R moved out.
It all went pretty fast suddenly – she announced that she might have found something one Thursday, looked at the apartment and signed the contract the following day. I spent hours plotting and organizing so we could handle her move, M’s move into her vacated room, and a trip to get a new fridge (ours belonged to R and she wanted to sell it) in a single go to save on rental costs for the van.
Like – the ability to just watch things, invisibly, with no one knowing you’re there or interacting with you.
It wouldn’t have to be creepy. I don’t have any particular desire to go lurk in people’s houses. The thing I want is to be able to be in a public space, where people know they might be watched, but without the possibility of anyone trying to interact with me/noticing me/judging me.
I don’t think this is actually impossible, just socially impractical to arrange – it would suffice for the thing I want, for instance, if there were a social convention that if you wore a specific black outfit then you “didn’t exist” and everyone should just pretend you weren’t there.
There are a couple of things this would be nice for.
First, sometimes I’d just like to avoid anyone interacting with me. This I can mostly achieve through body language: if I can’t handle Interacting With People but need to be out in a public space for whatever reason, I can usually signal No, I Don’t Want To Talk hard enough that people won’t try to strike up a conversation. But it would be nice to have a guarantee, because even being-on-guard-for-the-possibility uses up energy I don’t have to spare when I’m in that state.
Second, sometimes I’d like to do something mildly unusual in a public space without anyone commenting on it/coming over to see if I’m OK. This comes up most in locations I have anxiety about: if a particular place makes me anxious, it would be helpful to be able to approach it on my own terms, go in for just a minute and then go out again, sit around in it reading, lie down in it and take deep breaths, that sort of thing. But if you do that in most public locations, people are going to notice you’re acting weird and come ask if you’re all right, do you need help. (Which is sweet of them! But is the last thing I need under those circumstances.)
Third – and this is probably the main one – is more or less the same thing I often use internet-lurking for. Just about any community (internet or not) has a whole bunch of norms which are non-obvious to an outsider.
On the internet, I can reduce my odds of coming off as a buffoon by lurking the community for some time before I speak up, getting a sense for what the norms are. If I’d like to hang out on a forum, I can go through the archives and read hundreds of old threads, figure out what the normal writing style is, what topics inevitably cause flamewars, what clueless questions every single newbie asks, what pet peeves the regulars complain about; and then once I start actually commenting, I can avoid those. (And I do this, by and large, any time I’m thinking about actually talking in some internet space.)
In real life, on the other hand, you can’t really do that. When (e.g.) I wanted to join a new fencing club, I couldn’t first spend several sessions sitting on the bleachers watching the social dynamics. I couldn’t go in having already figured out who was socially central, who was universally acknowledged to be a jerk, who had some quirk that made them come off unpleasant at first but was actually super sweet once you figured that out and compensated for it. I couldn’t come in already knowing what would get on the armorer’s nerves and how people addressed the coach and how serious people were about being punctual.
Instead, I had to show up (how early should I be there? will they think I’m weird if I’m super early? will they think I’m disrespectful if I’m late?) –
– and introduce myself to people right away (who should I be trying to remember? are you a regular or a one-time visitor? should I be matching your social register or does everyone else think you’re a weirdo? do you dislike me or is that just how you come off?) –
– had to try and figure out the norms about equipment-borrowing (is this club more ‘bring your own, it’s okay to borrow the club’s once in a while but all the time is annoying mooching’ or ‘use the club’s by default, showing up with all your own is show-off-y try-too-hard’?) at the same time as I was figuring out where the equipment was –
– had to guess at the norms for open fencing (do they mean it when they say ‘open,’ or is it structured? when they offer to let me stay on when it’s my turn to switch off, are they being polite or do they mean it? am I hogging the strip if I fence all the time, or am I slacking if I don’t? should I be tracking points for a bout, or are we just fencing casually until we want to switch up?) –
– and so on.
Probably to some degree the solution to this is “don’t sweat it, everyone does clueless stuff when they’re new.” But it’s overwhelming, it’s a lot of new things at once, it is very high-anxiety – and that’s in addition to the default anxiety of just not knowing what to expect. It would reduce my anxiety about that sort of thing a lot just to know what the room looked like in advance, so I could picture it better. But that’s often not easy to arrange.
Probably, also, if I went to the coach and said “hey, can I sit in on a few sessions before I take part, anxiety stuff,” they’d be cool with that. But that isn’t exactly lower anxiety than just sucking it up and dealing with it. Everyone would notice and think I was weird, people would want to know if I was okay, they’d offer to let me join in and it would be friendly and they’d mean well and it would add to the stress so much. And then once I did feel ready to join in everyone would be all weird at me, even if they were trying to be nice about it, because I’d be That Anxiety Person. (Not to mention, like, if it took me a while to get to where I felt ready to join in, they’d all be wondering what exactly I was observing for so long.)
It would just be so nice for there to be some way I could come in, unobserved, and watch silently until I had a sense of How Things Are Done in any new group I’d like to join.
Some groups will let you do that, to some degree; but most of them try to Welcome The New Person – which is great and nice and would be super helpful if I could just get them to start doing that once I’m ready for it.
Even when you can do it, people will notice and draw conclusions from it – and even when those are nice charitable conclusions, like “she’s shy,” it’s actually really frustrating, because I am not shy, I am the opposite of shy, if you treat me like a shy person once I’m ready to start interacting it will be frustrating for both of us.
So I’m just left wishing this were somehow magically A Thing, either through literal invisibility or a social convention that people who mark themselves a certain way Do Not Count and you don’t acknowledge they’re there or draw any conclusions from that.
I wouldn’t mind being on the other side of it at all, either way; I mean, it would be weird if people were lurking in my house, but that’s not the thing I want. (The internet equivalent would be, like, reading people’s PMs, which of course you can’t do.) I wouldn’t be at all bothered by people in public spaces quietly observing, with other people knowing that there might be lurkers but not whether one is watching at any given time. Nor would I mind at all if someone wanted to lurk and watch meetings of various clubs I’ve been in, until they were ready to join. (Obviously, again, that could be creepy if it were a very intimate group sharing things they didn’t want strangers to know; but in that case you just do it somewhere private, that’s fine.)
Unfortunately this is all completely impractical to arrange in real life – even if some real-life group decided to enable a “lurking” option, it wouldn’t really work, part of what makes it work in theory is being ubiquitous and socially-acknowledged-as-normal. So I am left fantasizing.
An important part of making this work (for me anyway) would be to preserve the ability of observees to maintain privacy-through-moderate-obscurity and also to be able to mask things like subvocalization. Readmores, “don’t reblog"s, and yelling at the screen without anyone knowing are important parts of what makes this hellsite work. But yes, this.
I am definitely above the cutoffs for Aloof and Pragmatic Language but below them for Rigid. which puts me at “composite diagnosis of the Broader Autism Phenotype” according to this.
Oh hell yeah, 3 for 3, baby! I crushed it on that aloofness score.
I’m still gonna comment on politics though
So are people doing this thing like it’s a purity test or what
I got Aloof 4.58, Pragmatic Language 3.92, Rigid 3.83, which is pretty good I guess, but @femmenietzsche is definitely unbeatable on Aloofness (which is the most desirable one because the name makes it sound cool)
anyhow does anyone else find the idea of “diagnosing someone with a phenotype” to be kind of wacky? just saying
Everyone else’s scores do seem to be confirming my “doesn’t fit with either the neurotypicals or the autistics” status.
Also, I forgot to include the average the first time around:
Aloof 3.67, Pragmatic Language Deficit 1.75, Rigidity 4.42
Average 3.28, which is pretty close to the exact threshold of 3.15; clearly I’m more qualified than anyone to opine on society.
Also, I already have children. My ex-wife is decidedly nowhere near the autism spectrum, however. One of my children displays some lack of social awareness and has sensory issues, but neither of them is autistic and both would probably test as closer to normal than me on Aloofness and Rigidity.
Actually, there’s another important point to be made here: bravery and evil are not mutually exclusive. Orcs are brave. Stormtroopers are brave. Nazis are brave. Every one of these groups contained people (not all, but many) that sacrificed their lives in the name of what they thought was the greater good, and pushed on even when everything was hell. Trying to tell people that none of the bad guys were brave is inaccurate, and the loved ones of the bad guys are going to *know* that it’s inaccurate.
Simply feeling and performing bravery DOES NOT ENSURE THAT YOU’RE ON THE RIGHT SIDE. It’s often necessary in the service of the good, but it is not and shouldn’t be a target or a reliable indicator. If you want to reliably do good, then you have no option but to think critically, do anything you can to see through the neverending storm of propaganda, and question everything. And this obligation does not ever fully let up, because you might find out at any moment that you’re on the wrong side.
No matter what side you’re on, and no matter how good or evil your cause, bravery very often feels the same from the inside. You might truly feel like you need to find a way to sacrifice or contribute, and feel guilty for not doing so. But you know what? Staying home, eating an entire tub of ice cream, and jerking off is *far more virtuous* than pushing yourself to the limits and even laying down your life for the good of a nation that wants to be able to keep slaves.
I remember a bit of a scandal around 200X where somebody said the terrorists flying the planes on 9/11 weren’t cowards, because they were clearly willing to give up their lives for their beliefs and whoa boy did that not make people feel happy.
But that’s always how it works – we are glorious and brave even when we invade and bomb them from ten thousand feet higher in the air than their weapons could ever reach and they are despicable and cowardly even when they take on the best equipped militaries in the world armed with two goats and a beat up martini rifle left over from the British invasion in the seventies. Eighteen-seventies.
yup. im willing to die for this is like, the definition of bravery no? like, im so brave im willing to go willingly to my death to achieve goals i believe in?
bravery is good in the way that intelligence is good, its not MORAL, the bad guys can be clever and the bad guys can be brave, if you assume theyre all stupid cowards you will underestimate them.
I saw these and thought “oh, Illan Rivière?”, but nope, it’s Horus Mozarabe (full video here)!
Is there anything creepier than the word ‘unlearn’?
Not trying to be rude, but I’m curious as to why you think the word ‘unlearn’ is creepy and what you believe is creepier than it. You don’t have to answer any of this, but I desire to know your opinion on it.
The second question’s easier, so I’ll answer that first. There are plenty of things that are creepier, like the scene in Sleepaway Camp where one of the characters is established to be a child molestor (in… pretty crude detail), or about 75% of alpha male posturing. ‘Unlearn’ is pretty innocuous in comparison, but it still squicks me out because of my own set triggers.
The reason ‘unlearn’ is creepy… well.
‘Unlearn’implies that there are some things so terrible, so awful, that you cannothave ever agreed with them without being Tainted in some way. It’s like you’re the protagonist in a Lovecraftian horror story where the horrors beyond all comprehension are named “Nota’llmen” and “Patr’y’yarchy”. If you try to comprehend them, you’re boned.
Which… isn’t how the world works. We do not live in a Lovecraftian horror universe. Having a bad opinion does not Taint you; it makes you wrong.
Using words like ‘unlearn’ IMO is a symptom of certain leftism-strains’ insistence on total ideological purity. You can’t just reject toxic social norms. You have to totally unlearn them. You can’t just change your mind, you have to unlearn the thing you changed your mind about. If you don’t unlearn it, you’re still Tainted and Bad and probably ship She1th. </sarc>
‘Unlearning’ also takes people’s agency away. It makes an extremely volitional act into a chore you have to do before you can be accepted by the Right Folkx. I didn’t unlearn Mormonism. I rejected it. It’s ultimately a semantic difference, but it is a difference, and … it’s one that skeeves me out.
Huh. That’s not how I understand “unlearn” – the way I usually read it, it’s not about the opinion itself, it’s about the opinions and reactions and feelings it’s linked to beneath the surface. That is, you can consciously believe that e.g. make-up is value-neutral, but still have a knee-jerk emotional response of contempt or dislike towards women who wear a lot of it – you haven’t unlearned that response yet. (I don’t know if you have or had any such responses related to Mormonism. I know I had a few Christianity-associated half-opinions, although fortunately quite easy to notice and change in most cases.)
And I do think that the word captures something true and important to notice about the way a lot of cultural beliefs work – with lots of roots tangled up in everything that don’t just disappear when you cut down the tree. Digging them up doesn’t seem less volitional and agent-ey than cutting down the tree in the first place, although it takes longer and is visually less impressive.
I wanted to shower once more before going home, but the day is cloudy and windy and not at all fit to warm up afterwards. Guess the other passengers will just have to put up with a stinky me.
Harry Potter’s German name would be Harald Töpfer.
DU BISCHT EIN ZAUBERER HARALD TÖPFER
UND NUR DU KANNST THOMAS RÄTSEL BESIEGEN
Voldemort in der Kammer des Schreckens: Thomas Rätsel ist *fuchtelt herum* Lord Voldemort! Harald Töpfer: kurze frog… wia genau bist du nuamoi auf den namen kema?
Ich hab die letzten vier Minuten unkontrollierbar gelacht und mir ist erst jetzt aufgefallen, dass ich “Dugzuft” als “Zugduft” gelesen hab
I’m slowly getting used to cold showers, I think – I managed to rinse myself much longer and enjoy it more than the first time today. Or maybe I’m getting used to the colder temperatures in general, because I get pretty hot sitting in the sun afterwards.
I think one of the reasons why a lot of trans kids dye their hair and/or get body jewelry is that it’s probably the most accessible way to modify ourselves.
maybe it helps us, in a tiny way, relieve dysphoria.
like, adding a second floor to this house may be forbidden or take five years to complete, but dammit I’m gonna paint ALL the walls, in all the colors I want, TODAY.
so when people make fun of trans kids, esp. “tumblr trans kids” for having “that look” it does kinda sting
I 100% dyed my hair green in order to a) have one piece of control over my appearance b) relieve stress about people staring at me by making it be about the hair.
Seconded. I mostly think of it a way to (symbolically) take ownership and strengthen the connection between my self and my body (I say, having done nothing more dramatic than getting my ears pierced and briefly dying my hair green).
Omphaloskeptomai 