Maxxing inherited the language of optimization. Find the weak variable. Increase it. Compare the result. Repeat.
That logic fits bodies, money, status and productivity. It fits the internet because it promises that ambiguity can be converted into a set of controllable inputs.
A different family of maxxings has begun to appear.
COMMUNITYMAXXING asks a person to return to the same people until attendance becomes belonging. NERDMAXXING permits interest to deepen beyond usefulness. STORYMAXXING tries to recover sequence from fragments. CRINGEMAXXING makes participation possible before confidence or mastery arrives.
- COMMUNITYMAXXINGANOTHER WAY BACK
- NERDMAXXINGANOTHER WAY BACK
- STORYMAXXINGANOTHER WAY BACK
- CRINGEMAXXING
These practices still speak the language of maximization, but their object is different. They do not primarily maximize market value. They maximize the conditions under which a person can become attached to something outside the self.
That does not make them pure. Community can become networking. Nerdiness can become status. Story can become manipulation. Cringe can become content. The optimization reflex remains inside the repair.
Still, a shift is visible. Maxxing begins as a method for correcting the deficient individual. It returns as a vocabulary for rebuilding capacities that optimization itself helped damage: sustained attention, repeated presence, sincere enthusiasm and the ability to be seen trying.
Perhaps the strangest achievement of the suffix is that it can describe both the disease and the attempted cure.
THE SUFFIX CAN DESCRIBEBOTH THE DISEASEAND THE ATTEMPTED CURE.