Pretty good but you forgot the part with immigrants being expected to replace non-compliants.
Why is lending a necessity? "Cash on the barrel" is pretty great, in my view; don't spend what you don't have, and that includes other people's money.
The only counter I've thought of is starting a business or factory. Contracts could be negotiated with employees to have their wages be a (small) % of profits instead (or in supplement) of hourly or salary. Harder initial investments like real estate and hardware can be pooled from the funds of cofounders - I'm not convinced that every business must be able to be founded by a single entrepeneur. The difference between this and borrowing money is that the cofounders might actually gain some skin in the game instead of just some rootless cosmopolitan watching numbers in his office. You could try to legislate lenders into becoming cofounders, but it's really not the same because they don't give a shit as long as they get their cut.
Thanks, now I know to check out redpanels.
I never gave it a try because it was my intellect that got me through it.
That's pretty good as far as coping mechanisms to develop. I pulled the card for dissociation so all I can do is nope out at will (and by reflex) - I have been trying to not do this recently because it's interfering with other skills developing. I'm almost jealous, but I'd have to take the history with it and I'll stick with the devil I know.
As far as "oops" goes, have you considered what you would have had to do in the absence of that choice? I've thought a lot about what I could have done differently, and the other paths available to me either sound worse or were impossible with the information I had at the time. I try to live my life with no regrets, but sometimes I still wonder if maybe prisontime would have been better for me. I'd probably be a different person, at the least, but I don't hate myself so there's not much potential for regret there.
no way I could have used drugs to fix my problems, when my problems were primarily perceptual, and required introspection to fix
I should elaborate, then. I didn't mean to imply that pyschiatric drugs are actually helpful for real problems. The only person who should even consider long term use is a person with a chemical imbalance, and even then I'd recommend trying to find a different solution. I was largely just playing along with idiot professionals in an attempt to experiment on myself because I wasn't clever enough to think out my answers.
I suppose an exception would be drugs that have recreational value. Alcohol helped me get through high school and helped me walk out of my room. The short term, regulated meds I stockpiled work to help me through unavoidable scenarios I'm forced into that I can't afford to "nope out" from. But these are shitty solutions.
The conclusion I came to in my therapy is that my only path forward is to open a door inside me that was closed for a reason. It's great to know this. But I refuse to ever open that - I will choose death first.
He is highly sociable. Such that, he needs my anti-social perspective to analyze problems analytically, and he is personally responsible for the entirety of my social life.
Hmm, sounds similar to a friend I had during school years. I got involved in a lot of 'normal' activities and with a lot of 'normal' people through him. Only, I never really spoke my mind to him, so I was appreciated as a listener instead of as a friend. I'm grateful, regardless, and consider my debt paid. All of my "friends" betrayed me when I asked them for help and understanding. So I said fuck this shallow friend shit and never bothered again. Now, what I call friend is probably closer to family for other people.
Even if I misinterpreted your words, I'm glad you have at least the one friend. Life gets real bleak with no one to talk to.
Relatedly, your evaluation of how to make a friend sounds..well, correct, but I think all it can produce is shallow friendship. That may be useful for you in a self-mastery sort of way. I won't try to give advice there, as my process for friends and mates are identical and it created many years of trouble for me. The times I tried switching to a more normal method like what you describe would quickly veer off course - my bad there though because I thought it'd be okay to socialize with furries in college (people think fags are bad about promiscuity, holy shit they have no idea about furries).
I have one close friend and one mate right now. Feels bad sometimes, I know I can't fulfill my role in a romantic relationship properly with the state of my emotions, but I'm dang dumb enough to do it anyway.
Since that has never been my response, I'm not currently wired to respond in a similar way. I take different ways instead.
We should try to attract more gamers, which are bound to be kids in similar positions.
Y'know, I never really thought to pry with gaming buddies that vaguely mention abusive pasts. Perhaps I missed some. Though I wasn't in the mindset to look for a long time. I only recently found out that there's a psych label for it (to the best of my knowledge, and borrowing from my sister's expensive therapists): cptsd. Basically when you get ptsd and then instead of being allowed to recuperate you're damaged repeatedly for years. Not recognized by american psych institutes so no tendies for me. Your prior explanation of it was more in depth, but I think a normie might understand "ptsd squared" better. Rambling, sorry.
Perhaps I'm reading in too deeply, but the two quotes put together seems to make a decent case. The only real counter I have is that I'm unsure how to imagine a troubled kid getting mixed up in culture war. Kids should be focusing on cool stuff and learning. The topics we get into here kind of demand an advanced set of mental filters that I wouldn't expect a kid to have, similar to how a kid should never be bothered with political talk (real politics, not the political circus stuff). I can't imagine how I would have even reacted to having casualized internet in my youth, let alone gamergate. Maybe I could have instinctively sided against journos because I became disgusted with the emotional manipulation present in news media fairly young.
carry yourself (and present yourself) with confidence and affirmation.
It activates my grim humor sometimes when doing so. People so easily swayed, I reflexively look down on them. Ironically, one of my most common presentations is slave mentality - by that, I mean, present yourself as a beaten dog. But I spent a lot of time around lowlifes where it helped me blend in. Simple confidence is definitely more comfortable, but sometimes it just serves to increase my cognitive load by adding extra variables into my efforts to read the minds of everyone in the room - easier to go unnoticed on a slow brain day. It did take me quite a while to understand how to get confidence to draw on, though.
As far as faking...I get you there, but it ties into an advanced dissociative technique I learned at my first/last job, where I turn on autopilot and crank out a bunch of mimicry to get through any small social encounter. I'm good at it, but it makes me feel sick in my gut and heart afterwards. Like a tiny betrayal of my values, I dunno, it's been hard to figure out.
What I, and probably you, need to do is use disciplined regimentation to re-condition ourselves into intentionally engaging in beneficial social environments as a response to those stimuli.
I've considered it, but I always come back to "no way". I can always figure out a way to solve a problem caused by isolation, and I'll always justify it even if it's inefficient or ridiculous. I've accepted that. The biggest part of it that kills me is that one of my hobbies is pnp game design and playtesting is a monumental task when there's zero playtesters.
Well, I still agree with your points, just not quite the conclusion. Simplest explanation I could give is that if I were coming here to seek out positive/uplifting engagement, I would refuse to do so in the thread designated for the purpose.
But hey, I'm just one guy here. Go ahead and go for it - if it gains traction, then that's good. If even 6 people can be enriched (not the ironic kind) by it, then I'd count it as successful.
I'll add some constructive criticism, at least. We get some /pol/ types here, and they often struggle to integrate. Now, I'm not gonna suggest making the process easier for them, but I want to point out that they had a sort of analog to this in the form of a "self improvement general". I think it's worthwhile to examine analogs, but I'll save you some time and explain. They needed it as a counterbalance; a lot of their discussions revolve around the degeneracy and failings of others (even if false, the perception is important here), so it creates a natural back-of-mind nagging "How can I better uphold my own values?". So they could go to those self improvement threads and discuss the answer to that question.
To translate to our community here...well, a lot of the discussion is basically reports of attacks and battles elsewhere. Like an army base coordinating data about what's going on in the front lines. Except we have no real chain of command and it's hard to get reliable data sources and we succumb to despair occasionally. There's a lot that could improve. Personally, I'd like to see gamers unironically rise up and become leaders themselves, so I'd push for a solution adjacent to that. Let's make our own press, internet, banks and then nations, haha. But those 3 problems (organization, accurate data, morale) are key, I think. The morale problem is the simplest to solve, even if it's a constant uphill struggle. Organization is a toss-up, but I hope to see some real discussions around the nature of operations and the viability of herding cats (dipping into both legal and ethical conflicts). Accurate data is gonna be a bitch, because that's practically the foundation of us being thrown in the pit - who knows, though, maybe we'll get lucky there.
That's about all I have on my mind about it. Though somewhat relatedly, I remember you telling me in the past that you were working on compiling some data for us, something along the lines of alt-tech stuff. Still working on that?
Oh yeah, I've seen some of the episodes uncensored. I was kinda let down based off discussions I'd heard. So I'll stick with my more extreme imagination and laugh during prolonged still shots.
I was just being sort of mocking of the studio for taking such a blatant strategy of pushing bluray sales.
The spider manga was great. No social crap or drama. Just constant verge-of-death action with heavy vidya mechanics. Then I saw the show, wowee, you're in for a disappointment. Cutting out good stuff to make room for a bunch of human playtime that's happening 10 years after the real story. I hear the show's actually adhering to the light novels, so kudos to the manga guy cleaning it up.
Mushoku Tensei
I'm happy with this show so far. Having an isekai where the mc has special talent but still can get his ass beat is top tier for the genre. Haven't tried the manga, so if there's a notable difference you notice, I'd be interested to hear. I'm really appreciating that they didn't take the easy narrative path of fast-forwarding to teenage years for that cheap demographic pop.
Redo of Healer (Its just a rape fiesta. Censored version but worth your time)
I'm enjoying it as well. The long censor scenes are becoming hilarious. Big Bluray sales in the future, haha.
Not him, but I'd recommend the manga over the anime. I'm too normie to try the light novels. They push the lesbianism a tad too much in the anime for me, and they're cutting out some of the interesting analyzation of how/why all the supernatural stuff happens. The lezzer stuff has some hints of narrative justification in the manga, but I think the author's gonna drop the ball there in the long run.
Relatedly, have you seen the Stalker movie? Foreign and slightly aged, I thought it was a nice primer into that niche type of supernatural. Though at this point, I think I'd find it frustrating to rewatch. I only mention it since you're probably hungry for more of that kind of thing.
I don't think I can properly explain why, but I don't like this idea. Your reasoning seems fine, it's just that part of the premise seems to be that we have no positive discussions or uplifting interactions - and I reject that. I've seen several threads where people ask for advice, for example, and those threads usually have great advice.
Making an official regular thing of it also just kind of reeks of daycare stuff to me.
But, yeah, I'd like to see some good news. If anyone knows any, I'm not sure why they'd abstain from sharing here.
Others have posted the good straight advice already. I'll add some subtextual advice.
Do not engage in "the dating scene". Doing so is the same as picking path #1. If you live in a secret righteous township with no poz anywhere, then maybe you'd have some success, but you'd also be shitting in the well by adding a "scene" where there was a more organic process.
This leads into the subtext for path #2: seek out connections through community engagement. Path #2 is advocating for a number of traditional communities. Consider instead, that you can find non-traditional communities. I don't care if you're dredging with degenerate furry scum, if the community is good enough for you (and you've fucked up if you're in one that isn't), then it'll be good enough for finding someone to connect with.
Further subtext of previous point. Being in a community carries some implications of involvement, interest, and engagement. If you're hunting communities for the express purpose of finding a mate, then just stop and go to tinder because you don't deserve path #2. Being engaged in non-mating/non-dating activities can demonstrate/exercise stability and discipline; chasing immediate rewards is foolish when selecting a mate because lifelong commitments are very not immediate rewards.
Now, I will say that I'm a fairly atomitized individual. However, the reason for that is an extremely arrested development stemming from abuse. Part of the reason I'm intellectually focused the way I am is because all of my neurological development and cognitive skill went into trying to think my way into surviving problems. The reason I don't naturally socialize with people is because that is not skill I have sufficiently developed yet.
Ayy, I found another! I'll limit my divulgence of details because I'm trying to break the habit - sometimes it's hard to stop talking about personal shit. But it's on topic and I sort of have to play my hand for this conversation.
I went through some shit. Missing some chunks of memory, been spending the past several years learning how to feel anger because I rather successfully sealed up the little problems that I had control over. The parts I remember I still have nightmares about. I don't go outside much because I shut down if I encounter one specific personality type (only ever encountered two).
You learn some interesting things as a person when you're forced into extreme situations for long periods of time. You know this, surely. One of my takeaways - once I understood just how my life was different than others I spoke to - was that I don't want anyone to go through what I did. Not much you can do there, but for the sad fuck stuck in that world, I want to reach out with some advice that could've helped me. Like, just something simple like "Some people really do want you to be miserable and will do anything they can to achieve it" would have helped me avoid a lot of anguish if I'd learned it earlier.
I've spent many years seeing psychologists and using psychiatric drugs (stopped the pills, not worth it). Most of that effort was pure curiousity; I needed to understand how I worked. I often advise for others to give it a try, but a good friend you can open up to is WAY better in my experience.
They're going to be too outgoing. They're going to either be a class clown always seeking positive attention,
I hit an interesting roadbump around this matter. This was the path I started on, but then I got misdiagnosed with ADHD and forced onto an overdose of ritalin right around puberty. Boy, that was like flipping a switch, I became crippled by anxiety. "Your grades are better now, so you're staying on this medicine". The anxiety made avoiding some of the worse outcomes easier, at least.
So I think my motive is clear, but I'll spell it out because I can: I want to help other people overcome the hurdles that I could not (and the ones I could, I want others to overcome them with less struggle). I would've been a psych major like the other failures but I hate writing papers. But no, I'm probably not gonna seriously publish such a thing and put it in stores. If anything, I'd just post it online somewhere and probably never reach the intended audience.
Tell me just one thing, I'm really curious since I've never really identified a person with similarly poor youth. What's your friend making process like? Mine is an intense probing to feel out boundaries mixed with some bait to see if they're prone to behaviors that would put me off. I had to develop some awkward strategies to get sufficient data because people are surprisingly reluctant to open up to others. I'd be surprised if you had a similar issue with your process, but I'm betting it's an area you struggle with as well.
I've heard legends of these positive reinforcement policies. Hard to imagine what life might be like in a country whose governing body acts to strengthen instead of weaken.
You could argue that they shouldn't have income tax in the first place, but still, better this strategy than telling your citizenry to stop breeding and make room for foreigners.
Hmm, there's something here, something about a link between this individuation and atomization.
Atomization strips away social support, which has many effects, but I can see one big desirable effect being reliance on authority. I've been toying with the idea that it may be possible to teach an atomized individual how to become..well, ubermensch, basically.
Most of the principles behind strategic atomization seem to rely on the targets all breaking. But if they come out stronger instead of weaker, that'd be a sight.
I've been thinking of how a children's book aimed towards atomized children might be comical enough to get published (basically teaching basics of living like a beast surrounded by enemies, older ages get lessons on humanity).
Do you have any thoughts on the relevance of atomization towards your topic? This'll really bug me for a while, so I want some more data to work with.
Hm, upon checking it from the thread, it's visible. Perhaps a quirk of this site? I was just reading from the "new messages" section, maybe it has different rules.
Anyway, thanks for clearing it up.
Familiarize yourself with this interview with John McAfee about how to survive as a drug runner in Central and South America and consider the very real possibility that your future looks very much like this.
...Did you forget the link?
At which point the governments pulled the cameras out because their maintenance cost exceeded the revenue they were getting from them.
This is the part that keeps me from being swallowed up in despair. That there's just enough merit behind the scenes to allow new features to fail and be withdrawn.
I am totally against this kind of high tech enforcement. The reasons are many, but mostly that it creates more problems than it solves.
I'm not planning on it. I'm actually at risk for it, too.
I don't have any reasoning more legitimate than belligerency. If I'm the one that's wrong, I'll die - I'm prepared for that. It's my choice no matter how I'm coerced. If I spread it to others, I refuse responsibility for their health or other decisions; to accept responsibility would be to deny the agency of my fellow man.
I'm making slow preparations for being banned from shops and hospitals for my decision. Too slow, honestly.
I take it you don't have cameras set up on every street where you live? I recently visited some family in TN, saw a few towns like this where they remotely enforced speed limits. Take pictures, read numbers, mail out a fine.
People there told me it "worked". Authorized vehicles obviously exempt, so you still get fire truck joyrides.
I expect over time for all laws to be technologically enforced like this.
Amazing.
A little disappointing, was hoping for a sweet Falling Down incident where the guy leaves money for what he takes.
Many good and serious responses in this thread. I'll offer a childish strategy, which tragically may work against a child-brained friend.
Eye for an eye. Push toxic femininity on her. Do it just like she does toxic masculinity. Create an emotional, unfalsifiable bludgeon and beat her with it. Put her in a position where she's trying to debunk your bullshit. Everything you can, throw it back in her face gender-swapped. If she starts citing sources of news and journalists, cite fucking 4chan back at her and demand she prove it has less authoritative legitimacy than whatever hack she cited.
As petty as this sounds, it's actually a simple emotional argument. Be prepared for any possible response and have an emotional counterattack ready for her emotional counterattack. Yes, this has a decent chance of ruining the relationship.
I see. I don't exactly agree with your position, but I can ally with it because that kind of topic often carries a lot of low effort baggage that fails to stimulate the intellect.
Don't let it alarm you too much, anyhow. We get a lot of brands of outcasts here. The ones that take the time to lurk/integrate won't be shitting up your discussions, though you may butt heads with some.
what we're trying to do here
I'm curious what you think that is. I'm just here for news and discussions related to the culture war, whether directly or tangentially.
Granted, the OP isn't engaging in either here, but he may begin doing so at some point in this thread.
I was overlooking that part of it, for some reason.
I still am not comfortable with charging interest in general, but I'll admit that it can have a beneficial place and so shouldn't be banned altogether. It's just the whole 'making money with no work/risk' thing that bothers me. Perhaps it really would be sufficient to ban the reallocation ("investment") of funds that aren't your own.