Best posts made by surreality

I'm going to second Jeshin. There are too many smear campaigns alone to make that plausible, even if it was possible.

When it comes to that sort of garbage behavior, people are very slow to realize that it's the person spewing steady, endless viciousness over a period of years about someone that's the problem as much if not more than whoever they're smearing. Most of what is coming out of their mouths is probably bullshit born of commiseration spirals with the people they're bashing as a group.

For anyone not familiar with this: go read the perspective section of ye olde guide to common sense.

If you don't think you've seen or participated that, you'd be wrong. Yes, I mean every one of us. It is super easy to fall into that trap and very hard to get out of it, since the people involved have become entrenched.

For people too lazy to click the link:

Another issue to be on guard for when considering perspective is the commiseration spiral. A commiseration spiral occurs when two or more people who have been mildly put-out by a certain person's actions realize they share the same feelings, and rather than speaking to the offending person to try to resolve their differences, they instead proceed to complain to each other and reinforce their negative reactions until their opinion of that person is radically altered and exaggerated.

Por ejemplo:

Harland is playing Captain Humongous, Penelope is playing Rocket Tits, and Squeeb is playing Farnokk The Thrusting. Squeeb has been plotting an epic Farnokk The Thrusting saga for quite some time, and Squeeb is very excited about playing it through, as there are parts for both Captain Humongous and Rocket Tits. So excited, in fact, that he commits a hasty error of omission, and continues Farnokk's Mighty Thrusting attack on the Sinister Space Trolls without realizing that Rocket Tits has called for his help with fighting Captain Humongous.

Penelope is struck with the impression that Squeeb is ignoring her, and says as much to Harland, tentatively. The exchange may go something like this.

Penelope: "Hey, I think Squeeb didn't even read my pose."
Harland: "Maybe not. Huh. Maybe he just skimmed it."
Penelope: "Or maybe he doesn't really like me."
Harland: "Or maybe he doesn't like ME."
Penelope: "You know, I bet he's pissed about that time Captain Humongous kissed Rocket Tits outside of the laundromat."
Harland: "Nobody understands our love."
Penelope: "I can't BELIEVE he'd be this petty about something like that! It was our choice to make with the characters, and who is he to throw it in our faces, like he's some RP god who doesn't even read poses?
Harland: "I'm so sick of this kind of bullshit! It's hurting the game, it is, and it's driving players away!"
Penelope: "I bet Johnny Chundernuts quit because of that crap, too!"
Harland: "Son of a bitch! He probably sits around at home, masturbating to poultry porn and trying to increase his power on the game! You can't even talk to him anymore!"
Penelope: "I know! It's got to STOP, I'm TIRED of this kind of treatment!"
Squeeb: "Hey, Harland, it's your turn."
Penelope & Harland: "YOU RAPE DOGS AND STAB THE ELDERLY WITH RUSTY PIRATE SHIP ANCHORS!"
Squeeb: "... wh-what?"

And so on.

A simple mistake that could have been rectified by a gentle prod turns into a massive conspiracy theory about power plays and personal invectives. The commiseration spiral is a slippery slope indeed.

@Coin I seriously miss the ignore feature.

@Ganymede ...maybe scale back on the enthusiasm just a smidge from that. Just a smidge.

While it's still in a limited fashion, I love that the work I do is something I can actually do while in recovery, rather than having to take a month off that I definitely can't afford. Very grateful for this particular perk of working from home.

@Coin In some systems, those things are linked. CoD being a prime example. There's only one prince status slot, for instance. They're corner case issues, but they are out there.

@Catsmeow I will applaud, because that's better than I can do! I have less than zero upper body strength.

@Derp Yes, that is a huge help, but I still wouldn't feel comfortable unless there was a list of 'nope, not happening' (ex: rape, child rape, etc.) listed as 'can't be thrown at people without permission'.

'Anything lasting longer than a single scene' is pretty important; hopefully this will include things like 'this mentally fucks someone up for life' in practice.

Double post, oh, well.

I know the role RP serves in terms of my mental health. Mostly, it's a chance to get out of my own head for a little while -- something that I consider more or less essential once in a while.

My head is not a particularly happy place to be. I won't go into specifics on the reasons why.

One of my brain's oh so fun quirks, however, is problem-solving. I rely on pattern recognition a lot, for better or worse. Sometimes, this comes in really handy. Other times? Not so much. If something breaks the pattern or doesn't make sense, my brain will pick at it -- and pick at it, and pick at it, and pick at it -- while approaching it from just about every possible angle until it's more or less driving me bonkers. It may be something major, it may be something completely trivial, but either way, I end up stuck in that particular loop, and go around and around and around until I'm dizzy and usually frustrated as hell. It's like a computer getting stuck in a loop and consuming more and more processes until it eventually crashes.

Not fun.

RP lets me step out of my own brain and into someone else's for a very short while. This? Handy. It helps break the head-loop thanks to the perspective shift, no matter how brief.

This is pretty amazingly helpful. And, weirdly enough, incredibly healthy for me at least, in moderate doses.

It also means that if real life is spectacularly horrible, RP is a bad idea, because stepping back into my head again becomes scary as hell. So when it could arguably be the most useful, I've had to learn to avoid it, lest the 'brief vacation from my brain's badly wired processes to hit the reset button' become 'I would much rather live here now k thx because this imaginary hidey hole that doesn't really matter in the long run is way better'.

I harp on self-awareness a lot. This is partly why. I know that if I'm not careful, and not paying attention, it's easy enough to fall down the 'I'll just hide here' rabbit hole, and focus on problems that aren't remotely important because in the end, the stakes are so incredibly small compared to more or less anything in the real world and even if everything goes totally wrong, it's pretend wrong/important/etc., no matter how important it might seem.

I still fuck up on the self-awareness sometimes. I try not to, but it still happens. Either way, though, if things are less than grand RL, I know to stick as much to solo project problem-solving stuff toward the same ends, and to the very tiny handful of folks I know very well if I RP at all, since they know me well enough to be able to say: check yourself (without me flipping out on them/feeling WTF about it and knowing they're looking after my best interests).

It will probably be a while before I'm playing much anywhere, if at all, for the above reasons. (And that was before almost dying twice and the tens of thousands of dollars in hospital bills that preventing a round three of that has looming for us now -- not a great thing for people who don't make much money; it's super fucking scary, actually, and it's going to take something just shy of an actual miracle to handle it. I have no idea how we're going to pull this off.) I'm OK with this, though -- the not playing part, anyway -- since I know my limits enough to know it's for the best.

@Kestrel said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

I don't think I'm alone in just having been badly socialised this way.

You are not. The same happens often with me, and from the staff side, I have seen endless other people with the same concerns and anxiety.

It does not matter how nice or trustworthy or ethical staff is for a lot of folks in these circumstances -- they may never find out for one (being too afraid to approach) -- but staff being nice and open-minded and open-eared about these things may actually increase hesitation in some way, because the thought of 'taking advantage' or 'wasting that nice person's time with (generic) my (not actually) stupid situation' and similar feels somehow worse than approaching a generic 'hit a button' system in that moment in which there is an issue.

Not judging either -- though I will say I have seen this taken to extremes that sometimes make me a little sad. (Not saying you or anyone here do/does in any way, @Admiral, this just reminded me of a case of it that had me head-scratching some.)

I remember seeing people scream about The Forest, the premise of which actually was dumb American with no goddamn clue goes into a part of Japan that people who have no goddamn clue should seriously not fucking go or they will end horribly, which sorta falls apart if it's not how it was cast, or it would at least be a totally different movie/story. It's... the premise, since a Japanese person would know the lore/not be that dumbass. If somebody wanted to make that totally different story with an all Japanese cast, I would be all over watching it, too, it would just be a very different story, and I'd want to see that made with an all Japanese cast, too.

Wait, when did the notion of these commands being 'use is required in place of direct communication' come up? Because I haven't seen a single person suggest anything of the kind.

Also: yay, Black Sails is back. This will help fill the gaping void in my soul for a little while.

But not completely. Not unless we get the best judgy-eyed haunting in the history of ever. (I'm refraining from spoilering anyone who hasn't seen the previous season, but anyone who has doubtless knows precisely what I'm talking about. Most well-deserved judgy-eyed haunting ever.)

If (generic) you see no value in any of this, don't employ any of it.

There's no reason to keep repeating how much you don't like it at this point; nothing new is being added with each repetition. It's unnecessary to the extent that it's starting to seem like an attempt to silence folks who do have an interest in the discussion, and it's getting irritating.

It is not making the case for 'respectful communication between well-intentioned individuals is the best way to work things out and reach a positive outcome', that's for dang sure.

@Arkandel said in RL Anger:

Anyway on Monday I got to a dentist and... let's just say the health insurance costs weren't even 20% of the actual money I ended up saving once I saw the bill. Dentistry is insane, man.

As someone with like... $10k minimum in dentistry required and looming (I have the shittiest tooth genes ever), I feel you on this.

And that's not counting the implant I really actually do need.

We tried the 'student clinic' for a lower cost. Every single thing they've done is either wrong, or has needed to be redone. (One filling from there came out the next day for instance.) The crooked grin is also now permanent because they killed a nerve in my lower lip, which after two years has only started to recover.

Good dentist is worthwhile dentist, trust me!

@Derp said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

Which is exactly how I feel about this entire topic.

Then stop participating in it.

What this topic is about is right there on the tin, after all. Why are you here discussing it if it's not for you?

Is the complexity of the problem becoming clearer to you?

Apologies for double post, but new subject for the coffee junkies amongst us: I the AeroPress. Damn, this thing is simple as can be and actually makes pretty damned good (read: strong as hell) coffee.

I could never get my fauxKeurig (which I had already chosen since it produced a stronger brew than the real one on strong) to do this after the good espresso machine died (rest in peace, Bliss the coffeebot, your service will forever be remembered with the utmost fondness), but I can now get plain hot water from said fauxKeurig and with about another minute of time, voila, good strong coffee.

This thing is desk-friendly, folks, and cubicle small (about the size of two standard mugs stacked on each other, a little smaller and frankly a fuckton more effective than a traditional french press), and it's plastic so you needn't be paranoid of thin glass being around•. Also easy to clean and whatnot. Most excellent, do recommend, and I found this one at Bloodbath&Beyond for $30 before one of their ever-present coupons.

Worth it. Cheap, works, and will not explode into shards of glass that could injure or cause someone anal-retentive in management to give you a case of the glares about safety concerns. (Friend of mine ran into this one at a few places, since I work from home it's not a thing, so I have no idea how common this is.)

• Thermal shock is no joke, either. With glass, not only do you need to worry about knocking the thing over, but thermal shock. Thermal shock is the quasi-technical name for that phenomena we're all used to re: putting ice cubes in a glass fresh from the dishwasher and still warm. It cracks all over. Pyrex, which is what most coffee pots and french presses are made from, is borosilicate glass and was engineered to be more resistant to thermal shock. (It also is used to make some seriously incredible beads that are unusually light-reactive. (GUESS WHICH WAY I LEARNED ABOUT THIS GUYS, IT'S COFFEE OR ART SUPPLIES, THIS ONE COULD ACTUALLY BE HARD! <cough>) It still does it, though. It just doesn't always do it right away, and will only happen if lightly nudged/etc. I found this out the hard way when the upstairs coffeemaker died once, and I meandered down to get the one from the kitchen we hadn't used in a year, and so help me gods, the moment I reached toward the old machine, the coffee pot exploded in what I can only assume was pure, huffy spite (and stored thermal shock).

(Exploding glass is no joke, even when it's incredibly funny in hindsight.)

@Apos said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

Someone that's a raging asshole can actually be pretty healthy for a competitive environment in some circumstances, where even someone that is merely unconcerned about whether a shared story is fun for other people is detrimental in a collaborative one.

@Bobotron I don't feel right upvoting that even as a sign of empathy/agreement, but will say: ugh, lots of empathy and agreement.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/22/us/child-sex-abuse-websites-shut-down.html

Seemed relevant to add here once spotted. Not directly hobby-related in any way, but on point to the issue on the whole.

Seconding the advice re: foam topper and massage therapist.

(But then, I have a bed that'd make the Princess and the Pea go, 'Bitch, you have a problem,' and I married a massage therapist, so take my advice with a bucket of salt.)