(no subject)
Jul. 30th, 2018 01:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogI came home yesterday and told Danae "I'm weird!"
A podcast I was listening to was talking about the incredible amount of cherry-picking behind the choice of patients for drug studies. A doctor being interviewed talked about a study of a depression drug that was done on patients who did not use alcohol. It's practically "unheard of" he said to have adult patients with depression who do not use alcohol. I'm weird!
"We can be weird together!" exclaimed Danae.
Personally, I've just never liked the concept that I am not fully in control of my brain. Of course, now that I am happily using prescription psychiatric drugs for mental illness, that position seems inconsistent...
----
There are several ways that I make Facebook difficult for myself. I'd like it to be a place that helps me feel connected to other people, but I have trouble using it succesfully that way.
A big one is that I think incorrect information is bad for us. I mean factually incorrect information. I want to point out rephrased, mis-attributed, or manufactured quotations. And there are *so many*. (Winston Churchill did not say that line about how having enemies is good and means you've stood up for something, by the way.)
There are so many current-events memes and article excerpts and interpretations of events that leave out really significant parts of things and/or are easily misinterpreted. So many memes that make universal statements. I *hate* universal statements. They make me itch to explain what circumstances they do not hold true in. Criticising inaccuracy and incompleteness seems to annoy people, leading to feelings of disconnection.
(I feel that a lot of this is because memes are generally shared in a performative way to indicate group membership, or to express a particular feeling by connecting to a shared cultural background. Because of that, the accuracy or factualness of memes is only tangentially relevant. I don't deal well with this, internally.)
Another: I write at greater length than, it seems to me, people want to read. When people often apologize for writing anything over a paragraph, how many people actually read any of the longer posts I write? Knowing that I mostly am skimmed over or unread creates feelings of disconnection.
Another: A lot of memes that seem intended to make people aware of issues related to social justice make me *so angry* sometimes because they seem either obvious or intrusive. "If someone is doing behavior X, you shouldn't criticize them becaue they might have reason A, B, or C for it." How about if someone is doing behavior X you *leave them the fuck alone* because what they are doing and why they are doing it is none of your goddam business? Why the hell do we have to keep telling people not to be assholes? JUST STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT FOR FUCK'S SAKE! STOP STOP STOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOP! FUCKING STOP IT!
But people don't stop, and being reminded of that makes me feel angry and impotent. This makes me feel disconnected. And when I see friends of friends, or responses to shared articles supporting, for instance, Republican immigration policies and saying that people deserve to die in the desert or have their children taken away it honestly makes me want to commit violence on them. This is bad for me, and makes me feel disconnected from humanity.
Another: Sometimes I see discussions of social justice issues that I feel are in danger of becoming dogmatic. Nothing should be immune to questioning and reconsideration. I hate it when inaccuracies are used to support positions I agree with; it reflects poorly on me and I want to correct such inacurracies. Questioning things that seem, well, questionable, in those contexts makes me feel disconnected from what feels like a community I ought to belong in.
Another: I don't know how to fit into the 'flow' of casual interaction here on FB. I often don't feel like I have much to add to things people say. Often, it ends up seeming like most of the time I interact with someone is to say something questioning or negative about something they've posted. It leads to people dreading, understandably, hearing from me because they know it's going to something critical of something they've posted. That certainly doesn't help me feel connected.
Another: I keep seeing updates about the state of the world, as much as I try to avoid them. It's a reminder of how angry and useless the world makes me feel, and how angry and disappointed in myself I am for not working harder to fix it. It makes me want to run away and hide. I already know how fucked we are. Reading about it doesn't make it less so, nor does it give me the power to do anything. It's just alienating and disempowering. It makes me feel like thinking of anything else is selfish and shallow.
In order to use it in a way that is a net positive for me, I need to figure out how to get past all of that. How to see incorrect things without caring. How to feel ok about continual reminders of powerlessness and despair. How to not feel rage at at people who are happy at other people's misfortunes. How to give up some of my individuality and skepticism to better fit into a community of 'lefty' folks. Either that, or how to just ignore problems of logic or data that are being presented as fact to support positions I agree with. I don't feel able to do any of those things.
Danae suggested I keep my account around and just don't look at anything unless people send me a message or an event invitation. That way I won't be invited to even fewer things than I already am by becoming more inaccessible. That seems reasonable. I'm leaning toward simply unfollowing, and not unfriending, almost everyone whose posts don't generally make me feel good more often than bad. And people who I feel like I'm an annoyance to, or who I feel awkward interacting with because we don't know each other well so it seems weird to just pop up on their feed. Or people who just post about things that are just not of interest to me, so I have nothing to say about them. I may work on that this weekend. I've always had a policy of actively reading everyone on my friends list on any social media platform because doing otherwise feels, to me, somehow intellectually dishonest. (Not for other people to do so; just for me to do so.) Such unfollowing also feels disconnecting, but I guess if there isn't a feeling of connection there in the first place, disconnecting that way will help focus on the connections that *are* there.
---
I'm getting another one of those afternoon headaches I've had so often. I was having them in Colorado, but I attributed it to altitude sickness to some extent. Don't have that excuse here.
A podcast I was listening to was talking about the incredible amount of cherry-picking behind the choice of patients for drug studies. A doctor being interviewed talked about a study of a depression drug that was done on patients who did not use alcohol. It's practically "unheard of" he said to have adult patients with depression who do not use alcohol. I'm weird!
"We can be weird together!" exclaimed Danae.
Personally, I've just never liked the concept that I am not fully in control of my brain. Of course, now that I am happily using prescription psychiatric drugs for mental illness, that position seems inconsistent...
----
There are several ways that I make Facebook difficult for myself. I'd like it to be a place that helps me feel connected to other people, but I have trouble using it succesfully that way.
A big one is that I think incorrect information is bad for us. I mean factually incorrect information. I want to point out rephrased, mis-attributed, or manufactured quotations. And there are *so many*. (Winston Churchill did not say that line about how having enemies is good and means you've stood up for something, by the way.)
There are so many current-events memes and article excerpts and interpretations of events that leave out really significant parts of things and/or are easily misinterpreted. So many memes that make universal statements. I *hate* universal statements. They make me itch to explain what circumstances they do not hold true in. Criticising inaccuracy and incompleteness seems to annoy people, leading to feelings of disconnection.
(I feel that a lot of this is because memes are generally shared in a performative way to indicate group membership, or to express a particular feeling by connecting to a shared cultural background. Because of that, the accuracy or factualness of memes is only tangentially relevant. I don't deal well with this, internally.)
Another: I write at greater length than, it seems to me, people want to read. When people often apologize for writing anything over a paragraph, how many people actually read any of the longer posts I write? Knowing that I mostly am skimmed over or unread creates feelings of disconnection.
Another: A lot of memes that seem intended to make people aware of issues related to social justice make me *so angry* sometimes because they seem either obvious or intrusive. "If someone is doing behavior X, you shouldn't criticize them becaue they might have reason A, B, or C for it." How about if someone is doing behavior X you *leave them the fuck alone* because what they are doing and why they are doing it is none of your goddam business? Why the hell do we have to keep telling people not to be assholes? JUST STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT FOR FUCK'S SAKE! STOP STOP STOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOP! FUCKING STOP IT!
But people don't stop, and being reminded of that makes me feel angry and impotent. This makes me feel disconnected. And when I see friends of friends, or responses to shared articles supporting, for instance, Republican immigration policies and saying that people deserve to die in the desert or have their children taken away it honestly makes me want to commit violence on them. This is bad for me, and makes me feel disconnected from humanity.
Another: Sometimes I see discussions of social justice issues that I feel are in danger of becoming dogmatic. Nothing should be immune to questioning and reconsideration. I hate it when inaccuracies are used to support positions I agree with; it reflects poorly on me and I want to correct such inacurracies. Questioning things that seem, well, questionable, in those contexts makes me feel disconnected from what feels like a community I ought to belong in.
Another: I don't know how to fit into the 'flow' of casual interaction here on FB. I often don't feel like I have much to add to things people say. Often, it ends up seeming like most of the time I interact with someone is to say something questioning or negative about something they've posted. It leads to people dreading, understandably, hearing from me because they know it's going to something critical of something they've posted. That certainly doesn't help me feel connected.
Another: I keep seeing updates about the state of the world, as much as I try to avoid them. It's a reminder of how angry and useless the world makes me feel, and how angry and disappointed in myself I am for not working harder to fix it. It makes me want to run away and hide. I already know how fucked we are. Reading about it doesn't make it less so, nor does it give me the power to do anything. It's just alienating and disempowering. It makes me feel like thinking of anything else is selfish and shallow.
In order to use it in a way that is a net positive for me, I need to figure out how to get past all of that. How to see incorrect things without caring. How to feel ok about continual reminders of powerlessness and despair. How to not feel rage at at people who are happy at other people's misfortunes. How to give up some of my individuality and skepticism to better fit into a community of 'lefty' folks. Either that, or how to just ignore problems of logic or data that are being presented as fact to support positions I agree with. I don't feel able to do any of those things.
Danae suggested I keep my account around and just don't look at anything unless people send me a message or an event invitation. That way I won't be invited to even fewer things than I already am by becoming more inaccessible. That seems reasonable. I'm leaning toward simply unfollowing, and not unfriending, almost everyone whose posts don't generally make me feel good more often than bad. And people who I feel like I'm an annoyance to, or who I feel awkward interacting with because we don't know each other well so it seems weird to just pop up on their feed. Or people who just post about things that are just not of interest to me, so I have nothing to say about them. I may work on that this weekend. I've always had a policy of actively reading everyone on my friends list on any social media platform because doing otherwise feels, to me, somehow intellectually dishonest. (Not for other people to do so; just for me to do so.) Such unfollowing also feels disconnecting, but I guess if there isn't a feeling of connection there in the first place, disconnecting that way will help focus on the connections that *are* there.
---
I'm getting another one of those afternoon headaches I've had so often. I was having them in Colorado, but I attributed it to altitude sickness to some extent. Don't have that excuse here.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-30 07:26 pm (UTC)A propos headaches, is your blood pressure okay?
no subject
Date: 2018-08-01 12:39 pm (UTC)Blood pressure; it's been ok when I've had it checked lately, though it's higher now than it was when I weighed less and was biking a lot. Go figure, right?