing.

Unfortunately, they can also help you get away with murder. If you’ve fucked up, for example, instead of forcing you to self reflect or evolve, they can support you to the point of enabling. On one hand, that’s lovely of course. How good is it to have friends that believe in you and take you at your word?

Sometimes though, it’s way more useful to have people tell you to pull your head in. To shut the fuck up. To get your shit together. To stop being such a fucking cockwomble.

It’s a bit like ‘tough love’, right?

I know for me personally, I’ve severely pushed my quota of fuck ups and found myself in more than a few sticky situations again this year. Not Shia LeBeouf level sticky, but you know, a bit sticky. I’ve said and done probably more than my share of dumb ass things. I never (OK, rarely!) intend to do stupid things, of course, but I sure do have a knack for it. And it’s lovely when people try and be nice and tell me not to worry about it or support me in other ways. It’s comforting. It helps me feel less shit about myself. But that’s not really the part I learn from.

I learn when someone calls me a “fuckwit” and I look at why. I learn when someone phones me up to tell me to pull my head in, and I ponder why they would think that. When someone’s angry or upset or disappointed with me, I could, of course, go with “fuck the haters. Haters gonna hate. You can’t keep all the people happy all the time” mantra which, to be fair, does come in handy at times.

Inevitably, I learn much more about myself, when I stop, take a breath, and ask myself “Which parts of what they’re saying could be true? How can I use this to be less of a fuckwit?” It doesn’t mean I suddenly resolve to be best friends with these people. Sometimes I still think they’re a total fucking assclown still, but even a broken clock is correct a couple of times a day, unless it’s a digital clock or your iPhone in which case it’s just broken and that saying makes absolutely no fucking sense at all if you’re under the age of about a billion.

Contrary to popular belief, I care about what other people think of me. That doesn’t mean I give everyone’s option the exact same weight, but of course I care. How could I not care at all? Or more to the point, what kind of person would I be if I didn’t care at all? If someone’s upset with something I’ve said or done, what kind of person would I be to not care at all about how they feel as a result of something I’ve said or done? (That was rhetorical, by the way, but the answer is a complete fucking asshole in case you’re not echo chamber with me on this one.)

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I have a think about it and come to the “fuck ‘em” conclusion. If I upset a racist or homophobe or misogynist for example, by calling out their behaviour, and they get upset with me I am highly unlikely to cry myself to sleep. Although even then, I might wonder if I did it in the most productive, constructive way. Or did I just call them ‘ a racist/homophobic.misogynistic cunt’ and achieve literally nothing other than cause more shit?

There’s a reason speeches by people like Martin Luther King are famous and why someone standing up and saying “stop being a cunt” just doesn’t seem to hold the same place in history.

And that’s why it’s good to realise that your echo chamber is exactly that. To look outside your echo chamber. To remember those people react to what you tell them, and what you tell them is almost certainly not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me dog. Even if you think it is. By definition, it won’t be. Can’t be. Isn’t.

I personally think I’ve gotten better as a human this year, and probably have less to apologise for than usual, while at the same time I’ve handed out more apologies than ever this year. Not bullshit peace-keeping apologies, but actual apologies for things I’ve said or done.

At times, I’ve even had to apologise for not getting my apology correct and fuck me, that’s been a meta drag. But it’s been necessary. Because there’s no use offering one, if you don’t get it right. So I’ve learned from that as well. Not all of them were accepted, mind you, and that’s OK, I have to live with that as well, and I’ll survive. I tried. I learned. Slowly.

So to my echo chamber for supporting me along the way. Thanks. And to everyone who called me a name or called me out, whether I deserved it or not, even though I probably did, thanks to you also.

Here’s to being slightly less of a cockwomble in 2021.