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Wellness Wednesday for August 7, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Friends and acquaintances are not there to be 'edified' by you. They are there to enjoy whatever interaction you're having or activity you are doing. If interesting info is exchanged in the process, then great! That can be part of it as well. But if you want to teach people, get a job as a teacher.

If you really can't be friends with people that don't share your world view, then that is certainly your prerogative, but perhaps focus on the things you do enjoy about being around them, all of this stuff is not anything that you or your new found liberal social circle are ever going to have any impact on.

Keep that shit online or in a personal journal, discussing politics can be fun with the right trusted people, but there is a time and a place. The football pitch or the bar with new friends isn't the place to go on an anti DEI rant or to tell people to throw their sim cards in the river because they are being tracked. No one likes a know-it-all with opposing views; even when they share your views it is off putting to be 'edified'.

I don't go around spouting hot takes in some attempt to change people's minds. What I bristle at are the people who try to do that with others, as if to enforce conformity to the new religion of ideology in society.

Do you really encounter people like that? I don't. You go grab dinner and someone starts telling you about how men should use women's bathrooms? No. You're just inventing stuff in your mind to argue against. People don't actually act like this.

While it's great that you imagine yourself a mind-reader who knows all about what does or doesn't happen in the various places of this world, you're basically accusing me of lying and I don't appreciate that.

I wouldn't put it like that. I would say you feel put upon by the world and have established a life narrative where you see truly while the 'sheeple' shamble about in ignorance. You're projecting this onto you regular interactions even when they have nothing to do with DEI or MSNBC.

Ironic we just had this discussion about you, in particular, and how close you are to getting a permaban.

I don't really want to ban you over a fairly low-level spat where you and @TowardsPanna are just kind of sniping at each other, but it's completely unnecessary. You are basically telling him "I don't believe you" (which you're allowed to do) but then expanding on that by presuming to tell him that his entire experience is manufactured and fake. Denying his "lived experience," as it were.

And you know, maybe you're right. You could be. Maybe he's never had these interactions and he's just mining CW points.

Otoh, you're clearly spoiling for a fight with anyone who posts things you disagree with and you feel like needs to be told.

There's a fine line between "I don't believe you, that seems implausible to me" and "You're making this up because you're a paranoid."

You seem to get online mostly to shitpost and fight, and the sad thing is you are clearly capable of putting effort into your posts and your arguments, but mostly you just want to dunk on people. You do not approach conversations with any level of consideration, or any acknowledgment that you could be wrong about something - you just know you're right and you're here to spew truth.

That's very annoying, but being annoying and abrasive isn't against the rules in itself. Flat-out telling people they are making things up and doubling down is.

Take another three day ban. I'm feeling generous, but next time I or another mod probably won't be because the fact that every time you return we end up here is wearing on all of us.