Underneath my yellow skin

An unacceptable amount of weird, part five

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I want to talk more about being weird in socially acceptable way. In yesterday’s post, I blathered about how it’s ok to be, say, a vegan Crossfitter, but not whatever the fuck I am. I’ve said it before, but it’s like trying to describe the color red to a blind person. They have no basis to understand the concept of red, so it’s exceedingly difficult if not impossible to do so. Someone born without sight, I mean.

In the same vein, it’s really hard to explain to people my way of thinking if they aren’t already so inclined. In a society that is so wedded (pun intended) to monogamy, for example, the idea of nonmonogamy is almost unfathomable. Add to that compersion (joy at your partner finding another partner), and, well, yeah. I actually like to expand compersion to joy in a partner finding joy at anything else, but I understand that most ENM people (ethically nonmonogamous) restrict it to dating and partners.

One of my goals this year was to find an Asian queer/genderqueer group (online). Have I done it? No. Have I even looked? I did a cursory search and did not find one that fit what I wanted. I would like it to be local even if I intend to attend online. I would like it to acknowledge that agender people exist, but I’m not holding my breath. Even a lot of people who are agender use ‘they’ as their pronoun. Which, I hastened to add, is perfectly fine! It’s just not me.

Every time I try to find songs about being agender, I get frustrated. I can find songs about genderfluid and nonbinary, but not about abstaining from gender completely. Why am I like this? Why couldn’t I just be genderqueer ?

Here’s the thing. I could call myself agnostic and genderqueer. In fact, I really like the idea of genderqueer, but as with queer now meaning gay, genderqueer has been turned into nonbinary. I ain’t (that) mad; I’m just tired. And resigned. I know most people don’t do nuance, but it’s not nice feeling like I’m being erased over and over again.

It’s like how POC means black, race is always black and white (and maybe Latino* because of immigartion issues). I’m never going to be acknowledged, which I have accepted more or less. But I will say that one reason I voted for Obama in the primaries over Clinton was because he talked openly about Asian people (makes sense. His half-sister is Asian, and he was born in Hawaii). He also mentioned bi people. And after he was elected, he mentioned people with no religion.

These may seem like small things, but for someone who had never been rmentioned by any politician before Obama or since, it matters. It tells me that I’m not a fleeting thought for the vast majority of politicians. Also, my grudge against the Democratic Party continues to grow. They learned nothing from Obama and continue with the same fucked up tactics that hasn’t worked for them in the last thirty years. Telling me how we’re losing and how bad the Republicans are isn’t going to get me revved up to vote or do anything for the party. Also, selling my name to every Democratic group within the country is not good, either.


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Free to be a weirdo, part four

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Let’s talk more about being a weirdo. In yesterday’s post, I wrote about how sometimes, I wished I could be normal. Believe it or not, I’m not trying to be difficult most of the time–it’s just that I was born that way. I was musing about how much easier life would have been if I could have just been ‘normal, but that’s folly.

What I mean is that I can sit and speculate about how different my life would have been if I was normal, but I can’t verify it. It alsways irk me when people state confidently what would have happened if something or the other (big) had been different. Usually, in a toxic positivity way.

The one that really got to me was people who said that they would not change anything about their pasts because it made them who they were. I would ABSOLUTELY change certain things in my life because it would make me better! The heavy emotional abuse? Gone. The nightmare relationship in Thailand? It would be no more. The feeling like an alien and that I should not be alive that dominated my childhood? Erased in a heartbeat.

I also take issue with the people who said that going through trauma made you more empathetic. There are other ways to be empathetic, thank you, and I would like to think I would have been, anyway, without all the abuse.

I don’t know if I would have been a better, more functional person without the trauma I experienced, but I sure as hell would like to have a shot at it. Would I take no abuse and not knowing how it would turn out over what happened to me? 100%, in a heartbeat, no hesitation. How is that even a question?

I know I can’t change my past, obviously, but that trauma still lingers. Taiji has helped a great deal, and so has Bagua. So has love. So has me just saying fuck it to a certain extent. The realization that I’ll never be normal whatever that is was so freeing. I’m not saying it isn’t still a struggle because it is.

Side note: I find it amusing when people advocate for being your true self. What they usually mean is, “Be your true self–oh, not that true self.” What I mean is that most people mean a two-deviation-from-the-norm true self, not a ‘what the fuck is THAT?” true self. Like weird is being a vegan Crossfitter. Weird is not being agender, areligious, into Taiji and Bagua weaponry, and being ENM. Not to mention bisexual. And just not giving a damn about 90% of things society deems important. Oh, and neurodivergent.

Any one of those things would be considered weird. Some of them are considered deviant, evil, vile, disgusting, etc., by a huge chunk of people. Not just Americans, but that’s the society I know best. It’s interesting. I’ve been listening to a lot of Stray Kids content, and while they are pioneers in music and very ‘weird’ for Kpop, they actually adhere quite closely to Korean norms (as I understand them). Personally, I mean.

I’ve watched quite a bit of their content and realized that they would disapprove of me as a person. Yes, they say eveyrone should be their own person, but they have made it pretty clear that their attitudes toward alternative lifestyles (not talking queer, but ENM and gender norms to a certain extent) is negative. They have several songs about what they call ‘very bad guys’, and they’ve had arguments about who’s the worst. The guy who is mean to his ex-girlfriend including telling her how she really felt about him (which they don’t see as mean) or the guy who thought another woman was attractive, didn’t necessarily act on it, but broke up with his girlfriend anyway because he felt guilty.


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Wish (kind of) that I could be normal, part three

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My sleep is shit. It’s always been shit, but there are ups and downs to it. Now, I’m in a down time, and I’m having such difficulty going to bed. In the past, I’ve had trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, and getting enough sleep (though not necessarily at the same time. Though also not NOT necessarily at the same time).

The only time I have not have problems with my sleep was in the hospital and about a year following after I returned home. I was heavily drugged, and it was so wonderful. I understood why people did drugs after that. I felt like a million bucks and nothing hurt. About three weeks after i returned home, I started feeling my body again. Little aches and pains, and I realized, “Oh, I acutally have to return to my body.” I was not happy about it, but there wasn’t anything I could do.

My point is that my sleep is on difficulty mode just like everyithing else in my life. It’s been my nemesis since I was a kid, and I haven’t made much progress in all the years since.

That’s not completely right. I have times when I make painful progress with my sleep, only to fall back into a terrible pattern once again. Then,  I berate myself for not getting to bed earlier. It’s six-thirty in the morning. I should be in bed. I am not, though, and I will probably not be for another half hour at least. More like an hour.

I try not to beat myself up because that doesn’t help. In fact, it hurts in that the shame makes me even less likely to go to bed at a decent time. Normally, I can make incremental changes, but I don’t feel capable of doing that right now. I’m not sure why, but I have a hunch it has something to do with the hopelessness I feel at the world around me.

When I got a tight eight hours a night after my medical crisis, I felt amazing. I could not believe how good it felt because I never get that much sleep a night unless I’m sick. Or if I hadn’t slept in a very long time. Otherwise, though, I am lucky if I get seven hours in aggregate. This is me reverting to the mean, and I’m not happy about it.


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Why am I like this? Part two

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Alternate title: Playing life on hard mode.

Yesterday, I wrote about how I unerringly pick the hardest choice when it comes to identity. And I tied it in with my dislike for hard games. Then I gushed a bit about Shadow of the Erdtree to make my point as to why I play From games (but, sadly, I probably won’t be able to play them for much longer).

Shadow of the Erdtree epitomizes what I love and hate about gaming. Or rather, the whole soulslike genre. I have tried so many soulslike games, and I have liked exactly one of them. That was Salt and Sanctuary (Ska Studios). And the reason I liked it was because it was almost exactly like a From game except in 2D. In fact the 2D aspect was my least-favorite part of the game beacuse it made rolling difficult. But they preserved the ability to beat the game with just magicks alone, which was why I enjoyed it so much.

Fast-forward to Life of Pi (Round8 Studio, now known as Nough, and NEOWIZ). Hahhahahah I just realized I called it Life of Pi. Lies of P, not Life of Pi. People not being me have declared it the best soulslike not done by From. Some have even said it could have been done by From themselves. I strongly disagree with that, by the way. The level design in severely lacking, and I don’t consider it good combat that only relies on one thing (fucking parrying. Goddamn it. I hope this trend goes awaya soon). It’s boring as fuck, and no, that’s not just my bitterness talking. Yes, that’s part of it, but it’s not the whole reason

Even within the FromSoft games, the ones I like better are the ones that allow you to play in a variety of ways. I have said time and time again that Sekiro is my least favorite of the From games, and it’s in a large part because you have to play the game the way the devs want you to play. Or rather, it’s no fun if you can’t/don’t.

People like to say this line, “When you click with the combat, it’s makes the game easy.” When I said the combat never clicked for me, I could see their brains screeching to a halt. I was talking to my nibling’s spouse about it, and they were talking about how a certain boss was a hard skill check. “That’s when the combat clicks–or you quit.” I told them that it never clicked for me, and I beat that particular boss the way I beat all the bosses–by whittling away at the health.” They said in all seriousness that they didn’t know you could beat the boss like that. I said, “You can, but it’s not fun.”

Which is true. I beat the game, but the second I beat the final boss and the very brief elation faded, all I felt was relief. I never, ever had to fight that boss again–and it was the best feeling in the world.

I watched a video from a guy who loved the From games, but who was very clear about there being a line between hard bosses that were fun and fair, and being difficult just for the sake of being difficult. He mentioned the last boss of the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, who was a nightmare when the game first came out. It was not a fun fight at all, and I don’t know why I persisted*. But it was an awful boss. I was shocked at how bad it was. It felt like pure fan service, and not good fan service at that.

Now, to be fair, one of my biggest issues with the boss pre-nerf was that I could not actually see the boss with the light show going on in the second phase of the fight. See, every action was accompanied by a holy attack that had light trails errrrrrywhere (and I do mean everywhere). And there’s a specific attack that is nearly impossible to avoid if you don’t start sprinting in the opposite direction the second you see it’s going to happen. Even then, you can still get tag–and if you get hit by it fully, it can one-shot you.

I. Hate. Being. One. Shot. By. A. Boss.

It feels cheap and really discourages me from trying again. It idd not help that I got the boss down to about a tenth of their health bar on my second try–and then did not come closs again for hours. That’s how it goes, I know, with big From bosses, but it just cemented my hatred for the boss.

This boss was so bad, many people respecced just to beat this boss. Think about it. You’ve played the entire DLC with one build, and then you have to change it to a very specific build in order to beat the final boss of the DLC. I did not respec, but that’s becauuse I actually had (sort of) one of the builds best suited to beating this boss.

Here’s the connection. Kind of.

In real life, I often feel as if I’m playing on hard mode. I don’t choose it on purpose, but I don’t really have a choice. It’s not as if I said, “Hey, I want to make my life as hard as possible so I’m going to eschew not only binary genders, but nonbinary genders as well. I’m going to choose nightmare mode and go with agender.”

If I wanted to play on easy mode within the traits that were given to me from birth, I would be a cishet woman who got married and had two children. Working a nice job that didn’t take too much of my energy because I had to devote that to my man and my children. Pilates three times a week, maybe a little ladylike curling of 1-pound dumbbells (I use 15-pounders when I do my Taiji weight-bearing sets. Or 20-pounders for the easier of the movements.)

That would have been easier–along with being a Christian. Which I was born as. Let me clarify. It would have been easier in the sense of blending in with society and not making waves. And maybe I would have felt less like a freak/alien. Well, if I actually wanted those things, I mean. Because I don’t, it would have made me feel even lonelier if I tried to do all that just to fit in. When my mother went on a fifteen year campaign to get me pregnant, the only time I wavered was when she  wore me down to the point that I considered doing it just to shut her the fuck up. Which is not a good reason to have a child, honestly.

Fortunately, I came to my senses and did not give into my terrible impulse. It just goes to show, though, how much my mother bugged me to have children.

More tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

*I know why. I’m a glutton for punishment. And I’m stubborn AF. And I would feel like a failure if I didn’t beat the boss.

 

Wish I may, wish I might

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Alternate title: Playing life on hard mode.

I don’t like hard games. I know that sounds facetious because I play From games, but I play them despite the difficulty not because of it. I put up with the hard bosses because the level design is beyond compare.

I can’t get over how amazing the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC’s level design was. Elden Ring, the base game, was terrific as expected. It won game of the year and totally deserved it. Two years later, the DLC came out. I went through one of the most traumatic events of my life on the day it was announced (well, it started that day and the next day was actually the worst day of my life, but I was ready for it (mostly) when it came out four months later.

I gladly allowed my self to get lost in the moody, atmospheric DLC. I did what I always do, which is avoid the main story for as long as I possibly could.

Hey, wait. This post isn’t about that, so let’s move on. I have written about Shadow of the Erdtree endlessly, and I wasn’t going to do it again in this post. I just wanted to mention it because it’s simply amazing in the breadth and depth. The main game took me 240+ hours to complete whereas the DLC took me 70+ hours. I explored the hell out of everything in both the base game and the DLC.

I was just about to write more about it, but the point is that I don’t play the games for the difficulty. In fact, in the DLC, the last boss was just…ughhhhhh. They have nerfed the boss (or rather, the shitshow that surrounds the boss), but it’s still just an unpleasant fight.

In real life, I wish I did not unerringly pick the hardest hill to climb every time. I swear to god that I don’t do it on purpose, no matter what my mother thinks. (She doesn’t like that I’m so anti-tradition and so…weird and wrong (in her eyes).) It’s just what I feel in my heart of hearts.

In this case, it’s gender. I was reading a forum about changing your pronouns at work, and so many people were for it. Meaning they were for having them in  the sig box of their emails and introducing themselves with their pronouns. These were cis people, by the way. Most trans/nonbinary people were not as sanguine about it for a few reasons.

One, for people who aren’t out yet, being made to state their pronouns could be very fraught. Or the people who haven’t decided on their pronouns yet. Or, like me, someone who is agender and does not use gendered pronouns.

More than one person said how I felt–they did not mind so much other people calling them by a pronoun, but they did not want to actually call themselves by their at birth gender pronoun. I have given up mostly on correcting people because I really don’t have the energy. Plus, I get how weird it is not to use gendered pronouns, so I can’t really fault people for getting confused. I mean, I don’t always remember for myself, either.


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I don’t believe anything any more, part four

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“Is the internet actually dying? (It’s worse than you think.)

I just read this title of a video (that has a quarter mill views). Execpt it was written like this, “Is the Internet Actually Dying? (It’s Worse Than You Think)”

Side note: Yes, this early! I cannot get over the dropping of the punctuations in messages and titles like this. I had put a period after think before the end parenths the second time I wrote it as well as the first, but it’s not in the actual video title. It kills me to take it out, but so be it.

Hm. Apparently this is a hot topic of discourse (twhether the internet is dying or not). Here’s my very erudite and lengthy response: No, it’s not.

Thank you fgor coming to my TED Talk. Tip your server on the way out.

Look. Is it changing? Yes. Is it making huge shifts? Also yes. Will it look the way it does now in five years? No. But is it dead or dying? No. Is it getting worse? Yes. That’s what this series of posts is about. But is it dying? Well, that’s above my pay grade, honestly.

Before I continue, let me just say that I wrote yesterday’s post mostly about my emotions are broken, and the internet isn’t helping with that. To briefly summarize, I’m bad at feeling my emotions and at expressing them. It’s partly because my brain is weird, and it’s partly beacuse I was emotianally beaten up if I dared express anything but the most positive of emotions. Only my father got to show anger, and only my mother got to be depressed. My brother and I were supposed to fade into the wallpaper, I guess.

I dedicated my teens and twenties to becoming invisible. I got really good at it, too. I was able to tamp down my energy to the point where people wouldn’t notice I was in the room. Which isn’t easy, by the way. I’m fat and Asian, and I have huge tits. Blending into the woodwork almost broke me. It was so hard. And then I just gave it up when–probably after starting Taiji. Now I just take up the amount of space I take up.

Back to the internet being dead or dying. I don’t think it is, but there’s also not much  I can do about it if it’s true. Look, I’m really good at finding things to freak out about. If they are not there, then I make them up. A weird twist to that is that if something is really serious, I don’t overreact. If anything, I underreact. I don’t know whwy this is, but I have a hunch it has to do with my neurodivergence.

I just looked it up, and, yes, there are theories as to why neurodivergent people are better under pressure/in a crisis than neeurotypical people. One, hyperfocusing is our thing. Two, we are used to being out of step with neurotypicals, meaning we view things differently, anyway. Three, our emotions are different. So what gets neurotypical’s pulse to spike may not do the same to us.

Those are only a few of the theories. I found it to be true, by the way. I realized when I was in my twenties that I was better under pressure than in the day-to-die in a large part because I was  always waiting for the other shoe to drop*. When it finally did, it actually was a relief.

I got in a minor car accident about a decade ago. It was a young girl who looked South Asian (this is important). She was with her boyfriend, and it was on a road with a speed limit of 30 mph. I was going forward, and she was going in the opposite direction. She suddenly realized she needed to turn left to get on the freeway (a truly terrible turn), and she was going at least forty mph. She was talking to her boyfriend when she realized that she was going to miss her exit. She yanked her car to the right without looking.

I was watching her because she was driving really fast and distracted. She kept looking at her boyfriend, and I just sensed that she was not watching what she was doing. I also sensed that she was going to turn left (which would be where I was). I saw it all happen.

Time slowed down to a crawl. I knew she was going to turn into me, and there was not a damn thing I could do about it. My Taiji instincts took over (in fact, that was where I was going), and my body went totally limp. When she hit me (front bumper, but not on my side), I was completely boneless (well, you know what I mean, I hope).

After we collided, I just got out of the car and sat calmly on the side of the road by my car. I was in shock, probably, but I also felt very chill. There wasn’t much I could do about it, so no need to get upset about it. The young woman who hit me rushed over to see how I was (after calling a friend to pick up her boyfriend), and she was so upset. She was crying and wailing that her father was going to kill her because he needed the car (SUV) to go to work.

I was concerned beacuse it did not sound like hyperbole to me. I know it might have been, but she sounded legit worried. I told her gently that he could get a taxi if necessary and that I was sure he would not kill her. Honestly, thoug,h I wasn’t as sure as I would have liked to be. Not about killing, obviously, but corporal punishment? I could see it. Asian parents are strict, and some were not shy about it.

Her boyfriend came over before he got picked up, too. He wanted to make sure I was OK, yes, but he also wanted to make sure I realized that his girlfriend wasn’t being reckless or neglectful. Well, she was the latter, even if it wasn’t her intention. I was not going to be vindictive, but the accident was completely her fault.

Someone must have called the cops because a policeman showed up to talk to me. he reassured me that everyone had said it was not my fault, which was good, I guess. I was still numb from the experience so I wasn’t really feeling anything.

This went in a completely different direction than I had expected. More tomorrow.

 

 

*I have PTSD from my childhood, which is not the point of this post. That’s why i’m always on edge and feel like something disastrous is just around the corner. It’s not as bad as it was when I was a kid, but it’s still there.

The enshittification of the internet, part three

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Let’s talk more about the good and the bad of the internet. I spend most of my time online, so obviously, I’m a big fan. But I’ve noticed how the quality of the writing has gone down the toilet. I’m not talking about the AI (though that does, indeed, suck. I’m not here to talk about it, though), which doesn’t help.

(Deep sigh. So many big thoughts about AI that I do not want to share right now.)

Side note: Yes, again. Oh, here’s yesterday’s post in which I railed about all the shitty clickbait that is just getting shittier. And how websites are actively making themselves worse in order to appease their shareholders at the expense of their customers.

When I actually give in and check out one of those, “So-and-so DESTROYED the other so-and-so”, I always hate myself after. I have to be strict with myself because it’s so bad. Even on news sites, there is a tendency to run towards hyperbolic. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I immediately knock off fifty percent of the energy whenever I read a piece. So if something is disastrous, then it’s mildly bad.

I also mentioned that I already have an issue with showing my emotions–feeling them, too. Which is a sign of my neurodivergence. I thought I was just wrong, weird, or broken, but it’s just how I’m made. It’s also my parents making it exceedingly clear that emotions were for them and not fro me. Any time I showed the least bit of negative emotions, I was  reprimanded, chided, and criticized. Sometimes, even shouted at.

I got exceptionally good at swallowing my rage, er, emotions. And in not showing pain. In fact, when I started Taiji, that’s something I had to address. My teacher was teaching ushow to do joint lock techniques, called chin na techniques. Basically, you jab or press pressure points to cause the other person immense pain that disappears the second you let up.

Before I get to thaat, there’s another kind of content creation that just drives me up the wall. I want to mention it because I keep meaning to talk about it, then promptly forgetting. Since I just saw something that reminded me of it (and set me off), I decided to do it now. This is the “I can’t believe _______ (people of a certain country) do _______ (something completely normal)!” and it’s cousin, “I finally understand why ______ (people of a certain country) do this weird thing! (Which is not in the least weird.)”

Me: “Oh, you can’t understand WHY PEOPLE IN A DIFFERENT COUNTRY MIGHT DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY THAN YOU DO?!”

It’s so fucking annoying. I don’t know about the actual content because I don’t click on those vids (though I have seen one or two of them). “American English is different than British English!” Well, duh. The one that really irks me is when British people make fun of/are incredulous about how we do dates in America. By that, I mean the way we write the date, not how we go about dating.


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I just DESTROYED the internet, part two!

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Before I tell you how I DESTROYED the internet, I have a side note. Yes, alredy. It’s tangentially related to my exasperation at the way hyperbole on the internet is being ramped up in a desperate attempt to get clicks, but even if it weren’t, I want to talk about it.

It’s the constant enshittification (and yes, that’s a real (slang) word now) of the internet, and I am so frustrated with it. In this particular case,  it’s Yahoo! mail. They keep ‘updating’ it, ostensibly making it better. But, in fact, it’s worse. Not only is it uglier, there is a panel on the night side for ads. At first, I did not realize what it was for because I have an ad blocker. I tried to get rid of it to no avail. When I found out what it was for, I was so grumpy.

Yes, I could upgrade to premium or whatever it’s called, but I don’t want to do that. Yahoo is like my dump email, meaning it’s just for garbage, mostly. But also for all my accounts. They have been warning me for the past year or so that my inbox is exceeding 90% and that I should upgrade to avoid the possibility of not being able to receive new emails. I’ve deleted thousands of emails, but that apparently doesn’t matter.

Also, this is a nitpick, but it’s still annoying. When they ‘updated’ their look, they automatically switched me back to the light version, which hurt my eyes. Keep my preferences for fuck’s sake, Yahoo! Sheesh. It’s so ugly now, I can barely stand looking it. I know that’s a feature and not a bug. They don’t give a shit about user experience (that is so last millennium), and they are doing everything they can to maximize profits.

How does this tie into the hyperbole that I’ve found else where on the internet? Because it’s all in the name of making a tiny bit more profit. Whether it’s a mega-corp like Yahoo! or a YouTube channel with 10,000 subs, it’s the same desperation to get one more click that is such a turn-off.

I realized how bad it’s gotten when I found myself talking back as I read video titles. One that is particularly annoying me these days is the “This game has thirty minutes to get me/win me over/other negging.” Or even worse, “Kpop hater llistens to ___ (Kpop gropup) for the first time.”

It’s not that art can’t be judged–it can, of course. It’s just the “Prove that you’re worthy of my time” tone that is just so off-putting to me. Like it or not, but don’t act like a snot. Many people seem to like that premise, though, so maybe i’m in the minority on tihs subject.

Another that really annoys me has two versions. One is, “We NEED to talk about___” to which I automatically shout, “No we don’t!” The other, and it’s closely related to the first is, “Why is no one talking about_____ (incredibly popular thing that everyone is talking about)?!” I will punch my computer table the next time I see either one of these configurations.


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You won’t believe what this post is about!

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I am a big fan of the internet. BIG fan. However, one thing that irritates the fuck out of me is how hyperbolic ledes/titles can be. I cannot stand anything that has a title that starts, “You won’t believe what____”, “So-and-so CRUSHED/DESTROYED (his/her opponent!)”, or anything else of this ilk.

Another format I dislike is, “Did such and such a thing mean such and such?” I once read that if a headline asked a question, the answer was always no. Which I have found to be true 99% of the time.

Yet another thing that grinds my gear is titles that are negs in disguise. “Kpop hater listens to (Kpop group) for the first time! Will it change his mind?” That is such a bad premise, but it’s so clickbaity because most people want that redemption arc, even if it’s manufactured and/or trite. In the gaming world, the equivalent is, “I gave ______ (a game)” thirty minutes to make me interested.”

I will not click on any video that has any of those in the titles. Not only are they so negative, but they are overtly manipulative. If you’re going to manipulate me, it has to be much more covert than that. I resent being able to see the manipulation, and it’s so clumsy, too. It outrages me that these content creators think I’m that naive/ignorant/swayable.

It’s reached the point where if I see any title that starts with “Such and such hater tries–“, I just shut it down. Or tell YouTube not to recommend that channel. Also, it’s made me much more cynical in general. All the hyperbole, I mean. “You won’t believe–” Oh, I bet I will.

And all the ‘crushed’, ‘destroyed’, ‘humiliated’ talk is outright bullshit. I watched several of those (usually a liberal ‘destroying’ a conservative), and it’s never the humiliation that the channel is trumpeting it to be. At best, it’s a mild point scored for the liberal. At worst, it’s the liberal being shown in a bad light.

Look.

I know that it’s hard to get eyeballs on yyour channel no matter what the niche. There are a zillion channels, and you have to find a way to stand out. But this is so not my jam. I am turned off by negging and the exaggeration.

I don’t even know if it works. I mean, it must, right? Or why would people keep doing it? (Don’t answer that. I know there are other reasons why people might keep doing it.)

This kind of senseless sensationalism has infiltrated so-called serious journalism as well. There’s another problem there. They have to fill 24 hours, and that’s not easy to do. I’m thinking specifically of news stations like CNN. Think about it. We used to have a daily paper. Now, the news in a constant barrage peppering you relentlessly at every moment of the day.


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What I’m loyal to, part seven

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Let’s talk more about brand loyalty. I don’t have any because I’m more utilitarian than anything. In yesterday’s post, I talked about why I don’t have brand loyalty, and I want to expand on why I don’t. I’m pretty sure it has somtehing to do with my neurodivergence, but I can’t say with 100% certainty.

Here’s the thing. I do not feel any loyalty towards things, be they brands, teams (yes, they are made up of people, but not people I know. Plus, I’m talking specifically about “the team”), or individual products. I can be inttensely loyal toward individual people, but even that has it’s limits.

I don’t believe in unconditional love; I just don’t. Why? Because to me, that’s how you abuse happens and is enabled. I know you can set limits and boundaries with someone you love, but there’s so much pressure to love someone no matter what. So many people believe that love means allowing the other person to walk all over you. I don’t agree with t hat, and I want no part of that. In addition, Toxic love is not unconditional love, but so many people believe the former is the latter.

An even more toxic version is, “You do everything for me, but I’ll do nothing for you (except maybe hurt you).” I see that a lot, and it’s disturbing to me. Brand loyalty is similar to me because the expectation to be loyal to a brand is pushed by people who aren’t affiliated with any given product.

I know there is something different with my brain because I just don’t undrestand the ride-or-die way people get with things/products/groupsl/teams they like. I can appreciate really liking something, but if that something no longer brings me satisfaction, then it’s time to go. I have heard so many people say about teams that if you bail when things get bad, then you’re not a true fan. What’s more, you don’t deserve to celebrate when they win. Also, that it’s more meaningful if you go through all the pain with the team as they are losing.

I want to make it clear that I actually agree with the basis for this. Knowing the hard times does make the good times better. Where I disagree is with the gatekeeping. I don’t see how it takes away from a longtime fan’s enjoyment if someone who’s only followed the team for a year is elated when their team wins.

This is me for everything, though. Someone else’s enjoyment of something has no affect on my own. Just like if someone wants to play a From game “wrong”, it has no affect on how I play the games. Or if someone liked Liz Phair’s album that was deliberately made to be more commercial/mainstream/palatable, that doesn’t take away from her more experimental works. In fact, if people get hooked on the former, that may open them up to listening to the latter.


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