(no subject)

y’know it’s interesting, one of the most consistent comments I get is ’you’re so genuine/easy to talk to’

which is always nothing but hilarious to me because imo i’m unapologetically selfish / chronically emotionally unavailable / mental landscape is a funhouse mirror of masks with very deep pits behind them / take your pick ??

i don’t even know, man.  if I had to guess as to where the hell those came from:

1) basic listening skills happen to be too stronk for the world. (sit your ass down, don’t have a smartphone, try to at least average half of every conversation talking about *them*, don’t instantly judge other people’s thought patterns because there’s usually a reason for them, real basic. )

2) i am frankly, chronically emotionally exhausted to even pretend to care about bullshit trendy social whims. if it’s not something actionable that I *want* to do, or something that produces a personally-witnessable greater good for the world (or preferably both - think, buying a zine because it has the characters I like and because it directly supports a fellow artist), it … doesn’t exist. i don’t give a shit. if there’s one thing I ferociously optimize for, it’s the highest signal-to-noise ratio for my time with this.

( ^ it is amazing how many scams I inadvertently dodge with that fairly simple guideline lol)

3) i make it a point not to hold loyalty to any ideologies, political or otherwise (not that i don’t have strongly held opinions on specific topics or what I’d call my values, but it avoids the whole mess of groupthink, entangled loyalties, etc, not to mention I’ve been burned way too many times by bad actors rotting a good movement to the core.)

4) sometimes i don’t have an opinion on [current events] and … will say that, which always produces in the best surprised_pikachu.jpg face ever lul.  Sometimes it’s because there’s no time to do a deep dive on a really tricky topic, sometimes i genuinely don’t care to talk about it on a public platform, sometimes (often) I get the high key feeling it’s a lead into a bad-faith conversation that’s just a time-waster on both of our ends, and there’s better things to do. what I do with my time ain’t anyone’s business.

5) deliberately assume the kindest / most “obvious/simplistic” response to everyone? ngl, i have a lot of thoughts how irony poisoning’s actually done the most damage to social fabric in the last ten years, to the point when you can’t talk straight about an already-nuanced topic, or even interact sincerely with some folks. (for example, taking a passive-aggressive compliment and just “obliviously” but genuinely saying thank you! does … an amazing job taking the wind out of a bad actor.

tl;dr strategic oblivious kindness is my jam lol