Thanks! Though it’s worth noting that I tend to exaggerate. During that 3-year period, I actually did do some long-term projects and kept my attention on them; I just wasn’t satisfied with the overall impact of them on my life because I was playing things way too safe.

This post is basically me taking a common self-defeating pattern I exhibit and calling it out as silly, perhaps to better help me recognize and challenge it within myself. It is one of the final things holding me back from ditching the dopamine machine and returning to the real world.

I was doing good for the past couple of days, but recently, I had a relapse. My brain’s excuse was: “If you go cold turkey, you might never get to experience these feelings ever again, since you could die before forming the relationship required to feel them legitimately.”

It sounded compelling on its face, but then I realized that all of the time I spend indulging myself in various ways eliminates time that I could be spending on pursuing real connections. Using technology to partially fill the void was consuming all of the time that I could have spent actually filling said void. That’s what inspired me to make this post—recognizing just how counterproductive that mentality really was.

The answer that my mind seems to be converging on is: “We can use the power of local community to help insulate ourselves from outside forces and replace technological addiction with genuine social connection to achieve a more natural and healthy state of existence.”

Or, put simply, “Friendship is magic.”

It doesn’t answer existential questions about the future, but I think it makes them less relevant by making the present nice enough that work towards the future is less of an emotional sacrifice.

That’s a good point; there are people who think like this everywhere, not just on the Internet.

I believe that the main difference for me is the speed and volume of negative sentiments. Maybe in real life, you’ll have one or two people in the general vicinity expressing worry for the future, and many who won’t say anything. But on the Internet, it’s an endless scroll of hundreds of people saying “We are doomed” in different ways. As others have pointed out, there are additional statistical effects that also make negativity more prominent on top of that.

But ultimately, even if you quit the Internet, the rationality filter you mentioned is necessary for real life, too. If your positive mindset can be ruined by talking to a single negative person, you aren’t going to be positive for very long. I try to understand where other people’s opinions come from rather than accept them at face value. Once I recognized that I had control over how others’ words affected me and could interpret them in my own way, I become much more emotionally stable.

That filter doesn’t make you invincible, but I think it’s much more resilient against a slower pace of negativity rather than the constant deluge on many social media spaces. A slow pace of interaction gives you more time to reflect and ponder the meaning of negative statements, whereas a fast one often precludes such introspection.

I also like your point about engaging with the Internet thoughtfully. There are some who still use it to spread positivity, even if they aren’t immediately visible. Someone sent me an unexpectedly sweet and heartfelt compliment yesterday, and that really touched my heart. One of the best things about the rationality filter is that it diminishes my sensitivity to criticism while maintaining my high sensitivity to kindness. That diminished sensitivity to criticism makes me less afraid to put myself out there, while the high sensitivity to kindness makes even the smallest positive interactions feel wonderful.

Most of what you wrote about how you are, are written in ways others might say about you,

In retrospect, this IS a very weird stylistic choice, and definitely isn’t how I would describe myself under normal circumstances. These are internal feelings of self-concept that are presented in a way that basically compliments myself, which, yeah, definitely comes off as odd. This was an extremely unconventional way of saying “I’m confident in who I am and I feel good about that.” Pretty much a dead giveaway that I did not actually consider the audience when I threw this random jumble of thoughts out there.

My own self-image will never exist in other people’s minds. Everyone I’ve interacted with holds a different version of me in their heads, and they are all imperfect projections with various degrees of distortion based on all of the information that their brains have taken in about me. To attempt to force someone to accept my personal image of myself would be ill-fated and narcissistic.

Take this post for example. I sound completely unhinged to most of the people in this comment section. Everything I do and say will be colored through the lens of that first impression, and there’s no way to change that. So what else is there to do except own it, learn from it, and move on? People are gonna people, and you can’t change them, so focus on building understanding and modifying your own actions accordingly. I’ve learned so much fascinating stuff from this thread about how other people perceive my words, and that will help me communicate better with people who think differently than me in the future.

When I talk about who I want to embody, I am not talking about controlling how others perceive me; I’m talking about what I aspire to be. It’s the difference between telling people that you want to be a good person and telling people that you are a good person. The former describes your own standards and aspirations, while the latter sounds narcissistic. I meant the things I said in the former, aspirational way. I will never fully be a good person or a good partner, but that doesn’t mean I can’t keep working towards those goals. This is what I meant in the post when I said:

I know that ideals are goals to work towards, not promises to expect.

Nothing I fantasize about or imagine will ever actually exist. The feelings are real, but the situations I imagine are fictional. You’re right that tying my understanding of reality to what happens in this fictional world would be disastrous, and one must daydream responsibly by being aware of this and regularly grounding their understanding in real life experiences.

Thanks for pointing that stuff out.

I want us to be compatible in sexuality, personality, values, communication, life situation, and overall life goals. In other words, I want anyone who I can make a relationship work with.

I don’t believe in defining rigid categories so much because it neglects so many edge cases. I would prefer to evaluate each situation on a case-by-case basis. For example, if I said that I only wanted to date introverts, I’m filtering out ambiverts or even some extroverts who I could be compatible with. I just need someone who I can create a balanced relationship with, not someone who passes dozens of logical heuristics. I’d rather see if we have chemistry and compatible lives and go from there.

The central miscommunication of this post, as evidenced by the comments section, is that I was posting vibes hoping that others could relate to them, whereas others, perhaps more analytically-minded, interpreted my words more literally as a blueprint for a real relationship, rather than what I intended for them to be: a freeform expression of romantic interest, disconnected from any of the implementation details.

I’m not ready for a relationship. I have no plan yet. I’m just excited to figure out how to make one happen in the future. That’s what this post was actually meant to be about: feelings, not practicalities.

But I will say that, while my post came across as obsessive and manic, most of the time, I imagine us leaving each other alone and quietly doing our own things. We’d only briefly interact a few times a day for a few minutes at a time. Those narrow time windows are where the actual emotional intensity is, and that’s what my brain zooms into and talks about, as if the whole relationship looks like that, when they are really just the absolute peak highlights.

I think I could definitely spend less time daydreaming and more time going outside for sure. In fact, that’s kind of the point of the daydreaming: to figure out what appeals to me romantically and how I wish to conduct myself as a friend and partner.

I’m not keen on having some kind of imaginary friend, and I’m definitely not keen on being in-your-face hyper-emotional towards others because I literally can’t do that. I am just way too introverted and it goes against every instinct in my body. This whole post is an extreme exaggeration because it’s made to be more abstract and artistic, made to capture the intensity of feeling; it isn’t meant to convey what the relationship is literally like. Clearly, this is not how most people read text, and I should probably have realized that sooner.

I imagine the actual relationship to be slow and easygoing where we actually leave each other alone for most of the day. We would only interact a few times a day in moments lasting from a few seconds to a few minutes. We might also spend time together in quiet ways, like reading books in the same room. What I have done in this post is blow up those very small time windows and made them seem like that’s what the whole relationship looks like. It’s not. I don’t think love will free me from having a social battery.

If I learned anything from this thread, it’s that I am so glad that I never became active or had a decent following on mainstream social media. I couldn’t imagine what a mistake like this on a site like Twitter would do to my mind back when I was younger. At least here and in real life, your mistakes are confined to a relatively small group.

I just struggle to comprehend what those issues actually could be in concrete terms. I sort of exaggerated my speech on purpose just for fun, so that’s probably where a lot of the “crazy” impression comes from. And I’ve never actually been in a relationship, so there’s nothing to go off of there. Am I ACTUALLY overly attached and clingy? Or am I just bad at writing and my post just made a bad impression? We don’t know.

Like sure, I probably come across as weird and could do more to think about the actual nitty-gritty of a relationship rather than embellishing raw feelings, but other than that, I don’t know what the actual problem is other than “This guy sounds weird.”

Maybe because of the way I came across, people perceive everything I say to have a double-meaning, where caring for someone means wanting to control them and wanting to show kindness means wanting to lure people in. Maybe a lot of what I said isn’t bad in principle, but because I said them weirdly, I look like some kind of serial killer psychopath or creepy incel freak. I’m just too uncanny valley to be a “normal” person, so EVERYTHING I said loses its innocence and gets tainted with “What does he REALLY mean by that?”

Because if I were to tell someone what my feelings were, I’d say that I want to be a romantic partner for someone, to care and be cared for, to work together and make decisions as a team, and to continually improve myself so that I can best fulfill my duty as a partner. Sure, I may feel strongly about those feelings from time to time, but that’s ultimately what they are. Is that bad? Is that something I should go to therapy for? Or have I simply expressed these feelings in a way so unconventional and distorted that it comes across as creepy?

Either way, this has been a fascinating and unexpected exploration of “What happens when I miscommunicate or misrepresent myself in a horribly disastrous fashion?”

I write a lot because I have a lot of ideas that I want to express. I try to do some trimming, but I don’t like to dilute my ideas too much. But I could definitely be more mindful about how much the audience cares to read and throw more of this in my own private journal.

I exaggerated what I said on purpose because I thought it’d fun to try expressing myself differently and not being so restrained, but clearly that style is reminiscent of the overly-attached girlfriend meme lmao. So, I’m gonna definitely keep that feedback in mind.

I experience strong emotions in general, and that’s something that I need to learn how to manage—when to be more emotionally restrained versus when to be more expressive. Clearly here I just splattered raw emotions all over the page, which ends up being fantastical and disconnected from reality compared to what a relationship actually looks like.

I have a duty to my future partner to manage my emotions in a way that upholds a stable relationship, or leave if it’s not going to work out, which means that it is most certainly against my self-interest to actually come across how I did here.

So then why did I make this post in the first place? Idk, it was kinda fun to write, even if it’s suuuper exaggerated. Just kind of my own form of artistic expression to look back on and say “Wow, I was so weird and whimsical in my early 20s. How cute.”

That’s fair. I sort of shoved all of the intense feelings into this post and downplayed the boring stuff because my brain leans on the idealistic side.

Here I describe all of the raw feelings I feel all at once, which gives the impression of something overly intense and disconnected from tempered, pragmatic reality.

But you need all of the boring pragmatic stuff, because that’s how you make anything actually work. Ideals are something that have to be built towards with the building blocks of realism, otherwise you can’t actually build anything.

Thanks for your feedback. It helps me get a better grasp on things, even if not every comment is positive lol.

So I’m guessing that all of the sentimentality at once comes across as super clingy?

That might be an aforementioned blind spot that I have to look out for. Consciously, I think controlling behavior like that is super gross, and the idea of being attached to someone who doesn’t reciprocate or isn’t comfortable with that level of affection feels super counterproductive; why invest in painful, unreciprocated relationships when I can just find someone else? If I have attachment issues, why not go to therapy and work through them, then try again with someone else?

I guess this post gives the impression that I would get WAY too into someone too quickly, and then find myself unwilling to leave because of a scarcity mindset. I was hoping that the metaphor of slowly nurturing a seedling until it grows until a flower would give the impression that I would develop the relationship in a careful, thoughtful manner, but eh, it is what it is.

But, assuming that’s your point, I appreciate you bringing it to my attention, because even if I’m not the crazy psycho overly-attached girlfriend/boyfriend meme, I think individual agency is something that I could be thinking about more, not just for relationships, but also for friendships.

Ultimately, I’m just trying to be a good person. And maybe dumping a bunch of feelings on the Internet at once makes me look crazy. Heck, maybe I AM a little crazy. But as long as I accept that I’m imperfect and that my understanding will never be complete, I can continually improve by observing what effects my behavior has on others and adjust accordingly.

So yeah, NOT dumping all of my feelings on someone at once is a good idea lol.

Genuinely curious how this is a “yikes”?

Is it because I sound like some overly idealistic person who will have his dreams crushed?

Or because I sound so ridiculously overly sentimental compared to the jaded cynicism that pervades the entire Internet?

Or do I sound like I’d get psychotically attached to someone because most people show more restraint when they talk about romantic feelings?

I don’t know how to interpret this comment otherwise.

I could definitely see them screwing it up and censoring too much. Like for example, if criticizing corporations or corporate greed was censored, I think there could be right-wing backlash too. Complaining about getting ripped off or screwed over is just a part of life, regardless of whether or not people ask deeper questions about the system.

My entire immediate family is far-right, which, aside from being terrifying, allows me to get an idea of how some of these people think. It turns out, they DO have some anti-corporate sentiment, but only for those who fall outside of the perceived right-wing populist umbrella. Apparently, only those billionaires are the evil greedy ones and theirs are the good ones. Nonetheless, that could be a potential hazard for corporations who find themselves on the wrong side of popular support, where they are no longer protected by an anti-establishment perception.

Hey, I’ve seen you around before.

Perhaps it’s a bit nosy of me, and of course I don’t fully know what you’re going through, but I know there’s a real person on the other side suffering, and that’s the only thing that matters to me.

So I wanted to say that I’m thinking about you and I care about you. You have intrinsic worth no matter what anyone says. Even if you can’t find anyone to talk to in real life. Even if you get a bazillion downvotes and hateful comments on the Internet. It doesn’t change that fact one bit.

I remember years ago when I was in a really painful headspace, I would project my internal cynicism and attract negative attention on purpose in order to make other people affirm my self-hatred and belief that I deserved to suffer.

But I was hyperfocused on the negativity. I ignored the caring people who were concerned about me because it didn’t support my internal narrative that everyone hated me and therefore I should hate myself too. I found comfort in hopelessness because it meant that I didn’t have to be vulnerable anymore. I told myself that a bad outcome was guaranteed and therefore it’s never worth opening up or reaching out.

Most people who feel for you won’t speak up. That’s one of the reasons I believed nobody cared about me: I couldn’t see the evidence. People have to step up and be part of the evidence, so I might as well be one of them. Real life evidence is worth a lot more than Internet comments, but if my words have even a chance of helping you in some way, then writing this all out was completely worth it.

The single most healing moment in my life is when someone in real life offered to be that person for me, and she told me all of the things that she genuinely liked about me. I was an emotional wreck; I avoided talking to anyone, was woefully insecure, and felt like nobody could ever like me. She knew all of these things and chose to talk to me anyway. Her compliments canceled out all of the insults and rejections I had ever received and made me confident in myself for the first time. I have hope you can meet someone like that too. Mine showed up when I least expected it!

So maybe it’s none of my business, and maybe many of the things I said don’t apply to your situation, but I want to make it absolutely clear that, whoever you are, I care about you, and many other people do too. You deserve love, healing, and support. And I truly wish the best for you.

Hugs~

Codswallop, dingus… these are abstract terms. You cannot argue with them. They cannot hate you.

Disagreements on the Internet happen when you argue with people (not abstractions).

(Sorry, I couldn’t resist)

Recently I’ve been getting into making digital art and reading books. Though I haven’t done much of either yet. These are new hobbies that I just discovered my enjoyment of and I’m just getting into them for the first time.

The closest I had to this actually was my old workplace, but power dynamics, workplace stress, and a lack of shared purpose were my biggest problems.

Having your behavior controlled by management, friendly coworkers who suddenly become cold-hearted backstabbers if they find out they can gain financially from it, etc

Stressful days where we were overworked also brought out the worst in everyone, including me at the time, which was also not fun…

Depending on the job, there could also just be a lot of people who don’t want to be there other than for the money, and in those cases, there isn’t really a uniting greater purpose that everyone believes in.

I think it might work for some people, but the conditions have to be right. For me personally, the corrosive and anti-social influence of money makes me wary of really trusting or connecting with people on a genuine level in work environments.

Well then, I guess if I were to rephrase the question, I’d ask:

Where are some places or contexts where you can find a group of 5-30 people who meet regularly, generally feel connected to one another, and won’t spend the whole time staring at their phones?

Nah, they just haven’t realized that they actually CAN if they’re willing to band together and fight anyone who tries to stop them

I just didn’t have to deal with homophobes before middle school lol

Nobody can stop your cuddle party if you’ve got the bigger army >:3

Rural Ohio… I don’t recommend it