Looking backwards, looking forwards

Reading one of my earlier posts recently I made a connection that I’m sort of surprised I didn’t make way back then. I mentioned once I have this recurring intrusive thought or daydream of poisoning homeless people. Not any particular homeless individual, in fact I think the idea is that I’d specifically avoid the ones I know. See there’s a few who hang around near where I work, and sometimes I’ll give my tips or some of my tips to them after closing up. They’ve all come to recognise me when they see me now, there’s this one guy in particular who is very friendly. When I have to take the bin out to the sheds at the end of the shift and there’s not much room he’s helped me get it through the door a couple times. Yes it’s just a gesture, I can manage it easily enough and he’s there because he’s come to expect some change when seeing me ultimately, but nevertheless I appreciate it. I quite like these people, even if most of them probably rightfully earned their current situation, and I wouldn’t want any harm to come to them.

That’s the funny thing really, and I suppose I already did this bit in that very same earlier post so I won’t go on about it, but while I will judge these people for their poor character and decisions I don’t necessarily dislike them. On the other hand the strawmen I’ve conveniently just made up who would say I’m a nasty and ignorant person for doing so do tend to. Like I said I’ve already mentioned it before, but there’s a real disdain that most people have for the homeless and it’s a very visceral thing. It’s really a feeling of disgust, and it makes sense because they do often smell but it’s more than that, almost like they sense that their poor fortune might rub off on them. Even when I don’t have change or don’t want to give my change to one of them I’ll feel a bit bad and will always acknowledge them if asked, so many people just ignore them entirely. I mean completely blank them, they’ll be walking right by and definitely within earshot but they just pretend not only like they were never asked for money but like the beggar doesn’t even exist.

I said something else in that very same post as well actually, an insight which I lost as soon as I had it. I was worried when going back to reread some of these earlier posts that they wouldn’t hold up and would seem stupid and cringy but that’s not the case, unusually for something I’ve written and revisited after some time. There were a few things that I did in those earlier posts that I’ve decided to stop doing because of those reasons, but the general ideas and message I stand by in almost all cases which is what I’m talking about. Anyway, I said in that same post that ignoring someone is not something people do to those they don’t care about but actually to people they have a problem with. It’s not disinterest, if you’re being ignored it’s not because the person really doesn’t think about you, it’s a minor act of aggression. Not like being punched in the face or even insulted of course, but in principle it’s the same if not in degree. It’s a deliberate act, I think were my exact words.

I think this is why being “ghosted” bothers people so much, there’s this explanation that it’s because you realise how little you mean to them but that never sat right with me. That’s not what’s happening at all, let’s go back to the homeless people again for an example. See, the smartly dressed cubicle cucks and their heavily made-up female counterparts have to make an effort to pretend the beggar asking for help isn’t there, it’s undoubtedly a conscious act. They feel insulted that someone so gross and stupid (according to them, not me) would even speak to them, and again like I said in that post months back the deliberate ignoring of them really translates as “fuck off” or something like it. Being ghosted is no different, they’re basically saying you’re unworthy of their time and should fuck off. It’s not that you don’t matter to them, it’s that they have grown to dislike you or be annoyed by you and this is their way of saying so.

I’ve noticed as well that being ghosted seems to bother robots and people of a similar mindset even more so than it does normal people. Which makes sense when you think about it, because what is the thing that really seems to define a robot? Other than the obvious I mean. It’s this feeling of being ignored, of being left out. It starts young, and I literally cannot think of a single example of one of these people who doesn’t share this experience. I have had this experience, if you read MTW you’ll see that Elliot Rodger had this experience, it’s one of the most common things to see people lamenting on /r9k/ and in my very brief time spent checking out other spaces online populated by similar people I’ve seen it there as well. I mean you might think that this should mean they’re desensitised to it but I don’t think so. I think that it’s like irritating a wound, see a lot of these people retreat away from the world in their youth, which is partially what stops them from being properly socialised. The desire for companionship being so strong though, they search for relationships with other people online. The time away from the world has allowed for some healing, but then these online things break down as they always seem to and the scar is reopened.

I had another post very early on, my second or third, about school shootings. I feel like without the whole build up the hot take I have on the subject doesn’t have the same gravity so I’d say if you’re reading this and haven’t checked that one yet you should read it before this, but it’s not crucial. Essentially, I see school shootings/ mass shootings in general as performance art. The problem is that the message of the piece is not something I think the performers (the people doing the shooting, whether it be Elliot Rodger or the Columbine kids or whoever) are consciously aware of. I will say though, something I didn’t say in that post, that the increase in such events or at least the increased reporting of them is an interesting development. See take the example of Columbine, everyone always assumed they were bullied losers but they were actually relatively normal. They had a group of friends, one had a girlfriend I think, this is something that surprises people. It surprises people because it makes sense for school shooters to be losers, after all who is it who fantasises about doing that kind of thing? Even if only as an escapist fantasy, and they’d never actually do something like that, just like how I would obviously never actually harm the homeless. It’s kids who are bullied, kids who are meek, kids who struggled to find friends.

Now though, and there’s been a new one since that post actually but I haven’t taken the time to really read much about the story, you’re seeing a lot of these shooters more explicitly identify with this role or be identified with it. I’m not really here to talk about just shootings though, I think it’s bigger than that. After all, there was that guy Alek Minassian and he certainly fits in with this despite using a vehicle to attack the public rather than a firearm. So we all kind of know that it’s “losers” and now a more recent term “incels” who are the kind of person to engage in this sort of thing, even when it’s not, if you understand. Incel is a really interesting term, and I’ve had another idea for a post just regarding the term itself and why it over all the similar ones has come out on top in the public discourse recently, but right now I just want to talk about one particular thing regarding the term.

It’s something I’m sure I’ve talked about in a previous post, but I can’t for the life of me find it so maybe I never actually got around to that one. Does the term incel describe a kind of person, or an ideology? I mean of course it describes a person but I mean is it merely a person, is any young man who can’t get laid an incel? Or is it a young virgin male who also believes specifically in the usual things that are associated with the term incel? So, does being an incel also mean you have to be in that whole world of Chad and Stacy, of the blackpill, of the very term incel? I mean there’s the idea of the “hopecel” (which is one of the funniest words I’ve heard in a while) going around, which describes someone who would generally fit the incel archetype but doesn’t buy into the whole “blackpill” idea. The thing is, hopecels are considered a variant of incel (by incels, who are the ones who coined this amusing term) which leads me to believe that according to most people who would identify themselves as an incel it’s not about an ideology. To these people it is just what it says, a portmanteau of involuntary and celibate, someone who can’t get laid.

The problem is whenever incels are spoken about in normie media outlets they are identified as an ideological group. Even a terrorist group, lol. Any article on the subject from a major news organisation or even just a buzzfeed kind of thing (glorified blog that operates within the overton window) makes the preface that they’re not talking about all virgin men but merely the people who believe in the toxic/ misogynist/ hateful/ delusional or whatever other meme buzzword they have ideology professed on incel forums and other such places. This then filters down and nowadays the term incel when used in general public discussion also means this. So the question is really, what is this ideology? To me if there is one right now, and I’m not sure there is, it’s basically just a variant of the same “redpill” stuff that’s been here for over a decade. It’s really not much different than what PUAs, or MRAs or MGTOWs and so forth believe, other than a few admittedly crucial differences. It’s a lot like Marxism in a way, you have socialists and anarchists and Leninists and so on, but they all see one another as comrades when push comes to shove.

These crucial differences are, at least from my understanding, the “blackpill” and the acceptance of violence. So the blackpill is essentially the idea that it’s fucked and there’s nothing you can do about it. I don’t know if Eggy’s video is the actual first use of the term but it certainly was the point from which it entered the meme lexicon. It’s kind of spread to certain alt-right circles, you see some of those e-celebs use the term but it’s taken on a slightly different meaning when they use it, thanks to the pol9k pipeline which I’ve already talked about before. It’s ultimately the same feeling, hopelessness, just applied to politics. I’m not going to go on another several paragraph long tangent about this, but I’ll quickly say that there are even within incel circles different ideas about what the thing to be “blackpilled” on even is. It doesn’t matter too much, the only thing that matters is that the blackpill has been taken, and now you see how hopeless your situation really is.

I think this is what leads into the second thing, the acceptance of violence. Now most people who identify with incels obviously aren’t violent and thuggish, if anything I’d argue that meekness is much more common amongst them (us?) than the public at large. Statistically speaking an incel is less likely to murder you than a normie, I’m not kidding. What I’m saying is that you’ll never get any kind of condemnation about what Elliot or Minassian or the most recent guy who killed those women in a bank did, in fact you’ll find jeering and celebration of it. This is in opposition to the people who identify with those other associated “redpill” groups I mentioned earlier, who will always claim that they condemn violence. I’m not saying this as a bad thing, I’ve done the same over and over in my time on /r9k/ if I’m being honest, laughing and joking about the victims of various shootings. In fact the picture I think I’ll use for the header image on this is a screenshot of my post from the infamous “some of you guys are alright” thread, if I’m honest I’m not 100% convinced that Mercer actually made that thread and it’s not just a coincidence but it’s certainly a likely possibility. I do find it kind of satisfying, I probably gave that impression on my other post about school shootings too. It feels like a kind of twisted justice has been had when I hear about one of these mass shootings, and I know for a fact that a great many people feel the exact same way.

Until that post about school shootings, or the idea I wrote about in it came to me anyway, I couldn’t properly explain why. After all the people who die in these shootings aren’t even the actual people who excluded or bullied the shooter (if he was bullied that is) in many cases, so it’s not like he’s getting revenge. The people are random, but of course as I explain in that post that’s the point. What unifies everyone who has “taken the blackpill” is this feeling that the thing holding them back from happiness and companionship is out of their control. Whether it’s how they look, or their meekness and lack of proper socialisation as a child or whatever, it’s random, or at least it feels random to someone raised in the individualistic culture we inhabit. It feels wrong to even be angry at the people who did exclude you, after all you’re told over and over that to expect to be treated well or even the same as everyone else is entitled. Again though, going back to the other post I was talking about, ignorance is deliberate. Which should bring me back to where I started this post.

Back to poisoning homeless people, hopefully you’ve figured out the connection already. Just like with a mass shooting or running your vehicle into a crowd, the beauty is in the randomness. Now I can kind of retroactively appreciate why this weird fantasy appeals to me, and again I want stress I personally wouldn’t ever actually leave little poisonous drinks around for hobos. There’s just something about the idea of truly random violence that has a kind of beauty to it. There was a thread I saw a few weeks ago on /r9k/, it was about some crime that had happened and how the perpetrator was found because of his relation to the victim. I don’t remember why it was made, but there ended up being quite an interesting point made about the perfect crime.

The perfect crime you might say, is one without any discernible motive. This example was given by an American, he said what if he were to buy a gun and travel to a different state and then shoot someone at random. Then dispose of the weapon, make sure no fingerprints or DNA evidence is left behind and never talk about it. How plausible this actually is I don’t know, but it’s very interesting to me that it was someone from /r9k/ who would think this way. Again, this idea of randomness of the victim comes up. Just another anecdote that stuck out to me. I think there’s really something to this, and I think that while it may just be unconscious now a very interesting potential development for the “incel community” if there is any such thing will be when people start to become conscious of this.

The still beating heart

We have these /comfy/ threads on /r9k/, I’m sure most of you already know what I’m talking about. To the one or two who don’t though, essentially people will post art, photos, music, and tell little anecdotes that in one way or another have this common feeling of “comfy” linking them all together. Of course the word comfy, or comfortable, is far older than 4chan but the way it is used makes the /comfy/ of 4chan a unique idea. It’s a little like this Danish word. See in Denmark they have this word hygge, and there doesn’t seem to be a direct translation to English but from what I’ve read it describes a general feeling of cosiness/ warmth gotten from certain activities. So, drinking a hot chocolate while it snows outside or sitting near a fire place and listening to the crackling sounds as it gets dark out. Apparently this is a large part of Danish culture, the best way of putting it that I heard was from this one guy Meik Wiking who said that “Hygge” is to Denmark what “Freedom” is to the US. Now I don’t know how true this is, after all this guy is trying to sell this hygge idea it might be entirely manufactured but it certainly illustrates the concept quite well. The word exists in other Scandinavian/ north Germanic languages or something very similar but it doesn’t have quite the same weight to it. So in Norway it’s just their way of saying cozy or homely, at least that’s what I’ve gathered, whereas in Denmark it’s this central idea. You could say there’s the lower case and the upper case hygge. Similarly you have “comfy” as it’s used by normal people every day and you have “Comfy” the romantic ideal.

Now the two aren’t synonyms, I’d actually say that /comfy/ is far larger in scope. See /comfy/ is a bit different for everyone. The different things people put in those threads reflect their own sense of it. Sure there’s a lot of overlap, in fact a lot of things that would be pretty hygge would also be /comfy/ for many anons. You see a lot of the same images reposted often, but there’s quite a lot of different kinds of things. Deckard’s apartment from Blade Runner, a group of anime girls living in a caravan, a photo of a cup of coffee near a window. Ambient music, or folk, or something that just has nostalgia value and most wouldn’t find /comfy/ at all. Some anons like an old timey aesthetic and others prefer a futuristic place to imagine themselves in, hobbit homes and personal space ships. Even though there’s quite a lot of variety, and almost everyone is going to find things in those threads that they don’t get or understand why someone considers them /comfy/, there’s an understanding that the feeling experienced is the same in substance. I’m not really too happy with my explanation, but the explanation isn’t the purpose of this entry it’s just some preliminary information. Hopefully you already know what it is I’m talking about. No, what I’m here to talk about is the only real through line I can identify that connects everything that /r9k/ might consider /comfy/. Yes, the term is used site wide and in fact even outside of 4chan nowadays as it’s kind of spread out like everything does, but it did originate there. I know the /adjective/ meme is a more general thing too, but I’m not here to talk about 4chan shit. Honestly the “culture” for lack of a better term there isn’t something you can give a quick rundown on you have to just live in it, that why the whole lurk more thing came about. I mean I first started visiting maybe late 2011 and I still would be considered a newfag. Of course even that whole new/ old thing is only half serious, it’s literally just a website where people post pictures and make the same stupid jokes over and over. I don’t want to get side tracked here, these recurring /comfy/ threads are what I’m talking about and the idea may have spread and become diluted or changed but it doesn’t matter because I’m not talking about those cases.

One huge thing though is the amount of artwork or oc that taps into the greater board mythology, I’m using the term loosely but it’s definitely something that exists. I mean you have these figures, and yes the more famous ones are not board exclusive or even site exclusive, but they are most developed on /r9k/. The thing is, pol9k is a real thing and that demographic (not the best term, but the best I can think of right now) absolutely dominates the site now. The radicalised virgin, the 2010s upgraded version of the 00s neckbeard caricature. Very few if any individuals embody all of the traits associated with such a character but as a collective all of them show up frequently. So of course a lot of what develops kind of organically on /r9k/ is spread out quickly because /pol/ is so huge now and there’s that overlap thanks to this demographic and gets picked up by normals. Maybe the most famous example is the virgin walk image which existed as a standalone joke that was posted for years. One day someone made some absurd response image to it, the chad stride, and now a couple years later you have some facebook boomers making “Virgin thing I don’t like, Chad thing I do like” memes who have only ever heard of the hacker known as 4chan through fox news segments. Anyway that’s just another tangent, my point is that I’m well aware that most of these characters (pepe, wojak, spurdo and the various variants that have become their own characters after a while) both existed before the current “culture” on the board had developed into what it is today or even before the board existed at all and exist beyond it. You don’t get stuff like pic related anywhere else though, do you?

Yes I know it’s an edit, the original was from the poopoopeepee days though and that whole situation was an earlier part of this board mythology I’m talking about anyway. In fact that whole thing was a response to the characters becoming adopted by so many normies, which further goes to show how these little cartoony beings are inextricably tied up with the place. It’s such a lovely little comic strip as well isn’t it, really warms the heart. You see, these various characters seem to me to form a pantheon, and much like the gods of ancient Hellas these characters show up all over the artwork of various creative robots. You couldn’t really create a serious canon from all of these drawings and things, with a continuous story or something like that, it’d be impossible. These characters just are, they exist in all these separate stories and none of them at the same time, just like the hundreds of poems and plays and works of classical art featuring the Olympians. This is ongoing and like I said earlier organic, I deliberately chose a more recent and kind of shoddy image for the main picture of the post to help show this. There’s stuff like it being made often and by all sorts of people. Well, all sorts of robot anyway. These characters have certain traits we all kind associate with each of them, and we know when one is being used over another what they’re trying to represent. These characters personify various aspects of ourselves, and can be used to create a feeling of sadness or melancholy, of joy, of anger, and most importantly of being /comfy/. The funny thing about the things that feature these characters though is this sense of friendship or being at ease around one another these characters all seem to have when two or more are put together. Even in the ones where they’re messing with one another, and sometimes those can get really fucking weird, there’s this sense that they’re still part of this great and unbreakable friendship or even familial bond. Which again I can’t help but see in parallel to not just the Greek pantheon but Norse mythology as well. See a lot of people think there was this codified story of the gods in these societies, and all the famous folk stories featuring them were believed to be true. Of course that’s a very materialist and modern way of seeing things, and it misses the whole point of these ancient mythologies and the characters they feature. No, there’s stories where they fight and die and betray one another and come together to deal with greater threats and there’s so much no one could possibly believe it all happened and in some kind of order. Some stories might even outright contradict others, but yes if you want to see how the gods of antiquity were used in stories and sagas you should think about how gondola or wojak or that retarded version of pepe are used.

It’s funny to me because this sense of there being a friendship or bond is almost exclusive to the art featuring these characters, in the /comfy/ threads I mean. Almost everything else posted, photos or artwork or music etc. feels very solitary in theme. Maybe this isn’t surprising at all, this is /r9k/ after all it’s filled with isolated and lonely young men, but remember these threads are meant to be about what we find comfort in. So it is interesting that it is often (admittedly very pretty) art of empty bedrooms, or isolated winter cabins, or small ships floating through space. Fuzzy lo-fi music, usually pretty melancholy, that brings to mind the idea of a summer stuck indoors. All tied together with the things that people in the thread talk about, how they’re getting /comfy/ themselves. Naturally because it’s a bunch of NEETs and hikkis or sometimes wageslaves who are still very shut in the rest of the time like myself finding this comfort in old video games and films, simple things enjoyed from home like a hot drink and most importantly these threads themselves. Both alone, and in good company. In the wizards tower with a nice heavy blanket, with the Palantir at hand. See, I first started thinking about this when I made that post a couple of weeks ago. Why I like to romanticise my situation, cut off from people and it’s not merely cope or an attempt to make it more bearable. It’s because, I actually in some sense quite like it. I mean I long for good company sometimes to be sure, but I also take solace in being away from people when things become too stressful. I think I mentioned this before here but I actually used to have a very romantic view of the hikikomori archetype when I was a lot younger and still not necessarily on the path to aligning with it so closely as I do today. It’s because I (and I think it’s fair to say you can extrapolate to a lot of other robots too) have always been drawn to similar figures. The wandering ronin, the chivalric knight-errant, the wizard cooped up in his tower on the mountain, the drifter afloat in space and of course as I’ve mentioned before the ascetic monk. It’s these kinds of characters, sometimes drawn as variations of the /r9k/ pantheon I was talking about earlier and sometimes just reposted pics found anywhere online, that are the second major kind of figure that appears in these threads. Often as well, there’ll just be empty rooms, or city streets with no people (or blurry silhouettes) and similar stuff too. I know it’s a stretch to say that the modern hikikomori (as an archetype, just like I said earlier about something else it’s rare you’ll find any person in the real world who embodies all associated traits) is the incarnation of what all those other figures are for the modern world, it’s just a loser who can’t get laid you may say. Maybe you’re right, but I see a connection there.

So I said that the only time you have depictions of a more social existence in these threads is when the frogs and cancer patients etc. are used but that’s not entirely true. There are also occasionally pictures of children, there’s two images which I can think of right now. One is this drawing of a bunch of Japanese schoolkids doing some kind of project near a big window during what looks like a summer break, the other is of three or maybe four boys playing on an N64 in their pyjamas. I think it’s clear why this is, it’s a case of looking back on childhood with rose tinted glasses. I’m absolutely guilty of this, I’ve made several posts on here in which I’ve done it. When I think of friendship, I think of being a child. Why wouldn’t I, it was when I was a child that I actually had friends. Well, up until my mid teens anyway. Of course I still have friends now, a few anyway although I had many more when I was little, but we see each other at best a few times a year. Clustered around the summer as well, so most of the year I don’t see anyone. The only real group of people with whom I can engage in friendly activities with, laughing about stupid jokes, arguing about anything from politics to art, sharing feels both positive and negative, is /r9k/. Who, that’s right, are best represented by this pantheon I guess I’m calling it now. Again, I think I’ve spent enough time with the robots to say that a lot of them are very similar to me in some fundamental ways, and therefore it’s fair for me to extrapolate my way of seeing things onto them I think. So I think that this is why it’s those characters or children who are necessary stand ins in order for most robots to see any kind of social gathering as /comfy/. A lot of normalfags might see a pub or bar with “interesting” strangers to talk to as comfy, but to any robot such a place would be the exact opposite. Because these threads represent /r9k/, and not only that but they get at the fundamental robot truth more than any other. The only other recurring thread I can think off that comes close would be those Frog and Feels threads but they seem to have stopped or at least become way less common over the last couple years. You can’t help but see these /comfy/ threads as basically the church, or temple, of the board when you think this way. The place where the soul resides.

Trust no one, not even the incels

Often at work people will ask me to charge their phone, it’s even quite common for them to carry their own charger around with them now so they only need an empty plug socket and I most of the time will do it for them. I’ll plug it in behind the counter somewhere and then they’ll come back in just before their bus arrives or after they’re done looking around and collect it. Most weeks I’ll get asked at least once, but the last time I was at the busier shop I had two people ask me at the same time. Or, slightly apart but both had to be charging next to one another for a little while. Describing these two reminds me of that couple I talked about quite a while back in that it’s almost cartoonish how these people live up to what is supposedly just the deluded worldview of the incels. First a woman maybe in her early 20s but could pass for early 30s, overweight and with a comical amount of make-up for a sunday afternoon. Of course she had a shit attitude, even her tone when asking me to charge the phone had an undercurrent of entitlement. Sure she was asking, but it felt like she was just going through with a formality and the idea of me saying no wasn’t even a possibility in her mind. I did think about saying no just to see how she’d react but I felt it’d be petty of me when I almost always say yes to other people who ask. Also having her around means she’s more likely to buy something, and other customers are more likely to come in. It’s an interesting thing I’ve noticed actually, how the shop can be dead for ages (sometimes for nearly half an hour) and then as soon as one person is there other people become interested. The way heads turn, sometimes people who’ve been outside paying no attention for some time, like hyenas is quite amusing to me. Anyway, second was a man of similar age maybe, now he was not a “Chad” but still someone I’d imagine is quite attractive to women. Trendy haircut, trendy fast fashion getup, handsome, not scrawny or chubby, etc. He came in a little after her, asked like he was expecting me to say no and seemed grateful when I didn’t.

I suppose you can already tell where this story is going. Her phone was lighting up and buzzing every couple minutes, and his phone didn’t go off once. It wasn’t off or on silent, because when I took the plug out to hand it back to him and the screen lit up I looked and the icon wasn’t there at the top. I know that’s fucking weird, and it gets worse because I also looked at her messages or at least the snippet that shows on the screen if you don’t press to see the full thing. I don’t remember what any of it was about, I didn’t see enough to, but I know it was various people messaging her. There were several names, both male and female. Now how is one supposed to react to admittedly anecdotal evidence that falls in line with their worldview so neatly? I’m certainly not going to be inclined to take these ideas (in this case, the whole “easy mode” meme) less seriously after this, and it’s hard to just disregard it even though supposedly that’s the rational thing to do because anecdotal evidence is meaningless right.. At least according to pseuds and contrarians, but pseuds and contrarians do get a bad rap and I think are a lot more valuable than they get credit for so who knows. I will say that confirmation bias, especially when it comes to people who talk about these kinds of things, is a real issue. An issue I don’t want to contribute to, especially as this whole blog does kind of a have a “we want the incel audience” vibe to it. I promise, it’s only partially intentional. So I need to be careful, but I have to say there’s no way I will be able to stop this incident from affecting my view on things. I need to be careful with this entry as well, it’s easy when you’re used to talking about this kind of thing with the sort of people on /r9k/ to forget that not everyone is up to date with the latest internet loser slang.

The thing is, the “ideology” of the incels is uncodified and is also only a splinter of a far far FAR larger ideaspace or subculture anyway. That’s why after literally thousands of articles, youtube videos, news segments or whatever no one actually understands anything at all about any of this shit. Not even the actual fucking incels themselves. Incels are something new because the term has recently become famous, even though I remember it being thrown around in 2014 on /r9k/. There was even a tripfag IncelManlet around that time but he just disappeared one day, press F to pay respects. Incels are a movement, they want to KILL people, and they all share a uniform set of ideas. Incel is just a term for a guy who can’t get laid but would like to, see anecdotal evidence above for why women can’t be incels (or robots, or losers, or nerds, or geeks, or dorks or etc etc forever) ;D. Not in spite of the fact that most of those guys would love for there to be, because of it. Another anecdote to illustrate what I’m talking about perhaps. This friend of mine I’ve mentioned before, we were chatting around the time of the Toronto van attack when the term incel was getting mainstream news coverage about the subject and at some point I said something like “you know I’m an incel right” because I didn’t like the mean spiritedness in his voice while having this conversation. Then there was some surprise, I’m surprised by his surprise because he knows I’m still a virgin and he knows I’m not asexual, and it ends with him saying I’m actually not an incel. Ask people on the internet who self identify as incels on places like /r9k/ or incels.me and they’ll give my definition in most cases (but not all, because there is no codified ideology of incelism it’s really just a collection of a certain type of guy within the larger internet “red pill” scene), which is what I stated above someone who can’t get laid. It’s the most straightforward term ever, celibate involuntarily.

I’m not quite sure what my goal is here, I don’t really have a plan but basically I’ve had a view of this world since around the age of 14 and I feel like a lot of people miss the forest for the trees because they not only pay attention just to the few times this world is brought into contact with our own but also because those who do try to understand it are overwhelmed. They’re overwhelmed by the numerous slang terms and codewords which are always evolving, and they’re overwhelmed by conversations which rely on assumptions and the results of earlier conversations the outsider wasn’t able to experience. You’ve probably heard the expression “start with the greeks” if you’ve asked anyone about reading philosophy. The idea is that you can’t just dip into the works of a more trendy philosopher like Nietzsche or Descartes, because you’d be missing the context of a several thousand year conversation which these works are a continuation of. I’m not comparing the at absolute best two decade long red pill “discussion”, of which early PUAs like Roosh would be the greeks if we stick with the metaphor, to the canon of western philosophy (although plenty of autists would, and there is certainly a large contingent in this red pill world who would jack off the concept of western philosophy despite being the exact types who would be told to start with the greeks) but the metaphor works I think to explain why this world is so impenetrable to normies. You scratch just a little and the whole comparison falls apart, it’s the greatest minds of the aristocracy going over things for generations and a bunch of lower middle class and working class 20-somethings arguing over tiny details while generally agreeing on the same worldview. Apples and oranges, but both are fruit.

That’s what the discussion is, if we go back to this idea of a separate world then incels and pick up artists and MRAs and neoreactionaries and MGTOW and the Alt Right ad infinitum are all various nations and civilisations of this world. Sure, history is nothing but bloodshed and warfare but there are a lot of shared premises. Instead of agriculture, social class, a legal system or warfare you have the 80/20 rule or hypergamy, the sexual marketplace (and the fundamentally different and fixed roles of men and women in that), a rejection of the current social and political order, evolutionary psychology and probably more that I can’t think of off the top of my head. There might be some groups within this world that reject one of these while still following the rest, just like the Russian empire 2.0 (USSR) supposedly holding the goal of achieving a classless society or various hunter gatherer tribes and peoples like the Scythians or the Comanche that weren’t agricultural. It’s a case of being able to break the rules after you understand them. It’s kind of a weak metaphor, but I like to explain things this way because it’s how I think. There are patterns all over the place and I think when people are made aware of these shared patterns they better understand what it is that’s important to focus on, or at least what you want them to focus on. Of course if you stick with thing, there are certain “cultural areas” within both this world and the real world. Certain regions of the world where empires have risen and fallen clearly are more close to one another than groups on opposite sides of the planet who had minimal on no contact. Just how you can see a huge influence from Rome in everything that came after in Europe from Byzantium to the British Empire, or how Buddhism spread to cover quite a distance on both sides of the Himalayas, certain groups are much closer to one another in similarity while others might consider themselves so different people associated with them would be angry about me grouping them all together like this. There clearly is a link between it all though, and I think I’ve finally found a way to explain it so I’m not going to just let it go. I’m aware of the term “manosphere” but I think it’s not broad enough, I’d say the manosphere is like one of those cultural areas in this imaginary world that quite a few groups some of whom are still going strong and others that have completely dispersed are covered by. Think of it like you think of the idea of “The West” when looking at European history. The more I think about this world metaphor the more ways I find it to be applicable actually. Sticking with this idea, just like all civilisations have heroes and leaders most groups in this online world have a few e-celebs associated with them. There are also of course e-celebs in this sphere who aren’t directly associated with specific groups, just like there are heroic figures claimed by multiple nations and peoples. These people are who come to mind immediately if you talk about one of these groups. Most of them are pretty shit individuals so I’m not gonna talk about them, but you probably know or have at least heard of a lot of them.

I think the most helpful thing of all about looking at things this way though, is that I finally might understand my place in all of this after around half a decade. I’ve been heavily exposed to the shared ideas of this “world” and can certainly say I’m part of it but yet I always hesitate to say I’m a part of any of these groups. /r9k/ and the robots are the only group I’ve really stuck with and feel some connection to, but I’ve taken several long breaks from visiting the board once even leaving for over a year. I’ve always just enjoyed looking at the larger picture, which is why I’ve always seen this larger world/ visualised it that way (although only the last couple days have I been fully conscious of it), and so I’ve drifted around and seen things come and go. Anyone else remember true forced loneliness or “neomasculinity”? I’m just a rootless drifter, a people watcher, enjoying watching things play out without my direct involvement. I stick around for a while, and sometimes naturally I get a little too invested like during my /pol/ phase (gazing too long into an abyss..) but I always move on because there’s one thing that separates me from all the other people like me who inhabit this desolate world. I’m too self critical, no matter what that niggling voice is there telling me I’m probably full of shit. I can’t trust a single thought that goes through my head, I can never comfortably make an objective statement. That goes for this blog too, of course. It might all be complete nonsense, just the ramblings of a neurotic mess, you shouldn’t trust a word. This world is like the collective unconscious of young men the world over, and naturally it evolves as the population increases and the backgrounds become more varied. That’s what I mean when I talk about my worldview, the zeitgeist of this other world.

I read Herodotus’ The Histories about a year ago and what I liked about it so much is it was less of a history book and more like a travel guide for the ancient near east. Herodotus was able to explore this world in a time not only of constant change but where anywhere even only a thousand miles from home was completely mysterious. I suppose he had a better understanding than most of the “rules” or prerequisites of civilisation but he was more apart from any specific one than most also. I’m not planning on writing extensively about this stuff, although naturally this blog inhabits this world because my thoughts are influenced by it no matter what. So going back to the unintentional catalyst for this entry (because when I started writing a couple days ago I planned to go in a completely different direction), what does it matter? I’m sure most people like me would just shrug it off as expected, but that’s why they’re also not quite me because I’m always a bit thrown off when something conforms to my worldview. I’m always expecting something around the corner to make me question myself all over again. There have been plenty of times where that has happened, and yet I still consider myself part of this “world”. If the opposite had happened and the guy’s phone was blowing up with messages I’d still be here, but let’s be honest that wouldn’t have happened… because it didn’t happen.

Living up to my shitty blog title

The problem is that I can’t fucking accept my damn role, I know who I am and who I’m meant to be. I already talked about this, I am a loner and I’m always going to be. If I could just accept that I’d be so much happier, and I want to but it’s instinct to strive for otherwise. That’s why I keep getting obsessed with all these people who wander through my life briefly. That’s what they’re doing, that’s how it’s always going to be for me. People passing through, if I really try hard I’ll keep my two close friends but I will very likely never form another lasting relationship with a person again other than that. That’s what me falling for these girls at work is, it’s the desperate grasping of my reptile brain. If I was some thick dick PUA chad who had women throwing themselves at him I wouldn’t care about any of these people most likely. I know it sounds shocking but it’s true, because look how those people are. I’m timid and nice because it’s some kind of strategy my inner nature cooked up to try and push my genes. It’s not in my control, I think I’m nice because I like being nice but I like being nice because my brain dumps positive feelies in order to incentivise this false niceness which doesn’t feel false. I mean seriously, I struggle through smalltalk with these people that’s fucking it. What I do know about them, the opinions they have and the art they like etc it’s all unimpressive or uninteresting and I see myself latching onto whatever it can but frankly it’s reaching. I want to assume command, my rational thinking conscious mind or ego if you will wants to start making the decisions around here. I’m just not eloquent enough to express myself, I have the vocabulary and the ideas are bouncing around in my head as words but I can’t quite put the puzzle pieces together when I want to record this stuff more permanently in ink or on the internet.

I’ve been thinking about what would happen if any of the people I’ve written about were to read this blog, would they be shocked and disgusted? Would they think, what a fucking loser how dare he be attracted to me or think about me like that without me even knowing? Or maybe they can all tell, and it’s all some big joke pretending to act normal around the weirdo. I don’t know what people are saying about me, it’s all women other than me and one other guy who just started so they’re probably gossiping about all kinds of shit, at least that’s what popular knowledge would have me believe. Someone said in a post on r9k the other night that if you work around mostly females and they aren’t shit talking around you, you should be concerned. I know I make them uncomfortable, I know I make everyone uncomfortable. It’s a fucking joke, I understand that it’s evolutionary for us to dislike/ distrust the weak but circling back onto my earlier point can’t we exercise some control over our baser instincts given how we aren’t living in caves anymore. I’m not saying I think I want anyone to give me some succ, I actually don’t feel entitled to sex like a lot of people would claim about incels or whatever I am. I just want people to maybe not resent me or feel weird around me, maybe even make a little more effort in conversation if they can tell I’m having a difficult time. It’s not hard to tell, and I do the same thing when I get customers who I know are a little awkward or nervous. There’s a university not too far from me see, so I occasionally get a few guys who I can tell are a little similar to me. Around the same age, and carry themselves in a way that I can just tell, if that makes sense. They usually come in alone and don’t speak very loud and might have their change ready before coming in so they don’t have to get it out at the counter. I always try my best to make them feel comfortable, again because it gives me the good feelies thinking I might have made life just a little more bearable for a minute for them. It’s really not much to ask for, but almost no one is willing to do it. When they do, I’m so deprived of human warmth I immediately become way too grateful and can’t keep them out of my thoughts. They don’t know this though, or at least I don’t think they do. You’re shunned because you don’t know how to act, which brings me onto the subject of this Wizchan screenshot that really activated my almonds the other day.

It’s all interesting stuff, but the second post is the one that really kind of changed how I think a little. This idea that I and people like me are unable to tap into this secret tongue, which I suppose is a combination of body language and the right kind of eye contact and tone of voice and a bunch of other things, just makes so much sense to me. It also builds upon this idea that has always kind of fascinated me, and which I kind of got close to talking about before in my “thinking about thinking about things” entry. This conflict between our nature and our “spirit” I suppose. I don’t know, spirit might not be the right word here maybe intellect or higher being I can’t think of any one word that expresses what I want to without being potentially misleading. I think it’s clear what I’m trying to get at though, hopefully. I mean it’s not something that only I think about, clearly this question has been asked since we’ve been capable of asking it. We know that something separates us from all the other animals on the planet, but yet we know we are still alike also. Intelligence works maybe, but that’s another tricky word because it has a few different ways of being used so there’s still potential confusion. In some cases it’s used to describe the general characteristic which we think separates us from the rest of the animals (like how we say we’re looking for “intelligent life” on other planets) but often it’s also used interchangeably with cleverness which is a completely different thing. That confusion is what was blocking my progress on the issue I talked about in “thinking about thinking about things” actually, because sure being thoughtful or engaging abstract ideas is what we mean by that first definition of intelligence so it’s understandable that I and I’m sure plenty others assume that more of that is “more” intelligence but it’s this other use of the word which was getting me stuck. You convince yourself you’re some misunderstood genius, when in reality you can be a total idiot but just very thoughtful, and all because of this quirk of the English language. That’s what the “smart but lazy” thing is, ultimately. Language is both our liberator and our jailer, but this is again not some great insight plenty of people have talked about it.

Anyway, I’m really all over the place here I’ll try to get back on course a little. You might remember me ending that “thinking about thinking about things” post by saying that what ultimately links people like me together isn’t social alienation or introversion or lack of interest from women, although those are of course often things we have in common, but that we both spend so much more time thinking about things than normal and respect others who do. I also said that this is why those of us who are like this but lack self awareness gravitate to this idea that is right now best represented by the NPC meme but before in terms like sheeple, etc. Well I basically think that there’s kind of a spectrum (not the autism spectrum, although it is funny that autism and autist are terms so commonly thrown around in places we congregate, like r9k) which kind of covers this nature/ reptile brain aspect of humanity and this “intelligence”, for lack of a better term. I don’t think it’s new, like I said it’s something that I think is very common to think about. See, when I was in my /pol/ phase (not that I’ve put those ideas behind me, I’m still influenced by my time there) Evola was brought up a lot. He was a thinker of the Traditionalist School who were apparently a group that believed in this idea called the perennial philosophy. I never read anything from him, maybe I will one day in fact I plan to, but from what I understand the idea of the perennial philosophy is that all the major religions and belief systems found the world over are all trying to get at the same fundamental Truth. So, maybe I’m completely off here but it seems to me that in order to get an understanding of this Truth, one should look at what these religions share in common and discard the rest. Well, something that stands out immediately is how seemingly independently these religious orders have in one way or another arrived at a kind of asceticism. Whether it’s drug and alcohol abstinence or fasting or more extreme things like buddhist monks who meditate in extreme climates or the Japanese monks who mummied themselves while still alive by deliberately dehydrating themselves. Of course it’s the Japanese who took things to the absolute extreme, they really do as a people embody this end of the spectrum I’ve imagined, which might be why so many people like me have this obsession with japan and Japanese culture actually now I think about it but I can’t get sidetracked again now. The idea is always that these kind of activities bring you closer to God/ Enlightenment/ Truth/ whatever, and really what they all are is you deliberately going against your nature or instinct to indulge. The seven deadly sins are all instinctive/ animal associated behaviour. Perhaps that the idea of man as fallen, common in Christianity is getting at the same thing. Our intelligence, this thing that separates us from animals if unrestricted by our nature is God. So we really do get closer to it, the more we choose not to indulge.

I don’t know, maybe I sound like a total idiot and none of this makes any sense. I’m always so self doubting, it’s hard to commit to anything without feeling like a fraud. I’m not sure anyone is even capable of an original thought nowadays, we’re so bombarded with information it’s probably just us riffing on something we heard or read and thought we’d forgotten about. I think what people call the crabs in a bucket mentality of 4chan doesn’t help someone like me either. They say that during a Triumph in ancient Rome, which was this parade celebrating a major victory, the general leading the procession would have a slave who would stand right behind him and whisper “Memento mori” in his ear over and over. That translates roughly to “remember you are mortal” I think, and in moderation I think 4chan has the same effect. Unlike basically any other major forum or social media platform or whatever which is basically a complete fucking hugbox in comparison you actually get called out on your shit and I think that’s healthy. Most of the users though, especially in the /pol9k/ sphere of the site which doesn’t just mean those two boards but anywhere else that group predominates, aren’t casual users at all they’re there for several hours a day. After so much time around it does become less of a positive and more like the crabs in a bucket, and you can kind of tell who is and who isn’t steeped in this after a while. You really can sense this “newfag”, or nowadays I guess people will call you reddit meaning the same thing, aura from certain posters. I think I have more to say though, going back to that wizchan screenshot. Maybe the opposite end of the spectrum from the ascetic detached thoughtful end are the normalfags, the people who just are tuned in to this secret tongue.

I also have something to say in regards to that third post on there, the one at the bottom which talks about intuition and instinct. See his initial response was quite different from mine, an equally fascinating way of looking at this though. Whereas I kind of think that maybe it is just instinctual for people to tap into this secret tongue, and that being people who are more on the detached/ unbound end of this spectrum I’ve imagined we can’t tap into it. He says it’s something learned, and the reason we can’t tap into it is I guess because we never went through that learning process. In his view the normalfags actually agree with me as it being instinct, but they believe that it’s universal and anyone can tap into it unlike me. It’s probably because there are normalfags who suffer from social anxiety and things like that, I mean every youtube e-celeb seems to have it and every soundcloud rapper and every millennial normalfag with a platform anywhere really. It’s more common than fucking toxoplasmosis at this point, but these people still manage to have friends and romantic relationships and careers so naturally to incels and robots that’s all a little suspect. I’m not going to get into that issue right now though, perhaps another time. The point is that for those people bee urself does kind of work, and so it’s just assumed it must work for all people with “social anxiety” which is a term I think we should just kill off because as I’ve explained it clearly is used to describe two groups of people at once and that’s having a negative effect. Once again with the tricky nature of language. So you’re shunned for not being able to communicate using this secret tongue, you feel “off” to people and therefore you never have any opportunity to get better. If we’re sticking with that anon’s metaphor of learning the piano, you won’t ever be able to become a maestro if you don’t start learning from a very young age, but you can still learn to play competently as an adult. What do you do though if no music teacher will do lessons with you? I think that some of us are just meant to be alone, but even though we might be less in touch with out beast nature it is ultimately still there and it roars at us in hunger constantly.

I don’t know what I’m talking about, I just had to loosen the tap and let this stuff out it’s not a cohesive piece of work. This isn’t a thesis or an academic paper, and yes I’m doing that cowardly thing people do who want to hide from real criticism by saying “I’m just throwing ideas around man, don’t take me seriously”, it’s just what’s been on my mind. I kind of had to get it all out, I rushed my last entry because I felt I was taking too long between updating. I think I’ve got it all out of my system, I hope this is interesting or entertaining. I’ve been thinking about this blog itself some more too, I’ve finally decided what I want to do. You probably already have heard of the album ITAOTS (I know I’m an entry level /mu/ hipster faggot, pls no bully), well after it was done the main guy behind the project Jeff Magnum never recorded again as far as I’m aware. He knew when he was done, he knew that record would be the peak of his artistic career. Well, one day I suppose I’ll be done with this. Elliot Rodger left behind his “manifesto” before he went on his shooting, My Twisted World (I’ve both read through it myself and listened to a reading, if you haven’t already it’s worth at least a read) and I understand exactly why he did. It’s about having some control over how you’re remembered, see it was called a manifesto but it was more of an autobiography and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t actually referred to as a manifesto in the document itself. I’m aware of plenty of normies who actually read through the thing, and pretty much every last one of them had some sympathy after, but the many more who only heard what was said about him on the news or in a few short interviews with his family tended not to. If you read it you get an idea of his thoughts and beliefs and how they evolved, a rundown of all the important and meaningful events in his life and a real sense of closeness/ humanity. It’s hard to hate anyone you know so intimately. I don’t give a shit about the normalfucks he killed so that wouldn’t bother me anyway, but of course for most people that’s an issue, without an understanding of the guy they hate him.

In a way Elliot still lives on through MTW, I mean I remember there was a weekend a couple of years ago where some anon had found like 300 never before released photos of him throughout his life and was releasing them slowly over multiple threads. Well at one point I was suddenly reminded, this guy is dead. Not only is he dead, I’ve only ever known of him after his death. Yet I feel like he was part of my life, I know I’m not the only one what about that mullato guy who’s built a whole youtube channel on talking about Elliot. I’m not saying I plan to commit a mass shooting, there are no guns here. But one day when I finally feel like I’ve finished. When I feel that this blog taken as a whole truly represents who I am and was, I’ll switch it from most recent at the top to the reverse and be done. Or maybe I’ll do nothing of the sort and decide to keep going forever, or maybe within a year I’ll stop getting any visitors and give up, but I have this little romantic vision right now and if I stick to it that’d be cool. I find it so hard to talk to people you know. If everything is all in one place, all my concerns about context and being taken the wrong way will be gone. People have this tendency to ascribe a motive for something you do because it happened recently, and they miss the bigger picture. For example in Elliot’s case if we didn’t have MTW but just some events we knew of, we might think that that night when those guys broke his ankle and robbed him at a party was what made him decide to perform a shooting. It might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, but with My Twisted World we got a detailed description of all the other straws that didn’t. It’s only with this knowledge, that at last we can understand him. Of course by the time I feel finished I imagine this entire thing will be a lot more daunting and all over the place, because I’m not streamlining at all or in a rush to get it all out, but it should provide a complete picture. How I think about things, how I got to be the person I am, etc. Of course it’s totally narcissistic to assume anyone will give enough of a shit to read everything I publish, but I would do it for someone I found interesting or engaging and I think I can be those things to some people. So that’s the plan, maybe.

Finding my mind

I’m trying this for the third time because my mind is all over the place and I’m tired as shit. I think I’ll just try and say what’s bothering me/ been on my mind lately and not try to tie it all together anything tricky like that.

Firstly, yesterday (for me right now, but by the time I publish this probably not) was the first day I got no visitors. I mean technically I must have because I had someone “like” one of my posts but they must have come through the referrer thing which means they don’t show on my stats page as a unique visitor. It’s more of a symbolic thing, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t disheartening, because one of the main reasons I do this is so it will be seen and appreciated by people. I am fully aware of my own narcissism here, but it’s ok to be as long as you’re self aware right? I said either in my introductory post or the initial thread on /r9k/ that if no one was interested and I couldn’t get anyone to read I’d give up. It’s clear to me things are more complicated than that now. I do have a couple of you who are reading every upload and I really am glad you’ve stuck around and enjoy these, although it’d be nice if I knew your thoughts beyond that. Is it sick fascination, or do you find what I have to say relatable, or do I make you think? It’s such a huge drop though, because in those initial first few days I got a completely unexpected amount of people reading and by the end of that first week most were gone as I expected but there were still a good seven or eight who seemed to be interested and checking back. What I’m trying to say is I wouldn’t want to give up now that there is a very small group seemingly looking forward to what I post next, I don’t like leaving people hanging, but I am kind of disappointed that this group is so very small now. I know how I sound, but that is how I feel whether I like it or not. It’s just harder to find that initial enthusiasm I had in the first few weeks, because in the first few weeks I had three times as many regular visitors after that initial burst died down, or at least I thought and if they got bored everyone will inevitably. I was more than happy with that number, I want a pretty small audience but just large enough that if one or two get bored that’s not the end. Having only one or two (or maybe three right now, I can’t exactly tell) is a really precarious place because once you’re gone it’s a fucking wrap. This isn’t an attempt to emotionally blackmail anyone in to staying, I just realised how that sounded. The day this is no longer interesting you should stop visiting, and not feel bad about it at all.

It’s not a huge deal, I am getting people finding me from time to time thanks to that referrer thing and I think one of the current regulars was though there. So I’m probably not as close to oblivion as I convinced myself, if it hasn’t become clear yet I can get into these negative thought spirals really easily. It’s seeing the situation written down and being able to view it from a third person perspective that I’m finding really helpful for breaking out of them actually. Which is why I really don’t want to lose this, I really am finding it very therapeutic to have an outlet and know someone is hearing me out in full. I fully appreciate that if I want more of an audience I have to give people what they want (whatever that is, it ain’t this) but I just want people to love me unconditionally for who I am because I’m an entitled cunt so I will continue down this doomed path instead. Again, if you’re self aware it’s ok. Last thing on this subject, the “likes” system bugs the absolute shit out of me. It’s perhaps a benefit in some way I don’t understand right now, but they just feel completely meaningless. The option to “like” a post is (at least in the default layout) at the top so you don’t even need to scroll through what I wrote never mind actually read it. I know that’s happened as well because on a couple of occasions all my posts have been liked by one person in way less time than it’d take to read them all. Again maybe there’s some benefit and they’re doing me a favour like perhaps it’s more likely to be seen idk, but I don’t know that so it just cheapens all the other “likes” I’ve received. Did these people go on to read every post, or had they already? I’m not sure, the whole stats page is set up in a way that makes it difficult to tell because it doesn’t count all visitors. I can tell one thing though, the two people who I know keep coming back don’t ever feel the need to “like” my posts, and frankly their returning says far more than any “like” ever could. The only comment I ever got, which if it wasn’t from one of you was still from one of the original visitors who found me through the thread, again meant far more and encouraged me to continue far more than any “like” possibly could. Maybe it’s an imageboard/ chan background that’s the reason I feel this way and the reason my real niggas who I’m pretty sure are from that thread also don’t “like” things. There’s no upvote, thumbs up/ down or any other equally gay system on 4chan, the closest thing is maybe reaction images but even those convey far more than any of the usual generic positive symbols that are easily exploited. You know with a reaction image the guy read what you have to say.

Ok, second thing was more of a big deal when I started this two nights ago (I know I’m really getting lazy with this) and also now there’s some distance my thoughts have changed. There are two new people at work, I’m sure I’ve mentioned it. So, naturally given how I’m a completely desperate loner it took almost no time for me to start seeing one of them in “that way”, the female one of course I haven’t gone prison gay yet. I know, I really do know how unbelievable it is that I’ve been at this place for just under a year and this has happened three times, it’s beyond pathetic. What can I say, my standards are basically just be pretty and be nice to me so now I’m finally out of my NEET cave I’m coming into contact with plenty of people who fit that description. Anyway I decided to check her social media the other night while bored, something I’m worryingly becoming way more comfortable doing lately, and she has a boyfriend. My immediate reaction was surprising even to myself given how unsurprising the information was, I took it quite badly. I’m over it now, in fact I’m pretty relieved as this should hopefully prevent me from developing serious oneitis but I’ve mentioned before that there’s this hope you live with when you have oneitis and I think the real sting is always that being taken away. Because let’s be honest, anyone who’s been in a similar situation knows they’re never going to make a move or they already would have and the girl never will. So there’s only one way the thing ends, which is as it always does. That hope though, that fantasy you know is completely unfounded that she’ll just confess her love for you one day or something, is enough to work with. In fact, it’s actually quite nice in a way like waiting for a package from amazon. One day life will just sort itself out and all my problems will be fixed by other people. So, I think looking back I got so upset (I wasn’t yelling out loud or banging things like an autist, I just mean internally) because I was starting to get that feeling again and it was prematurely killed in the womb. I got over it pretty quickly though, the very next morning I woke up and felt pretty good and I’ve been in a generally good mood since even though I had to do an extra day at work. Not manic either, not all of the time anyway, just generally positive vibes. I think I’ve already said this somewhere but, I feel like I just got out of a prison sentence but it’s one of those comfy Scandinavian prisons where you can play videogames all day. I feel like there’s more I could say about this, but I’m trying to speed up a bit because I’ve been posting way less frequently the last couple weeks. I’ve just been working a lot more, when I started this it was way less busy and I had a couple of two day weeks. I can write more in an hour at home than I will in an entire day at work.

Third and final thing is less related to any event or ongoing issue and more just a general idea I’ve been having. I’m not sure what sparked it, actually that’s not true it’s these new co-workers. I find them a little easier to talk to and be comfortable around, not much easier I’m still incredibly awkward but it’s not like with the ones who were there when I first started. I’ve got more comfortable around them having to work with them for a year, it’s not like at the start where I was more timid than someone with AvPD (maybe I actually have that but I’m not going to self diagnose because people who do that are insufferable) but it’s still really bad sometimes. Whereas these new people I’m already as comfortable around if not slightly more so than with the original crew. So I was thinking about it, and it reminded me of something I was wondering months ago about how I am actually getting a little better with people, which was why I deliberately looked for a customer facing job, but it’s only new people. I’m way more confident now, well not way more but certainly more so than before I started, but not with people I have already gotten to know. Basically, and I’ve always known this really but these recent things made me very conscious of it, I strive to maintain the first impression I make with someone. I don’t know why, but I’d find it so much harder to speak louder or gesture more or just be open with one of the people who’ve already decided I’m shy or quiet etc. than with some stranger I was meeting for the first time. Realising this, I see myself constantly following it throughout my life. Once someone sees me in a certain way I find the idea of going away from that terrifying, and I don’t know why because it sounds so ridiculous reading it back. This is with people who in many cases don’t give a shit, or would prefer me to be more confident and talkative.

I wrote something down on the back of a receipt because I thought it sounded clever at the time “We embrace the assumptions people have about us, and become who we are”, I don’t remember how I made the jump from this being just a personal problem to something universally applicable but it made sense to me at the time. Maybe this is relatable, I really do wonder now if this is just a problem for me or if it’s more common. It’s not just a personal thing either, I have slowly embraced many of the stereotypes about shut ins/ hikikomori even if originally I wouldn’t have wanted to. I was never a weeb in school, or even a casual anime fan despite the opportunity being there. I mean there was an anime/ manga club, but it’s only the last couple years so since I’ve turned 19 that I really got into it at all. I just wasn’t interested, in fact I hated those kids and I thought it was faggy shit. I was quite into western comic books though back then, luckily I seemed to jump ship on that interest just as it totally went to shit. I listen to a lot of metal, I sometimes piss in bottles, I almost never actually go outside aside from work, I’m into weird nazi mysticism, I’m racist and honestly the term is overused but if you called me a misogynist it’d be fair. I could go on but you get the picture, I’ve very slowly crept closer and closer to the basement dweller NEET caricature. Luckily I’m not fat or ugly and I stopped being a NEET, but still in many other ways. I’ve always done this, I don’t know whether it’s fear of being considered a fraud or what it could be. So, there is something to the idea of beeing urself because I’m maintaining a bunch of slightly different selves with all the different people I know and none of them are quite me. Even in this blog it’s not a completely accurate representation of who I am, but more because of the limitations of the medium rather than me hiding or acting a certain way. Ah I remember now, I was thinking of the idea of “flanderization”, which is this weird phenomenon in television. Basically a character, usually a secondary or less important character but I can think of one example where it’s not (Bazinga!), is introduced as fairly well rounded with some odd traits and eventually those traits become more and more pronounced and after long enough the two are basically completely different people. So, I’ve gone through an irl flanderization almost. It’s not a perfect fit, it’s been much more natural and slow me becoming the person I am today, but television and film is always hyper real. I’ve been aware of the fedora wearing daki clutching stereotype for as long as it’s been going around, before I had even hit puberty or really got into video games. Yet I always kind of felt like something about that spoke to me, and while I avoided anime and some of the other more superficial trappings associated with such a person for a time I think I knew I’d end up like this. When I was a little kid, I idolised the loner and I had a romanticised view of shut ins/ omega males/ hikkis.

I feel like I have more to say, but I have to go to work again soon and I just want to get this out today it’s been long enough. I’m still here, still blasting Loveless erry day, still keeping it D R E, still not loving police etc etc. I’ve got plans, finishing that Cure project, and there’s this Wizchan screenshot I’ve been thinking about a lot I think I want to talk about.

Thinking about thinking about things

I always hesitate to give the spur or catalyst for one of my internal monologues when trying to share these thoughts I have with someone. Not that I get much opportunity to do so, I’m not comfortable enough around most of the people I know to want to tell them what’s on my mind. When I do though I’ve learned it’s best not to tell them about whatever it is that got you started on this train of thought. Oftentimes it’s something trivial but they’ll latch onto it and it’ll become impossible to stay on point. I understand that a conversation is not a lecture and you’re going to drift, but this is before you can even get into the ideas you have. I want things to go in an unexpected direction, I want the opinions of other people. I don’t want to be told “Why are you thinking so much about X?” Well perhaps not those exact words except for one which is absolutely used frustratingly often, about. It bothers me so much because it devalues my ideas, no longer are they original thoughts but merely a response to or worse a regurgitation of what was presented by another person’s art or action. If I tell them how I feel about this, about that word in particular and everything it communicates to me I’m told I’m overthinking something trivial again. I’m told that but yet continue to not be taken seriously. I’m told that but they continue to focus on whatever silly thing it was that got me thinking in the first place rather than the actual thoughts I’m trying to share and have a conversation about. This is why I believe there’s no such thing as overthinking. Just because the person isn’t intelligent enough toto consciously imply everything they do with each word they utter doesn’t mean the language doesn’t reveal things if you pay close attention. So with that out of the way here’s what got me thinking recently.

I was at work as I’m sure most of these will start and this guy and his girlfriend came in. Now I honestly don’t mean this insultingly but he was an entirely unremarkable man. Wearing a graphic t-shirt and a denim jacket, soft spoken and looking ever so slightly uncomfortable. He was exactly who I picture in my head when you say “man” or “guy” other than perhaps his height. He was rather short, in fact the girl was taller than him but she did have heeled boots. Speaking of her, she was essentially his female equivalent. Pretty but not especially so, dressed in a way that didn’t stand out at all (although it would have shocked people a century ago) and wearing minimal but still very noticeable makeup. What I’m saying is that they were the very definition of generic, sure if you get to know them they might prove to be a fascinating and unique pair but given their gormless expressions and what I could pick up form their conversation I doubt it. I don’t like this new NPC meme because I think it’s just the most recent expression of the modern phenomenon satirised in the image above this paragraph, however I feel like if you ran around a street corner fast enough it’d be people like this you’d catch rendering in. So after I’d processed all that for a second I remember my first thought being that these two in this moment were perfect for each other. In this moment specifically that is the key here. As she looked up from her phone to answer his question about what they should get “yeah babe, whatever” and he shuffled up to the counter to pay, that’s what I thought. Outside of that it’s a void, I have no idea how a relationship like this begins or ends, I just cannot visualise it. I can’t picture this relationship progressing into parenthood or marriage when she clearly resents him (you’d know what I meant if you heard her tone of voice and saw her expression when speaking to him) and I can’t imagine how they ever got together in the first place when he’s such a fucking beta male. I really hate that term, I find it so vulgar and I’ve always avoided referring to guys that way even in anonymous 4chan posts because of how ugly it is to me, but this guy was the archetypal beta male and I’d be dishonest if I didn’t say what I truly thought at the time.

I suppose it says more about me than it does about them. I don’t know a thing about these people and I’m judging them completely based on a very brief encounter. I just can’t understand it though. There’s this real contradiction in my head in that what I’m seeing when they’re there in front of me makes so much sense but yet no sense at all. This isn’t that unusual for me either, I get a similar feeling from time to time in regards to completely different things. Things that are completely normal for many people, which is why I don’t find them unusual but I haven’t personally experienced which is why I find it so hard to understand how they happen in the first place. I’m doing a really bad job of explaining this so I’m going to try giving an example here. Think of how career criminals are represented in films (or in pop culture/ major Hollywood productions at least), they’re these jovial or suave characters. Beautiful intelligent women who can pull the wool over any man’s eyes and charming smooth talking men who can get out of any fix. When you get thinking though, it doesn’t make any sense that someone like that would end up with such a life for a number of reasons. People who look like models and movie stars can become models and movie stars and be making far more money without the risk factor of robbing places and other criminal activity. I mean look at actual real life famous gangsters, they’re all busted up middle aged men who grew up in poor/ lower class areas and rose up through petty crime and local violence. It makes people uncomfortable to say this but beauty is an asset just like wealth or intelligence and it concentrates upwards socially. I could go on but this is a complete tangent, my point is that when you try to imagine how these kinds of people in these films ended up where and as they are you can’t. The whole situation is so absurd and it takes you out of the film entirely. So that feeling is what I get, except without good reason like in the case of the film. That feeling of it not making sense is there but at the same time in these other cases it also makes perfect sense… I don’t think I’ll ever be able to properly share what this situation is like with someone unless they’ve experienced it themselves and just know what I’m talking about. I don’t have the vocabulary to properly express myself here and it’s really frustrating.

This feeling I have though is very unpleasant, it really worsens my usual sense of detachment and separateness from society. To most people normal things just are. They don’t seem to think about how, they don’t put any thought into trivial things it appears. In fact it annoys them when you do or they believe you do as I talked about in the beginning. Life just happens and they never really put much thought into it, you could even say it’s like they’re following a prewritten program. In fact that’s probably in part the reason everything just happens so smoothly for them, the more you think about something the more complicated you realise it is and the more daunting it seems. I don’t seem to have a choice though, it really does seem like ignorance is bliss. I’m reminded of this one time, I was watching a video on youtube that was titled something like “I don’t have any friends” or “I’ve never had any friends”, you might find it if you care to look but there’s probably a bunch of very similarly titled videos so it’ll be like a needle in a haystack. Anyway after dishonestly whinging about his lonely existence and “lack of meaningful relationships” for a while he said something like at least he had his girlfriend to keep him company without blinking and then kept on with the video. That’s information about him that completely changes the entire video, should cause any sane person to re-evaluate everything he just said, but he didn’t even fucking blink. I mean call me crazy but surely a romantic relationship is also supposed to be meaningful, if anything more so if you want to perhaps raise a fucking child with this person one day. Apparently not though, I hear people talk about their bfs/ gfs like a meal or an item of clothing or something completely boring and mundane. I’m focusing in quite a lot on this one thing because it’s obviously something I care about being a khv but it’s the same in other areas of their life. People talk about doing drugs or going to parties or whatever normalfag shit they enjoy doing and then wonder why I can’t relate to them. This is including people that know me and know I live a completely different life, and that used to be much more like me. It’s like everyone was able to transition into adult life completely seamlessly and without instruction and I don’t know what I’m even talking about anymore.

I’ve stopped making sense, I don’t want to put off finishing this entry another day though. I think what I’m trying to say is that the NPC thing is a really tempting way to look at the world and it helps a lot to cope with the fact that so often everyone around you can appear totally soulless, but you should be careful because maybe they’re right and you’re just a faggot thinking about pointless shit while everyone else is busy getting laid and doing fun shit. I mentioned earlier something about putting thought into trivial things, and that’s always been a lens I’ve used to judge people, I’ve always personally felt that putting great thought into trivial things was a sign of intelligence. I don’t think I was even entirely aware of this, I know I say this a lot but it was probably not something I was completely conscious of but was just going on under the surface. I think a lot of people like me have a similar thing, in fact I think that’s what binds us together more than anything else. Robots/ incels whatever term you want to use have no other trait quite as unifying. You have short and tall, ugly and handsome, overweight and skinny, rich and poor, and even both clever and stupid ones, but we all seem to spend way too much time thinking about everything. I realise now that I’m am conscious of this that it isn’t necessarily a sign of intelligence after all but rather a sign of someone like me. I don’t know if I’m intelligent, I often feel like a total fool and to be honest I’m a fucking dropout working a dead end job too, but I have so much to say I can’t be that stupid can I?

Anyway, I’m done for tonight I’m not working for the next four days so I’m going to stay up late drinking and listening to Dead Meadow. I know there are two or three regulars who are actually checking every couple days for new posts so hopefully this is another satisfactory read. I’ve started writing some notes for my post about The Cure so maybe that one’ll be next.

Riding a train of thought

I don’t do interesting things, I don’t know interesting people. In fact, interesting people tend to resent me, which is what I want to talk about. I’m starting to feel that if people don’t either respect or like you, then they resent you. There isn’t a middle ground, people who are just tolerated or invisible, no I assumed this was the case my whole life but I’m really not seeing any actual examples of it. I could be completely wrong, I always hesitate to say any new opinion or insight of mine is categorically true because I so often will change my mind again, but it’s starting to feel like this is how things really are. The more I think about it, the more anecdotes I’m reminded of, the more it all seems to make sense to me.

I sent that message, saying “Why did you message me?” to phone girl, and of course there was no response. I don’t regret sending it, it was what I wanted to do and now I can move on I think. I’m thinking about other things, my mind is wandering again. The only real concern was it somehow affecting my job, but being realistic that isn’t going to happen. The situation is wrapped up in a box and put away again now, I can move on to being sad about something else. My feelings on the whole thing are of course way more negative now, but I’ve had relationships with other friends/ acquaintances that ended worse than this. I’ve been thinking though, over the last few days when obsessing over this I was constantly trying to read her mind. What mattered to me most was understanding the motivation, why would you just message someone so out of the blue and then ignore them? I had all these absurd ideas, and thinking back on it I realised I was ascribing to her attitudes and ways of thinking about people that I never have had myself. I do it all the time too, I’m probably not the only one I imagine it’s quite common. We think of all these reasons people might do something but such a reason would never motivate us. So I get to thinking, maybe it’s just disdain. You don’t ignore someone you’re indifferent to you ignore someone you have disdain for, someone you want to go away. Ignoring someone is, contrary to popular belief, not a cowardly way of not dealing with the situation but an active declaration. It means “leave me alone, I don’t even want to waste the effort of saying that to you properly”, it’s aggressive. I realised this when I stopped trying to think about why, and started thinking about when. When I’ve ignored people in the past, whether it be giving my parents the silent treatment as a little kid after not getting my way or more recently ignoring a customer still trying to talk to me after attempting to short change me moments before. There are plenty more examples, but ultimately they always meant “fuck you”. Of course that doesn’t necessarily mean you resent the person, I didn’t resent my parents as a little kid I was just throwing a tantrum. If there’s no history of warmth or empathy from someone though, well then I think it’s safe to assume they probably have no respect for you. After all, they’re actively disrespecting you.

So I then got to thinking why do so many people seem to resent me and losers, or whatever you want to call people like me, in general. Because I really have done nothing wrong, nothing to offend or harm anyone at all. I’m timid, meek even, around most people. I do honestly think I’m a truly nice person, I’ve gone into my reasoning slightly before on this blog but I have more to say about the subject like I do on everything. Last night there was a thread on r9k, somehow someone thought of another angle to take on the whole “nice guys finish last” meme. It said something along the lines of “why do women hate nice guys”. I don’t need to talk about this for too long, we’ve all heard everything this conversation has to offer in a hundred different ways. It’s clear to me that almost everyone on both sides of this issue, if you can even call it that, is painfully lacking any self awareness. The one side won’t accept that it’s not being nice that’s a turn off it’s the lack of confidence as there are plenty of “Chad” types who are pretty nice people, the other will lie that women don’t find thugs/ criminals and scum in general attractive. Do I need to bring up the old chestnut about rape being the most common female sexual fantasy? For some unknown reason though I picked up on something I never have before in a certain post, the post itself was pretty standard but it gave me this eureka moment.

See, it’s been staring me in the face for literally years through comments just like this one but I haven’t been able to put two and two together. I suppose it goes to show that the hardest truths really need to be beaten into you repeatedly. See, the implicit message behind this is that being meek and cowardly is deserving of scorn or hate, as the OP was asking why he is hated remember not why he can’t get laid. You can say I’m reading too much into a shitpost, but as far as I’m concerned you can’t read too much into anything someone says. The implication that being cowardly and meek is a reason people don’t respect you I can grasp, that’s not new to me I’ve understood it for a long time. People respect strength and confidence of course, both men and women. I’m not and haven’t ever been angry about women sleeping with assholes, because I understood this, unlike a lot of incels. It’s amusing to me when I see that narrative play out in real time if anything, there’s this one couple who sometimes come through the shop that fit this perfectly. The woman is maybe late 20s, always dressed modestly and is really polite. She’s pretty and thin and demure, the ideal partner for men the world over. She often comes in to the shop alone, with her baby in a pram. The boyfriend/ husband is sometimes there sometimes not, he’s often wearing a wife beater and ripped jeans and has greased back hair and a bunch of faggy tattoos. I wish I was kidding this guy is like a fucking cartoon character, he talks to her like shit and always has this pissed off expression on his face. I wonder why she’s always wearing long sleeves, even in the middle of summer. Anyway, I don’t care if people don’t respect me because I understand I haven’t done anything to earn it. What’s new though, is that if I’m not respected I’m resented. This is new, this really changes how I analyse everything the people around me say and do. Because I can tell when people don’t like me I’m not an idiot and like I said I know I don’t command respect. I thought I was invisible, you’ll hear people like me talk about it all the time. How they feel ignored, left out of life. Elliot talked about it in his final video. Did he understand that it was deliberate? I don’t think so because he said he felt it was unfair, like being ignored was some force of nature not an active decision made regarding him. Either I’m an idiot who’s just catching up to something blatantly obvious or I’ve hit on something life changing. I really had to think about this, so I went over all the regular customers we get at the shop. There isn’t one who I don’t think something about, sure most of them aren’t on my mind at all outside of when I have to interact with them but still I have an opinion. Every single one without exception I either like and am happy to see, or dislike and wish they wouldn’t be there. There’s no one I’m indifferent to, not one whose presence doesn’t affect me. So, why would I assume that other people are any different? Like I said earlier that never gets you anywhere.

Look at how people treat the homeless, a group of people who fascinate me in many ways. You see the way most people react to them when they ask for money, it’s not just no I haven’t got the time often people are outright rude to them. More often though, they will simply ignore them which as I’ve demonstrated I think is itself a purposefully offensive act. It’s true, look at how they ignore, they will often have this expression like they just walked past an open sewer. I’ve been with people, walking together in friendly conversation and seen their expression turn so suddenly when they get asked for some spare change by a homeless guy. It’s quite something, and you know what it reminds me of most. It reminds me of how women behave when approached by someone they find to be unsuitable or not “in their league”. Not that I’ve ever cold approached women myself, but I’ve seen it happen in person on a few rare occasions and the expression is almost the exact same. Also there are plenty of tales I’ve heard which follow a similar pattern, sure people go on the internet and tell lies all the time I probably shouldn’t use that as evidence for anything, but it does fit the description of what I’ve seen myself fairly accurately. Anyway, both cases show yet again this duality I’m talking about. It’s impossible not to see it everywhere really, if they don’t like you then they hate you. I actually try to be nice to homeless people, most of the ones I’ve interacted with were quite endearing characters, most days I’ll give my tips away to whichever one is outside the shop after I close up. There are a few regulars, and they’re always friendly with me other than one who I’ll admit I quite dislike. Not to beat a dead horse but this further goes along with my point, all the ones I like I actively try to help (in a small way admittedly but more than most people, I’ve probably given quite a significant sum away in total over the last year when you add it up) and then I find myself pocketing the money when the asshole one is around. I’m not sure why I find it so easy to like the homeless when so many people find them repulsive. It’s funny because I have this weird recurring daydream where I’m trying to kill them. Of course I’d never do something like that please, but I remember this post I saw years ago on 4chan somewhere, I don’t remember which board. The OP talked about how he tried to kill hobos in his local area. He said he would take cheap bottles of vodka and after drinking the contents he’d refill them with methanol and leave them around bins. You’d actually only need to half fill the bottles, because that would easily be enough to kill a person and a half empty bottle of vodka is way less suspicious. A drunk hobo stumbling around at night isn’t gonna care if someone already drank out of it a little. I don’t know why, but sometimes I think about myself doing something like that. I highly doubt the guy actually did anything like that either, it was just edgy humour but for whatever reason the imagery of the whole thing has stuck with me. If I told anyone about these thoughts maybe I’d be seen as a monster, but they’re the ones who actually despise these homeless people and they probably hate me too.

These kinds of thoughts aren’t going through my head most of the time, usually I’m fairly pensive or even timid, but then sometimes this feeling of misanthropy comes over me. Violent daydreams/ intrusive thoughts are common when in this state, but not always a feature. I am a lot more antagonistic but honestly the feeling is kind of liberating for me. It’s almost like I’m a different person, the music I want to listen to is different, and my opinions about people change. Not drastically, I don’t go from liking people to the reverse this doesn’t counter my earlier point. It’s more like I’ll go from not liking someone or what they did but being charitable and understanding and then if I’m reminded of it later I’m thinking I got taken for a fool and should have kicked the shit out of them. I never would assault someone just because I’ve only been in a few fights in my entire life and I’d probably get beaten up in most cases but I have made impulsive decisions while in this state before. Including a few times at work getting kind of angry at stupid customers and berating them. Nothing excessive, I’ve never sworn or shouted at a customer but sternly told them off (I sound like a schoolteacher..) or asked them why they did something stupid. They never say anything back either, that’s something I’ve began to notice over the last year and half or so. I’m a skinny soft boy, I haven’t even taken a punch since I was maybe 12 or 13, but when I get visibly angry people get intimidated now. Maybe it’s my height, or my dead eyed expression idk. When this feeling hits me in public, which is uncommon but since I’ve got the job and am around normalfags a lot more has started to be less so, I’m also more confident. People don’t need to ask me to repeat myself because I speak louder, I have less trouble with holding eye contact. I also get a different vibe from the people around me too, like usually I can tell people are uncomfortable when interacting with me. It’s like they’re forced to have a conversation with someone with Down’s Syndrome and are just desperate to end the encounter in a polite way. Then when I’m like this I feel like people actually enjoy being around me. I can’t control it though, I watched it fade out in real time on my most recent shift. I could feel my voice getting fainter as time wore on, I could feel the self doubt creeping back in. It was like when you’re in a dream and aware of it but you still just accept this crazy shit going on around you as normal, like climbing a treehouse to work. I’m consciously trying to reason with myself that nothing has changed but yet my entire world has changed.

I’ve been listening to Loveless several times a day since I first heard it, and I’m able to enjoy it whatever my mood. I said the music I listen to changes when I’m in this more alert and normie-ish state, which isn’t unusual a lot of music is mood specific for people, but with Loveless that isn’t the case. I listen to it before I have to go to work and deal with people like a pick me up, and yet put it on to help me wind down before going to sleep. Immediately after sending the message the other day I put it on, and somehow my racing thoughts were put to rest as I was whisked off to that warm and cosy place that’s already becoming very familiar. It’s like when people joke about going to a “happy place” in their mind to deal with trauma or something, now I’ve finally found mine. I wish I could understand and explain in more technical terms what’s so special about it. I have been watching a few videos about the making of the album and stuff like that but I know absolutely nothing about music theory so a lot of it goes over my head. I can only explain how it makes me feel. I wish I had studied music, I was never interested in making and performing music, or learning an instrument but it’s become so important to me that I wish I was able to discuss this art form that’s such a big part of my life properly. I could learn some of the basic stuff, but it’s rather dreary I feel like having to go to lessons on it for years would be one of those things I’d hate at the time and then really be glad for when looking back. I couldn’t possibly have known that I’d become much more interested in music almost a decade later though, but I do greatly regret the decisions I did make. I could write a whole entry on all my regrets, probably several actually, and how they all relate to one another and affect me today. I’m listening to other stuff as well, we’ve well and truly entered autumn here so I’ve been listening to Five Leaves Left this morning while watching the rain and wind shake the leaves off the trees. Someone recommended the album Fisherman’s Blues by The Waterboys recently too and I quite enjoyed that. Might give it another listen this afternoon if the weather stays like this, feels appropriate. I’m enjoying the lesser known NMH album too, On Avery Island, it’s got a real charm to it but I understand why it’s never had a response like ITAOTS had.

I wrote most of this yesterday, in my notebook while at work and then typed it up in the evening. That was pretty relaxing, kind of menial but it helped me relax. I have nothing to do today, it’s grey and raining out like I’ve said so there won’t be many people around. Perhaps I’ll go for another walk, or maybe I’ll just stay in all day in my comfy cave. I tried to follow a similar pattern with this post as I did with the first (not including my introduction) one, where I followed where my mind wandered as the day went on. People seemed to like that, and I like writing that way the most. That’s all for now anyway, I’m working after tomorrow for three days straight so perhaps that’ll get my mind going again.

Maybe it’s ok to just let this keep happening

Ok so before anything I just have to say that I’m obviously not an expert, I have no academic qualifications because I’m a dropout piece of shit. What I do have is way too much free time (if I’m not working I’m at home almost guaranteed) and an interest in this kind of thing. It’s hard to find the best place to start when it comes to this subject, I’ve thought about it so much for years now and I keep getting thrown off every time I think I’m getting somewhere writing this up. I’m just going too have to accept that I won’t cover everything I have to say in this post. It’s like when people say “I could write a book on X subject”, I keep getting sidetracked by other aspects of the issue. Basically, my idea is that mass shootings are a form of performance art and I’ll try to explain how and why I got to this perspective. I’m not going to talk about the gun debate, the mental health of these shooters, the very particular time and place of this modern phenomenon (the US in the last 30 years or so), how overblown the whole thing actually is and the disproportionate media coverage it gets when compared to literally any other fucking violent crime except maybe sandmonkeys blowing shit up, etc. outside of when it directly relates to what I’m trying to talk about.

So quickly some background information, there are two definitions of mass shooting and it’s important to be aware of each. Not just for helping to understand what I’m saying either, but also because all the major media institutions are aware of the difference and abuse that knowledge. There’s the official/ legal definition which I’ve posted a screenshot of above, and there’s what I suppose you can call the cultural definition. The cultural definition is much more limited, it’s really a kind of story that follows a similar pattern and has the same theme every time. For each beat there’s at least one exception but this is a general rule. The shooter is male, which is why in the only instance I can recall of a mass shooting orchestrated by a woman everyone was pointing it out constantly. I’m pretty sure she didn’t actually kill anyone though and she wounded only three people so that’s another example of her not fitting the official definition despite fitting reasonably well into the cultural one. Truly showing how women can do anything men can there. Second, the shooter is a loser or social outcast and probably a virgin or at least kind of unsuccessful with girls. Again, you can find counter examples but the fact alone that this isn’t a shocking statement is enough to prove my point about the cultural definition. The school shooter as a loser/ nerd is something firmly in the public zeitgeist. Third, the shooter is taking revenge. The story of the shooting is ultimately a revenge fantasy. The shooter is going after people who bullied him, or who shunned him or stood by and did nothing to help him in his time of need. Which is why the terms “school shooting” and “mass shooting” are so closely linked. All these kind of resentments centre around school, a place where the social hierarchy is much more overt than anywhere else in life other than maybe the military. You have Chads/Jocks/Alphas and Nerds/Losers/etc. and everything in between. Of course on closer inspection usually it isn’t actually that cut and dried but then if you look at a rainbow close enough the colours blur together you’re not gonna tell me green and red don’t exist. What I’m saying is that your average normalfag has this very specific idea in their head when you mention the term mass shooting. They think of the story as mentioned above and also usually the shooter is white or east asian in this mental image and there’s probably more but you get what I’m saying now I’m sure. The mass shooting has a second definition that we kind of all agree on but isn’t really written down or laid out anywhere in whole (other than above kinda…) and you can see it made reference to all across the western/ americanised world. People jokingly talking about “that white kid everyone thought was gonna shoot up the school” or even nerdy/ loser kids themselves daydreaming about shooting their classmates. The killer is a villain, an anti-hero or a protagonist depending on who you ask, but they all agree on the narrative structure.

Most actual mass shootings are gang related events, nig on nog crime which gets hushed up until the statistics are useful to create a false perception in the minds of the public. Because when someone says mass shooting you think of the two or three big news stories of the last few years, and now you’re being told that that is happening way more than once or twice a year. The second unofficial definition is something that has been deliberately placed into the public consciousness, or more accurately the seeds have been placed so it appears like people came to this shared view naturally. Really think about it, every time one of these specific shootings happens that fits the standard setup it’s a huge news story. Nasim, funny how we keep coming back to her, didn’t even kill anyone. Elliot killed six people, Chris Harper-Mercer (some of you guys are alright) killed 8. There was a shooting a few days ago in California where six people died, yes it got news coverage but it’s not still going now. These numbers are not that unusual in the grand scheme of things. Just go back and look at the aftermath of the Elliot Rodger shooting where the same amount of people died. They were interviewing people related to the story including his scumbag dad weeks after the thing happened. You can say it’s because we’re desensitised to these shootings but think about it. Before Elliot you had Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech and a bunch more very deadly shootings but they weren’t enough? I’m having a really hard time staying on focus here, fuck. I made a mistake thinking I was up to this I really did. I’ve written so much and deleted almost everything to restart twice now. I’m not doing that a third time so everything from here on is staying. It’s fucking impossible to do this the way my mind works, because I get completely distracted and then get convinced that this tangent I’m on is crucial to my main point. No more preliminary bullshit it’s just bogging me down. I want to talk about my ideas, but I’m just not able to lay them out for people the usual way. Rambling aimlessly the way I did in the last posts and being a miserable git is easier and more enjoyable and actually quite cathartic, plus the few of you who have been here since the beginning seem to like it so far because you’ve come back for more. This is new ground, and I feel like one of the dorks who writes articles for Return of Kings when I read back this and my previous attempts to make this post.

Here’s the point, and if it has a ton of holes fine. I’m not writing a paper for an academic journal here I’m just trying to share the stupid shit that goes through someone’s head when they’re cooped up inside for days on end. School shootings are a performance, they follow a pattern just like a Punch and Judy show. Or at least those that do are highlighted, the more on script they are the more intensely so, while those that do not are disregarded. Elliot didn’t ever harm any of the people who actually bullied him or shunned him, he killed a bunch of random normalshits who were of a similar social standing to them. They were a representation of those people who he mentioned (by name in many cases) he was actually resentful towards, they were props in his big show. Cho talked about how he was doing what he did for “the weak and defenceless”, he wanted to make a point with what he was doing it wasn’t about getting revenge on his classmates. Adam Lanza went back to his elementary school for his shooting at the age of 20, he wasn’t avenging himself upon people he knew he was killing the school as a representation of the suffering he and millions of boys like him went through in schools across the western world. Look at the fucking most famous of all these shootings, Columbine. Eric and Dylan were in full costume, that black “trenchcoat”, edgy printed t-shirt, black boots ensemble is something that everyone is familiar with today two decades later. They secured themselves a legacy, something all performers long for. Bones put it perfectly in a song about the subject, “young dead suicidal superstar icons”. It’s well known that the fame is a huge motivator, and how not showing the faces or names of the killers is one of the best methods of preventing copy cat crimes but yet every time the exact opposite is what happens. I’m struggling to find it now but there was a paper and interview by this criminologist talking about it that was circulating in pol9k circles not too long ago. You can look for that if you’re interested, or just assume I’m making it up whatever suits you. These shootings are a spectacle, there are various different interpretations of what it all means just like with any good piece of art. They give losers all over the place something to fantasise about as well, they serve as a form of escapism in a sense just like many videogames, movies, books, shows, etc. When I was in school with that friend I mentioned in the last entry we would regularly joke about it. What groups of other kids we’d target, how we’d do it, shit like that. This is when I was at my most mentally healthy… Yes I said I was actually doing reasonably well and was hopeful for the future but we were still the weird kids. I had someone there with me though which also made it way easier, and I was young enough that the whole “they laugh at you now but they’ll be working for you one day” meme and it’s variants were something I thought had some truth. They also give the people who do bully and ostracise these kids validation. You can hear it when that bulldyke 56% face whore from the Florida gun grabbers squad talks about how she and the other normies actively ostracised him because “it was no surprise to hear that he was the shooter”. I suppose this kind of goes against my earlier point, because in the case of the Florida shooting Nick Cruz did personally know the people he was trying to kill. That clip isn’t hard to find if you haven’t seen it btw, the kind of thing that really activates your almonds.

I have to say, there is a kind of beauty to these events or performance pieces as I now tend to see them. Like I’ve said a lot of the victims are totally random. Yes a certain demographic is targeted but that really is the only trend. Some shooters go across the country, others target schools they once went to but students in a completely different age group, the message is that it could happen to anyone. It could happen to you. It fits perfectly within the contemporary view of any hierarchy, that your place in it is random. These kids, the ones who shoot and the many many more who feel they can relate to those who shoot feel like their place which they’re of course unhappy about is random and unfair. What are the chances I ended up at the loser table? Whenever the normalfag hears about these shootings they can’t understand, how could you go and kill a bunch of innocent people? That’s the point, sometimes the best way to express yourself is to just fucking do it. Now people are dead, people like you, you get to experience that feeling of unfairness. The shooter is the performer, the victims are his props, and the normalfags who get sp00ked every time one of these attacks happens are the intended audience. If this were a youtube video essay I’d play Kids With Guns by Gorillaz as my patreon supporters’ names scrolled by now. There’s more I could probably say, but I don’t know what I’m doing and I think this is good enough for me. Not sure what I’m going to talk about after this. There’s two new people at work I haven’t met yet, sometimes interactions with customers can put me on a weird train of thought, who knows. Next time I’m bored with nothing but hours of scrolling through the catalog on r9k to look forward to, somewhere I’ve been an ungodly amount of times the last few years, I’ll write instead.

First real entry

So, I suppose I better start somewhere.

Now I’ve had some time to think about this more clearly I’m going to lay out my plan for anyone who might be interested. I’ll be using this as a diary or journal like I mention in the introduction. Now I actually need to have something to say it’s hard to know where to start. So as a general rule I’ll make an entry or post, not sure what to call these, if I have an interesting day or event happen around me and whenever I get to thinking about something in particular detail. For today I’ll go over the last few days events, which ultimately led to me starting this. The last few days have been really difficult and confusing, but it was all in my head. I’ve thought about recounting what happened in detail but after reading back the draft I realised how insane it makes me look that this is all it took to completely throw me off baseline. So instead I’ll just go over it all as briefly as I can and use that to springboard to other things. I think this post will probably still be atypical for what I generally plan to do here though. No matter how hard I try I can’t get this particular entry to not come off as completely self indulgent and wanky, but going forward I’ll try to keep things more in the spirit of my introductory post.

So as background information starting Tuesday morning I’ve had the home to myself and will for the next month, my parents are away. My last day at work was Monday, and my oneitis co-worker will be gone when I start back next. I knew she was going to leave for a while, and I knew but didn’t mention that Monday would be the last time I’d see her. I also knew she’d be opening up the next day, so I left a goodbye note that evening before going home. I didn’t “confess my feelings” or anything faggy like that but I was more emotive than I ever was in person. I wake up and immediately check my phone the next day hoping for some reply but there’s nothing. Parents leave really soon after that and I basically do nothing the entire day but scroll through the catalog on /r9k/ and check my phone every few minutes. It’s still the busiest part of the shift maybe later, she’s still working maybe later, etc. It’s clear there’ll be no reply after a while but I still do nothing except listen to Filosofem on repeat incredibly loudly and lie on the floor constantly checking my phone.

At some point the bright idea hit me that I should check her social media, because I didn’t feel like enough of a creepy fucking loser already. Some anon told me that putting someone’s email address in quotation marks into google would help and through that I found her Instagram, Facebook and an old youtube channel with one video public. Now, going through all of that crap for the following few hours really illustrated something to me that I’d been going over in my head the month leading up to this day when I first found out she was leaving. I never really fell for her, I fell for a creation that was based on the few snippets of information I got in the time I knew her. Because we hardly even spoke, for months I couldn’t even manage basic smalltalk without my voice shaking and even after getting more comfortable the conversations were really brief. I didn’t fall for a person, in my desperation and loneliness I convinced myself she was something she wasn’t and that that person I imagined was who I wanted to be with. I hope this makes sense, I know if you’re a khv like me you’ll understand but I want normalfags to get it too. Like I said I was already thinking about this for a month, but finding out in a few hours that this person was a performing musician, an amateur photographer (this one I was aware of actually but I had never seen any of the photos), had been on several trips over the summer, might very possibly be a lesbian (something I did have very slight suspicions about before) and just had a life that was so much more active when looked at next to mine the two weren’t even comparable really hammered it home.

I’d been awake since about 6 and it was starting to get dark, but at that point the racing thoughts were so intense I had to do something so I got my coat and left. I got a bus to the city centre, which was around half an hour as I was listening to the ep Nightshade Forests by Summoning and it synched up almost exactly. I know it seems like I listen to a lot of black metal reading this but I actually don’t very often I just happened to that day. The bus ride itself was really something, I actually made a thread about it on /r9k/ after getting back. I was staring out of the window and it’s like every single inch of the city had some memory attached for me. It all suddenly hit me how limited my life has been. That’s where I’d hang out after school, that’s where I got stuck for hours in the snow that one time, that’s where X used to live, that’s that place I used to go on weekends when I was little, that’s the shopping centre where I got chased around by the older kids. Like that but non stop, a new one every few seconds for the entire trip before I had time to really think properly about any of these memories. I genuinely started to feel nauseous after a while, it was relentless. Most of the memories weren’t bad, they were either good or neutral, but realising how my entire life could be relived in a short bus ride was a really awful feeling. Especially because in the back of my mind this whole time was the knowledge that oneitis girl had lived in several cities and I couldn’t help but compare myself to her. It’s not like I even want to do that though, I want to travel yes but I don’t want to live in a different city or live the kind of life she does. I want to see mountains, and sprawling deserts and third world shanty towns. I want to go on adventures, which is another reason this ride bothered me because I realised I’m in my early 20s and haven’t progressed mentally or materially since I was 15. I could elaborate on why I think that is for hours and have and probably will in future posts but not right now. Short story is I think the suicide of someone very close to me when I was around 14 and seeing their embalmed corpse at that age may have caused some kind of PTSD. I don’t have a professional diagnosis though so don’t trust me for a second. I haven’t progressed because I still talk about wanting to “go on adventures” like a fucking child and also because I haven’t been on any adventures yet. Well, there’s one brief holiday I went on with my only two friends earlier this summer which kind of fits what I’m looking for but it was only a couple days and fairly local in the grand scheme of things. It was an interesting few days though, I had my first psychedelic experience too while there.

I’ll try to keep going with the story though. I got off the bus and began to walk, I walked along the river for a while until I got to a bridge and crossed that. I walked around fairly aimlessly until I found myself at the city cathedral, then crossed back via a different bridge just as it began to rain and the fog was getting pretty dense. I have to say that second bridge crossing was really beautiful, it was completely dark by this point and through the fog you could see the lights on the taller towers shining through. I should have taken some photos, they’d have gone down really well in a /comfy/ thread. After that I was getting pretty hungry after eating nothing the entire day so I went around searching for a nice ramen stall to eat at. Of course I didn’t find one because I don’t live in an anime and eventually settled for getting my calories in drinkable form. I found a little alcove down by the river and sat there for a while drinking my ales and watching the rain hit the water with some tunes. Curtains by John Frusciante, as you may have noticed music is quite a big part of my life. This is actually fairly new though, it really only started when I got this job. I used to listen to music occasionally before, but when I started in order to keep myself entertained through the long shifts I began listening to lots of new stuff every day. This new interest in music and appreciation for it has been really helpful in getting through the harder times the last year. This lasted for a while anyway, me sitting there, I’m not sure how late it was at this point but it wasn’t yet midnight because the shop would have been closed.

Eventually a homeless man barged into my little outpost and I had to go. The interaction we had was noteworthy though. I was already at the end of my last bottle so I quickly finished it off and got up to leave and on my way out he started complaining about his situation. He said he’d lived in this city his entire life, and watched new apartment buildings go up every day for people with no connection to this place. I said something in reply I don’t remember exactly what and as I was heading up the steps he said “I wish I had somewhere to go home to”. I felt I had to say something, but as nice as I think I am I’m not going to invite a total stranger into my home so I replied “you might find somewhere” which he misinterpreted as me saying I didn’t have any money. He got visibly angry and said “I’m not asking for money” and being the sperg I am I said “No, that’s not what I meant” but the no was far louder than the rest and that’s all he heard. Then he had this look on his face, which still bothers me now. I think what happened is he thought I’d misheard him both times and the second reply was me saying I didn’t have money again but louder. As I walked back to get the bus home, the rain now heavily coming down, the internal monologue started playing up again. I started thinking maybe I really am a good person. The fact that I even care about this guy at all when he can’t possibly do anything for me must show that. See, there’s this immediate reaction people have when you refer to yourself as a good/ nice person now which is why I never do it. They think you’re just another example of the “nice guy” meme, an opportunist or someone who’s just trying to get in a girl’s pants. You’ve heard it all before “you’re not nice you’re just doing nice things to get sex”. Well disregarding the fact that that doesn’t even matter because you’re still doing nice things it’s often not even fucking true. However, it’s such a widely held view of things that someone as self doubting as me still sometimes starts to second guess themselves. Which is exactly what I’d been doing before the homeless guy came along. I’d been thinking specifically about one day when the oneitis girl had been ill and I went into work despite it not being my shift to bring some medicine. That was the main thing, but there were a few others. I was still bitter at this point so it started with me thinking about how I’d done all this shit and she didn’t even think to send me a goodbye message back in response to mine. If she even ever saw it and it didn’t just blow onto the floor overnight which was something else worrying me. That made me think though, maybe the legion of cunts are right and I’m not really nice. Did I just do those nice things because she was my oneitis, I’m still not sure. Would I do something like that for someone I wasn’t attracted to or thought I could get something in return from? I’m not sure, but I did realise that I certainly care about people who can’t do anything for me. So my “nice guy”ness is universal not contextual at least in theory. I suppose if I was a real good person I’d have let him stay in my parents’ bedroom though wouldn’t I, what a piece of shit I truly am.

The rest of the evening was uneventful, I started writing this on the bus or at least the other draft which was more in depth (would you believe?) but I wasn’t sure if I was going to ever put it anywhere yet I just needed to get my thoughts out. Then I got home, rewatched that one video from her old youtube channel a bunch of times on repeat and went to sleep. It’s a cover of some latin american pop ballad, with an acoustic guitar. She doesn’t even show herself in the video but given the name on the account and some tells at certain points in the song I know it’s her. It’s funny, a few times when I was not feeling great she asked if I was doing ok and it really helped me cheer up. When you feel like no one in the world cares about you at all and then someone does something to show they do it really can make your day. Given that she didn’t even think to reply to my message though, something which would have taken a few seconds, I guess it was all false. Assuming she got it in the first place that is. She never cared at all, and the video is quite a fitting metaphor. It’s this love song, I looked up an english translation of the lyrics, and in the video I can feel what seems like true emotion. The main reason I was listening to it that evening was because it almost helped recapture that feeling of being asked if I was doing alright. It’s a cover though, someone else’s words about someone else’s love. It couldn’t be any less genuine and yet it feels so real. I feel like I need to say this too, I’m not saying she should care about me or even that she’s a bad person for not caring. I was stupid for believing she did based on nothing more than her asking me how I am a few times. I don’t think I’m entitled to any space in anyone’s head, I’d just like it.

The next day was better until the evening, I woke up and managed to actually eat something. I did some push ups, and while some part of me still was hoping for a reply I had accepted that were wouldn’t be one realistically. I still did nothing, I continued with that draft and had it mostly finished but other than that I was lying around feeling sorry for myself and going through the /r9k/ catalog over and over again. It wasn’t until later that night, not long after it got dark again that the next and final interesting thing happened. I hadn’t checked my phone in a while but I looked at it and there was actually a notification. Of course my immediate thought and hope was that it was my oneitis with a more likely guess that it would be my friend who I had tried to call earlier that day. It wasn’t either of them though. It was someone I hadn’t spoken to in months and expected to never hear from ever again. This serves as a good way of showing just how different my experience is from the typical normalfag btw. If I get one (1) notification on my phone that’s an unusually eventful day. I’m not trying to compete for biggest loser on the planet here but if I was I’d probably beat you.

Anyway, you’re about to understand just how neurotic I really can be, this next paragraph could have been written by a 14 year old girl. Quickly going back in time, when I first started my job there was another girl who worked there. We actually got on probably better than I did with oneitis girl and I was able to make her laugh a few times even. On the day she quit she actually sent me quite a heartfelt goodbye message. In response to a text from me first but still I really appreciated it. At risk of sounding completely shallow she was prettier and younger than oneitis girl too, I guess because I knew she had a boyfriend I managed to not develop feelings for her. I’ve looked back on the time with her fondly because I know for sure there wasn’t any kind of unconscious ulterior motive and I did just enjoy her company in and of itself. There’s an innocence to it all, or at least there was. Anyway, she’s in a completely different country on the other side of the continent now but for some reason last night I get a message on WhatsApp saying hi. Not the exact message but that sums it up. No question just hi and because I’m so taken aback I have no idea what to do. I’m wondering if it’s an accident and was meant for someone else (most likely in my mind now) or she really does want to catch up or I don’t even know what. After I take a minute, and ask for advice about what to say on 4chan which was no help, I reply back “hi.. what’s up?” to which there has still been no reply almost 24 hours later. There’s two things that may have happened here, and both bother me greatly. Either it was an accident and she hasn’t replied to my reply because she didn’t ever want to talk. Which might also mean that the goodbye from before wasn’t as heartfelt as I thought and was just something she sent to get me to leave her alone. Not that I was going to try and contact her again after my goodbye text, but she might have thought I would. If this route is the accurate one then it ruins that entire time I’ve looked back on fondly and also ruins how it was all wrapped up and left in the past. Closure is such a nice thing to have in life, so when that is retroactively taken from you it really isn’t fun. Alternatively, she did mean to send the message but my reply wasn’t satisfactory. Maybe because it was too soon after her message and I seemed too enthusiastic, or because the message was fairly brief and reserved so I didn’t seem enthusiastic enough. I really don’t fucking know, there’s this whole millennial code around this kind of thing that being separate from normie life I never picked up but I thought it was only really important in dating/ romantic exchanges and for catching up with an old friend things would be less strict. I’m still checking my phone now like holy shit why would you send a message to someone and then just ghost. If it was an accident just tell me, and the fact that this happened to me right now when I’m in a particularly emotionally fragile state it’s like I’m being divinely fucked with. I really can’t shake this feeling that I’m living in some Truman show style simulation and the viewers or the showrunner or the harvester robots or whatever are just messing with me for kicks. This is why people shoot up schools. Well, not really I actually have an interesting theory on that which I don’t think anyone else has talked about so maybe that could be the concept of a future entry if I can think of a good way of presenting it.

Anyway, that’s where we are now, there’s nothing else eventful that’s happened other than me making my introductory post. After seeing those blue ticks show up on my message and then radio silence this powerful feeling of exhaustion just came over me. I was so completely unprepared, maybe a better reply would have been “hey, thanks for the anxiety attack” after all it would have been more emotionally honest than what I actually sent. It might have gotten a laugh, not that I’d see it but I do miss her laugh. So I fell asleep after that, earlier than I planned but lately I’ve found going to sleep and escaping this mental hell the part of the day I most look forward to. It’s starting to get darker now, I’ve been writing this on and off all day long so it’s tonally all over the place. Maybe that’s fitting though, if this thing is meant to be truly representative of my state of mind it should be all over the place. Comical and absurd at parts, melancholic or outright miserable and bleak at others. Of course everyone goes through changes in their mental state, I just think the rapidity is uncommon.

Anyway I’ve been thinking about this blog thing all day while writing this up and I do want to keep going. It’s quite cathartic to get my feelings out and know that someone will hear them in full. And that really is crucial, I don’t want to be screaming into an empty void I’ve been doing that without a blog for years. /r9k/ can be a great place to vent but it’s limiting, I really got to lay out my mental journey over the last few days here. Even if the tl;dr of the story is just, I woke up and hung around at home, then I went for a stroll, then I came home and did some more nothing, my mind has been on overdrive so it’s felt like an emotional odyssey. Right now my audience, or potential audience is limited to the anons from that thread and I’m not sure if even you’ll stick around. I said I’m not going to shill this there again, but if I want to get people reading I’ll have to learn to be comfortable shilling somewhere which I’m not right now or be good enough that people shill for me. I don’t want much, just a small following of people who are genuinely interested in what I have to say or maybe see me as an interesting case study worth paying attention to. So, if you think I’m worth shilling for I’d appreciate it. Also I think there are comments if you want to call me a faggot or something.