@m0xee

well, after spending 1hr in the aforementioned state i decided i deserve to get meself a whole pack

and there goes my 5th attempt to quit smoking for the year 💨

gonna be a right laugh if quitting smoking gives you schizophrenia. or me

@m0xee

s'funny because there's the part of me that wants to have, like, a "normal life"

and then there's the part of me that goes like "you've been to normieland how many times already? havent you learned that it's just cannibal vampire zombies sacrificing each other all the way down, except that some of them also have a sentient being trapped within"

and then there's the part of me that, y'know, codes, earns money, feeds itself, negotiates, carries around those other two dimwits...

@unspeaker
It's not like they are doing it out of intentional malice — they are just "acting naturally". If you play along with it in order to work something out in the short term, expect them to understand that you didn't like it, but let it slide, you'd be gravely disappointed later when they get used to it and start doing it more and more often.
Just like on personal level you have to establish personal space, you have to watch you work relationships to not get out of hand.

@unspeaker
It's not like people would become more understanding any time soon, so you have to state explicitly what you do not like. Of course fixing it at a later stage when they already got the wrong idea that you find it acceptable ain't easy — but not impossible and it's still better course of action than blaming yourself in retrospective for what you could've done. And it's better than relying on substance of any sort for short-term relief. Little-by-little it's possible to fix anything.

@unspeaker
Damn, I still ended up giving unsolicited advice 😅, but I think I know what you're talking about and I think this has happened to me more times than I wish it had. True — acting more bold and establishing where you want to be with people early on might make some of them not like you, but in the long run it's a better strategy than getting along with the wrong people, ultimately losing motivation for it and sliding into a "bad state" of sorts.

@m0xee

the problem i encounter here is that i was pretty much created in this "bad state" to start with, and grew up in a culture where it was normalized

the main things i internalized from my formative experiences are that there's no such thing as boundaries, and that communication is impossible

standing up for myself without being dismissed and/or screamed at until i'm a gibbering mess on the floor? inconceivable

much, much later i learned that not everyone grew up like this. THE FUCKERS

@m0xee

and then there's the people who went through much of the same but lost their integrity along the way, and turned into humanoid creatures that talk a mean game of ideals and compassion but act like you're torturing them any time you try to stand up for your simple right to exist.

11/10 manipulation, contagious, too.

@unspeaker
> 11/10 manipulation, contagious, too
Exactly! Another disappointment of mine is that manipulation also doesn't always come out of intent — people just get used to that, someone did it to them and they start reproducing it faithfully!
You can't even "relax" around these people and act in good faith like it would be comfortable to you — because they are going to twist that anyway, if you come up with an attempt to fix that, it turns into another device they use to manipulate you 😩

@unspeaker
Yes, more or less the same here — this is where the drive for being liked by others stems from. But in the end, even you succeed at that — the prize only makes you feel more hollow, because you end up being surrounded by the wrong people, having to do things that you might not like instead of things you enjoy, very unfulfilling!
Well, if we come from the same mess and to more or less the same conclusions, at least — maybe we aren't wrong this time.

@m0xee

yep.

what you describe is pretty close to one of the dynamics that occurred so that i ended up like this.

thanks for understanding.

@m0xee

this not even about work, more about any form of functioning as a human being in the world beyond "go to work—go to the shops—go to the shitter—go to bed"

i don't really fuck with "intentionality", all these pesky "free will" questions about things that are discursively ascribed as linguistic rituals. they lead nowhere

i prefer to think of these things in terms of behavioral conditioning, signal theory—the mechanics of what actually goes on—exactly what everyone's afraid to examine...

@unspeaker
Yeah, it's like that — it's hard to grasp for those of us who think on more abstract levels and in the longer term, but most people — they function on more… vegetative level if I might say so.
I mentioned intent — because it's one of the greatest disappointment for me personally: most of the time there is no intent, you do something and expect other person to think why you did that, but they only go for the most immediate response.

@m0xee

it's kinda like a firewall. being able to read between the lines already makes you aware of the whole world of psychopathic games which everyone loses in the end

"normies" quite actively reject becoming aware of it all and still largely follow its rules. pretty much how political power works. unless my sources are playing 1 more dimensional chess than they look to be...

really shouldn't have allowed [???] to install me that second hand empathy module tho, only ever works in reverse 🤣

@m0xee

but then again, "boundaries" is a reddit movie from 2015... here's how it actually went down:

"lemme just plant this in your head real quick: what you think never matters, what everyone else things always matters"

"ok, only smart person who is not always moderately hostile but is sometimes VERY friendly and sometimes VERY hostile, whatever you say - it's not like you haven't exhausted and confused me until i have become incapable of consent, anyway"

@m0xee

and then many years of unable to speak except in cryptic nonsense

@unspeaker
NP
Sorry for resorting to giving advice instead of just listening, but… Damn, that's what people do — we have to accept ourselves for who we are, someone's got to do it 🤣

@m0xee

nah it's good to have an actual conversation about these things 😁 (rather than 1 hour of trying to not start screaming my lungs out in the "therapeutic situation")

so many of the "you should just listen" people are actually "you should just shut up" people in disguise, and have nothing to say. the ideas gotta bounce around to establish some sort of picture of the terrain, and that's a hill i'm willing to die on...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtZT7hcMltg

@Hyolobrika
Who THEY, carnal vampire zombies? 😨

@unspeaker

@m0xEE

hahaha what happened here

@unspeaker
I just honestly didn't get @Hyolobrika 's question 😅

Also, your client seems to autocomplete my name now to my account on my own instance.
Which could be a good thing were it not barely breathing, sometimes replies to this account → @m0xEE
get lost when it's under heavy workload 😩

@m0xee sorry about that.

i didnt really see what @hyolobrika wrote bc they seem to be banned and deferedated here?

so i looked at their profile through some other instance and, well, saw why.

but i didn't see their post - and somehow i'm still morbidly curious what the fuck they had to say to my persistent online meltdown 🤣

@unspeaker
> they seem to be banned and deferedated here
Fediblock moment 😩

> what the fuck they had to say to my persistent online meltdown
I don't think it is to mock you or something like that. Knowing him, it's probably a good faith question, I just quite genuinely "don't get it" 🤪

@m0xee i dont mind even if it's mocking, still curious :D

better then the mental adblock moment. like when you share with a friend that you are experiencing horrifying difficulties and they literally respond with "i'm glad you're doing ok bro"?

@m0xee

i've noticed that happening a few times when i've try to ask for help and moral support. a honest "can't help you there" would've been more healthy.

on reflection this was constant when i was growing up, and made me more than a little antisocial. and somehow other people weren't adblocked even though we had much of the same problems?

@unspeaker
I've always thought that generic words of support, without digging deeper, would feel lame — same as receiving Birthday greeting online from a person you barely know. Funny thing, I have a second faux Birthday date that I use for my online profiles to avoid this and back in the day even some of those who knew me personally who've been buying that and sending me HB. Once I had an idea of holding a party on that day 😂

@unspeaker
Back to "emotional support" and generic words — in my experience (and to my surprise) some people DO appreciate it, so now I say them myself from time to time.
Problem is — not everyone is empathetic or just perceptive in general (and I won't pretend I'm good at it either), so they can't even say those words properly — at an appropriate moment even. This is where it truly becomes a trainwreck! So maybe some of your friends aren't… distant — maybe they are like that.

@m0xee yeah, i've been thinking about that.

the first thing that comes to mind, of course, is this acting as a firewall against emotional manipulation.

there's so much of that stuff in the world. idk if everyone forgot about its existence it would disappear though...

@m0xee

i've only kept the friends that are pretty alright. i understand if they dont have the energy to engage with my shit. i can be a lot. i try to give back where i can, and also find it difficult to even have something to give back.

there were also some pretty insensitive mfs that even ended up benefiting from the problems i was having. difficult not to be vindictive and hypervigilant when you don't know where everyone's allegiances lie.

@m0xee

there's definitely a difference between support and help. i think verbal support becomes effective help when you actually know the other person and care enough about their situation to actually know what to say that actually helps the other person to make things better.

@m0xee

and there's a particularly vile species of vicious creature which gives you totally adequate emotional support while continually undermining you, until you begin to find yourself turned inside out.

since people these days prefer to not examine themselves or each other too closely, its pernicious activity can be very difficult to identify, counteract, or make evident.

@unspeaker
Could be the case for a lot of people — they are just scared that if they get invested too heavily, the person they support might become emotionally dependent on them, which should be okay with friends, but being handled without proper experience it might escalate into something really ugly real quick. With intent or not, but some people are manipulative, some have victim's mindset — you having good intention and not being able to hold this off, they might start leeching off you.

@unspeaker
Especially now — when some people can't handle even basic social interactions, they aren't confident they're up to this and feel vulnerable. Hell, I can remember avoiding my friend when he had lost his father — I did want to support him, but I've been in an unhealthy situation before, didn't want to go there again. Looking back I might've even done the right thing — we're still good friends, had I gone for it then and not handled it properly, it very well might not be the case.