Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

k: this world is killing me
a: when you think about it, aren't you *letting* this world define itself by your death?
k: no, i am a prisoner of the Discourses; disagree with me not lest i be slain
a: once when i was a child i saw a firefly that reminded me of freedom
k: [dies]

I see people... disagreeing with each other.

I see one person saying "I disagree with this one small portion of the OP and many people piling on to say "fuck you"

But like... marginally. No one there seems to be arguing COVID isn't real or any of that idiocy - they're bringing up different points and perspectives. And some people are dumb, like responding to a flight attendant with "we're all out of work" - I mean, no we're not all out of work and some people have to go do their careers to survive. Yay capitalism.

she deleted that Tweet, so it appears she was aware of its stupidity

in before people tell me that I'm deluded because they actually said fuck off and therefore my entire point is invalid

I mean... one person posted as if her shit didn't stink and then several people told her roses really smell like poo poo poo. That's not discourse, that's a blue check with a bunch of clout having her large audience respond to her.

^

see, this is the current state of the discourse but I guarantee, because I was there, that when it first was posted the response was overwhelmingly positive

Then more people responded and they had different perspectives. I don't see where any individual was rah rah to Jane Marie and then decided, due to peer pressure, that she's Satan.

I've refrained from arguing Chelsea Fagan's point several times when people I know IRL got overly full of themselves for their ability to stay inside without encountering another human being for 9 months. Offloading all risk on to the 19-year working for DoorDash tips because you've got a trust fund isn't really noble IMO.

except that the "different perspectives" are unanimous consensus with whatever is the going state of the Discourse, except for the one or two people who express the wrong opinion and then get piled on and told to die

and people wonder why I am scared to interact with anyone I encounter in real life

the discourse is an illusion; just random twitter accounts competing for views and clout

people are more reasonable in real life when conversations can happen and it isn't just one pixar smirk mic drop after another

xpost but

it's the same people in terms of people liking/responding to it; you can also see good examples of consensus with anyone who dissents (example:

not everyone in those replies are saying the same thing. also, I have no idea who any of them are, and no reason to care about them disagreeing or agreeing with @Tasty_Arsenic. also, one example is barely even anecdotal evidence.

if it's causing you stress to read replies, log off. if you are planning to travel and do not want to read people posting at you about traveling being bad, then do not post about traveling.

(traveling increases risk of acquiring and transmitting the virus. if you are reading what people post about traveling because you are looking for affirmation that traveling is safe, you are unlikely to find it. if you are looking to be dissuaded from your decision to travel, you appear not to be prepared to be dissuaded. if you are not traveling, and nobody is traveling to visit you, then you have no imperative to read posts about traveling, even if you don't log off.)

one pixar smirk mic drop after another

pixar /= dreamworks

You quoted different perspective! 'A funeral was very important to go to because the psychic trauma of 2020 is already bad enough'/'Funerals are not worth endangering others even if it feels important to you.' That's just a disagreement, you can (for instance) come down on the latter side while still fundamentally understanding how someone felt like the former was true.

Jane Marie appears to have taken (a very small amount of) shit because she posted from a place of ego, hectoring people to conform to a standard she made up on the spot, in a forum with a large audience, inviting people to respond.

aha yes of course

xp

lads

the disagreement is "I agree with this except the funeral part" "FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU"

are you even reading what people are saying

Yes. I read all the quoted tweets and screencaps - tasty_arsenic was agreeing with a woman who said going to a funeral was irresponsible and explained why it was irresponsible.

(Also, none of the peoples whose tweets were quoted or screencapped said "fuck you" or were even mean to anyone else.)

the replies:

"Imagine agreeing with that ghoul"
"Lol"
"Was (the loved ones they said they knew who died) your dad?"
"lmao scolding someone who went to see their dying father and burying him fuck off dude"
"Screw you."
"oh fuck off"
"Stfu."
"Fuck off idiot"

I guess I was right, I WAS told I was deluded because they said "fuck off" and not "fuck you"

rip

You left out other responses like

I think that’s a deeply personal decision as long as the funeral is open air, masks, etc

— Dan 🍜 (@ThiccStauskas) December 21, 2020

The rituals surrounding death of family have been around thousands of years through much worse plagues and events. These are a fundamental part of humanity.

— Amb Terintia (@ATerintia) December 22, 2020

Yes it is. Going to your Dads funeral, to be with your mother and siblings is 100% ok.

— Howard Moon multi instrumentalist (@GiantDad15) December 21, 2020

But none of them are responding to Jane Marie or the people you initially referred to, they're talking shit back and forth with other left edgelords.

who are those people and why are you reading their tweets

yesterday you said they are real people who we both know, but even if that's true - which I doubt - those 14-character tweets are not themselves substantive.

they're responding to an opinion that was floated

as far as "who are these people" -- they're actual people, that I could encounter, for all I know they could be friends, or friends of friends, or alt accounts of people I know. their opinions are no less inherently valid than yours or anyone else's

(this is also funny because I distinctly remember being told a while back that "left edgelords" weren't real. I guess their realness or non-realness depends entirely on whether it can be used to tell me I'm wrong)

Personally, the past two decades have solidified my opinion that social media is pernicious and engaging with it with any degree of personal openness is a sure way to get myself emotionally overwrought... and i'd include ILX in that category too!

Some people are capable of playing the game and working "the discourse" for networking and exposure. I am not and I know it. I allow ILX in to the extent that it allows for controlled conversations about and exposure to media that's of interest to me and I (very very stupidly) allow instagram in as an effective portfolio for art that i wanna share with my art community. Even instagram can warp my brain if I allow myself more than five minutes on the damn thing.

Otherwise, I've proven to myself that allowing for extended engagement with disengaged voices from actual people will make me sick over time, so I really avoid it. But that's me! You guys may be made of sterner stuff.

Part of my issue is that it can be difficult to determine the veracity and import of voices that you internalize if you really commit to listening to an entire crowd, which is part of what I think i'm hearing from Katherine and which i empathize with.

Yes, if this conversation has reinforced anything for me it's that social media is a festering blight which is best avoided in most circumstances.

that's a copout, as "social media" consists of real people whom you may encounter in real life

people blame "social media" as a way of avoiding the fact that people are just like this

Most people are like this on social media because they don't face the more immediate repercussions of being like this face-to-face with other people.

'Most people who are like this are like this' I should say.

they're responding to an opinion that was floated

there are millions of opinions being floated on the internet every minute and you don't read them all, nor have to read any of them

they're actual people,

only in the most conceptual, abstract sense. they're Schrodinger's people, and not even that if you had never seen those tweets.

that I could encounter,

unlikely and also irrelevant, as even if you did meet them, the likelihood of you then having a long conversation about every 14-character tweet you've ever read, ending up on identifying some of theirs, and then announcing that you disagreed with them, and them caring, is infinitesimal.

for all I know they could be friends, or friends of friends, or alt accounts of people I know.

objection, your honour. speculation.

their opinions are no less inherently valid than yours or anyone else's

a) sure, so there's no value in paying attention to their opinion over literally anyone else's

b) those are not reasoned opinions that you can assess the weight of. I have good opinions and bad opinions, including absolutely thousands of excellent opinions that many people here disagree with. those twitter people are strangers posting content-free swear words, whereas I am someone you know slightly on the internet, who is posting reasoned factual sentences in the hope of pointing to ways you might find a path out of an anxiety freak-out. people here like you and want you to be less distressed. if you really didn't think the opinions of posters here are more specifically worthwhile to you than @GoldfishFart2937, you would probably be arguing in those replies rather than expressing yourself here and (to some degree) engaging with the posters taking you seriously.

Feel like the last four years have generally disproven the idea that people won't 'say that to my face.' GoldfishFar2937 might not say it at work or in front of his mee-maw but people have always been prone to talking shit.

I don't want to encounter an infinite pool of "real people whom you may encounter in real life"! It would get exhausting and i'm not equipped to do it! Social media allows instantaneous access to vast swaths of opinions, attitudes and conversational approaches that i would avoid like the plague if I ran into them IRL. It prioritizes the immediate and deprioritizes empathy except as performative exercise. It erases necessary boundaries that keep me sane. I avoid it.

TBH, I don't really care what most people say or think about how people should be (because opinions are like assholes: a point of egress for hot air), and to the extent that I do care, it's pretty much only in proportion to how much regard a given person has for the well-being of others.

Also, since currency on social media is driven by likes and follows, the discourse is going to shift back and forth as people rapidly pile on and jump off of bandwagons of popular opinion. IRL twitter would be like a giant high school filled future politicians and wannabe celebrities.

you've just explained why I hated the Boy's State documentary.

a film full of all of the worst kinds of people. hundreds of mcshitters in the one place

The end proposition here, as it always is, is "nobody should be allowed to dusagree with me- i dont like it"

Its just being pushed out to several billion people here as opposed to just the posters on ilx

I don't have anything to add to ~the discourse~ except that the contempt so many of you have for women's magazines is palpable and it suuuuckkksss

— Jessica Grose (@JessGrose) December 22, 2020

Use of ‘the discourse’ in the wild. Katherine does have a point about this whiplash stuff.

What I’m getting from this is that the early take on the Elle story was, “Wow, how could this person who seems like one of us fall for this fraudster? What an embarrassment.”
Which then quickly received the pushback, “shitty magazine is dragging this troubled woman through the mud for clicks. This is not journalism.”
Which is now being pushed back upon as anti-women’s magazinism.
Which will then peter out and the whole thing will be forgotten

"Please stop posting the reasoning behind your murderously irresponsible holiday travel" isn't an opinion, it's a naked invitation to flamewar, is the thing. We're not talking about opinions or discourses at all here, we're talking about people who want to fight on the internet

Yes, so much of this shit is just about the serotonin rush of winning, of being the most right. Humble yourself!

I legitimately don't understand what the fuck this conversation is about any more.

Just get off Twitter.