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.

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!