Credit: Unsplash
I keep wanting to write this as an essay but honestly it feels more like a rant, like I just need to spit it out first. I’ve been tempted to write about genocide. Or maybe not genocide itself but disruption. And how disruptive it is to simply… have a voice. To open your mouth at all. Because we’ve all been trained to censor ourselves. Somewhere along the way we learned that disruption is bad. That if you tell the truth you’ll get in trouble. That silence keeps you safe.
But disruption isn’t about yelling to be heard. It’s about naming the things we’re all pretending not to see. The things that should be obvious but somehow aren’t. Like genocide is not okay. Or artists shouldn’t be exploited. Entire systems rely on us swallowing those truths.
And when you let them out instead of swallowing them—you’re not just speaking, you’re jamming the machine.
You’re also strengthening the collective voice of reason, sanity, and empathy.
Take the profession of acting. It should be obvious that actors should get paid for auditioning. But they don’t. You can give decades of your life, go to hundreds of auditions, train, hustle, invest thousands of dollars, and never see a dime for that labor. Casting calls go out, hundreds of broke desperate actors show up, knowing it’s unsustainable, but still doing it. And if one of them dares to say, “Hey, this feels exploitative”—suddenly they’re the problem.
Covid, ironically, was a disruptor. It gave us self-tapes. Before that I used to sneak into the staff bathroom at my day job, balancing my curling iron on the paper towel dispenser, full hair and makeup at 9am while coworkers came in and out to pee. Then I’d rush to a casting office for a two-minute audition that was sometimes delayed.
I was so frazzled coming back from one of those auditions once that I scraped both sides of my Ranger truck trying to get it into the too-small company garage and knocked the rearview mirror clean off. I just accepted those white racing stripes as a new aesthetic. I remember sitting there in the driver’s seat thinking: I just destroyed my truck for a role I won’t get and an audition I wasn’t paid for.
I had coffee (actually lemonade) last week with this lovely actor who also illustrates for a living, and somewhere between sips they admitted they’d hit such a wall of burnout from constantly being underpaid for their labor (both in publishing and entertainment) that the thought started creeping in: I wouldn’t mind not being alive. And my whole chest ached, like I could feel their weight in my own body. Then came the rush of anger at the system, at how we’ve built this world where someone talented and hardworking could be pushed that far down.
And I said, maybe what you’re feeling isn’t proof that you’re broken at all. Maybe it’s the most natural response to being relentlessly undervalued. Of course your brain goes dark when you’re asked to give and give and give and never get compensated in return. Of course you start to wonder what the point is. That’s not you. That’s the sickness of the system showing up in your body.
You could see the shift in them, like something cracked open just a little, because no one had ever said that to them before. They left that lemonade meetup with some relief.
Like—oh, wait, I’m not crazy or defective. The culture is what’s toxic. My despair is just a human reaction to living inside it.
Genocide is another example. Even the word itself is treated like it’s radioactive. You post something sympathetic to Palestinians who are watching the annihilation of their people in real time, and you’re instantly labeled anti-Semitic. And yes, I know it’s complicated. History, trauma, religion, indoctrination: all of it shapes how entire nations can be brainwashed into hating or dehumanizing each other. But still, genocide is bad for people. That should be the baseline. Why is it “too disruptive” to just say that out loud?
I find myself cringing as I write this, like I need to duck behind the couch for cover, waiting for the retaliation for saying these forbidden words. And listen, I’ve given people the benefit of the doubt. I’ve had conversations with others who felt strongly opposed. I listened intently with openness to see it another way, but I couldn’t contort my brain into another backflip, somersault, dismount to justify the unjustifiable.
“The more we justify what should never be justified, the sicker we become. Humans can hold complexity and empathy at once, but when we lose that grounding truth, that all human life matters, we collapse into savagery.”
The more we justify what should never be justified, the sicker we become. Humans can hold complexity and empathy at once, but when we lose that grounding truth, that all human life matters, we collapse into savagery. Just ask Piggy in Lord of the Flies.
We keep contorting our little human brains, trying to make palatable what should never be palatable. And it’s warping us. Good people with good intentions start to feel unrecognizable. It’s like we’re all under hypnosis, stumbling through the trance together.
And, yes, I do worry how my words and self-expression can be used against me. I’ve heard of Substack writers detained at the U.S. border because they wrote about the protests at Columbia University. But I look at my friends who are unapologetically vocal online and I feel proud. Inspired. And then I look at myself, and others like me: quiet, scared, avoiding. I empathize with us too. Because having a voice feels dangerous. Being disruptive feels like risking exile from your group. And if you’re already wired as a people-pleaser? Forget it. And if you’re benefiting from the system in some way? Even harder.
That’s why Hollywood’s abuses thrived for decades before #MeToo. Everyone was terrified to speak. Speaking meant exile, career suicide, total disruption. That’s why our political systems are broken. Politicians don’t actually serve us. They serve whoever funds them. Corporate money, foreign governments, special interests. The people are an afterthought. Disruption, in that context, means biting the hand that feeds them. And they won’t.
So I keep circling the same question: how do we get more comfortable with disruption in our own lives, especially where we actually have free speech?
Just last week Afghanistan passed new laws against women. On top of being banned from education beyond elementary school, forced to cover every inch of skin, and forbidden to leave the house without a male escort—it is now illegal for an Afghan woman to use her voice in public.
Think about that.
Here, we choke back our truths out of fear of judgment or backlash. Afghan women are literally forbidden to speak in public. We swallow our words by choice; they have theirs stolen from them by law.
This isn’t just about art or politics. It’s about freedom of speech, of spirit, and to be a whole f*****g human.
And maybe we start by remembering what our bodies already know. I teach barre and hot Pilates, and here’s what I’ve learned: muscles literally need tiny ruptures to grow stronger. No disruption, no adaptation. No resilience. No strength. The body gets it: disruption isn’t the enemy, it’s the way forward.
So tell me: what obvious truth do you feel scared to say out loud? Put it in the comments. We need to hear it.
Yours truly,
Ashley aka Fake Guru
Footnotes
