Reveal Your Uncool Conservative Beliefs Here

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wexS7X3I1SA/U5C_kKnFDHI/AAAAAAAADtM/7MFdNTL4yEA/s1600/Peter+O

Executions serve an important role in society.

Bring back sumptuary laws.

There are too many lazy people.

Kill the weak.

War is an honorable pasttime

People who are against spanking children don't understand the evil inherent in human nature.

this got dark v quickly

The Western literary canon has substantial value.

Free verse poetry is less interesting than formal poetry.

Photography is a lesser art and should not be celebrated outside facebook pages.

No good literature has been produced since WW2.

fewer and fewer schools are teaching cursive these days, and that's a real shame

mainstream rap has had a net negative influence on the quality of American chartpop

comics may or may not be a serious art form, but graphic novels really don't belong on 'greatest novels of all time' lists

most people in this world are feebs/children/psychopaths who will revert to arson/scalping/pillaging the moment they're freed from the strictures of organized religion. evangelical atheism is one of the greatest threats to the stability of western civilization, and the world will not be safe until atheism has been scaled down to a Masonic/Rosicrucian-style secret society with a maximum global membership of ≈100,000 carefully vetted rationalist supermen

if i can make it to a church before capture i should be given sanctuary

british imperialism was better than most of the alternatives

individualism is in many respects v good

i've got nothing else i can think of, you people are monsters tbh

'cept unregistered maybe, can get behind the secret atheism bit

brown sugar runs rings around superfoods as a topping for oatmeal.

i have brooks brothers glasses

Compulsory parade attendance.

yoga is bullshit

military technology is pretty cool

I am this guy IRL

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41Gb%2B7TzrEL._SX327_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

it is obnoxious for boys under the age of 13 to have long hair, and an indication that their parents are overindulgent.

today, while at the supermarket, I saw a boy of no more than 10 with a mohawk and felt genuinely incensed.

i like to open a door for a lady

lol, there is definitely this thing that happens in Brooklyn where I see certain longhaired pre-teens and I can just *tell* that they have skateboard dads who encourage them to have it, like it's not even rebellious but actually DL striving by the parents.

I like women.

I don't append "cis" to the male box that I check off on every form.

Cannot abide visible bra straps, even when fashionable

Dogs are outside pets.

Tattoos.

an individual's actions does have something to do w/ their success

not all cultures are equally wonderful and some are bad enough that they should be discouraged

life could be hellish and for many ppl it is so if yours isn't some gratitude is probably in order

nb 1 + 3 might not be internally consistent

Femmephobia is way less useful as a critical concept than misogyny

Self-care is necessary but not thereby radically oppositional

Couching leftist projects in terms of resistance to neoliberalism rather than to capitalism risks a lot of reformist implications

(Not that femmephobia can't be useful in order to talk about, say, biases in specific queer spaces, but it can mystify the conditions that butch and gnc women actually face if applied too generally.)

watching grown adults discussing rae sremmurd like it was literature is to behold the end of art

that's not a "reveal" per se

I forgot imago had some sort of Sremm beef. Why so much hate?

Marxism is dumb and bad.

Capitalist liberal democracy is the end point of Western civilization, it will never be superseded by a higher/better form of social organization, will only end through collapse.

Men should not have facial hair and people in general should not have messy hair.

xps i don't recall saying that you can hear a soulja boy's influence on chaucer

lol "a soulja boy." the soulja boy's tale

currently at peak hair and beard, this will probably only end by collapse too tbh

sremm beef = just watch their latest video, 'set the roof' and listen to the lyrics, they're just the worst people in earth, i fucking despise literally everything they're doing, it isn't even abrasive in an interesting way

lol crut, one for old-skool ilx that

hir wese y manne ful cranke, tellynge

Femmephobia is way less useful as a critical concept than misogyny

Self-care is necessary but not thereby radically oppositional

Couching leftist projects in terms of resistance to neoliberalism rather than to capitalism risks a lot of reformist implications

― one way street, Thursday, August 4, 2016 10:52 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink]

looooool

women's sports are, in general, less exciting versions of men's sports

http://allproudamericans.com/paimages/does-duck-and-cover-really-work.jpg

I'll watch women's tennis from time to time but yeah

There are too many things that I massively disagree with posted here for it to be worth a fight on any one of them. I'm just wondering why the 'loool' at ows? Because those aren't really conservative standpoints? They kind of are in comparison to a lot of current radical discourse (I agree with all of them, though not entirely with the latter, but again, I kind of feel this thread is meant to be a dumping ground not a discussion ground).

women's sports are, in general, less exciting versions of men's sports

― have you ever even read The Drudge Report? Have you gone on Stormfron (k3vin k.), Wednesday, August 17, 2016 10:52 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sexual dimorphism of humans def means that a lot of sports are more exciting to watch when men are playing them but otoh a lot of women's sports are less commercialized and therefore less likely to suffer from rampant PED use endemic to men's sports and therefore likely to be more of a clean competition

also crowds at woman's sports tend to be less shitty

(emil.y i was laughing at the extreme relativity necessary to consider those "conservative opinions." i assumed they were posted tongue in cheek so thought i was laughing along with one way street, not at them, and wasn't critiquing the positions themselves)

Can't speak for sciatica but I lol'ed at ows' post bc it requires some, like, wicked fractal definition of conservatism within the queer anticapotalist left. but I get how all those opinions could be uncool rn

liberalism as many of my friends practice it is like a shitty religion that i want no part of.

they think of other people as needing to be saved, by them.
they make penance with speech acts, not real action.
they live their lives in constant guilt.
they live in cities that are only differentiated from other cities by being huge destinations for wealth, then they disavow that wealth while continuing to partake in the lifestyle it provides.
they blame rich people for all the evils of the world while ignoring that they are the 1%.
they prescribe how other people should be living their own lives.
they say things that have no meaning other than to reveal to others that they are members in this very sensitive club of good people.
it's nothing but performative.

Lol got xp'd

I must admit I like Republican President Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower. But chances are, you also like Ike. Maybe everybody likes Ike.

xps to sciatica and flopson - yeah, both of those reasons are basically fair enough. I think I inhabit so many circles where these are topics for fierce debate that I took it w/ a completely straight face!

watching grown adults discussing rae sremmurd like it was literature is to behold the end of art

― imago,

links?

I must admit I like Republican President Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower. But chances are, you also like Ike. Maybe everybody likes Ike.

― Philip Nunez,

best Cold War president if you look past his championing of covert ops

First of all... just teasing! I was going for comedic timing with the "dope" theme.

But I read the post as talking about dopeyness inundating comment sections, not necessarily exclusively as you implied.

However, re-re-reading DC post and the word "just" was used - maybe that is what was meant after all. I don't know, I'm a huge dope.

He abhorred the Internet. He demonized it all out of proportion.

Not all dopes

in general the overwhelming majority of people, including myself, have nothing original or worthwhile to contribute to anything. the invention and proliferation of the comments thread as the fundamental tissue of the internet means that basically any post image, news item, anything is just going to accumulate thousands of profoundly dopey, unoriginal, and overly worked-over response from people desperate to feel heard even though there's nothing to say. including me, writing this!
― Doctor Casino, Thursday, 10 April 2025 12:24 (thirty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ironically, this is actually a very good and worthwhile comment.

in general the overwhelming majority of people, including myself, have nothing original or worthwhile to contribute to anything. the invention and proliferation of the comments thread as the fundamental tissue of the internet means that basically any post image, news item, anything is just going to accumulate thousands of profoundly dopey, unoriginal, and overly worked-over response from people desperate to feel heard even though there's nothing to say. including me, writing this!
― Doctor Casino, Thursday, 10 April 2025 12:24 (thirty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ironically, this is actually a very good and worthwhile comment.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive)

ok i'm going to Discourse this one

first off, "including myself" makes it not conservative, doctor casino - it just means that you have low self-esteem and probably you're externalizing your low self-esteem to try and justify having a distortedly poor opinion of yourself. in fact i think you're intelligent and insightful, and i value your contributions.

probably a lot of conservatives externalize their own low self-esteem too, but the way you're doing it doesn't come across as particularly "conservative". disguising your emotions as empirical beliefs _is_ conservative, but again, everyone does it to some extent. it's just particularly noticeable in conservatives because of the absolute absence of anything resembling rational thought in their statements.

people, i think, have a _right_ to feel heard. you widen the scope enough and most of what anybody says will be ignored. one of the things i will fight hardest for is the right of people to be mediocre. that doesn't mean that people who are mediocre should have an audience, but there's this constant pressure to be _more_ heard, to be _more_ important, and then the opinions come. to me, in a statement like "i wouldn't do it that way" is an implicit "i wish i could do what you're doing". envy. it's a normal and natural thing. the strange thing is that i _don't_ envy online content creators, people who Have a Voice. the pressure people who do that for a living are under is insane. much of my life has been spent avoiding trying to Have a Voice just because i know the negative consequences of that too well. in the meantime what gets amplified is difference, conflict. people who want to say thoughtful, considered things are putting in clickbaity titles because that's what people want to see.

something doesn't need to be original to be worth saying. everybody, i think, has something worthwhile to say. if someone says - personal bias here - if someone says "trans rights", that's not an _original_ statement but it sure as fuck is worth saying!

i've started making comments on some of the videos i watch. i don't read the responses. i don't know how to read the responses. again, _creators actively encourage comments_ because it helps them out, it's "engagement". so we have a system that strongly encourages those responses. if i'm working as a professional content creator, i definitely want responses, want engagement, even if it's stupid, both because it helps my content get promoted and because it validates me, it lets me know that people are reading it and enjoy it. of course i don't like negative responses and i take them far too seriously. i'm working on learning how to _not_ take negative feedback personally. other people are allowed to be wrong, lol.

in general the overwhelming majority of people, including myself, have nothing original or worthwhile to contribute to anything. the invention and proliferation of the comments thread as the fundamental tissue of the internet means that basically any post image, news item, anything is just going to accumulate thousands of profoundly dopey, unoriginal, and overly worked-over response from people desperate to feel heard even though there's nothing to say. including me, writing this!
― Doctor Casino, Thursday, 10 April 2025 12:24 (thirty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the thing about 'comments sections' were that they were at one point of life, just this really niche area of social engagement that only the lamest people gave a fuck about. back then, people only cared about being "FIRST!". and nobody ever read the shit, it was just a place that a 56 year old Deacon at a Baptist Church could whine about people's manners in public.

Twitter's fatal flaw was smushing civilians, politicians, celebrities etc into one communal space and allowing them to respond to each other. The first time someone got a response from their favorite rapper on Twitter, the checker board started wobbling. the first time someone got internet famous from a damn Tweet was the time the checks slid off the board.

95% of people who post on any social media site now are just seeking crumbs of serotonin and nobody really wants to connect like real human beings, which is why I stopped posting to Facebook/Bsky back in January. I read Bluesky cos of the infestation of quality independent journalists there, but that's it. it's not toxic like twitter, but it's full of people afflicted with 'smartest guy in the room ready to pounce' syndrome. so much better for my mental health to be away from that...and I still consume news at the same volume.

I use Facebook for professional knowledge sharing in groups… it often helps me better think through problems and how to explain things when I am discussing them with colleagues. It still is kinda ridiculous how many people answer a question after multiple people have given the same answer and even more ridiculous are the people who clearly don’t read and understand the question the person is asking!

smartest guy in the room ready to pounce' syndrome

Everyone is competing with each other for smartest guy trophy because modern social media has trained people, due to the style of career influencers who depend on engagement, that winning smartest or cleverest or most forward thinking and therefore most viewed comment is the entire goal. The most upvotes or hearts or whatever.

In other words, the pervasiveness of engagement farming has seeped into everyone’s posting style like a virus. Influencers be influencing

(please otm)

pfft, only 3 followers? pass

Shit

Kate, I really appreciate that. For what it's worth, I was riffing based on Evan's post, and didn't intend to present my graf as an Uncool Conservative Belief. I do think there's something to the idea that I undervalue my own posts/opinions, even on ILX (a space that has generally been very supportive, and helpful for me getting a little more precise and clear in my thinking). But really I'm almost just tired of having opinions? And/or too exhausted by the prospect of (a) arguing with strangers on comments threads - I mean who could be bothered except other desperate comment-threaders, or (b) being somehow targeted IRL for whatever dumb stuff I've said online. That one has also seeped in gradually as a consequence of The Way The Internet Is Now, but it's a different animal than what's under discussion here.

everybody otm

well trust me, dr casino you are a lot more well informed and eloquent than most internet posters and you have a strong spirit of compassion. totally agree about being exhausted having opinions, though.

Kate, I really appreciate that. For what it's worth, I was riffing based on Evan's post, and didn't intend to present my graf as an Uncool Conservative Belief. I do think there's something to the idea that I undervalue my own posts/opinions, even on ILX (a space that has generally been very supportive, and helpful for me getting a little more precise and clear in my thinking). But really I'm almost just tired of having opinions? And/or too exhausted by the prospect of (a) arguing with strangers on comments threads - I mean who could be bothered except other desperate comment-threaders, or (b) being somehow targeted IRL for whatever dumb stuff I've said online. That one has also seeped in gradually as a consequence of The Way The Internet Is Now, but it's a different animal than what's under discussion here.

― Doctor Casino

i do relate to that. i don't know if i've talked about this here, but i'm tired of my entire life being centered around my being trans. it's not really that interesting nor do i have anything new to say about it. i've been really struggling over the past few years about how to engage in the internet without getting involved in Discourse. everything becomes an argument when really the important stuff, to me, is the emotions underlying it. i don't think there's value in arguing with people who aren't listening. i do think there's value in making myself visible and talking about my beliefs and my experience, particularly in these times, particularly around cis people. that's why i keep doing it. i wish it wasn't so important for me to keep doing it.

Doc Casino and everyone else who is exhausted about having opinions, may I present you with the ultimate truth bomb, immediately downloaded and saved by me from the truth bombs thread the very first time I saw it: https://i.imgur.com/JcjynGt.jpeg

(originally shared by Ye Mad Puffin it appears)

Ooooooooooooh that's nice

wait, I'm doing it again

https://www.latintimes.com/mike-johnson-says-men-need-stop-playing-video-games-all-day-get-work-theyre-draining-580534

First they came for the gamers

why is he criticizing Elon Musk like that?

shucks, thank you brimstead.

in general the overwhelming majority of people, including myself, have nothing original or worthwhile to contribute to anything. the invention and proliferation of the comments thread as the fundamental tissue of the internet means that basically any post image, news item, anything is just going to accumulate thousands of profoundly dopey, unoriginal, and overly worked-over response from people desperate to feel heard even though there's nothing to say. including me, writing this!
― Doctor Casino, Thursday, 10 April 2025 12:24 (thirty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

people, i think, have a _right_ to feel heard. you widen the scope enough and most of what anybody says will be ignored. one of the things i will fight hardest for is the right of people to be mediocre. that doesn't mean that people who are mediocre should have an audience, but there's this constant pressure to be _more_ heard, to be _more_ important, and then the opinions come. to me, in a statement like "i wouldn't do it that way" is an implicit "i wish i could do what you're doing". envy. it's a normal and natural thing. the strange thing is that i _don't_ envy online content creators, people who Have a Voice. the pressure people who do that for a living are under is insane.
― Kate (rushomancy), Friday, 11 April 2025 21:45 (five days ago) link

Well my “otm” goes to Kate, even though I sympathize with the good Doctor’s yearning for something higher. If feeling inadequate isn’t the root of this dissatisfaction, it’s certainly the other side of the coin. Refusing to engage with the “usual traffic” always seems to leave me between points of connection- rejecting one, but not quite reaching the other. 

The “right to feel heard” strikes me as a uniquely American outlook, though. In the UK, aiui, the idea that any of us have thoughts that are special or deserving of attention would be regarded with suspicion, and justifiably so. We’re getting there too, probably- but in America the real incentive for sitting on your ass had been, yeah, the potential of thoughts to be converted into a “valuable contribution to society”. Most of us are middle aged, we’re coming up on 10 years of reckoning with the knowing that our lives are never going to amount to much. By that bullshit, batshit rubric anyway. Permission to be unremarkable and unoriginal hasn't soothed a lifetime of burdensome expectations, even if it's a step in the right direction. Believe me, I’ve tried - as my posts in the visual arts thread openly attest.

Because the truth is, I think I'm quite... well, sure, "remarkable" is a little much. But I do think I'm *unusual*. And there's a chicken and egg thing with being unusual and being a miserable failure *incapable* I'll never figure out, but I like the way I am. Maybe the challenge is for that to be enough in and of itself, so there’s no need to channel it into whatever measure of accomplishment. 

Anyway, I def struggle with what it now means to ask for attention. That is, when our attention is commodified and stolen from us by parasitic companies in abusive and increasingly invasive ways.

I’ve been listening to this ‘kinetic object’ music a lot over the last year, artists attaching tiny motors to teacups and other common items, basically. One of the main practitioners is Rie Nakajima. It’s “experimental music” and she is closely connected to Cafe Oto. But on the surface at least, everything it does is offering support instead of making demands. Even though she’s setting up a forced perspective, the “objects” retain their identity as everyday items. They are *verifiable* and don’t require figuring out. The rhythms are monotonous and mechanical, unobtrusive as the murmur of an old refrigerator. I mean, this is hardly pulling heartstrings. Buuuut, the implicit threat in massaging little teacups to make them purr for you is that if you beat them, they will scream. So this music invites you to let your guard down, and very persuasively, only to violate that trust later on.

Isn't that basically what the internet is doing? Easing the social anxieties that trigger avoidance only to subject you to novel forms of abuse?

If I'm so desperate to feel heard, why am I constantly seeking refuge in white noise? Is the teacup a living voice to be heard? Or an aid for shutting down, because it’s *my own* damn voice I’m so sick of hearing? Who or what am I trying to drown out? Am I yearning to connect or do I just want to be left alone? If this is starting to sound incoherent, it’s because I honestly can’t tell the difference anymore. The only response I can get behind is to disconnect and make myself unreachable. These tech companies are absolute fucking monsters, they have taken so much.

Everyone is competing with each other for smartest guy trophy because modern social media has trained people, due to the style of career influencers who depend on engagement, that winning smartest or cleverest or most forward thinking and therefore most viewed comment is the entire goal. The most upvotes or hearts or whatever.
― Evan, Saturday, 12 April 2025 02:23 (four days ago) link

Look, I think you’re basically right that comments sections foster that kind of competition, but way off about what kind of answers get upvotes. 

 Who else is still listening in 2025?

I mean, how the goddamn fuck can an award winning artist who sold millions of records be underrated???!!

The more niche the forum the less Doctor Casino is correct but in generalist areas like comments sections, twitter, etc. he's OTM.
― a ZX spectrum is haunting Europe (Daniel_Rf), Thursday, 10 April 2025 17:24 (six days ago) link

The niche forums are more like Wikipedia, where the dominant voices are the people with the most hours to burn and the motivation to see the topic page reflect their own POV no matter how long it takes to wear down any challengers. Not the most knowledgable people or the people who have the most to offer. 

"The Right to Feel Heard" sounds like what conservatives imagine the right to free speech actually implies. When cons say they are not allowed to speak when clearly they can say anything they like (and on major media platforms) the core of their anger is actually that they feel they are not being taken seriously by the people they hate.
The right to speak does not imply the right to someone elses attention.

The niche forums are more like Wikipedia, where the dominant voices are the people with the most hours to burn and the motivation to see the topic page reflect their own POV no matter how long it takes to wear down any challengers. Not the most knowledgable people or the people who have the most to offer.

My knee jerk reaction to that would be "who gives a fuck what's dominant". The smaller and more niche the forum the more you'll actually be able to identify every person in a conversation, remember what they said before, etc. I have a mental list of ppl I trust in different discords and it's def not related to "who posts the most", assume most ppl do.

That’s a good point, assuming the population of a forum is more or less entrenched- and I actually agree, to an extent. I’ve had ‘allies' on more niche boards in the past where I said to them privately ‘look, you should respect other people’s intelligence enough to knock it off with the whack a mole games’.

But who sticks around, and for how long?

The boards where I’ve been active in the past, there's a steady influx of new members all the time. Many of the most active people are new to the topic and move on once they get to the point that they’re not so green. Otherwise, the people who stick around are the ones who are motivated to spin the narrative, or else the messageboard has always been their primary interface for exploring that interest.

So i think people are driven away, and of the ones who know the most stand the least to gain from sticking around, so why put up with that? Even if you particularly enjoy showing off, you might very well decide it’s not worth the aggravation.

Because with a green population 90% of the thread topics are always going to be ‘answer the usual noob questions yet again’

^^^ the beating heart of Reddit afaict

Interesting take. I think my definition of "niche" was perhaps both too sweeping and actually left out some of the places I was thinking of. What you're describing seems to me like it's about hobbies you "learn" - cooking, gardening, learning an instrument. The examples I was thinking of were more about culture - so being "not so green" doesn't really lead ppl to leaving forums about, like, early 90's UK comics or Taiwanese martial arts films. But yeah there are many forums and reddits I've only ever visited to ask a question, usually a n00b one probably, and didn't really think much about who hangs out there 24/7.

Meanwhile ILX is technically the least niche forum possible, but it has a limited, steady user base and I've been around long enough to recognise most poster's names and place their opinions within a context, which makes them akin to my hyper specific discords. And I think that this in 2025 will mostly tend to happen on forums for less sweeping concerns than "everything" (or even "music").

To both points at once, I had a feeling, and almost said "you're talking about comic book boards and really specific movie genres, right?" I was thinking of topics like Chinese metaphysics and indigenous religion and ecology. Those are areas where popular traditions are being eroded -albeit very slowly- by research, and certain people will do anything to discredit whatever challenges their long held beliefs & assumptions.
On the other side of it, we have a hard time accepting that not everyone is concerned with empirical truth, for some credibility is more linked to tradition.
So back to your original point, I think the real value of these spaces is the access they provide to the thoughts of people who are not writers, who will never be published, who you'll never find in the card catalog. It's really a shame if the only rewarding or emotionally sustainable approach is then 'plz help me find a stack of books to imbibe, then peace' because certain voices crowd out everything else.

"Technically" doing a lot of lifting wrt ilx of course 😆

That's really interesting, though I'll admit I can't really connect it to your previous post - Chinese metaphysics, indigenous religions and ecology all seem like things you could spend a lifetime on, I don't instantly see why you'd graduate out of these once you're no longer "green"?

For sure, but they are also topics that attract enthusiastic newcomers much faster than they generate new ideas and debates.

It's complicated, though. Like with Chinese metaphysics, there are boards about geomancy or divination where most people are only interested in the practical side of things, and the empirical/traditional divide mostly applies to the theoretical discussions most posters aren't bothered about. And other topics like Daoism where it's more pertinent. I am also over-generalizing and under-generalizing.

"The Right to Feel Heard" sounds like what conservatives imagine the right to free speech actually implies. When cons say they are not allowed to speak when clearly they can say anything they like (and on major media platforms) the core of their anger is actually that they feel they are not being taken seriously by the people they hate.
The right to speak does not imply the right to someone elses attention.

― 29 facepalms

almost! conservatives, that i can tell, seem to hate feelings. feelings don't _count_. all that counts is _facts_. in the conservative mindset, there are no feelings, only _alternative facts_.

it's frustrating because facts do, in fact, matter, COVID isn't a hoax, wi-fi doesn't turn you gay, etc., etc. if something's a fact, that's falsifiable. feelings aren't falsifiable. that's kind of what i mean by the right to _feel_ heard, people deserve to have their feelings validated.

note, though, the use of the passive voice! i agree with your last sentence. "you deserve x" doesn't imply any obligation for me, or any specific person, to provide x to someone.

there is, at base, a certain question of "god, what the hell do you do with someone like that?" you have these men who hold the reins of power and they're not getting what they want. but since they hold all the cards, they don't _have_ to listen to anybody. they'd greatly benefit from listening to certain other people, but nobody can _make_ them. this is something i kind of have an ongoing disagreement with my liberal mom about. she's like, if you don't tell people things, how are they going to learn? and i'm like, i can't make them listen. i can't make them learn. and since a lot of these people are an active threat to me, my first priority has to be to protect myself from them.

now the complicating thing is that we start getting into what i've seen described as "pre-emptive self-defense" - that is, sometimes people perceive someone else as a threat when they aren't. generational trauma, etc., etc. i mean i can tell an incel that i'm not their enemy, but they don't have to believe me. people gotta make their own decisions and live with the consequences of that.

and a lot of times those consequences is that people continue to make bad decisions and suffer and die miserable and alone. that's not a judgement on them, just, like. i mean i'm thinking of my brother here. i love him a lot and i try to talk about my experience and he argues and he winds up saying some transphobic stuff and he gets mad at me for it. i mean i love him but he's clearly not listening to what i'm saying. well, i'm just not gonna expose myself to transphobia. i've done what i can with him, but i can't, like, fix him.

The “right to feel heard” strikes me as a uniquely American outlook, though. In the UK, aiui, the idea that any of us have thoughts that are special or deserving of attention would be regarded with suspicion, and justifiably so. We’re getting there too, probably- but in America the real incentive for sitting on your ass had been, yeah, the potential of thoughts to be converted into a “valuable contribution to society”. Most of us are middle aged, we’re coming up on 10 years of reckoning with the knowing that our lives are never going to amount to much. By that bullshit, batshit rubric anyway. Permission to be unremarkable and unoriginal hasn't soothed a lifetime of burdensome expectations, even if it's a step in the right direction. Believe me, I’ve tried - as my posts in the visual arts thread openly attest.

― doe on a hill (Deflatormouse)

i don't think "right to feel heard" is a universally american outlook. when i was younger people in america would complain about today's pampered kids and their getting _participation medals_. and in fact participation medals, done right, can be a great thing. because some things that are easy for some people are hard for others. every quarter in grade school i'd get academic achievement awards and i literally papered my walls with them. they meant nothing because i hadn't worked for them. then i'd go in for... it was called "the presidential physical fitness award" and i was supposed to be able to do two chin pull-ups in the third grade or some shit. it was ludicrous. the bar was (in this case literally) way too high for me. nowadays, with my ADHD and my chronic depression and all that, sometimes i do celebrate being able to literally get out of bed. because it is fucking hard, some days.

and you know, i can get into disability politics and capitalism and all that. one of the things that i'm most in crisis about is that the stuff capitalism will pay me for isn't, like, stuff i find valuable or stuff i can do particularly. i can and do accomplish a lot of valuable things. it's just that nobody's going to pay me to do those things. i'm thinking, like... "gee, i don't know, maybe i could try writing professionally", which is something i've never done before. never had the self-confidence. or maybe i could start freelancing doing medical office coding and billing. i don't know. i've trained for so many jobs that have become obsolete in my lifetime. in america FDR had this speech about the "four freedoms", where the last two were "freedom from want" and "freedom from fear". and i haven't really ever known the last one. my life always seems to be on the verge of collapse at any second. no obviously "freedom from want" and "freedom from fear" aren't uncool conservative beliefs.

the thing about writing is that i _don't_ think anything i have to say is special or deserving of attention. and that's, i mean, i'd say that's a genuine cognitive distortion. that belief is wrong, over and over and over again. i just can't imagine why anybody would pay me for the dumb shit i have floating around in my head. everybody can write, you know? i'm a pretty good writer, but there are plenty of better writers, people who have professional experience and professional training. my background in writing is having spent decades shitposting on the internet. that's not a career, that's...

The niche forums are more like Wikipedia, where the dominant voices are the people with the most hours to burn and the motivation to see the topic page reflect their own POV no matter how long it takes to wear down any challengers. Not the most knowledgable people or the people who have the most to offer.

― doe on a hill (Deflatormouse)

that's who i've always been.

the thing about writing is that i _don't_ think anything i have to say is special or deserving of attention. and that's, i mean, i'd say that's a genuine cognitive distortion.

That's true.

I don't really see you as one of those. I mean, what's your agenda? That in our culture of disapproval everyone should try hard to love themselves and do what it takes to be happy? :)

I think the way you write is more like processing your experience out loud, and through venting and meandering you arrive at these statements that are revelatory and I think "huh, you know, I actually knew that *inwardly*, yet for some reason I've been looking at things the other way around". Often you do that multiple times in a single post. So while you prolific, and yes it is hard to keep up sometimes, 1. your posts are extremely substantial and rewarding and 2. I don't get the impression that you know where you're going with a post until you get there, I think your're more open ended.

I liked that about your music selections too, that thread was like "here is all this cool shit I found by accident while I was looking for something else".

I'll come back to the Frederick stuff. I'm glad you responded tho, been meaning to shoot you an email for weeks because our paths haven't really crossed on ilx since I took a long break from the internet in Nov.

Maybe the challenge is for that to be enough in and of itself, so there’s no need to channel it into whatever measure of accomplishment.

I gotta say posting this on ilx was like a piece of spellwork, if i had written it on paper and folded it up and put it in my pocket it never would have worked, totally worth how embarrassing the post was

sorry, self love is very hard won and once it's won is easily lost without constant vigilance! i wouldn't deliberately belittle that, just meant that your openness to where writing takes you is almost antithetical to the kind of dull agendas i was talking about.

I think the way you write is more like processing your experience out loud, and through venting and meandering you arrive at these statements that are revelatory and I think "huh, you know, I actually knew that *inwardly*, yet for some reason I've been looking at things the other way around". Often you do that multiple times in a single post. So while you prolific, and yes it is hard to keep up sometimes, 1. your posts are extremely substantial and rewarding and 2. I don't get the impression that you know where you're going with a post until you get there, I think your're more open ended.

― doe on a hill (Deflatormouse)

that's definitely true! i think there are benefits to writing that way. however, it's very difficult for me to write _intentionally_ when i have no idea what i'm going to write until i write it!

I always appreciate seeing someone's working!

Why do weed smokers think “no smoking” signs don’t apply to them?

You sound kind of uptight, man. Here, try some of this.

https://i0.wp.com/www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Nancy-Reagan-Just-Say-No.jpg

^^^Pole smoking

my boss was smoking in the office one Saturday. "it's ok, there's no tobacco in it" he said, as if that made everything ok.

That’s ridiculous tbh

Like because it’s legal now, it’s allowed anywhere at any time: the bar, the subway, your oxygen tent

Crazy. Being intoxicated at work not the greatest idea anyway but if that's your thing there's gummies and oils and stuff that don't impact ppl around you.

(this was the uk, and 2005ish. it wasn't so much the smoke that made me pack up and leave as the way he was constantly tapping his one foot and making the floor shake)

Nuclear power is fine