Final Boss of the Liberal Disease
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I addressed that paragraph already specifically. I asked the question about what I should do instead because that paragraph doesn’t answer it. I’m plenty satisfied with things currently. I told you I got over it. I genuinely don’t get why you’re thinking otherwise.
But what’s “properly,” in terms of seething? How long am I supposed to seethe? I’m not gonna keep being angry about a bike years later when it doesn’t bring any good to the picture. Does it make the world a better place for me to seethe longer? To keep asking why? How many more times do I have to ask why?
Pretty big stretch, friend. I'm not even sure what you mean by the logic. My new bike lock is sick.
“New” implies recent and “old” implies previous. I got a different brand that I like using a lot more than my old U lock. I had wanted one even before my bike was stolen. I called it new because it was new and I had to buy a new lock
Great, I know what you want me not to do. I’m glad I haven’t done that. You'll notice I've never done any encouraging in this thread, only shared my perspective.
What would you do differently that you think I have not yet done? You mentioned “Sometimes you have to look like the bad guy superficially and burn some social capital sometimes to do actual good things long term.” What is it that I have to do that does actual good long term despite burning social capital?
Is your answer to literally just seethe more? Because that’s all you’ve said so far. I hope not. I literally don't see the purpose in still being angry about it. I’ve gotten the new bike, I’ve set better care to make sure it doesn’t happen again, I’m satisfied with where I’m at now. What else are you expecting me to do?
(I'm predicting a "I've given you all the answers you figure it out now" but I'm really hoping you're able to at least articulate something instead of trying to play coy and mysterious like I see so often in discussions like this)
Momma said if I don't have anything nice to say I shouldn't say it.
But if you're going to poke the bear with this double replying the next day and deleting the original BS, apparently you really just need to hear what's on my mind.
It's also apparent the presumed high verbal reasoning ability is more of just an upper-middling. So I guess I have to do the obnoxious piecemeal quote thing to avoid being misinterpreted the same way thrice. Which I'm pretty sure this place can't even do nested quotes, so it's going to be ugly as hell too, enjoy.
"All that" being:
It's not the seething I'm disputing, I've already explicitly acknowledged that you're supposed stop seething after taking some of meaningful action to take it upon yourself to improve a system of fairness that has failed. It should be pretty fucking clear that I'm skeptical that you actually took any significantly meaningful action before retreating into fantasy, not suggesting that you seethe indefinitely. And yes, it's shocking that people on the internet might not just trust you your subjective judgement bro, I know.
Yep, that's what a qualifier like "maybe" is supposed to account for. If we were supposed to be having a moratorium on speculation this conversation should have stopped at "maybe he needed my bike more"
The logic is you had to buy a new lock because the old lock catastrophically failed to protect your bike. And I presume you know the saying "insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting something different to happen." That's really debatable if it counts as "taking action" so much as it is throwing money at the problem and repeating yourself.
You could argue that your sick looking new bike lock isn't the same as the old one, and I could argue that unless you went from the very bottom of the range to the top the differences are largely just security theatre, they're all "cutter resistant" not "cut proof", it buys you a little more time at best. That's an exchange I could at least respect.
But acting like you can't figure out that basic chain (pun absolutely intended) of logic is just stupid and disrespectful.
Speaking of disrespectful, so is asking the same question multiple ways without even bothering to wait for me to answer.
Again with the verbal reasoning lessons. An imperative like stop explicitly implies I believe you're actively doing it. Re-phrasing "nuh-uh, no I'm not!" in a smug passive-aggressive way doesn't help magically gaslight me into not believing it anymore, you have to at least attempt to argue against the reasoning why I believe that, which I guess you did make a token attempt at afterwards.
That's just angling towards some motte and bailey BS. Saying "I think women would be safer if men had a curfew and weren't allowed out alone at night" and "men should have a curfew at night!" are both encouragement that men shouldn't be allowed out at night. The only difference is the degree to which they're encouraging it.
Saying "I think we'd all be happier if we just all believed [token fairytale bullshit]" is still encouragement to believe in fairytale bullshit, just to a smaller degree than saying "you must believe it". But we're not debating degree here, you're just flat out denying it entirely.
Really depends on how your bike got stolen. You now have momentary specialist knowledge in one specific mode of failure of the social contract. Stolen at a cafe? Be the asshole who asks if they can install a feed from the bikerack CCTV camera inside so people can see if someone's messing with it and react. Stolen in an obviously public area outside your condo? Be the asshole who asks your neighbours if they saw anything, and suggest you all agree to help watch each other's bikes more carefully. Nobody really likes thst guy, but realistically he makes the world a fairer place if he only does it when the current system has demonstrably failed. And if you really just can't think of anything more systemic to change, resolve to be the guy who asks a stanger "hey, is that your bike?" when you're pretty sure the guy grabbing it isn't the one you saw put it down, knowing full well it's probably just as likely his friend grabbing it for him as an actual theft and it's going to be super cringe.
I know this is a bit of a collectivist vs individualist split, but it's generally considered a bitch move on the individualist side to cling to group preconceptions long past the point the individual has had a chance to prove themselves. At no point have I been fucking coy and mysterious here. I have been tediously comprehensive and patient, to the point I'm having flashbacks to toddlers asking me "but why is stealing wrong?". Drop the baggage at the door if you would.
Bump
Yes, I do want to hear what’s in your mind. That’s why I’m asking you this question.
And, again, I’m asking you, what is that action that you expect me to take? You refuse(d) to be clear on that. (Until this comment, I've addressed it later)
I had to buy a new lock because the old lock was taken. When I buy I new bike, I buy a new lock. This isn’t hard to grasp. My new lock is quite different from the old one, easier to store, easier to carry around, collapsible, and rigid. My old U lock was clumsy. Even when I had my U lock, I had seen these other locks people were using that I liked a lot more.
I didn’t go from lowest quality to highest, but I did go with a significantly different form factor
I would 100% agree. I never said this though. I only spoke for myself and said that I choose to think this way. Do I actually believe my bike is being ridden by some down and out guy? Nope! The reality is I have no idea where my bike is. It could be scrapped for parts for all I know. I just choose to think this way, years down the line, because it literally costs nothing and does no harm I think this way. I have made no statement about what the rest of the world does or “we’d all be happier if…”
Why attribute these statements to me? You’re getting worked up about things that you put onto me, instead of about things I actually say or do.
It was stolen out of my condo building. I spoke to all of my neighbors asking if they saw anything, looked at camera footage with the condo association, the locks to the exterior doors all got changed, and I posted about it on my community pages. I filed a police report and followed up with the cops. I got local social media pages posting about it as well. I spent a couple weeks trying to find anything about where it could be and got nothing. Trail is ice cold by now. I did all of this years ago.
None of this is “asshole” behavior by the way lol. My neighbors and friends were glad to help me out, just as I’d be glad to help out someone asking for assistance.
Is that what you were looking for? Did you assume I just did none of this because I choose to think that now, four years later, it might be ridden by someone who is happy with it?
Bump
It occured to me that I don't know if replying to a deleted comment notifies people. So here, have this potential double ping, you've earned it.
Sick
Previously on "Sisyphus wept"
I wish it didn't matter to you enough that you'd stop pinging me every day trying to get me to validate your latest argument so we can go in circles for one more lap. I was tired of it.
But fine, sure, I'll believe you that you took meaningful steps to be responsible for building the social and moral order you think should exist in your community and somehow find value in believing the fairytale version of events without it eroding the motivation to keep taking responsibility. Personally I find willfully believing in fairytales as an adult is poor mental discipline that tends to lead to people making excuses for not doing what needs to be done. Doing the right thing but also needing to believe it wasn't necessary seems entirely incongruous to me, but you do you
If nothing else your dogged insistence on me believing your account of doing both things, and having witnessed your near infinite patience in talking to a dreary lost cause like TCDforever, suggests you're not going to change tack nearly so easily as the average Joe. Your beliefs only matter to me insomuch as they influence your, or others', willingness to take civically responsible actions instead of burying their heads in the sand, so as long as it doesn't lead to that for yourself, knock yourself out I guess.
Fair, asshole is on the strong end of potential responses, for those minor intrusions on people's peace you did, "slightly annoying" is probably a more appropriate description, but being annoying is still a drain on your social capital, albeit a smaller one relative to being the asshole. It became apparent around the third ping that we have wildly different ideas of what is appropriate and what is annoying behavior though. I would never consider acting like Navi from the legend of zelda: the ocarina of time with strangers to be pro-social behavior, and yes I am aware that is probably a reference you will probably have to look up, but here we are after the third "hey, listen", so if you feel no dissuasion from being annoying but for the right reasons, good for you I guess