Suck off sideways, I regularly see on Bluesky a healy feely woke wording where I rolled my eyes so hard I saw my own brain and gave myself severe whiplash.

“Holding space.”

My impression from context is “holding space” is the creation of a discrete echo chamber to lament something that hurt tender woke feelings. Or, it’s an excuse to have squishy, soft, and unmasculine Walz-Emhoff feel goods. Or, it’s some DEI human construct where you’re not allowed to say meanie face things. Or, it’s a way get and give hugs.

Give me a moment, let me go to Bluesky to find examples. Hold my space while I check.

I’ve got a handful of Bluesky screenshots now. Analysis:

Wear COVID masks. Support BLM riots. Get your vaccines. Stand with Ukraine. Trump is Hitler. Pride. Down with patriarchy. Drive an EV. Occupy Wall Street. #me-also. No petroleum. End hatespeech. January 6 is insurrection. Free Palestine. Watch “The Acolyte.”

This is “holding space.”

“Holding space” is just the lastest slogan in the everlasting, ever churning cauldron of woke virtue signaling. When you tell someone you’re “holding space” you’re holding forth your open hand for the woke secret handshake. And you are both pleased to know this secret handshake. It’s comforting and reassuring.

On Bluesky, there are a lot of spaces being held for the horror and reality of November 5. It’s a support group inside the echo chamber, it appears. Within these held spaces, Trump is still Hitler, Trump supporters are still Nazis who are also morons and transphobes and bigots and racists and capitalists, Trump is still a convicted felon, and Trump is still the Project 2025 fascist existential threat dictator on Day One.

These are not healthy spaces, at least framed as unhealthy to mental wellness. Delusion, avoidance, enabling, and incitement of continued national division, this is the true nature, structure, and function of “holding space.” It’s a falsified ideological circle jerk where everyone is wearing sandpaper mittens and all the bottles of baby oil in the whole world are being held in evidence for Diddy’s criminal trials. Does it really feel good, together denying Trump’s landslide victory, or are you just telling each other it feels good because no one wants to be the first one to admit human blood makes for a lousy manual lubricant?

Look, I’m a huge advocate for peer support and peer support groups. Obviously so. I’ve dedicated 14 years of my life to having mental health peer support groups in person and online. But there’s always a risk for a support group to become an echo chamber where our mental health conditions are normal and it’s everyone else who’s the problem. Destroyed employment, destroyed relationships, destroyed credibility, destroyed health, destroyed freedom. It’s not the ravages of mental illness at cause. It’s everyone else’s intolerance at fault. That’s stagnation of body and mind. No one moves towards feeling better and accepting difficult reality in a support group like that.

And that’s what I see in these woke “holding spaces.” They’re support groups with no interest in recovery and growth. It’s mutual comfort in being stuck. Let’s all stick our fingers in our ears and scream at the heavens “LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU LA LA LA LA LA TRUMP IS HITLER LALALALALALALA EVERYONE WHO VOTED FOR TRUMP IS A FASCIST BIGOT PHOBE LALALALALALALA …..”

I’m not really invested in woke virtue signaling in our newly hopeful America. It’s not like just a few years ago where not bending knee to woke virtue signaling had real world consequences like social ostracization and professional cancelation. I’m observing is all, and in today’s America, woke virtue signaling is a cultural oddity to pity and ignore. Drink the Bud Light, have a month of colorful parades, drive an EV, and denounce Trump like it’s November 2016. Woke virtue signaling is at best an inconsequential spectator sport.

So go ahead and hold all the spaces needed to keep woke on struggling life support. Hold spaces to signal woke virtue – Bluesky is ideal. It isn’t healthy in the farview analysis, but it’s also not my choice or responsibility. Just keep in mind, if a tree falls in a woke holding space, does anyone give a shit? Not so much in newly hopeful America.