latenightnoir

Oh, of course, there will always be exceptions! And I do believe some level of decency/empathy is intrinsic to human beings, it actually takes work to become a knobhead. Plus I suspect a lot (if not most) of us who dive deeper into online socialisation are a form of refugees, precisely because that shark stuff doesn't float well with us. I'm generalising, but it's my suspicion.

As for trying to get me to be a dick, it was little things, chipping away at my behaviours and approaches with pointed observations, stuff like "I don't understand why you're so polite, I would've blown up in their face" when attempting to defuse an argument with patience and communication, repeatedly hammering home that my being polite is a weakness to be abused and nothing more, talking shit about people with whom I've had minor disagreements, telling me to stop caring about others, and so on, and so forth. And there was a time when I almost started believing them, because so, so many people told me the same story. I almost gave into it, because I was deeply unstable in my faith in myself back then. Gotta say, feel ashamed that I questioned my values for... that...

As an extreme example, one of my closest friends once got pissed off with me - and I mean to the point where they were yelling - because they were insisting that I select an activity (they were trying to get me to acknowledge my preferences in a way, I guess), when I genuinely didn't have a preference. I'm easy-going, the company is more important than the context to me, but it's like they simply couldn't understand or accept that about me.

I'm geuinely sorry to hear that... It really does feel like a lot of people are trying to drag others into the mud with them, especially out of envy... I can say with 100% honesty that, while I understand exactly what's happening, I simply... don't, can't understand what's happening. It feels like one of those not-quite-nightmares, where things look the same, but make no sense.

I wouldn't necessarily put this on you, to be honest. I've noticed an overall decline in empathy and basic politenes all over the place... As a Romanian, I can say that it's all the more pronounced around here, as people are falling for the same shit that's been propagated in America - hyperindividualism and fuckboy-ism...

Most people don't even respect their neighbors anymore, let alone strangers. It's so bad that, as a person who enjoys being polite, I get a ridiculous amount of compliments for having basic decency, but only from older people. People my age and younger (35 and down) are mostly just annoyed and tend to mock me. A lot of my former friends even tried to get me to be as much of a dick as they were.

And all that's left is to hope that alternatives will still be available.

Easier to just carry the groceries in my arms, the last accessory I'd need for people to fully think of me as a serial killer would be random lenths of rope...

You can obfuscate it so that people won't even know what they're eating, though... Wouldn't be the first, or the last time... All you need to do is get the meat into the country, then throw it in the shredder and process it until it is unrecognisable.

Edit: or not even that, just slap whatever label you want on it. It's not like the average consumer will do a chem test on every cut of meat they purchase.

This whole console exclusive thing is getting on my nerves more and more as time goes by...

I hate these... as a tall person, I have a choice between cosplaying as Quasimodo, or letting that thing wreck my boot heels...

Fair enough, but the fact that we have to circumvent official channels in order to do so says a lot about said official channels, y'know?

Nightreign kinda' scares me, I'll be perfectly frank.

It's hard not to look at it as a response to Space Marine 2 and Helldivers 2's success as online comp-stompers. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, FromSoft always put out at least thought-provoking and engrossing (if not downright brilliant) games in terms of mechanical refinement and gameplay.

But that stench of chasing trends is all over this project to my nose. Add to that Bloodborne's doomed console-exclusive future (which is a decision I still thoroughly cannot comprehend, because it sure as hell isn't driving console sales anymore, not even with the Remaster), and I start getting worried about the possibility that FromSoft will end up as just another name on the memorial wall of nuked game developers...

Iliescu are un plan, așteaptă să ne salveze și de un al doilea comunism. Mr. House, nu alta.

Yyep!=))

Seriously, human existence is a collective learning experience, Stagnation started rubbing its hands with perverse delight the instant we forewent vulnerability and openness for excesive individualism.

Edit: I still don't know how to adequately open up to someone else, after a decade of trying to figure it out. After being raised to be a soulless performance machine and being surrounded by people who cave in to the grindset, I don't know what it means to be open and vulnerable with another person.

And it sucks so much long-term, I can feel it as though I'm being held back several grades, like I'm completely missing the point of my own lived experience and have no idea what to do with it, because I don't have the framework of a big picture atop which to analyse things, and I think that framework would be having enough perspectives which aren't my own in my life.

I've finally understood what Alan Watts said, that we can't know ourselves unless we have other people around to help us see who we aren't. It's because we know too well who we are, but not knowing who we aren't, that's like trying to understand fire without knowing ice.