Emrie

Decided to just be a full-on Communist now. Objectively better system to capitalism.

If I'm honest, I've been treating someone at work differently simply because of their gender. And by differently, I mean better. Like, I shouldn't, right? I look at them differently, I'm nicer to them, I ... I just, we have a different relationship and it's only because of their gender. Gender equality should mean I treat everyone the same, no one gets special treatment only because of their gender. And yet, here I am. It's good that I'm aware of it at least, and it's something I'm going to work on. But it kinda bums me out because I thought I'd moved past that but I guess I haven't.

Ho--kay so this is uhh ... this is bad, it happened twice in a week, which is really bad. You know how when someone asks you how you're doing, you're supposed to just say you're doing well? Like they don't want you to dump you negative emotions on them. Well TWICE this week I said I was doing well and they could tell I wasn't. First time it was someone who asked me if I was doing okay today and I just said "Yeah, yeah..." but with the worst possible tone ever that just screamed "no, no...". And he totally got that I wasn't doing well from that. Second time, with a completely different person on a completely different day, I answered "Yeah I'm doing well, more or less". And she answered "more or less? What do you mean?" And again she totally got that I'm not doing well. Like it's bad because, typically when I'm not doing well, I can still hide it enough when people ask me how I'm doing. But now I'm really at a point where I'm doing sooo badly that I just can't even.

Okay firstly you do absolutely have autonomy over your sexual preferences. In fact you have complete autonomy over literally everything in your life. You can live your life however you want and do whatever you want. And if you do consider that someone being bisexual is a valid reason not to have a relationship with them, I'm going to respect that and will not force you to change. If you don't wanna date bisexual people just because they're bi, that's fine, I don't care, live your life and be happy. Secondly, transgenderism and bisexuality are vastly different, you're comparing apples to oranges. Someone being transgender is reflected in how they dress, their mannerisms, and even their body. Sexual preferences apply very much here. It is completely understandable that you wouldn't want to sleep with a trans person, and it doesn't necessarily make you transphobic. But bisexuality is literally just who someone is attracted to. It doesn't affect their mannerisms, it doesn't affect how they dress, it doesn't affect their body, it doesn't even affect the rest of their personality, it is literally just that they can be attracted to people of more than one gender. It does not affect you or your relationship in any tangible way. The fact that someone could build a relationship with you and get to a point where there's emotional and even sexual intimacy before they tell you they're bi without you noticing, knowing, or even suspecting it proves this to you. So if you can get to this point and you still want to break this hypothetical relationship off ... like why? Biphobia would be number one for me, but maybe it's something else. Maybe it's anxious attachment, maybe it's fear of abandonment, maybe it's just jealousy. Like I'd be curious to hear, because sexual preference cannot be it. The bisexuality isn't apparent at all in the bedroom and even in the relationship at large.

To biphobic people, yeah. Then again, do you really wanna sleep with biphobes? If the answer is yeah, and I don't really blame you, trick is to sleep with them a bunch of times before telling them. That way, if they break things off, it's their fault they have to confront their biphobia, and you got laid.

Like I'll be turning 27 in a few months and it just feels like I'm a good 10 years behind. I was watching this video and it was a girl talking about topics to bring up on your dates to scan for potential red flags. And like the first thing she says is "Tell me about your best friend!" ... and I don't have any friends!!!! She was saying like "if they can't keep any real good friendships and talk highly of their friends, that's a red flag". So then I started thinking like .. okay well if I want to date I gotta make friends first, I guess. But then who would want to be friends with me if I don't already have friends, they'll think I'm a shit person... which yeah I don't really have any social skills so... And then I started thinking like, if I look at my whole life, there's just a general lack of experience EVERYWHERE. I don't really know what my Life Purpose is, I can probably intuit that it's something to do with music but I just don't know, I certainly don't have any real big skills that can dramatically help people. I've only started exercising like 9 months ago and I'm still not perfect with my diet. I still have a lot of trauma I endured when I was growing up that I just haven't healed from. And I have absolutely ZERO spiritual development. And like from all this, I'm genuinely afraid that I'm never going to really be able to build a strong life because like who would want to associate with someone like me who's never had friends at 27, who tries to be cool by playing guitar when they work in IT and they're a giant nerd (you'd honestly be shocked by the number of people who discriminate against us just for working in IT), who's lack of social skills is so apparent you don't want to have a conversation with them... And before you come at me with your "I know guys in their 50's pulling girls in their 20's", take several seats, okay, I have several arguments: 1) There are different cultures around the world alright, I may shock you with this but that's a bit cringe to a lot of people around the planet, and especially where I live. 2) I don't really care about "pulling girls in their 20's" (I actually quite dislike that verb, feels very objectifying to me), I care more about emotional intimacy and cultivating loving interdependent relationships... and like those require really mature people. And honestly I think many of those mature people won't want to build said relationships with me because I'm so far behind. -- Of course yes I realize 27 is actually quite young and if I just give myself 10 years and work hard on this stuff, I'll be radically transformed and probably be more developed as a human than the average first-world human, though tbh I don't care about the average human, I care about the best humans. And of course I realize that these negative thoughts aren't helping in any way and are in fact counter-productive, they do nothing but shoot myself in the foot. But I think it's also a legitimate concern and something I absolutely ought to be aware of because I might have to deal with it in some way. Like how do you deal with someone asking you about past relationships when you've had none! So yeah anyways... I just wanted to express my feelings I don't really care about fixing the damn problem, just talking about it already helps. But anyways you may try and fix my problem or whatever.

Being bi, poly, non-binary, and just generally leftist, I think I'm just a depressed communist.

Got hit with the "Am I too old?" today... I mean I'm 26, super young. Definitely not too old. But also I feel like I'm at level 1 in life. Like I just have NOOOO real experience in anything, I have zero experience in social, romantic, and sexual life. Zero experience in my life purpose. Zero experience in spirituality. Basically I'm almost 27 and I feel like I should be 15. If I were 15 and I started trying to make friends and get better social skills, trying to play guitar or even finding my life purpose, starting meditation, it'd be a whole different story. But I'm almost 27... I'm almost 27 and I've only started exercising early this year. I'm almost 27 and I never had any friends. Actually I watched a TikTok of a girl saying "here are questions you should ask your dates to look for red flags" and the first was like "tell me about your best friend!" ... and it hit me like a truck. I'm almost 27 and obviously you can tell I've never had any sexual or romantic relationships either, and I'M BISEXUAL!!!! At this point idk if I'm bi or so fucking touch-starved I'll even give other genders a chance. -- And now I'm really in a situation where I'm like ... am I too old? Like legit won't people expect good social skills when I try to interact with them? And inevitably end up trying to disassociate with me when they realize that I just don't have any! And then how am I supposed to get better if people don't want to talk to me and .... *sigh* Of course this is all fear, insecurity, and it's doing me a lot of harm and not helping in any way, but fucking hell, I just wanna express my feelings. I wish I had someone to say this kind of stuff to.

Got my guitar and I'm in love. Like holy shit. It's so good! I will be making music like hell and it's going to be fantastic.

I gotta be real fucking careful, holy shit. At work today, thankfully my boss wasn't at his desk, someone from another team asked if there was an opening in our team jokingly, because he loves our team so much. ... And OMG I answered so casually and so unironically that, yeah there's probably going to be an opening soon, and I didn't elaborate further. It was VERY MUCH IMPLYING that I intend to leave. People in the team were honestly super suspicious but I could definitely feel that it was obvious I had essentially outed myself. I was not careful there, I didn't realize what I was saying while saying it.

Has anybody here done any research into psychedelics for art or creativity? I was thinking like, what if there's a psychedelic you could take and it would give a lot of inspiration that you can then translate into drawings, music, or anything right? My own thoughts is that like any of them can give you inspiration if you have that intention when tripping. DMT probably can be really good as it's a very powerful one.

One of the biggest mindset shifts I've had now is Journey vs Destination. Every day I take a cold shower, and every day in the cold shower I pretend I have a conversation with other people about cold showers and every day I tell myself that I just do it because I like it. I don't care about the health benefits, I just like the cold shower itself. And today I realized how I apply this same mindset to literally everything in my life. I do everything I choose to do because I enjoy it, not for any supposed results. I eat healthy food because I like cooking and eating healthy food, not to keep myself in good health. I exercise because I enjoy lifting heavy weights and sprinting, not to have big muscles. So yeah, pretty cool

Some really really reaaaaally tall people out there. Myself being 195cm (or 6'5) and very rarely seeing people taller than me, I gotta say it's really impressive to see people even taller.

That's awesome man, are there ones you prefer over others specifically for that purpose?

I've had a random thought that kinda made me laugh and also questioning, like I need deeper inquiry on it. I think that I've gone so far into communism that it's even affected my sexuality. Like my bisexuality is like "well no I'm not gonna limit myself to just one gender, that's unfair and discriminatory, I'm gonna give everyone a fair shot" -- which is kinda socialist right?? Same with polyamory like "I'm not gonna limit my love to one person, we're not gonna claim ownership of each other, we'll spread our love to as many people as we can, it's stupid to limit it" -- Of course I know these things are much deeper traits than just political views, but yeah, kinda made me laugh.

Y'all it's not hard to replace "his or her" with their, come on.

A lot of people have very strong negative opinions on TikTok but I think it has a lot of potential and can absolutely be used really well, as a content creator and a consumer of the content. There's a lot of bad stuff too but like .... ummmm did you not notice the world we live in? YouTube has plenty of bad stuff and I don't see anybody here criticizing it! Plenty of shitty books that make you waste time too! Leo even just posted about a video game on his blog! Actually I think Leo even said at one point that we have a lot of industries right now that need more conscious people who can elevate all of those industries. But coming back to TikTok, I've seen singers post small snippets of new songs they're trying out, in a low-stakes environment, as an example. I've seen people even make political commentary, serious content with TikToks lasting several minutes (you can also .. make Part 2's you know). It's also great for posting memes and just funny content, or hell taking a serious subject and making a funny TikTok about it, like making a comment on racism using a funny trend. I think there's a lot of engagement with the community that can be had there that can be great. Of course consumers have to actually find the right content and that can be hard but I wouldn't really dismiss it outright.

For real, I noticed recently how my negative thoughts affected my life so badly. Especially in social situations. I remember one day I had an after-work drink with some colleagues and at one point in the conversation I felt like I wasn't doing well enough and I started feeling really bad about myself, and then a little later, the conversation stopped for a bit and I felt TERRIBLE that I couldn't keep it going. Then the next day, I had a conversation with someone on the train home from work and it was a very chill, nice, relaxed and just overall good. There were actually plenty of silent moments in that train ride and a decent bit of them (not all, but a decent amount) were broken by my conversation partner, not me. But I didn't feel bad and ultimately the conversation flowed naturally and I had a much better time. Realistically the only difference between those two were just my negative thoughts. So for real, always assume it's going well, and it'll actually go well.

One of the scariest things about our society is how easy it is for people to just never cultivate any real relationships in their lives.

How DARE you even SUGGEST that environmentalism can even go too far!!!! Im-POSS-ible!!! No but like more seriously, I think there are just some things I'll do no matter if they're going "too far" or not. For example, I'm considering going to Sweden next summer and I'll probably take the train. Taking the train would require taking the night train and it would literally take more than 24 hours to travel to Stockholm, it's also much more expensive than just taking the plane. Some people would say it's too far, the plane flies anyway (though I would argue probably not so much anymore due to service staff shortage, airlines are canceling flights more often now), but I don't care I wanna do it anyway.

This is really super true, I love it. Just great. Thanks for the share!

So I recently came across this concept of relationship anarchy and I have fallen in love with it, it is so great. Firstly let me make clear that it is NOT about chaos, avoiding responsibility, doing whatever you want because there are "no rules" or any of that. I find that a decent amount of people associate a lot of negative things to the term anarchy and that is NOT what we're doing here. The short 1-liner definition I can try to give to RA is that individuals are autonomous, there are no inherent hierarchies to relationships, and each relationship is unique and customized specifically by the people involved. This is a short video introducing RA. This here is the original manifesto for RA and it states the general principles of RA. And this is a nice 60-minute podcast on RA 101, they go through the manifesto and go a little deeper on each principle. What I love about it is that you're actually sitting down and putting conscious thought into exactly what each of your relationships look like. And this does not apply to just romantic relationships but every relationship. So you may even ask yourself "okay so what kind of relationship do I have with my boss? With my coworkers? With my dad?" Another thing that I love is that you're replacing prescriptive hierarchies with descriptive hierarchies and rules with boundaries. So a prescriptive hierarchy might be "my spouse is more important than my friend, therefore, if there is conflict between the two, I'll always side with my spouse", whereas a descriptive hierarchy might be "I am sharing finances with this person, so therefore it is important to me that this person's decision making power regarding financial decisions is higher than other peoples'. I am therefore going to make this a priority with everyone that might be involved in that regard and we'll come to an agreement". And this is where boundaries might come in as opposed to rules, where a rule might be "you are not allowed to talk to me about financial decisions because that person's opinion is the only one that matters regarding this subject" and a boundary might be "because we are sharing finances, it is important to us that you respect this hierarchy, you may choose not to, you're a grown adult and we don't have control over your life, but if you do, we are going to remove ourselves from this relationship, or we'll de-escalate and find a new structure for this relationship". A big part of discussing and designing the relationship is good-faith communication. So taking the example above, when discussing the subject of finances all three people involved will sit down and discuss the terms to come to an agreement that works for everyone, so the two people know what's important to them, that the descriptive hierarchy regarding finances be respected, and they might even have specific examples of how that would look like day-to-day. And they might come to the third person and say "this is what we want, what do you want and how can we accommodate you?" And an agreement can be formed, or not and perhaps the relationship ends. So it creates these amazing dynamics where people are always very open, honest, communicative, and even vulnerable, but we all act from a place of love, community, companionship, pooling resources and creating something beautiful together, all of us. And we treat everyone with a lot of attention and care and we really see everyone as whole complex human beings equal to one other that all have a lot of value and love to offer. We essentially decide to challenge quite literally everything that we might have learned previously and build our relationships from a blank slate. And it is truly an amazing thing that I can't wait to start now.

Specifically the ones who have no social calibration whatsoever. The amount of shit I've had to deal with from toxic men is just awful. Here are five examples that come to mind, like literally off the top of my head: 1) When my brother lost his virginity, he literally told everyone. I mean ... EVERYONE. We had a party with at least like 40 people and he just told everyone there, it's INSANE! This whole macho "Oh I had sex mwahaha" bullshit, like imagine how insecure you have to be for something like this. Jesus christ! 2) I was once talking with a group of people, including one guy. The dude had no fucking social calibration whatsoever, he would start talking to me randomly when I was clearly following another conversation. And that's not the worst part, he was trying to hit on me. I was clearly not interested in him and even trying not to talk with him but he kept insisting, like TAKE A FUCKING HINT!!!! 3) I met a guy once, again through a group of friends. Literally the first question he asked me was "are you single?" ... honestly I should have said yes because then he asked me if I wanted to go to a sauna with him... *sigh* I gave him the coldest possible look and shook my head "no", he still tried to give me his fucking number after. The fuck has to be wrong in someone's head to behave like this! 4) I went to a party wearing a suit. Literally the first person who talks to me, and literally the first thing they say is "Oh you're definitely gonna get laid wearing this suit tonight". As if a fucking suit gets you laid... I had like five other people that night tell me I was trying to get laid with that. The fucking slut-shaming for wearing nice clothes is insane to me! Maybe I wear a suit because I want to look good and sex has nothing to do with it. 5) I was on a plane recently and there was a dude in front of me who spent THE ENTIRE TWO-HOUR FLIGHT writing a bio for his Tinder profile. Now, not only was it the most boring and least original bio I've ever seen, what I hated most was the attitude he and his friends had toward the whole thing, they were all like "woooow you're so gonna get laid with this awesome profile". -- Now of course I can reframe this and understand that it's really not really all that bad. My brother was just proud of himself and wanted to share how happy he was with the rest of us. I respect that. I didn't outright reject the dude so it's understandable he was talking to me. And he was mostly just being friendly and showing his intentions. The sauna guy I'm pretty sure was autistic. Autistic people shouldn't be treated as evil sexual predators, they're gonna have a harder time socially and that's okay. People saying I was trying to get laid were actually right, I was trying to get laid. The dude on the plane was probably just trying to find love and being himself, nothing wrong with any of that. But still like ... where did we go wrong that guys are so badly socially calibrated? I noticed this in myself where I'm really struggling to be this really fun interesting guy who also treats people right and I tell myself that I'm the fucking bottom of the barrel, but then I have interactions like above and I realize that there are people who've got it even worse than I do! Anyways rant over. Mods if this is too incendiary or breaking any rules, firstly I apologize, and secondly I'll be happy to take it down or you can take it down.

Think we can lock this, mods?

I'm pretty sure you can get Vitamin D supplements.