The Xenforo "Discourage" Feature

Discussion in 'That's So Meta!' started by palindromordnilap, May 14, 2018.

  1. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    It's honestly not even really about whether it'd be good to hurt bad people. That question, it turns out, can't become relevant until we have a way to discern between good and bad people, and... we don't, really. Last estimate I saw was that about a third of people convicted of capital crimes in the US can end up exonerated by unambiguous proof later on. And that's with trial by jury, appeals, standards of evidence, and all that.

    If all you've got is a fighty brain that has a track record of being wrong about who needs to be hurt well over 95% of the time, the only rational answer is to hurt no one at all, because if you hurt anyone, anyone at all, you can be quite sure that you will be hurting innocent people more often than you hurt guilty people. And if you sum up all the harm done by all the guilty people you hurt, you'll find that it's a drop in the bucket compared to the harm you did supposedly in the process of trying to get to them.

    I don't actually remember the "have you tried actually helping people" thing, but... it's actually pretty decent advice. It's maybe not exactly phrased persuasively or politely, but in terms of "courses of action to take if you want to make things better", it's pretty much solid gold. It works really well.

    The reason there are so many shitty and abusive cops is that no one who wants that kind of power should ever have it.

    Alix, the degree to which you want the power to judge is, in and of itself, proof that you should absolutely not be the one doing it. You are an exemplar of the failure mode that makes for incredibly abusive cops. Don't you get it? The worst cops aren't the dirty cops who are completely insincere and just in it for the bribes. They're the ones who think they are protecting us. The ones who are bravely, heroically, protecting us from the blacks and the mentally ill people, and who are prepared to do whatever dirty tricks and cheating is necessary to make sure they Keep Us Safe. They're the worst. They're the ones that kill innocent people, they're the ones that rape prisoners and torture prisoners, and every time, they are firmly convinced that they are just doing what's necessary, and they have to do it, because otherwise lawlessness and bad guys getting away with it. And nothing they do even makes sense. It is obvious to everyone else that "keep a toy gun in the car so if you shoot someone you can plant it on them" is a sign that something's gone horribly wrong.

    But you expect us to think that "habitually access every site through VPNs and make multiple accounts" is somehow, in any way, a sign of anything but premeditated and planned abuse.

    It's not. It's you being an innately-awful cop. It's you loving power and calling it "justice". And it needs to stop. And you can stop the worst of it, in one simple step, by calling it by its true name. This is one of the few demons that really can be shut down completely by just using its true name. Call it what it is, don't let it pretend to be anything else, and let all its excuses and justifications go. Be who you are. If you're an asshole sometimes, but you don't pretend it's For Their Own Good, you'll be infinitely more pleasant to interact with than you are now.

    The cruelty is bad, but what's really making it impossible to put up with is the dishonesty. And I know, you really feel like what you're saying is true. But it can't be true. Nothing you do makes any sense considered in light of your alleged goals. So. Call it what it is, reject it, and watch life get easier. Not easy, mind. Just easier.
     
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  2. Verily

    Verily surprised Xue Yang peddler

    So the purported reason for reviving this thread is to take seebs to task. But that doesn't at all resemble the actual result. What's actually happened is the floodgates have opened and lots of people have grievances to air with Alix. This result is not just pedictable, it's demonstrably repeatable because this is a repeat.

    Alix, maybe I'm wrong, but I'm looking at this and I don't think seebs was really the main target. I think you were. Your aim is excellent, I'll give you that.

    (That's not to say I think you were lying about your intentions. I don't. No one I've ever met is privy to all their own motives, especially not in the heat of the moment while they're distressed. I tend to think results often speak to the things people didn't even know they were after.)

    When people say forgive yourself, that's vitally important. It probably sounds like empty, sugary words. It isn't. There's nothing sugary about that process. It's fucking hard.

    Can you forgive yourself for not being the person you were led to expect you could be? For not being able to be the person you wished to become? Can you look at yourself and see the person you are, rather than a failed version of someone you aren't?

    This misery isn't justice. It can't even see justice from where it is.
     
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  3. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    ... I think there's a thing people aren't getting in this discussion. Sure, it's not like I can time-travel back to before all of this went to shit, fix everything and be the person I always wanted to be.
    But I don't need to. All I need is support, figuring out a way to get back to a decently challenging education, being able to fix my fucking brain so that I can actually handle that decently challenging education... Fuck, in theory I could even retake the high school exams so that I can get merit-based scholarships! All I need is support, decent therapy, meds... I never even planned to get into any fancy highly selective higher education things, so I might not even have any permanently closed doors.
    And you know the problem? Every time I ask for actual, concrete advice on doing that, people tell me to stop dwelling on the past and just accept that I'll never have the life I wanted. That I should just be happy seeing people like Nicole (who someone summarized as "me but with all the DLC") he successful in life and just kinda give up, find a decently-paying job, adjust to a kinda okay life objectively speaking, wait for my brain to adjust to the new normal. And it's incredibly frustrating, especially when there are concrete, actionable ways to get my fucking life back.
     
  4. rats

    rats 21 Bright Forge Shatters The Void

    the problem is that the support you're looking for is probably not going to be coming. people who you've hurt, even if you didn't mean to etc., don't have any obligation to talk to or be a support network for you any more. if they don't want to do that, then basically that's that.
    what are these 'concrete, actionable ways' to 'get your life back'? be put back onto seebscord, where most of the people there will feel very uncomfortable interacting with you? have everyone magically forgive and forget no matter what awful stuff you said to them?
     
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  5. rigel

    rigel in a line of late afternoon sun

    i can tell you from experience that just waiting for the Right Support or the Right Person or the Right Advice to come and present itself to you isnt going to help. sometimes you just have to save yourself.

    people have tried to help. you've been given good advice. you've been given resources and means to help yourself forward. demanding to be let back into seebscord isnt the answer. trying to force yourself back into the lives of the people you hurt isnt the answer.
     
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  6. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    ... I'm not talking about the seebscord. I'm asking if anyone has advice on therapy/meds/etc that isn't to move to fucking Canada.
     
  7. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    You've gotten a ton of that advice. To recap briefly:

    Meds are nice but completely 100% optional, people with worse ADHD have done quite well without them. They can help, but they are not an essential requirement. That said: Definitely think in terms of "move to any other country", luckily you're in the EU and can move anywhere in the EU.

    Therapy: Any therapy would probably be an improvement over none. You need people to talk to who are there to listen to you, and having at least one who's doing it because it's actually their fucking job might be good for you.

    General brain health: Stop seeking out things that upset you. Actively avoid them, in fact. Treat the rage as an enemy and just stop treating it as though it is ever good for you. It's not.

    You don't need to magically fix your brain; you need to learn how people with brains like that adapt and survive. Conveniently, you've been given hours and hours and hours of detailed advice and life coaching from people with those problems, which is in your chat logs and things and available to you whenever you want it.
     
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  8. rigel

    rigel in a line of late afternoon sun

    youve been given advice, over and over for years. its just not what you want to hear. the advice that you want to hear doesnt exist, because you very likely will not be able to get the life you want back. you have to work with what you have now, with the goal of being better. the life you had isnt better, because thats when you decided to abuse your friends.
     
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  9. rigel

    rigel in a line of late afternoon sun

    people dont trust you because you idealize a past where you actively decided to harm them! where you went out of your way to harm them! where you choose to harm over literally ANYTHING ELSE. if you focus on the past, and how things used to be, youre just gonna end right back here again, having this same conversation again.
     
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  10. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    Uh, actually, I only started constantly abusing my friends like that when my life started going to shit. Maybe it is something about power, and/or jealousy, in a "if I can't be happy then why should they?" way.

    Anyway, I'm not asking for the moon here. My plan is "get into that biology program I always wanted to get into, and then don't fail". That's literally it. The only two problems are my behavior issues, which have been repeatedly addressed here, and my cognitive problems. Which no one even seems to believe are real.
     
  11. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    There might be more to it, but basically, Gifted Child Wall plus Constantly Seeking Out Stress would be enough to explain just about all of this pretty solidly. Like, I've been trying to watch what my actual sustained cognitive activity looks like, and in practice, I don't actually ever do something for >15-20 minutes. I do things for maybe almost that long, then do other things, because I can't keep doing the same thing that long.

    Like, if you avoid seeking out stress, and do some of the things suggested (various meditation-like exercises, any parts of DBT you can stand, etc.), you will likely get a lot of improvement. Maybe not as much as you'd like, but more than enough to make you able to handle college-level stuff.
     
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  12. KingStarscream

    KingStarscream watch_dogs walking advertisement

    Stop looking for things to be angry about.

    I know it’s been said before, but stop engaging with FiD threads, stop digging through the parts of reddit that will piss you off, ask your friends on your discord server to keep drama cordoned off from you, just stop engaging with rage-inducing things entirely.

    Rage is exhausting. Constant, overpowering, relentless amounts of angry is exhausting. The most brainpower you spend on things that make you angry, the less you have for dealing with school.

    So stop looking for things to be angry about. It will help the cognitive processing issues. Really.
     
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  13. rats

    rats 21 Bright Forge Shatters The Void

    i'm not sure if this is what you're intending, so if im reading this wrong im sorry - when you say 'im not asking for the moon here' wrt this topic all i'm hearing is "people who were my friends once that i hurt need to come back to me, it wasn't that big a deal, i need that support network again", basically almost guilting people to come back?? again, if that's not what you're going for, feel free to correct me but that's what keeps coming across, at least to me
     
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  14. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    I'm not even talking about things directly related to Kintsugi or the seebscord - though if anyone has any sort of advice on making new friends, because clearly I'm near-pathologically unable to do that, that would be welcome as well.
    Like... Maybe read the rest of the sentence?
     
  15. rats

    rats 21 Bright Forge Shatters The Void

    i am reading the whole sentence.

    when you follow
    with
    'anyway i'm not asking for the moon here'
    it comes across as "i only started abusing my friends when my life went to shit, so im not asking for the moon here, ugh, just be my friends again"
    which, again, if that's not what you're intending i'm sorry, it's just what's coming across
    if anyone thinks i'm reading way too much into it or seeing things that aren't there please let me know

    eta: it's also why i brought up seebscord up above, because the fixation with wanting to turn back time and wanting 'your life back' comes heavily across as wanting people to ignore everything you've done and everything to just go back the way it was before you hurt them. AGAIN, i'm sorry if this isn't what you're intending to come across! it could be a lost in translation thing, idk, but as far as i remember i've never had any issues parsing what you were trying to say, and this is just what everything is reading as in context

    even if you change entirely and become a literal saint there are still going to be people that don't forgive you or want anything to do with you and it just be like that sometimes.
     
    Last edited: Feb 10, 2019
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  16. Re Allyssa

    Re Allyssa Sylph of Heart

    1) false
    2) two birds one stone. You don't see anyone addressing the cognitive problems because when they do, the advice is the same to do with the behavioral problems. You can't fix one without the other

    Also when you say things like this it sounds like you care more about fixing the cognitive stuff than the behavioral stuff and I think those priorities are backwards
     
    Last edited: Feb 10, 2019
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  17. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    I guess I should probably have said "the rest of the paragraph".
     
  18. 3strim

    3strim Professional Accidental Rater

    Live in Canada, can confirm: whoever is giving you advice probably doesn't live here or was in one of those lucky cities that has the support framework and no mental health epidemics. Horrid plan though, would not recommend.

    It's frustrating to hear you say that we're not helping when we're giving you endless advice. Want to know how to make and keep friends? Maybe quell the rage addiction first. Tends to make people more approachable. Cognitive issues? I've addressed ways that I - an individual who has executive and cognitive dysfunction - accomodate and help myself with that.

    So as much as you're saying we're not listening, reverse it for all of us who have been trying to help you and try to imagine how much it feels like you're listening.
     
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  19. 3strim

    3strim Professional Accidental Rater

    Actually, correction: thought the tips and tricks were in your thread, was wrong and had been posted elsewhere.

    TL;DR on how to fight brainfog: Stimulate your brain, do some sudoku or doodle god or one of the plethora of word games, literally anything, for like fifteen minutes a day. Or, combine tactics and work on a basic twine game even if the text is just a keysmash.

    Coincidentally, all of these also help combat rage.
     
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  20. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    Yeah. That really is good advice.

    But the most fundamental thing, the thing that pretty much has to be first, is believing that the rage really is wrong enough more often than it's right that you start to genuinely reject it. Not embrace it because it feels good, and then make excuses about how theoretically there was one time when the victim might have been a bad person, or at least they were friends with bad people, or weren't fighting bad people, which is basically the same. Nah, it's consistently, uniformly, fucked up. Your rage is significantly less accurate than a stopped clock.
     
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