do you ever get tired of your own schtick

and if you don't, does it suggest a lack of self-awareness?

yes and yes

i do want to say that i fundamentally believe everyone on earth is annoying and we shouldn't judge ourselves too harshly for constantly leaning into our schticks

i would like to point out that my schtick is awesome

while many here would answer no, for me it's definitely a sometimes.

100%

At times.

what ivy said

im trying to get kinder to everyone, including (perhaps especially) myself

There is no schtick to what I do, or don't do. Its just me.

gotta say even the joke responses have been astonishingly in character, good schtick everyone

Yes, but when I think about the effort required to become a totally different person, I need about sixteen hours of sleep.

thats right xxp damn you ivy and unperson lol

Some of you learned the wrong lessons from Bowie.

i.e. if you're going to star in a kids-themed movie, don't wear a Tina Turner wig.

When a poster tells you who they are believe them.

I am a werewolf.

Mine? No. Other people’s? Yes.

😎

interesting question. i think i like when i can see someone's early on, and act accordingly. who doesn't love their friends schticks ultimately? i feel like i keep it a little slippery in that regard. that is probably my schtick.

https://di2ponv0v5otw.cloudfront.net/posts/2022/05/26/628fbd173e732b91740850ed/m_628fbd389e15593116288750.jpg

<3

resolutions are a kind of schtick and they rarely stick.
no caffeine after noon, that's my schtick for 2025!
2PM rolls around...
uh oh, now i am literally tired of my own schtick!

what's your schtick that didn't stick?

kettlebells

hm what is my schtick. i bet someone here could tell me and it would kind of hurt my feelings. oh one thing is i am by nature very excitable and enthusiastic about the things and people i love. i will say something is the best [x] ever about a billion different things and it'll always be true (to me, but also, like, i'm right). i get very annoyed when people approach these same things with cynicism or detachment. hate it when people act like they're better than anything, because they aren't. these are all things i love about myself though, i don't really get tired of them, though i can see other people getting tired of them which makes me a little exhausted and exasperated with myself by transference! so in conclusion please appreciate my schtick, for the sake of my therapist

I get tired of how tired other people get of my schtick.

It's also totally understandable. In other words:

im trying to get kinder to everyone, including (perhaps especially) myself

― tuah dé danann (darraghmac), Wednesday, February 19, 2025 11:26 AM (twenty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh one thing is i am by nature very excitable and enthusiastic about the things and people i love. i will say something is the best [x] ever about a billion different things and it'll always be true (to me, but also, like, i'm right). i get very annoyed when people approach these same things with cynicism or detachment.

i feel like most of us start out that way when we're very young kids getting swept off our feet by music/movies/whatever for the first time. everything is awesome, and it's hurtful when someone says it isn't, from a position of cynicism or superiroty. but then we very quickly start to accumulate all kinds of biases.

something i appreciate and sort of admire about you, more than entusiasm, is how resistant you seem to be to those kinds of biases- or more likely, you seem able to overcome your biases, see past them and find the beauty in things that a lot of us have built up resistance against.

im trying to get kinder to everyone, including (perhaps especially) myself

i think i give out too many compliments and i'm going to be really mean to everyone from now on.

I used to have a conscious shtick in my first few years of posting, don't know what it is anymore except to shake doomposters by the shoulders.

current schtick is "Spock baffled by the human race" and I do get tired of it sometimes, but it's not as cringe as Rock Hardy's schtick was

I agree with what everyone has said above. I get really tired of their schtick as well.

haha! i'm a lil' stinker! :}

I don't have one, and yes constantly, and yes what dmac said too.

i have multiple shticks depending what context i'm in

i'm tired of all of them

faschticks

i was coming at this question from two different directions - i see a number of ilxors who have definite schticks and i can't help but think "don't you ever get tired of being that person?" meanwhile i don't feel like i have much of an ilx schtick any more but i do frequently get tired of my irl schtick - the same interests and anxieties and dumb jokes i've had for 35+ years. that feeling of being so tired of being in your own head and wishing you could be someone completely different just for a break.

i find it helps to abandon my social circle every 2-3 years and join a new one, otheriwse i end up being the old guy from Vicar of Dibley who keeps saying, did i ever tell you about the time the pub rab out of crisps

Absolutely, i hate myself and i wish i was actually funny instead of annoying and attention seeking

^ilx-wise. my irl schtick is more “where did brimstead go”

everyone is annoying and attention-seeking!!!!!

especially people who are actually funny

i would like to point out that my schtick is awesome

when you are a broken person in a broken country, shtick is a coping mechanism imo.

Do you say “put a bit of shtick about” in the UK?

they say put some HP sauce on them lubbly jubbly shticks!

lol ty for remembering it was my birthday recently!

my irl schtick is more “where did brimstead go”

irl lol, same

My own schtick? Never. Endlessly entertaining.
Realizing mid-schtick that I have borrowed it from someone else and am currently doing an impression? A bit embarrassing but the only way out is through.

that feeling of being so tired of being in your own head and wishing you could be someone completely different just for a break.

Totally feel this myself, but I think this feeling is more about wishing you could change the particular recipe for /composition of your character - whereas schtick is more about the well-rehearsed roles you play?

My shtick is on ilx -- or anywhere else -- is a pretty true reflection of how my mind runs. I do get tired of listening in on my mind's chattering sometimes, but wrenching it out of its normal channels is next to impossible so I normally try to entice it down a different alleyway or just let it exhaust itself. When it gets like that I try not to listen too hard.

Yes, I get tired of my own schtick.

But it's way too late for me to develop a different one. My toolbox is just not that deep. Drive-by quipping, stupid puns, childlike amusement, eclectic culture detritus.

The only other mode I have is a zenlike monastic silence.

When I am quiet, people ask me what's wrong.

Yes, but probably not as much as others are tired of me.

no

no

I have habits, not schticks. None of them are particularly interesting? 360 days of the year, I wear the same pair of jeans. I have two pairs of them in rotation. I never wash them, except by hand if something spills on them. I even wear them all summer. I have jogging pants for the gym and dress pants for fancy occasions. But otherwise I only wear these jeans. I buy the exact same pair again when they wear out. It's been like this for 13 years. Is that a schtick? I like that there are some aspects of my daily life that are just figured-out and I don't need to think about.

that feeling of being so tired of being in your own head and wishing you could be someone completely different just for a break

Yes. I wish this daily because living with the constant insecurities/anxieties that I do is fucking exhausting. Oh well.

folks wherever you go there you are

I have been thinking of "schtick" as meaning "well-worn comedy routine" and did not realize that on ilx it means, like, wearing the same hat every day.

For some of us it is both

fgti I share your jeans approach almost exactly.

As for the thread question, every few days I hear that Springsteen lyric in my head, “man I’m just tired and bored with myself”.

xp Oh, I definitely have both a comedy routine and a hat. I don't get tired of either of them, but I'd say the comedy routine is something I do without thinking and neither like nor dislike about myself, while the hat brings me genuine happiness every time I wear it.

I'm all schtick and no carrot.

I just wish I understood it more

there was a "thanking u" ilxor period that I wish had stuck around to displace "I appreciate you" which i kinda don't appreciate as much

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7v6mOepu3Y

any time i’ve been single and regularly going out on dates, i quickly become painfully aware of and bored by my own schtick. something about meeting someone for the first time, you tend to have similar introductory conversations, and i hated the extent to which the repetition would expose that i was basically recycling the same “bits” over and over, like a hacky standup

id like to chamge my answer because i have a schtick for puns as a default but i can easily and often (imo) segue into acid comment or fairly sincere kindness so yknow maybe it's not such a schtick as the more rigid or pronounced persona that others perform as here

that would be my interpretation of schtick for the purposes of discussion here, not not changing jeans etc

iirc, my shtick is soi disant bon mots

i too would like to chamge yr answer

Puns are legitimately how I think. I'm usually _not_ trying to be ha-ha comedy funny or entertain people. The ones I say out loud are the tip of the iceberg.

When I am alone, most of my thoughts are just turning words and phrases around and thinking about their relationships and origins and similarities and resonances and and and.

There is no schtick to what I do, or don't do. It’s just me.

Meta-level schtick: my schtick is ‘I’m so sincere I don’t have a schtick’

Flop otm but generalised to any situation where you are meeting new people. Back at university again and meeting new people is tiring not because people are tiring, but because you constantly have to face your temperament/affectations in a way you don’t have to with those you have comfortable familiarity with

i too would like to chamge yr answer

― triste et cassé (gyac), Wednesday, 19 February 2025 22:58 (forty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

harassment imo and im stephen reaing u from hereon in

earlier I thought no but now well

i got tired of old ilx vibes like this thread for sure. some schticks are better than others.

fgti I share your jeans approach almost exactly.

As for the thread question, every few days I hear that Springsteen lyric in my head, “man I’m just tired and bored with myself”.

lmaoooo same except it's "wanna change my clothes my hair my face" any time I walk by a full-length mirror

On evenings where I'm smoking weed, I sometimes come up with hilarious-at-the-time ideas for living and tell them to my boyfriend. I started recording them so I'd remember them. One time I said "wouldn't it be fun to have 'chlamydia' as your safe word"

Actually it was more than that. An idea that safe words should be picked by one's partner, not by one's self. You tell your partner what their safe word is! More fun that way. I told him his safe word was "chlamydia".

I can’t turn it off, despite occasional benefits to doing so

I turned 57 years old today, so this question hits home for me. The answer is "yes"; how often depends on when you ask me.

Happy birthday Daniel, you're still young. it's good to see you here again!

Happy Birthday!

it had never occurred to me that ivy loving so many things was a 'schtick' but either way i think it is wonderful

“This is the Greatest song of all time” iirc
enthusiasm is welcome

I have been thinking of "schtick" as meaning "well-worn comedy routine" and did not realize that on ilx it means, like, wearing the same hat every day.

― Lily Dale, Wednesday, February 19, 2025 3:01 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, I think NA meant it in like - do you ever get sick of your own bullshit etc. idk. That's how I read it. I like the idea of people having actual comedy personas and routines though lol.

Meta-level schtick: my schtick is ‘I’m so sincere I don’t have a schtick’

― Bob Six, Wednesday, 19 February 2025 bookmarkflaglink

Clearly I am too pure for this world

I do often find myself, on the drive home from my parents' house, wondering how I let myself get suckered into the same arguments with the same people over the same things time and time again, and I often come away from social engagements sick of the sound of my own voice and convinced that other people must also wish I would just shut up. It doesn't help that I have the natural speaking voice of a dog trainer and I get annoyed very easily. Also I'm permanently tired, which makes me cranky.

otoh have you tried dog training, decent money in it and pick your own hours, etc

Sit, Ubu, sit.

Sometimes I feel like a prisoner of my own shtick. But maybe I, like fgti am thinking of shtick more as a set of habits. When I find a routine which is comfortable, I will stick with that routine for a loooooong time, even when it thwarts my own flourishing.

I think our schticks evolve, or at least certain elements of our basic schtick ebb and flow over time. I am in a weird schtick at the moment but I am fine with it, it’s keeping me grounded and thriving despite the horrors surrounding me.

it had never occurred to me that ivy loving so many things was a 'schtick'

― mookieproof, Wednesday, February 19, 2025 9:04 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i guess i thought of schtick in this context as "what if you were a thinly-drawn character in a novel who had 1-2 personality traits you were leaning into over and over again," which is often how people come off on the internet tbh

very schticky of ilx to have some semantic confusion about what schtick is

I like that 'routine' gets at the idea of schtick in a few different senses - a comedy routine, a set of habits.

Not exactly profound news but: everyone online is playing a character (including and perhaps people who don't think they're playing a character)

All parties are costume parties

Men and women merely players etc.

One can find this depressing or liberating, depending on yr temperament and/or mood of the moment

Trenchant, I know, pass the bong dood

*including and perhaps especially

first response hall of fame truth bomb from ivy, love that post

genuinely dunno if i have one?

One can find this depressing or liberating, depending on yr temperament and/or mood of the moment

Very much liberating imo, a major hurdle for me in overcoming social insecurities was realizing how much everyone was fronting one way or another. And that's not a pejorative word, you can't help having a "front," it's just a matter of how comfortable you are in it I think.

Not only online, but every social situation is a performance. However, something can be a performance and be sincere at the same time. They are not mutually exclusive categories.

Xp Totally, tipsy.

Once I got to 40ish, I got hit with powerful memories of my parents being 40ish. Because that was when I was 10ish, and could sorta see them as people.

Holy shit, the people who were respected authority figures in my childhood were... completely improvising every goddamn moment. They very much did NOT have their shit together, but they did a good imitation of it. As they had to. As we all must.

I wish more people were as enthused about stuff as ivy! It's definitely hipped me to some great stuff.

I absolutely get the idea of being more measured and critical of stuff, but I don't know, enough sucks in the world right now that I don't need a lot of negativity about stuff and it's nice to read people enthusing about stuff they love.

xp I feel that too as a late thirtysomething. However I also believe there are plenty of adults in the world who do genuinely know what they're doing, at least within their limited sphere of expertise. It's fallacious to think everyone else is as much of a dumbass as I am

no actually everyone is a huge dumbass too. this is my other core belief, we're all annoying and we're all huge dumbasses

I'm getting more enthusiastic and curios as I get older. I've gone through six books in the last week and I want more. I don't see the appetite waning.

yeah same, curiosity keeps me going. there's a line robert redford has in the (mostly terrible) adaptation of walk in the woods where nick nolte is asking him why he cares about nature and stuff and redford's like "because i'm curious! and i like being curious"! sometimes it keeps me going when times are hard. so many books to read, so much personal growth yet to come

I'm getting more enthusiastic and curios as I get older. I've gone through six books in the last week and I want more. I don't see the appetite waning.

My pace is slower but it's been the best year for reading for me in a while, and I appreciate it. A lot of it boils down to working through what I've built up in my library and if the idea is an offset to *gestures to rest of world* then that's more than all right by me.

omg, i went on some old thread where its people talking about stuff that they don't like for whatever reason and i had to say nice things about EVERYTHING that people brought up. i'm like: dude, younger scott, just let people not like things. its okay.

Yes and yes

I absolutely get the idea of being more measured and critical of stuff, but I don't know, enough sucks in the world right now that I don't need a lot of negativity about stuff and it's nice to read people enthusing about stuff they love.

This is why I don't publish negative reviews on BA. If I'm gonna write about a record, it's because I like it and want more people to hear it.

I'm consciously trying to read more this year too. I grabbed three John D. MacDonald crime novels from the library; they're pretty Sixties (the protagonist is a guy who lives on a houseboat and sleeps with stewardesses) but they're also pretty moral, as crime fiction goes.

I think historically I haven't had the vocabulary to do justice to things I really like beyond a basic "so cool!" or "I liked it!" But I'm trying to rectify that, because yes, everyone here is otm, there are so many bad things that it's important to get behind the good things and give them a boost.

i am not fond of the suggestion that one's personality is automatically "a schtick" -- i am who i am WYSIWYG and if you don't like it feel free to ignore me (which most people do, on ilx and elsewhere IRL)

so, no.

do i get tired of myself? absolutely, virtually all the time but that's not a function of a performance/"schtick" or "comedy routine" (whatever that is?!). it's because i have a poor sense of self-worth. working on it.

The responses are interesting. For me, it seems so obvious that as social animals we have often have a 'front', role, or schtick depending on the context we are currently in... A different personality with family, with a lover, at work, at a party, in court etc. It's part of our nature.To me, anyone denying we change roles according to context is like a chameleon denying its colour-shifting camouflage. I am slightly in awe of people who feel the same - WYSIWYG - in all circumstances.

I like to think Macho Man Randy Savage never ever dropped kayfabe under any circumstances, unlike that pukester Hulk Hogan.

i took the question as referring to the obvious/superficial aspects of personality. the schtick as the tip of the iceberg.

tired of my ilx schtick of killing threads tbh lol

I used to … then I realized I could perform differently. Like, I am the one creating the character that is me. If I want to be more positive, I can. If I want to let go of grudges or accept that I lost an argument or was wrong about something, I can. If I want to be a “team player” I can try.

I think that is part of what makes for “main character energy” … otherwise I felt like “Henchman 3”… the contemporary version of Rosencrantz.

Happy birthday Daniel, you're still young. it's good to see you here again!

― Dan S, Wednesday, February 19, 2025 8:05 PM (three days ago)

Hey, thanks, Dan. I appreciate it.

Interesting question. I occasionally re-read my old writing, and I'm struck by a mixture of "that's actually quite funny" and "you were trying too hard" and "a second pass or a sympathetic editor would have helped" and "you are not a good advert for the white race". But you can't have pudding without having cabbage first. Writing is like that. You can't have 100% chocolate. There has to be cabbage at some point. And sometimes the chocolate isn't very good. Sometimes none of it is good.

I mean, a whole team of people made the worst episode of your favourite television show. A whole team of people made Mac & Me. Have you seen the alternative ending where the disabled kid gets shot? A whole team of people wrote that. I'm just one person. One! One person blundering in the dark. Driven by a fear that I'm a much better writer when I eliminate myself. When I use fewer words. When I don't use "the schtick". The factual stuff is great. I can do research! It's the digressions that don't work. And yet without the digressions, what I am. What I am.

I've learned to live with being erratic. A flickering lightbulb that periodically lights up a bleak universe. Aren't most classic novels just boring between-scene linking stuff? People remember individual lines. Individual lines. "It was the best of times", "call me Ishmael", "with what, your bare hands?", "leave to stand for one minute". Time is my editor. Time. Time will strip away the bad words and preserve the good. Time. Time!

x-post @ self above: cut the Desmond Morris schtick!

I like all of your schticks, they are you being yourselves, and we all have them so bring them on

Schtick with it

Yeah but don't walk around like you have a schtick up your ass

we should be allowed to tell ppl who say they have no schtick what their schtick is

Everyone is playing a character, including people who don't think they're playing a character. Perhaps especially them.

the ones who know they are and say they arent are the subset to target maybe

Are you for real? How about not targeting anyone? WTF

I’m starting to think this place isnt good for me anymore. I need a break.

I am dismayed by a couple of things that happened recently while pursuing my schtick.

breaks are good.

dan s - i imagine you opening up ilx in the evenings with a glass of wine and having a post or two. is this at all accurate? don't mean to be nosy, you can tell me it's none of my business lol. anywho your tone is always pleasant to read and i enjoy it.

"schtick" is redolent of a different era of ilx, or maybe just a different era of me on ilx. feels very twitter ca. 2016 to me. i feel like we all know each other well enough at this point to enjoy each other's company, give grace for the tics, and just ignore the personalities we don't get on with lol.

Feel like there was a lot of talk back in the day about "posting styles."

I took a two year break about 10 years ago, but I still read the board every day.

I get tired of my ilx shtick like every three days, probably overdue for a break myself.

turns out people are just mostly themselves and everyone is half crazy half predictable. speaking of breaks i feel like if you're starting to feel "schticky" or tired of yourself it's a sign to do something nice for yourself. go get some sunshine sit under a tree pet your cat get some cardio that sort of thing.

who wants a Negroni?!

On one hand, it sucks when you realize your schtick is, on some basic level, a kind of coping mechanism that arose to deflect the difficulties of connecting with people by being yourself (especially if you're now trying to deal with those problems). And also: when you've identified with your schtick for so long you've lost the sense of who you are without it (especially when you, say, read your old posts and see they're not nearly as funny or clever as you thought).

On the other hand: everyone on earth is annoying and we shouldn't judge ourselves too harshly for constantly leaning into our schticks. And also: How about not targeting anyone?

i just got back from a lil break myself (sunshine and coffee) and can't wait for a run after work. stuck in my cubicle for another hour or so. so: more schtick and that's ok! haha.

do you guys ever have this experience where someone passes you, they say something out loud, and right after they pass you clock that what they said was probably directed at you? but you also can't really be sure? like, am i just being paranoid and reading myself into a random comment that could have been elicited for any number of reasons? but then you're like pretty sure that, no, they said something at you? and what they said wasn't nice?

for one, actually doing this sort of thing is obviously incredibly rude and cowardly haha. i'm pretty sure it's happened a number of times to me. people who are mean in public and don't stick around for the consequences. i've done it myself on the internet! the internet is like a prime environment for that sort of thing.

anyway i'm puzzling over this one. so i'm sitting outside in front of a coffee shop. i hear "but i'm really hung!" and a scoff said right as about 8 guys with "salt lake fire academy" shirts pass by. probably having just had lunch at the deli behind me. "it felt like that guy was directing that at me." "could it really be?" "how weird" "people are very weird, they will never cease to surprise you." the reason i think he might have said that at me is because i have an obviously muscular build, and there is a certain kind of guy who keys in on that and has to say something. usually it's like a thumbs up or something positive. but there is a certain kind of guy who gets real insecure about it and has to challenge you. it happens! this morning i was pressing dumbbells and this guy comes up next to my spot and does this kinda weird thing where he pulls out a heavy dumbbell, puts it on the ground flat-end down, sits on it, and proceeds to do concentration curls with the other dumbbell. it felt like a challenge and struck me as a fairly graceless one i might add! but whatever. once you understand that most people just want to be seen it's kinda cute. anyway sometimes i'm a rorshach test for how other men feel about their masculinity. it used to freak me out, sometimes it still does, but lately i'm realizing there's something beautiful about it.

to be fair to the second guy i mention, there probably wasn't anywhere better to sit and do his concentration curls as i think all the other benches were taken. but as ed.b alludes to above, sometimes the best thing to do is to be yourself, focus on your present, and let what everyone else is doing or saying drift away...

Amusingly right after I posted about how sick I was of my own shtick, I got an AuDHD diagnosis, which explains a lot about how annoying I am.

Credit goes to ivy and La Lechera for the italicised text in my last post.

Maybe some context for my last post: I recently met with my oldest friend, who I hadn't really talked to in a few years, who had revealed he was in recovery after a rough few years, and we spend some time reflecting on how we dealt with life and other people throughout our teens, and how it served/hurt us up to the present. It was uncomfortable to reflect on times when I was a dick to others, or pushed people away, or insulated myself with an air of smug superiority. To see yourself as the guy that scoffs as they walk by isn't a good feeling!

Not to cast stones, but I think I absorbed a lot of that here - a kind of jokey way of cutting people down because they, I don't know, listen to Animal Collective after they got popular. It's a kind of ironic mean-spiritness that's actually not ironic at all (to explicitly cast stones: posting a pic of a hat that says 'who gives a shit' is a good example). In that way, taking a break from posting here probably served me well. I mean, I still do this, but try to remember that I get sick of it because it's exhausting.

Also realizing my 2025 ILX schtick is posting mildly self-serious reflections on how I’m trying to break with older attitudes 😬

a lot of what you say in your last paragraph rings true for me too ed. i honestly think this message board was always pretty heterogeneous - a lot of different people with a lot of different demeanors attitudes and reasons for posting - but what you're talking about is familiar to me too. one of the things i used to desire in an out-of-balance way partially because of a really damaged self-esteem was to be seen as cool. but i also recognized that this desire was based on insecurity so i always pretended like i didn't care if i was cool or not! that whole complex was really brought out by reading and posting on this message board, which for all of the different people here there was undeniably something held in common where people were interested in "cool music". in being seen as cool through music as subject matter. and why not - i mean this is a very human desire. there was something about it that was kind of like the center of a venn diagram among music critics and academic types and the gays who liked "more than" gay music and the indie dudes and hyper-genre-conversant electronic music scene clairvoyants and so forth. this is basically what the profession of music critic is as far as i can see lol - to be seen as cool, a certain type of legible cool. a personality with a following.

unfortunately one tried-and-true tactic of elevating oneself on any social ladder is to demean others. there was a lot of that, it's true. i used to do a lot of that. i used to think it was cool to be subtle about it or whatever. i also think that when people take the cool sweepstakes too seriously they sort of demean others by default. these days i just take what i can. some people think i'm cool sometimes. i'll enjoy that when it happens. but there's always a different sensation that's next. i'm old and out of touch. i'll enjoy feeling that when it happens too. those kinds of things come and go and don't have purchase on who i really am, even as they all add up and comprise who i really am, and then some.

just a check here

ed is it ok to ask you what exactly your issue was with whiney posting a "who gives a shit" hat in this thread? as in id be interested to know what you're interpreting that as before i eh weigh in

There's a phrase I heard somebody use about art/creativity that has really stuck with me, a line about how you "grow the garden you've got" — like hey, maybe you dream of growing delicious juicy pineapples, but if you own a cranberry bog in Maine you should probably learn to appreciate just growing cranberries. I get the sense that there is way more of this in art than we ever imagine — loads of amazing work that's just the type of thing the artist can generate successfully, not the thing they most admire or value, and also loads of unsuccessful work that comes from people trying to do stuff they admire but aren't actually suited to. (It doesn't help that we often admire and value precisely the stuff that doesn't come naturally to us!)

Anyway I mention this because it makes perfect sense to me in creative terms, and I bet I could give a really good pep talk to someone who, I dunno, is wild about avant-garde literature and disappointed to have turned out really good at writing fantasy novels instead — but when I try to apply this to human personality it feels like so much more of a bummer. Ha, you're you and you're stuck with it — you can be infinitely better or worse versions of you and that's probably enough work to keep you occupied for a lifetime, just working out a you that feels a thousand times better than you could even imagine before — but as far a being some whole other variety of person, nah, you can get all the weird Oliver Sacksish brain syndromes you want and you are still hella unlikely to come even close to this, sorry

to deflect the difficulties of connecting with people by being yourself .... And also: when you've identified with your schtick for so long you've lost the sense of who you are without it

You know you best, but I am deeply skeptical that one can delineate "yourself" from "your schtick," especially over the time frames we're talking. So I don't quite buy the idea that one is authentic and therefore true; the other contrived and therefore false.

How you act in the agora, how you present yourself, how you carry yourself in a given setting (online, meatspace, whatev) IS part of "yourself," is what I am saying.

I interpret it as exactly the kind of ironic derision (that’s not really ironic at all) I mentioned. To me, it’s just an expression of scoffing at people expressing any degree of sincerity or self-reflection, or engaging with something less than cool, because what’s cooler than forced aloofness bathed in cyncism? It’s an attitude I really dislike and have also seen in myself.

Something I wish I learned when I was younger is that there are so many instances when you just don’t have to have an opinion or say something. Like, why write “who gives a shit” let alone post a huge pic of it, when you could literally just do nothing.

im not trying to chase you down but im not actually clear on what you think whiney meant by the post, and who it was directed at

i mean its a very specific, well known (on ilx) and self-directed bit that he's referencing, im asking if you know that (and i dont want to presume you dont, but hate it anyway which is fair enough)

but it does strike me as relevant to ask in the circs

xpost: Oh, I definitely do not believe in a “true self” or authentic identity that pre-exists all the ways you perform yourself in a world among others. But I also think there’s something when you stop forcing it, start noticing your habitual reactions, compulsions, desires, etc, and realize these aren’t “you” any more than anything. Like, when you realize the schtick is a mask you wear, you can let go of it, feel like you’re wearing it more than it’s wearing you

there's that infamous Simpsons scene with Homer:

"don't say revenge, don't say revenge"

REVENGE?

"that's it, I'm getting out of here".
--------------------------------

which kinda describes me. I do irritating shit like there's two conflicted beings inside of me wrestling for control

Never seen that hat.

I blame iphone theme which doesn’t load images.

Meanwhile, there are schticks I really appreciate for how overtly schticky they are. Eg saer’s UK-suburbia-core captions accompanying whatever house bobbins youtubes he was posting. There’s something disarming about how absurd and kayfabe-holding about it.

I once posted elsewhere “my worst nightmare is having an iron rod slammed through my brain and not undergoing a complete personality change as a result”

It’s not really true but it’s a p good joke imo

ed its not about the hat or the fact that its a picture

its a reference to something that you seem not to have understood, is the point im making

im just asking you if you know that, or have you gone out of your way now a few times to chastise whiney about what you mistakenly imagine he meant when he made a (to my mind obvious, jokey) reference that a fair amount of ilxors posting to the thread might have recognised

seeing as youve twice tied the same sentiment to a post ive made, fixating on one word in it which seems to have been intepreted as my starting the fourth crusade against unknown schtick-repellent ilxors (which i find more than faintly ridiculous, but its ok to be ridiculous, i am ridiculous myself a lot of the time)

im not spoiling for an argument, honestly, but if you are going to hoist up things people have said as examples of something while getting it flat out wrong, then i think you should be ok to admit that you misunderstood the interaction in a reasonably fundamental way as an outside observer

and just because you didnt understand it doesn't mean it gets to mean whatever you might imagine, even if it struck you as hostile nonsequitur. it just was a thing you were outside that you didnt get, it wasn't aimed at you or anyone else that didnt get it, thats all.

i just think that would be fair and quite cool of you to acknowledge that after explicitly casting stones, is all, instead of carrying on as if the imagined transgression was real and serious enough to make a series of posts about

making sincere posts about not projecting overly much onto how other ilxors interact is not my usual schtick, i dont think I'll take it up either as i may not actually be very good at it i think

If I completely misread a post bc I didn’t pick up on its actual meaning or context (because I legit have no fucking clue what you’re referring to). Then yes, I take back my comment about it that post and whatever it might say about whiney

At the same time, I’m sticking to the claim that lots of people on ilx have posted lots of snarky things and that includes me and that’s not something I feel good about

Sometimes a bit of snark is communally analgesic, heck sometimes even curative

xp well that much definitely isnt in doubt tbf

a lot less characteristic of the place these days tho

I am dismayed by a couple of things that happened recently while pursuing my schtick.

I told you nitrate is flammable!

schtick of dynamite

curious that ilx's shtick is spelling it schtick, the hipster way

Es ist ganz Deutsch

I love my dad dearly, but he has a repertoire of about 50 or so jokes/puns/facts/stories which I have heard so many times before that my heart tends to sink slightly when he comes out with one again. don't think this is a senility thing as he has always been like this, think this is one of the reasons my mum left (nearly 40 years ago)

lol yeah my pop was like that. I'd say his repertoire was even thinner - it was the same 5 over and over. we all used to groan and tell him 'omg find new jokes'. when he lost the ability to speak, I organically began saying them aloud because I missed hearing them so much. now that he's gone, I've basically taken over being the cornball of the family, telling cringe dad joeks despite not being a dad. one odd but fun way of keeping him around.

Mine is also like that and always has been. Gets annoyed if people don't find them sufficiently funny, but also has the pervese enjoyment of not being sufficiently appreciated

He's been reading the same handful of books for years on end. Underlining specific passages to rememeber, writing out the passages on scraps of paper that almost immediately vanish into a sea of notebooks and other scraps of paper. Snippets to try and memorize but rarely properly remembered, let alone understood

Over time I've come to see these phrases as a form of structure or tethering, without which would be completely lost. I presume he's been like this since leaving school. I'm not sure there's anyone there beyond this collection of stock phrases

that's a nice story. we're all mad animals tbh.

i recognise more of that than i care for tbh!

My current schtick is something close to an empty comment box. I've turned 50, stopped drinking, become more serious about meditating and a bit more serious about Buddhism, and my social self (beyond my teacher self, which is something else again) feels like it's atrophied altogether. I was quite a roaring drunk, sociable, good stamina for the early hours of the morning. Lately, I'm quiet and just want to be solitary or with my wife. I worry about becoming withdrawn but it doesn't *feel* like that. Yet, anyway.

I'm not sure about the 'garden you've got' thing. It implies a fixed set of characteristics, and, to me, the self and attendant ideas like morality and social attitudes, are processes under construction, at least under observation and open for change and development. Maybe that's idealistic and I dither and doze about in a furrow like everyone else. I'm certainly too old and knackered to pursue the implications of the 'non-fixed self' version fully, but I like the sense of it.

Has deems been doing a bit here, meta-style, or is him hounding the shit out of ed just par for the course? I think I'm with LL on this, sometimes the incessant policing that can go on round here is less a schtick and more an utter annoyance, at best.

it looked to me more like a genuine curiosity whether ed.b actually knew that "Who Gives a Shit?" was a meme .jpg Whiney kept image-bombing around 2010 that kind of endured, that it was a callback to something old. but that was just my read.

there's definitely some policing here, but far less than, say, BlueSky.

Hounding is an odd choice of word.

xp Chinaski! Check out the next ILB FAP thread!

trayce i think if you read ed's post as neutral and my posts as ed to neutral then the content and context are there for anyone to see

if you dont, then you dont.

ed's posts are heartfelt and appreciated and i felt the same about his posts to threads ive started this year that i liked and enjoyed a lot and vibed with strongly.

but he was wrong about something- even if his feelings about it were genuine and heartfelt- and seeing as that went on for a few posts and was a continuation of something that i was implicated it and that i wanted to nip in the bud, then it mattered that he was wrong about it.

i did ask and point it out a few times and ed chose to firstly evade, secondly handwave away and then finally acknowledge he may have gotten it wrong.

that it took three presses for that to happen is not on me. it wasnt hounding and ill reject any calling out of it as such, i was fair about it. i just wasnt for letting it pass.

no ill will to ed at all.

incessant policing?

well that takes many forms and shapes around here. we pick and choose the styles of it we like, perhaps.

It's possible Whiney could have posted that with image both meanings (jokey self-reference to his 2010 schtick and also scoffing) if we're insisting on fairness. We don't actually know for sure.

he was crying, jabbing both thumbs into his chest while posting it

Man, nabisco’s post hits hard for me as a musician who wants to sound like Bill Withers but for whom everyone’s like, why don’t you do more of that alt-country stuff

I get the sense that there is way more of this in art than we ever imagine — loads of amazing work that's just the type of thing the artist can generate successfully, not the thing they most admire or value, and also loads of unsuccessful work that comes from people trying to do stuff they admire but aren't actually suited to. (It doesn't help that we often admire and value precisely the stuff that doesn't come naturally to us!)

nabisco i know it’s probably folly to try to challenge you on this, lol, but i’m not sure i agree on this! or at least, i don’t understand what you mean by “generate successfully” and “aren’t actually suited to”. generated successfully for…others? in what sense...in monetary terms? in artistic value (and who determines that etc). and the other expression of that, “stuff they admire but aren’t actually suited to” - but who says they’re not suited to it? you? or them? and suited in what way? etc

facebook just made me watch that 90s clip of bowie talking about making art, how you gotta be in a place where you feel uncomfortable or you’re not doing it right, you gotta be just at that point where you can’t touch the bottom, then something unusual will happen, etc. so maybe that’s just in my mind. but when bowie was doing 1. outside etc, was he suited to it? and when he did the bad mid-late 80s stuff (if you believe that exists), was generating successfully at that time, or was he actually not suited to it?

sorry, a lot of rhetorical questions, but i guess i’m just not sure what you mean in this case!

It's possible Whiney could have posted that with image both meanings (jokey self-reference to his 2010 schtick and also scoffing) if we're insisting on fairness. We don't actually know for sure.

Needed a footnote imo…. What is they say if you need to explain a joke ?

Nah it’s fine not to get it and also fine to make ppl who get it the target audience for a joke

but also, apologies in advance, who, in fact, gives a shit lol

Deems apparently.

I think that Nabisco's spot on. Isn't a schtick a kind of posture that is like your default way to socialize, based on who you are with your personal history and whoever or whatever has influenced you, and at the same time a projection of how you want to be perceived. The funny result of a kind of reduction or compromise between our passive (automatic / deterministic) and active (adaptive) natures. That's putting something simple in complicated language, but I definitely see how art is a prolongation of the same process of how we present to the world and enter in dialogue. With a lot of potential mismatches between what we do and what we think we're doing - and why art is never entirely devoid of humor.

As for myself, I usually act social, likeable, and assertive, which is partially a way to cover my slight social awkwardness and shyness, which I assume people perceive pretty quickly. Lately I've also had remarks that I'm sometimes impossible to read and unpredictable - which is maybe a sign that I tend to keep to myself more and more or have become slightly indifferent, less in control, but that's more unconscious. Anyway, it's hardly for me to say what I'm like.

Bumbling into threads and insisting on the worst take imaginable because you can’t be bothered to read might be one of the worst schticks on here. Bob Six’s bizarre posts needling deems are not what I’m talking about, but I’m puzzled regardless. What’s your beef? Agree with an earlier opinion that certain behaviour gets a blind eye turned to it depending on the person doing it rather than the fact of the behaviour itself, JK Rowling ass morality ahhhh

i did ask and point it out a few times and ed chose to firstly evade, secondly handwave away and then finally acknowledge he may have gotten it wrong.

Is this what happened?! You asked me what I thought it meant, without explaining it was an inside joke. I explained. Then you asked me if I knew the bit, without saying what the bit was. I said I hadn’t (I clearly didn’t get what the joke was). Then you asked me to apologize because I hadn’t gotten the joke, which I still didn’t understand until Neanderthal explained. Just saying, how am I gonna know I’m wrong if I don’t know what I’m missing. Definitely did not intend to be evasive or defensive, just literally did not know wtf you were talking about

ed i genuinely (again) bear no ill will as i said and have never had an issue with you that i ever remember -and dont want one for my part!

and i wasnt being mysterious on purpose- i wanted to check if you *did* get that it was a reference and not an example of what you were holding it up as. i didnt want to presume that before i responded, for all i knew you got the joke and still wanted to call whiney out as a dick for making it- a valid position if that was the point, wouldnt have killed whiney im sure.

again- and i have been at pains to explain this imo- you followed on from posts quoting me, agreeing with an interpretation of what i said which i feel is ridiculous, and in the same posts then take whiney up completely incorrectly and i think if we are to be accused of anything in a larger point being made then let's clarify it before it becomes an actual disagreement?

but characterising what was posted as something it isnt (which can happen because human interaction etc) can be corrected in a fair manner without it being "hounding", and yeah tbh you *did* just reiterate the mistaken belief when i asked you directly but fairly in the first instance whether you knew it was a joke. (the fact that i didnt explain the joke seems irrelevant to me, not the point, who explains a joke in 2025, but if i should have done so then to really nail the landing then I'm sorry that i didn't)

final note though- nobody asked you to apologise.

now it does get interesting if the interpretations of my pretty easygoing posts in response to comments on my words or whineys post continue to project things that weren't intended, or could have been read a number of ways (but the reading is always the most negative possible without reference to any possible explanation offered), or- as with a requested apology- have been spun up from nothing i did or said.

at that stage i think even the last few people half interested in this will throw their hands up and say we are talking past each other here and it aint all one side or the other (and id be with them)

either way, there's nothing intended here on my part and reading back again im not even sure what tone people are imagining these posts in, they're very much me in earnest "let's not misunderstand each other" mode without rancour for my part

i personally love art where someone’s attempting something they’re not “naturally” good at. i don’t think this can be compared to schtick tbh

i’m also suspicious at the notion of being inherently good at one thing and just not being able to do another thing. i don’t think that’s a real thing

This seems like a case of talking past each other and not realizing it, and I think that it might be best to just put it to rest? You are both great posters, it’s cool, let’s be cool.

I also agree with nabisco’s post fwiw— I think that the idea of art as “genuine human expression” is actually vile and simplistic absent taking into account the projections and instabilities that every artist performs and is subject to. I mean, this is all about performance, right?

One thing that I often think about is the performance of education— how “intelligence” and “intellectualism” are performed, and how they can be performed in ways that are inclusive and inquisitive or in ways that are exclusive and mocking. I think what always prevented me from fully joining the academy is that even despite my own admitted snobbery (in some regards), I cannot stand the way many academics perform their own education, particularly if they’re “radical” academics. Gag me with that exclusionary bullshit!!

ive wanted to talk about the art points since but havent kinda felt able 🥲

didnt read the first post as being about commercial or critical success or fame or whatever but also think that its very possible for art to fail on a number of levels that are purely for the artist to decide which is how i read the point being made, tbh

just to be ear: No ill will for me either. I’m just like “huh, is that what I was doing? is ~that~ what you were saying?”

Performing education was a big part of my schtick for many years and one I grew extremely tired of and am glad to have matured out of.

🤝

I like many debut volumes of poetry, sometimes preferring them to the later "original" work, precisely because of the way naivete, derivativeness, and the writer's struggle to figure out what they want to say results in these wracked poems. I think of Adrienne Rich's fist couple of books, which I can read endlessly.

I don't know what a given artist's 'naturally' good at. Bowie couldn't "sing" well in any conventional sense, especially in the early days, and could barely play guitar; but, boy, I would have wanted Mick Ronson to play those jagged Diamond Dogs lines.

i’m also suspicious at the notion of being inherently good at one thing and just not being able to do another thing. i don’t think that’s a real thing

“Inherently” is overstatement but there’s a strong kernel of truth to this, says the singer who moved into classical choral music because even baritone rock stuff was too high for him

you can also subtly brag about how deep your voice is by being an artistic renaissance man.

Or you could brag with your deep voice about being an artistic renaissance man

true

If I sounded like Paul Robeson, every single one of my posts would be a sound file of myself singing Old Man River

i really believe in like... trusting your instincts, and i think a lot of my artistic failures in my early 20s are owed to me thinking my instincts were dumb and bad and would be better off transplanted with someone else's. i look back at a lot of my writing then and i just see other writers i was trying to imitate, poorly, and i was not making a great deal of sense or communicating anything real in doing it. it's only now in my late 30s that i'm realizing my instincts are what make me me, and what make my art unique and worthwhile, but i also think i had to be at war with them for a while to come to that conclusion. i also had to transition... i had to become SO much myself that i couldn't help but find it fascinating and beautiful, the things i can do, the things i don't even know i can do yet!!!

anyway this doesn't strike me as compatible with a discussion of schtick, because schtick can include learned behaviors, and instincts seem to lie somewhere beyond that, beyond even the active production of our thoughts. and sometimes our instincts can lead us toward failure, toward artistic ambitions we can't fulfill to our personal satisfaction, but i think *that* in and of itself is really interesting, and that failure reflects our true selves like some kind of x-ray mirror, and that anyone who abandons their desire to do one thing for another thing that they're pretty reliably good at is in some way abandoning their instincts for their schtick, i guess, and i think that's always sort of a shame

idk if this makes any sense with my previous posts but it just kinda came out like this

Anyway I mention this because it makes perfect sense to me in creative terms, and I bet I could give a really good pep talk to someone who, I dunno, is wild about avant-garde literature and disappointed to have turned out really good at writing fantasy novels instead

Yeah I don't really get this, because of what people have been saying, I mean what does really good at writing fantasy novels mean and who gets to decide what "really good" is here. writing is so subjective.

also does this ever happen? "i'd love to write like Thomas Pynchon but I write like George RR Martin, oh well."

basically this

i don’t understand what you mean by “generate successfully” and “aren’t actually suited to”. generated successfully for…others? in what sense...in monetary terms? in artistic value (and who determines that etc). and the other expression of that, “stuff they admire but aren’t actually suited to” - but who says they’re not suited to it? you? or them? and suited in what way? etc

i like to think of a novel as being a piece of writing with something wrong with it. and also if you create something how someone reacts to your art is totally out of your hands

“really believe in like... trusting your instincts, and i think a lot of my artistic failures in my early 20s are owed to me thinking my instincts were dumb and bad and would be better off transplanted with someone else's.”

Yes I totally relate to this!

I assumed the original premise for artists here was "I feel I am very good at this one thing but I enjoy this other thing I don't feel good at much more". Nothing to do with outside influences or audience reception at all.

idk just keep doing the other thing you don't feel good at, you'll probably get good at it

i am seriously trying to learn to draw for the first time, in my late 30s! i suck at it! but it makes me feel good and i get better every time i attempt it

^^^^^^

i am NOT doomed to be a shitty visual artist, and even if i were that doesn't mean i'll stop enjoying it

that's the key to life, trying new things "sucking" at something and getting better at it as you work through the suck. it's good for your brain

So many musicians paint. Let them paint!

I am doomed to mix excellent martinis.

This convo reminds me a bit of old timey ilx poster Dave q, who once said how he wished ppl were as enthusiastic about his music as his writing about it.

There's a story about a student who asks the rabbi, "why do you always have an appropriate parable for every topic?"

The rabbi answers, "Ah, my son, for that I have a parable.

"A traveler comes to a village and notices that on every barn there is a bullseye with an arrow in the center. The traveler is amazed by this, and asks a villager who is such an expert archer.

"'Oh, that's Simple Stephen,' says the villager. 'He paints the bullseye after he shoots.'

"The meaning of this parable, my son, is that I only introduce topics for which I have a parable."

^ I take this story to mean both "do what you're good at," but also to note that people who seem really good at something are often stacking the deck by only attempting to do what they're good at.

As a musician I very much keep to the material I know I can play well, which suits me as a hobbyist / enthusiastic amateur.

Picasso (or maybe it was Bob Marley) said that if you can do five things, do three. That way you have a sense of power in reserve.

but

it was the student who introduced that topic

READ: rabbi DESTROYED by darraghmac ON ILX

the student introduced the topic, but it was the rabbi who told his son the student, that he had a parable. if he didn't have a parable for his son's question, the rabbi would have instead just stared silently until his child went away. later, his son would come back with something else and the rabbi would be like "yes, you have learned to ask the correct question, kid"

rabbi sounds like he would be popular on reddit

idk just keep doing the other thing you don't feel good at, you'll probably get good at it

Get better at it? Sure. Get good at it? Not necessarily.

I can practice and study until the cows come home but it’s very unlikely that that will reliably give me the G above middle C full voice; that’s going to have an impact on the type of stuff I can credibly do. It’s just not how my voice works. Maybe I’m being self-limiting but I’d argue most disciplines involve both aptitude and practice, and it shouldn’t be overly controversial to note that aptitude can point you in a direction that’s not necessarily the one you would have picked for yourself.

I don’t think this necessarily ties into the enjoyment you derive from practice or learning, or the improvements you make when you stick with something, or even the importance of what the ceiling is for your ability at your chosen activity. I’m not intentionally making any value judgments here, more noting that e.g. not everyone can be an Olympic-level athlete or a compelling artist/writer or keen businessperson. I don’t think it calls into question the entire idea of pursuing your passions to point this out, or to note that there are people leveraging above-average skills in fields/areas they aren’t particularly passionate about, or are adjacent to something they’d rather be doing but aren’t as good at.

i think everyone is good at something creative. they can find it. a lot of the activities we understand as like officially creative are just the tip of the iceberg. you can be creative at decorating your house, for instance. i want to say that being good at something just means that you achieve a "flow state." that's my metric for when something is good by the way, if i can tell the person who did it found that flow state, that quickening. and then something about it that came out speaks to me. that's more where personal experience comes in.

anyway i agree with ivy that the important thing is you enjoy it. sooooo much that. that is the only fucking thing that matters! i really believe it. i've been a lifter for years. i consider it a creative practice. my whole thing is kind of idiosyncratic. i do it almost every day. it's creative for me. i get so much enjoyment out of it.

but

it was the student who introduced that topic

"The times when you have seen only one set
of parables, my teacher, is when I asked you."

Picasso (or maybe it was Bob Marley) said that if you can do five things, do three. That way you have a sense of power in reserve.

But at the same time Picasso was an inveterate schtick-shifter. I went to the Picasso Museum in Barcelona a while back and left not quite knowing what to make of the constant abrupt adoptions of completely new styles, which he'd then seem to immediately perfect before moving on again. The more sustained schtick, e.g. the little creatures and other biomorphic forms, were more compelling. As was, up the hill, the Miró museum, showcasing a guy who decidedly embraced his schtick.

It's hard getting to another phase in a hurry without a schtick-shifter

May be corny, but drift of the discussion reminds me of this quote from Vonnegut:

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

I went to the Picasso Museum in Barcelona a while back and left not quite knowing what to make of the constant abrupt adoptions of completely new styles, which he'd then seem to immediately perfect before moving on again.

Oh, here is something I actually do know about! His most intense and experimental output (ca 1906-12) was extremely prolific and driven by artistic rivalries and collaborations that accelerated his experimentation and envelope pushing. The widespread break in artistic activity during WWI and turn toward figurative art afterward also makes for a v jarring contrast in styles. Then, there was Parisian surrealism’s adoption of Picasso as a kind of elder statesman, but by then he kinda settled into doing his thing bc he didn’t have much more to prove so could just make grotesque homages to spanish masters or portraits of whatever questionably young woman he was fucking. Also: being famous enough for people to care about early, formative styles that would normally go unnoticed.

xp vonnegut otm. i'd go further and say that living itself is literally practicing an art whether people realize it or not. like, you don't have to 'pick a hobby' or whatever. you can do art as part of the everyday. all the stuff you have to do can be artful. you will quickly run into people or ideas that say that no, you can't do life in a way that feels artistically fulfilling, there are prerequisites. they are wrong.

I mostly agree with Vonnegut's sentiment, but it underplays the role of fantasy in our lives and how much our creative activity is prompted by and in service of things of which we're only dimly aware. Let alone the allure of validation. Late capitalism and social media intensifies to the point of absurdity. DeLillo says somewhere in *Mao II* that 'there's the life and there's the consumer event. Everything around us tends to channel our lives toward some final reality in print or film' and yeah, that.

Which I suppose puts the creative act back front and centre as a mode of rebellion *against* the lure of exposure. Dancing in front of the mirror is praxis.

xp to gyac. Oh man, I'd *love* to come and meet y'all. One day. One day!

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

― Kurt Vonnegut

i think about vonnegut a lot. the whole mother night thing, "we are who we pretend to be". (see above.) i don't think that we are who we pretend to be. my youngest sib, when i said that "fake it who you make it" didn't work for me when it came to being a guy, said "that's not the real saying. the real saying is 'you can't think your way into a new way of acting, but you can act your way into a new way of thinking.'"

we are what we do. i mean i grew up catholic. i sometimes hear "sola fide" protestants say that catholicism says that faith isn't enough, that you need to do good works... that's not what i learned. what i learned is that a person can say they believe something, but if they don't act according to those beliefs, well, how much does can that belief really mean to them?

the unfortunate thing about me is that i found the thing i'm good at early on. i'm a fucking incredible usenet poster. really great at it. i wasn't so good at it in the '90s, but it's been 30 years, and i've gotten really good at posting to usenet.

so ok, i post to ILX. it does make life more bearable for me. it's how i make meaning in my life. so much writing is solitary work. one toils away in isolation and then one shows one's work to others and... there's no real personal connection in it, for me. there's too much abstraction. i can write something that changes someone's life and it's about them, not about me. words are dead. i'm alive, at least as of right now.

i have... it feels like a compulsion to write, to create, in this tiny little niche format, one that's really only going to make a difference to people i know. it's exhausting, though. it's so, so tiring. i'll write one of my extremely long, thoughtful posts, and if they're too long for some people to read, i'm ok with that. these are things i have to say, and i say them the only way i really know how. the way this world is, it's change or die. i've changed a lot, but the world just keeps changing faster than i can, it seems.

the arts are not a way to make a living. how the fuck am i supposed to make a living, really?

oh i said "see above" and then i clipped the first part of the post

I once posted elsewhere “my worst nightmare is having an iron rod slammed through my brain and not undergoing a complete personality change as a result”

― fact checking suz (wins), Tuesday, November 4, 2025 2:51 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

It’s not really true but it’s a p good joke imo

― fact checking suz (wins)

a perfect example of why i take everything someone says as if they mean it

if this was a discord server i'd challenge you on it, be like "if it's not true why would you say it?"

i do think of myself as being fundamentally a narrative creature, in some sense i am the stories i tell about myself. it's taken me a long time to change my story from "i suck" to "i'm a pretty awesome person who has problems but is doing her best"

i got this pin at pride last year that says "suck dick & punch nazis"
except the layout is such that it's possible to misread it as "suck & dick punch nazis"
it's funny to say "that's me, i suck and dick punch nazis", but to do that would require me to say that i suck.

i'm gen x, i grew up on gen x irony, i grew up being sarcastic and putting myself down, and i've worked really hard to stop doing that

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rabbi sounds like he would be popular on reddit

― giving you schtick (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Thursday, November 6, 2025 8:47 AM (three hours ago)

idk, once i took a rabbit on a red-eye and they kicked me off

"if it's not true why would you say it?"

it’s a p good joke imo

here’s something

This article discusses the ancient reception of Cicero's poetry and explains why ancient critiques of it were primarily made under the aegis of genre essentialism: the Greek concept that each author was naturally suited to one genre. It argues that these critiques were a direct result of Cicero's canonization as Rome's primary prose author, and specifically of his transformation into an allegory for Republican eloquence silenced by tyranny. Because this canonization relied so heavily on the Philippics, in which Cicero discusses mockery of his poetry (2.19–20), it is concluded that, ironically, Cicero himself sowed the seeds for this tradition.

my parents made me take Latin in school, but I sucked at Latin and couldn’t get the grammar under my belt so the only way i could pass was by memorizing texts. one year we did Cicero’s First Oration Against Catiline and i memorized the whole thing. i remember the into said something like “Cicero believed his best work was his poetry. Unfortunately, no one agreed with him” and then quoted Catullus (the great proto-diss track artist) saying it was bloody awful poetry. anyway after that i adopted, inadvertently, the Ciceronean sentence structure. you don’t choose your influences, you know? my sentences got really prog. i read NME a lot too around that time, which didn’t help.

so, i really hate the way i write. i find writing very difficult & time consuming, even if it’s just like an email or a messageboard post. it’s like brick laying kinda, a lot of work. and i think it comes across as really self-important. it’s just so much easier to communicate face-to-face, in real time, where i don’t have the opportunity for deliberation. i’m always challenging myself to write faster and more spontaneously and in a more down to earth kinda way, and i mostly always fail. when i manage it feels good, but it’s rare.

'd go further and say that living itself is literally practicing an art whether people realize it or not. like, you don't have to 'pick a hobby' or whatever. you can do art as part of the everyday. all the stuff you have to do can be artful.

now, here’s where i can shine! one year, i spent like $500 on balloons.

what's your candle budget look like

I totally understand and share a lot of the questions above about what it means to be "suited" to something and who decides whether you're doing it "successfully" and all that, but I think a lot of the stuff I had in mind operates on such a basic level that those questions fall away? Like as an obvious example: I have known multiple writers who adore and admire funny things — just thrill and marvel at the idea of writing funny stuff — but also know very well that they personally are not funny writers. That's just not what comes out of them, not the way ideas arrive for them, not where their thinking leads them. Some can't picture how you'd even begin to write something funny; some could kind of try, but it would feel like an awkward battle and they wouldn't be remotely amused by what came out. And this is fine, because there are other modes they're good with, modes they understand how to work in, modes their brains can engage with in a productive and harmonious way. Plus "being funny" is one of those skills where it's pretty normal to just be like oh, I don't have that one.

So yeah, I definitely didn't mean that in terms of what other people enjoy or what the market rewards — I meant it down on that fundamental level, where "success" means, like, "can I even figure out how to create a thing in this way," or map's great invocation of a flow state. (I imagine that example writer spending years of miserable agonizing over various unfinished formalist novels that they can never get to do anything they want; meanwhile, they sit down for a fantasy story and exciting ideas flow smoothly out and everything works. That person should keep at the literary work if they really want to, but there's probably some feedback there about what their garden grows well.)

Anyway, it was just a metaphor for how one might approach personality stuff, which of course works very differently. And then I guess posting is somewhere between creative work and personality — I personally would love to be the sort of person who could have written like two pithy, breezy, perfectly distilled lines that conveyed this whole post, but, you know. I think it's healthy to aspire to move in certain directions as much as you can — people can change a TON, especially seen from their own perspectives — but also to accept that you're not going to be, like, native to certain qualities, and to see the value in your nice native qualities even if there are others you find more appealing.

Considering I used to work for L@dy Rh3@, and given the range of candles we carved and decorated for spellwork (she has several different designs just for gay sex!)… I’ve somehow been using the same 2 pull out candles for a decade. I feel so subpar. I do have 2 more for when they run out. & I also had 2 man-shaped red candles which are supposed to be for gay sex, but I can’t find them.

xp!

Not that I wish to relitigate this any further but deems I apologise if I've misread and thus misrepresented your intent with ed.b. It honesly came over as badgering in my reading, but if you didn't mean it that way, you didnt mean it that way.

nobody needs to apologise and lines drawn under it, all good

ok, but you don't have to scream it

there’s a typographical emphasis for that

all good

nabisco thank you for your response upthread!