At least your username is on point.

No, the imperialistic “I must dominate every space I find myself in” attitude is pretty ingrained in Americans, regardless of if they embrace it in themselves or not. Anything from “I must make everyone aware of how bad I feel about my terrible country” to “I must force every country and culture in the world to follow my value system” to just sucking the air out of any room they’re in by making sure that they are the loudest and most visible person around. They come from a culture where everyone is trying to be the tallest poppy. Most of the world by varying degrees generally trims the tallest poppy. It’s not without issues but I could write a hell of a rant on how the tall poppy thing has been painted in overly negative light thanks to American hyper-individualistic sensibilities worming their way into the general consciousness (and don’t confuse me for a tankie, that’s like cutting the whole field if one poppy grows too tall).

Maybe not all Americans go out with the intent to conquer. But very few Americans seem to actually ask themselves if maybe for FUCKING ONCE they could just shut the fuck up, sit quietly in the corner and give their attention to someone else. But no, even if magically all Americans took what I just said to heart, they’d FLOOD social media with posts about themselves sitting quietly in the corner. They’d make sure that everyone knows just how quiet and invisible they are. They would keep their mouth shut but paint a massive red circle and arrows on the wall behind them, and they’d definitely try to be better at it than the other guy. This is the American mentality.

Very frequently.

This is not a love song.

My sentiments exactly. Americans always find a way to make eeeverything about themselves. And then they’re surprised to find Trump as their president. And then, instead of actually doing something about their miserable country, they will dominate every online space with their political shitshow. Most ironically it’s usually accompanied with a significant amount of self-flagellation about what evil imperialists they are. A lot of it. They REALLY need you to see how badly THEY feel about being shitty (not that they’ll take any real action about it). 0 self-awareness. Trump is just the pus-filled cap of an inflamed zit.

I really need to work on this. I get easily caught up in the current events and then burn myself out not being able to do anything about it. But I sort of like feeling the outrage.

This. Exactly this. But because Christian Capitalism needs us to be individuals, being “nothing” must be characterized as a negative.

The only fucking reason people experience the emptiness under all the masks as a negative is because they’ve been conditioned to think there’s supposed to be something there.

Yet the emptiness is the experience of literally everyone who bothers to look. And it is a relief. You’re not anyone, you’re not “supposed” to be one way or another. There’s just an exchange with everything in existence and you can just respond as called in any given situation.

It’s not ADHD. It’s literally everyone. There is no such thing as a true self. That’s just what Disney movies and belief in souls brainwashed us to think.

But that’s a bit arbitrary

Exactly. It’s no more “true self” than any other. Even by themselves, most people play a role for themselves: they replay events of the day or tell themselves other stories and then believe whatever gives them an emotional fix. But it’s not real, and that is true for every other person as well. You are not your story about yourself, you are not someone’s story about you and nobody is your story about them.

Consciousness. Though that too is just a word, which I also don’t believe in. But that’s the best of all the imperfect words that at least point away from matter.

You’re always impacted by something that directs what you end up choosing. Or even thinking. Think of a fruit. Did you choose to think of that fruit? Or did something that falls under the category of fruit just pop into your head? Literally every single thought is like that. Verbal or nonverbal. Sure you can mull over a thing forever if you like, but that too is something you don’t know if you’re going to do before you’re doing it. Or not doing it. I can ask you to go brush your teeth right now. You can deliberate “it’s good for me, no reason not to do it, oh but I already did some time ago, I don’t wanna just do something because this dude online said so, maybe I’ll choose to do it just to prove a point…” endlessly but you have no idea what you end up choosing a single moment sooner than you do. You just tell yourself after the fact that you “chose” to do it or not do it, which also just depends on how attached you are the idea of free will.

Free Will

Materialism (as in, matter being the foundation of reality)

Words

Cat welfare because I like cats, and animal welfare as I consider it my meat tax.

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I think they literally are actually. I vaguely recall reading something about how if you spend a lot of time with someone as a kid, you’re less likely to be romantically attracted to them because we’re instinctively trying to avoid inbreeding (in the context of small villages). Even if true, that doesn’t translate to their claim though.

Bonus points if they also say something like “it didn’t use to be”.

Oh shit that’s good.

Not through my adblocker.

old article but hate how they are intentionally fudging the difference between people who pay for a pirate streaming site vs. people who just torrent stuff. I too will bet my left testicle that downloading anime isn’t going to put money into trafficking.