/plaza/ - General/Random

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>>8611 (OP) 
wow good write first off I respect the effort

>I think my ruralness comes off very rough
Not really what I thought of it honestly. You just seem more trusting than any city-people I ever met which more or less made me guess that you (positively) didn't have to deal with such things and people all too much.

>It does suck when people feel the need to gain and do nothing else, especially because a lot of the time it's not for survival
I agree and disagree with this on both levels simultaneously. Some kind of passive-greed I've come to internalize as of this last year whereas it's much less "I want more" and moreso that "I know there are people out there/around me/etc who can afford xyz and it bothers me if me/my people can't" and that did lead me to becoming far more aggressive about income. I think, without any polish, the issue boils down to being okay not-spending leisure on myself but feeling a bother when I see that take place with the people around me. I don't like hearing anyone say "we can't afford xyz" because resources can, with enough effort, be replaced imo.

>Going back to making money, it's easy to save money because 99% of all the things you can buy are useless knick-knacks and most of the remaining 1% is food and utilities; most of the rest of it goes to saving for big purchases, for example an emergency fund. I try to buy as little as possible, and it still feels like most of the stuff I buy, even the stuff I like buying, that I cherish, that has great meaning to me, is ultimately useless.
I completely agree with this. Buying my own clothes was a bit of an insecurity of mine if I had to share, I always hated the idea of dressing minimal/not having my own wardrobe. So I got my own clothes. Only in hindsight of having done this I found it appropriate to say "this was probably unnecessary and I don't plan on doing it again" but when it was an action that felt like I was taking out of lack-of options, I could not have tolerated it. That's something that I noticed in general as well. The poorest of my friends tend to obsess over the smallest things like buying the most expensive condiments whereas I can comfortably treat the prospect of eating as if it were just a mechanical need. I feel like what we choose (or not) to measure our identity with is the strongest factor. Another personal quirk I might even share is, I actually always hated financial gifts. Funny, no? My parents would always give me straight cash on my birthdays and I'd always tell them "I'd be so much happier if either of you could've gone the effort to buy a shirt confidently and say "I thought you'd like this :)"" but then again, a gift is a gift and a child always complains so no shade on it. I do consider certain things and acts to be some kind of "psychological need" however, a lot of the things we do that we consider "practically useless" almost always serves to fulfill our desires to be/feel an identity. It's the same way my brother gets irritated when I tell him "don't bother fixing that it's plastic garbage it's literally not worth your time." He doesn't care how much it's worth really. He just internalized that "I fix broken things :)" as part of who he is and... he does that. That's his "medium of art" I do suppose. Things like that.

> Donating the money is difficult because it requires directly knowing a source for it to go to and being able to push the resources to that place or thing; I think my money would be better used if I left it on my front lawn as opposed to donating it to some specific charity organization.
Yeah I agree with this. Charity does feel like a scam to me personally when considering things like
>Why is it more expected that I donate this money to someone across the globe instead of local?
>Tax writeoff scammery
>NGOs that technically still GO
>political incentives of these companies
Hence I'm always comfortable being selfish. If there is money, then that money is primarily going to be directed towards me and my people, and if there's an item, it's never going to be given away for free becuse I don't expect anyone to give me or my people the same kind of decency if we were to end up in a position of need.

>Making money directly with and for your community is mostly impossible
Relatable. It's probably better this way than not. I feel like my personal business/spending/saving practices almost always collide with that of my family/friends and it does lead to much growing resentment when you're constantly feeling the sense that someone around you is slowing business down because they're not being realistic or whatnot.

>I think that loss of community is the ultimate cause for a lot of the problems people attribute to money.
I used to agree with this but I think growing up I realized (or so I believe) that community/groups have almost always functioned like this. Something most strange to me about talent or even the act of simply doing something, that always awed me is that, most people simply don't even try. You can think of anything you want. Be that the gym, art, work, creativity, output. A lot of these things (and many more) out there I realized has some kind of urban myth narrative attached to them with "bro no one succeeds at xyz/it takes 123 hours of yadayada to get good at it/not worth/too hard/risky/etc" and that's just the front excuse people tell themselves to simply not do it. This goes for crime too, actually, not to incentivize it. People think crime is always near impossible to get away with. It haunts me knowing that the reality is quite the opposite of that. 

>Your work, your friendships, your locale, your hobbies, everything is either globalized or isolated. It's difficult to go to a show or play video games or be involved in any kind of group project and have it be a community event as opposed to something you're doing with someone else - I don't just mean that in an "internet bad" way, mind you.
Yeah I do agree that that's just the reality of life. It's strange but I don't find it too disappointing. "Doing something together" is almost always a fantasy to me it seems. Collaborative work often leads to expectation/vision/method/etc. mismatch which can cause lots of friction and I feel like I've come to believe I'd never want to do any kind of serious collaborative work with anyone I genuinely love. I remember years ago when we were playing cards with me, my brother and a friend-couple. It was an FFA game, no stakes or nothing, but I noticed how the couple was naturally favoring each other while my brother was "trying to play fair" and not applying the same logics to our own exchanges in his playstyle, naturally, we resulted being the #3 and #4 and I scolded him for "being such a naive moron who sees the world through rose tinted glasses" and, funny thing is I was only 16 I think. 

>There are plenty of real life groups I go to and have gone to, and most of the time we're just doing something we like together and not connecting over a shared goal or interest
This has been my main experience too. A lot of the friend groups I joined often did activities together. Repetitive activities, recreational activities, drinking and getting high or playing games with no goals or simply watching a film. A lot of the times I found it most irritating (hence my often abrupt leaving of such circles) that the other people are even present at all. I never liked the idea of playing games with no goal/expectation (besides when I'm overwhelmingly stressed maybe) and films or even recreational activities I feel obliged to at least sideline into something somewhat productive. It had irritated me when people treat things as though they were passing joys of life, though not to sound autistic here. Like yeah I do crack jokes that go nowhere too, but I don't know I think I made the point I wanted to make. 

>Do you think you have a chance to connect with any of those people?
Not really. I don't want to seem cynical but most people I've met in the city don't have an identity. The people with no identity of their own don't feel like they're your friends, they often feel like "people with no identity who only want to ride the cool by being present around yours" which is primarily why I'm so snobby about who and who-not I befriend. If someone's presence contributes as nothing more than audience, I don't like them. And as snobby as it may sound, I never quite liked wholesale attention in the form of numbers and eyes that's so easily available nowadays. I never really liked social media and such growing up, always hated even the idea that people I met N time ago should somewhy have my contact and be able to reach me at will. Which, I do my best to prevent still. I think a relationship(s) is a living organism of its own that deserves utmost respect and proper care to simply even be maintained, and while I get that the alternative (that is, of low-effort maintenance connections) is the modus for most others, I despise it. If you're here, then you're here. No hedging, no what-ifs, no underdelivering. If you're not, you're not. Memories, think about em. The cool moments where you make or be made to go "man wow that actually happened?" and such, those are valuable to me. I don't want them documented. I don't want someone to be able to sit down and go "wow, look at this OPERA of other people I get to watch!" at it all gawking. 

>but I think a city's disconnect comes more from a cultural desire for it
Yes I'd agree though I don't hate this. Something else I learned in maturing was that the realization I value few and meaningful connections over simply any connection. I think this is ultimately why I can genuinely refuse and reject socializing locally but be comfortable with digital people from halfway across the globe. Maybe I'd've been more insecure over it if I hadn't proven to myself time and time that if I wanted to socialize locally, I could've. I don't, still, however, since I find most people local to not be worth the attention nor time. I'd rather contribute to people across the globe than have my efforts gone to waste on indifferents locally.

>I would say that identity is something that exists and can be formed as opposed to something that is created. For example, inheritance from your ancestors exists, and we take on the things of our forebearers from the moment we are born. If you do not feel any connection to those come and gone, though, then your identity can be formed away from them - it is based on but not dependent on them. It is immutable but not unchangeable. If I wanted to escape my identity of place, I could not, but if I wanted my identity to not reflect my place so directly, if I felt disconnected from where I lived all of the sudden, I could mold my identity into something not so reflective of my place. 
I get this sense. I think I'm a bit of an outlier on this on terms of not having had the chance to really meet any of my ancestors nor having any kind of interest in the local culture as it stands. Which is a strange topic in itself (that I won't go into here because its getting super tldr) about things like how cultures form, develop, get transformed and transmuted. Ultimately, I do believe that there exist backwards-places on earth, in which the culture(s) for artistic influence(s) failed to develop to the proper heights be that due to dominant ideologies, national insecurities, sometimes the abundance or otherwise lack of material but ultimately, I don't care about contributing to anything that I find hasn't contributed to me. The past year, I painted the attached piece. A painting of a pack of smokes. Sometimes you feel more connection to a cigarette brand than many of the people that surround you and you make a painting for it that you wouldn't for many of your friends. Not that I'm sentimental over it, though. 

>I mentioned the concept of having your place in life and being able to move with all the other moving parts, but what does that look like?
I think of this with "the bus driver analogy" of mine. The bus driver hates his job. He'd never in a million years suggest that you become a bus driver. He believes his own words, too. But ultimately, he is the bus driver. He's also the doctor, teacher, artist, everyone. 
I think ultimately, we are who we are, what we do, where we are as we do it. That can change in itself but, you know? the grass is always greener on the other side, as cliche as that is, honestly. When looking at the past I can honestly admit to myself that there was never really any specific point of my life where I was all "yes. this is perfect. stop right here" but that my memory can fail me on claiming things used to be better or worse. which, haha faust am I right?

>Is fitting and belonging the same thing?
I'd say so? I don't even think something necessarily has to fit in order to be belonging. I find it that some things that exist to even create friction still belong to their place. Not to romanticize unnecessary friction, I just personally find it that nothing in life in itself can ever truly be meaningless or devoid of purpose, however small it can be. 
You can probably connect this back to the things we described to be useless/unnecessary but still done. Sometimes you find something that serves no purpose beyond vanity-beauty and that inspires you to make something that also exists for vanity/beauty. Is that not transformative and productive in itself? Did you not make-meaning in the process of simply doing the activity, that in which will probably eventually inspire someone else down the line?

>Surely I have to make an impact to belong, or is just being here enough? Isn't just being here impactful?
I'd say it is, honestly? Sometimes we as people are keen on calling things/actions/people ineffective or un-impactful but from a realistic perspective, things would inarguably always be different if those things/people/etc. were gone.

>For what it's worth, I don't know that it's wise to give one place you have been more value over the other just because you were there longer
Maybe, depends how you process time as a concept though. Time really can feel slow, or fast, depending on activity. I can almost swear that there are phases in my life where several years feel like a single day or week to me from the lack of anything happening at all, whereas there are days and weeks that felt (and still in my memory, feel) like years and years, and I would confidently say that that's not just about my personal feelings.

>I think my personal loneliness is so strong because I've become so isolated from other people and...
I more or less agree with everything you said there I do think. Though in that is why I would refrain from calling it loneliness myself. Self imposed isolation that stems from sufficiency I think is far different than being lonely. 
also that;

>I always have this nagging feeling that I'm doing something wrong and should be tending to something else when I become to focused on my various works
That's just how it goes honestly. I think that's just how it feels to be a caring person. Most people can easily shut that sense off and I've been getting used to being able to do it too. My overall sympathy for the widest masses have gone down significantly, though one thing I do try is that I forgive the humane errors of others same ways if I do take such mis-actions myself. Though even hypocrisy has its own uses for the good, I'm trying to keep this NOT too long.
Though I think I like worrying about other people to some extent. I like being intrusively overbearing and over-caring and protective and supportive and whatnot. That "I don't want others to deal with what I have had to deal with" even though it sometimes lead to me having enabled laziness. I think I'd even spoil some people in my life if I had the chance, lol.

>The idea that an entity as big as a country could come together towards a small group of ideas is absurd and everyone knows it's absurd
real

> I couldn't even tell you how the guy two houses down lives, let alone someone on the Pacific coast
also real

>Even the fence-line divisions you talk about are artificial. No separation is enough to actually keep two caring people apart from each other, and everyone hates that because the only thing anyone wants to be is apart, so we have to imagine differences (piggy-backing off of ones that actually exist, of course,) that keep us apart so that we can live the lives we wish to live
Well yeah that's ALSO real. The guy trying to barter a 25% off of me is a loser (obviously) but I'm being funny and smart and cute when I strike up "its for my disabled little bro he got 3 weeks left :(" on an anime figurine I'm 100% going to resell at 8x the value. THEY? are being extractionist and greedy. I'm just being virtuous and providing for my own circle. (Totally) not the same, duh?

>I think the truth is that I'm satisfied where I am now.
That's good
>I'm trying very hard, I think.
That's even better
>I just worry about what all of that says about me.
I'd say don't overthink it honestly. Everyone relates themselves to their environment one way or another, it can't ultimately be that bad of a thing that someone relates to where they live. That's... identity! (heh)

>for some stupid speedrun-from-the-monster Roblox game
DOORS. I love doors. Though there are some countries on this beautiful earth that can bar access to such joys of life "because groomers."
I'll be sure to save the song though :)

Also, yes, tldr, yes okay. But I did want to share my thanks for being as expressive honestly. I miss doing dives like this, something that I always loved was being allowed into other people's worlds and how they see things. 
It's always nice hearing how others feel about the world around them 😌

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>>8612
I would caution about never reaching out with yourself or your resources... had I not learned your lesson already. There is again this nagging feeling in me that I need to be reaching out to new and unfamiliar places even if I already know the outcome just because the reaching out is healthy and necessary. I also can't escape the feeling, though, that I've read the room a hundred times, and it's becoming more difficult to be impressed with each pass I give it.

I feel especially a bother when I'm on the short end of the finance stick and it comes around Christmas time, because I always feel like I owe the few people I talk to gifts. I want to show my appreciation with something they like, and Christmas time is really the only appropriate time to do that - well, according to other people at least. I feel pretty awful when I can't show my appreciation like that. Of course, I feel vindicated about buying product in this way because I always try my best to buy something that isn't a useless knicknack: here's a book to cherish, a game to play, a diary to write in, something you at least might be using a few years from now, something that will stay with you for some time at least, but again, it's all just the same, void overweight, right? I feel like making money is pretty easy to scoff at, but spending it is rather enslaving, not in a "you have to make money to spend money" kind of way but in a "my mindset is that if I'm not constantly increasing my wealth through my physical possessions I am worthless and not a productive member of society" kind of way. All of that to say I think being bothered that your own people "can't afford" is necessarily how one must portray their own resource worry in the modern day, but it's pretty much impossible to avoid that morphing into an endless lust for more product. Or, in other words, I don't like hearing that you worry about not being as financially well-off as others but I have no good rebuke. 

Admittedly I hate being given gifts for any reason. I already have enough stuff, and I don't like when other people try to find a hole to fill because they tend to just end up putting stuff on top of the big pile of my life, you know. Don't misunderstand, some things I've been given recently have been very cherished, but I didn't really need those things. I actually used to push for people to give me money, until everyone figured out that the money just sat in my bank/in my wallet/some safe place at home and I was effectively treating it as not a gift, at which point the normal gifts resumed. It's also funny that redoing my wardrobe is something I think about pretty often. I'm pretty lucky to have several notable local organizations around me that I can talk to the owners of and volunteer at and feel comfortable sending money to. There is a genuine philosophy about caring for yourself over others because you know you can do good, while the others' capacity for good is uncertain. While I personally would cast that mindset into the ditch, I think our whole conversation proves we both at least feel like there aren't a lot of people out there who really care in the ways they should, however we view and define that.

I would certainly agree that perceived regret is not necessarily actual and feeling bad about buying something doesn't make it worthless. Personally, it's this contradiction of knowing the things I buy are set up to be meaningless and having a great appreciation for them. I feel this way about media because I'm one of those physical media guys, and I feel like media is the stereotypical meaningless item. Yet, many media I've interacted with has been impactful, has stayed with me all of this time. I don't know.

I have to admit that I've often had the thought that communities "always functioned like this," as you say. I do genuinely believe what I believe, but I often worry about whether or not I want too much from life. Is a group of friends I can hold hands with and read on the lawn with and go to punk rock shows and help the local veteran's home and start a Pokemon game together and some other thousand things with too much to ask for? I've never found anything even close, and I fear that such a thing doesn't exist, that it never existed and is a figment of my imagination I invented as a coping mechanism for the life I had as a child. I'm in a state of doublethink where I still think I can find a friend, what I would consider a true friend, but since I've never really hit it off with anyone like that, let alone find a group who's so close or be able to connect multiple people together, I've chosen to withdraw much more than I did before, be more accepting of the way things are, and try to find my way to belong from a distance, as I laid out in more detail previously. I would echo my general sentiment that most people do try, it's just that what they try for is not very high up, so to speak. Many people try in their art, but the thing they're trying for is easily digestible entertainment because slop is what appeals to them and what speaks to them, for example. For what it's worth, I certainly would have been like your naive friend in those games. If I have to start being underhanded (in board games et cetera, being underhanded in "real life" is a little different) then it just stops being fun for me. I'd rather do something else. 

A lot of the things the modern day does is goalless. They are oriented in a goalless way. What is the goal of my job stocking groceries? What is the long-term idea here? There is no such thing. I have to invent it: I put these items up so someone can come through here and buy it. I provide for the community in this way, even if I don't particularly like a lot of the things I provide with this mindset. What is the long-term idea of watching an action movie? There is no such thing. I have to invent it: what is favorable/undesirable/realistic/relatable about the way the characters handle conflict? How does conflict affect the characters? How do the characters cope with their situations? Does it seem the director believes in finding strength or having strength or needing to be given strength? What do my answers say about me as a person? Questions like these can be mulled over for months, forming a kind of long-term goal. If you wanted to go the extra mile, you could write your answers down in an essay or article and give the goal more permanence. What is the goal of being around other people? Of learning who they are and what they do? There is no such thing. I suppose I leave the formation of goals for that one up to you (because I've made my own answer a bit too obvious.) Life has become goalless on account of these kinds of things, and meaning is generally found through attempts to rectify the meaninglessness imposed upon it. It's a hard thing to parse because it gives me this feeling of dread, knowing that I live in a world where it's more difficult than ever to amount to something meaningful, not because it requires more effort than before but because the outlets for it have diminished. I feel like my own skill for making the most of things and not just being buffeted by it hitting me in the face is atrophied. I guess I'm tempted to feel guilty for wanting everything to mean something, have at least a little permanence, but truthfully I have no shame and see no wrong in that. Maybe you're right, that big, meaningful connections are inherently seldom, but I feel like I at least should be able to have more than I do.

I don't mean to be too "society," but I think video streaming a la Twitch and microcelebrities has caused a lot of this "audience" phenomenon. The internet is a weird place because you are constantly and simultaneously the audience and the performer. You are being watched by a thousand people while you're part of another legion watching someone else in their own legion. We all constantly feel like we're being watched and need to put on a performance, and we all constantly feel like we're watching someone else's performance. Even I have a bad habit of starting to talk to myself while doing mundane tasks (like stocking groceries) like it's before an audience and for their entertainment. I have a bad habit of wanting everything I do to be content. It's why I was so obsessed with taking pictures for a while. The moment seemed so nice that I wanted to turn it into content to be consumed, as though that wouldn't deteriorate the value of the moment slowly over time. I couldn't let the moment be the memory it was supposed to be. Memories didn't seem enough. I'm trying to grow past that. I think another internet consequence is that we feel the need to take part in anything interesting. I'm bad about this too. "Oh, this conversation about motorcycles in interesting, let me stand over there and listen," but then all I do is stand there awkwardly and ruin the moment because I don't like motorcycles and I have nothing to contribute. As for time, I would argue that the tension between the real passing of time and the feeling of the passing of time indicates more or less belonging or whatnot, though what indicates which I couldn't say. I wouldn't want to give in to the "more events = more meaning" mindset, though, because I feel it is obvious that isn't true.

I think about people from my past a lot. I often have the thought, "I wish I could be with them again, say hi to them, talk about things we like again." What a stupid though, right? I did be with them. I did say hi to them, probably a thousand times. I did talk about things I liked with them and listened to them talk about things they like. Look where that put me. Why on Earth would I ever want to go back, to do it again? Why am I so silly and believe that things can be different, could have been different, why do I conveniently overlook the fact that I am a being with great agency and that if it could have gone better or different, it would have? I tend to have these feelings when I feel stuck, when I seem to have little other option, and so I grow delusional and think something familiar will help, but the truth is that tradposting is cringe and the proper response to the modern day is to move your view panoramically from what's behind you to what's in front of you, to be on the cutting edge but be able to take those past times with you while you're running it. So again, I recognize the ills of keeping dead contacts, so to speak, but I sympathize too.In that regard, I don't have sympathy for "the masses," but all I need is the smallest detail about someone's life, just a bit of knowledge and connection, and I can attach myself pretty hard, so I guess that's approximately the same thing.

My turning to the internet is mainly to do with my incredible, almost prideful nicheness. I have an unholy ability to pick interests that zero other people on the planet have. Let's use alternative manga for an example. There's a few videos on YouTube showing alternative manga collections. There's a couple of lectures on YouTube about alternative manga. That's kind of it. I have no real outlet for that kind of thing, even on the wild and open internet. I know a lot of this is made-up - I mean, Comitia is kind of huge - but it feels completely empty from my position. I can see the community, the conversation, but I can't touch it, can't feel it. I turn to the internet for this promise of being able to find people who share interests, but I've become more withdrawn as I've discovered I fall outside of this promise. I don't think I've ever seen the internet as any kind of replacement for local conversation and contribution, see my previous comments on globalization. I've not seen it as worthless, but I have seen it as nowhere near as important or impactful as your "real-life" life. Though, that term, "real-life," I hate, because again the internet is real, I've had many impactful and important events happen to me on/through the internet, and those events are not more nor less nor really even different than the important events that happened off of the internet. I do value a differential, though. Looking back on life, I do have to admit that every single best friend candidate would be an internet friend. Probably because of that nicheness I mentioned - it's easier to find people who understand on the internet if you're eclectic and eccentric as I am. Maybe it would be different if I were more normal.

I remember when the hip and popping thing on Roblox was stuff like Pokemon RP obbies. There was this one I remember where the gimmick was you had to find the Pokemon you wanted to RP as, so it ended up being this fun collecting game. Even more gimmicky was that legendaries weren't hard to find but very difficult to get to. I remember Zygrade in specific was put right next to spawn but it was in this cave with a very brief but very impossible parkour section needed to reach it. You couldn't even just walk into the cave, you had to glitch yourself out to fit through the opening. There was one guy who managed to do it. He tried to help the rest of us get Zygarde, but even with coaching we couldn't make it. I wonder how I would feel about Roblox now; I've tried some of the newer games on there, but the truth is that I'm not a gamer anymore. I also remember Roblox being banned from many of those after-school places (YMCA and others) because somehow we all kept getting viruses playing it. 

>Nothing in life in itself can ever be truly meaningless or devoid of purpose.
I'll try to keep that in mind.

That painting is really nice, by the way, was not expecting it to be your own. I had formed an opinion of the piece, but after looking into it more, I realized that's just what Japanese Night Blue cigarettes look like. I assume, then, that text is a health warning of some kind. I guess I still kind of take it as the Westernization of Japan and the backwash of that over to America, though. We forced our culture upon them, and in return they did more with it than we ever wanted to, maybe ever could. Quite sad. Your calligraphy is very nice as well. Thank you for reciprocating too.

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>>8655
Okay now here's a re-drafted less stream-of-consciousness I'm hoping to do a better job at;

>I also can't escape the feeling, though, that I've read the room a hundred times, and it's becoming more difficult to be impressed with each pass I give it.
I don't feel all too different if I have to be honest. But I feel like it's the internal drive to avoid conflict that causes this. For example, I've had an exact thought of "aren't I who I always wanted to be already?" up some months ago. So? I decided I'd dive into the things I've always hated very strongly. Not from a pure novelty-seeking perspective, but it felt like I myself wasn't giving the necessary respects to some of the things that were out there. Certain art styles, subject matters or aesthetic executions for example, I had always thought to be too hollow for my taste. So I started doing my own twist on them instead of just disliking the concepts from afar.

>I feel especially a bother when I'm on the short end of the finance stick and it comes around Christmas time, because I always feel like I owe the few people I talk to gifts. I want to show my appreciation with something they like, and Christmas time is really the only appropriate time to do that - well, according to other people at least. I feel pretty awful when I can't show my appreciation like that.
I get the feeling but I also feel like I wouldn't agree with the sentiment, honestly. Like it's strange because I know simultaneously "hearing this wouldn't comfort me in their position" but also the "it's also genuinely how I see it" and so, idk? I think when people say "it's the gesture that counts" (at least, to me) that really is how it is. And more importantly, how it should be. Christmas gifts, and overall gifts are sweet, yes, but I don't feel like that's anything to do with how we really see people. I always say "being pleasant to be around as a person is the best gift you can give to people" and I genuinely believe that tbh.

>not in a "you have to make money to spend money" kind of way but in a "my mindset is that if I'm not constantly increasing my wealth through my physical possessions I am worthless and not a productive member of society" kind of way
I kind of agree with the idea. That it FEELS like that. But I also feel like it's important not to get lost in it either. My general sense is often "I can always find more money but I can't always have this moment to be around/share/etc. for the people I love" so idk. If spending some makes a day better and it's not all-too-much, I should be okay. It's not even about the spending though, I just feel like people shouldn't push themselves to their own breaking points for any reason, first and foremost. You don't want to make yourself do something begrudging for someone you love, cuz I feel like that's just going to give you anxiety/stress/etc. about them over time. It's cliched yes but, I think there's merit to it when we say the "you should take care of yourself first and foremost." right? Always take care of yourself. If you don't feel fine, you can't make anyone else around you feel fine. Do the things that bring you joy, then share that with people.

>in other words, I don't like hearing that you worry about not being as financially well-off as others but I have no good rebuke. 
I think I keep a good balance on it, honestly. Work is ennui > I do the work while I can tolerate it > I bounce from work when I feel like I miss my people too much > it balances itself out. Though I appreciate the care :)

>Admittedly I hate being given gifts for any reason
Yeah honestly kinda fair? 100% relatable? It's one of the strange things about being human. Cash feels like such a lazy gift, until it kinda feels like, not? Like what if I buy you a shirt and you actually wanted a new ummm. mousepad??? That's on me now. How am I gonna live with the conscience of that, for example? Though I feel like accepting gifts is something you grow used to over time, honestly. That stems from growing up not-being-used-to accepting them if anything.

>While I personally would cast that mindset into the ditch, I think our whole conversation proves we both at least feel like there aren't a lot of people out there who really care in the ways they should
I'd agree. But personally I'd say that that's why you best not cast that mindset into a ditch, though, I don't know. Wanting to have control over things feels like a disease sometimes. You think you'll feel better when you have more control, but all it does is make you even more agitated and jumpy. Trust is a rough thing in life. Because it feels like if you have or give too much, people can try overstepping, or worse, you can become overstepping yourself. I see it as a rotating cycle to some extent. I'm definitely overreaching in terms of how many things and people I'm responsible with, and this ultimately creates a degree of a cyclical nature where I can't be present in some places as I should, I do manage to come back around nonetheless. Ironically enough, this works for the better. Other people learn that "I can't overstep XYZ because I'm not the sole person around him" and I like that. Priorities are an odd thing, we expect other people to have a hierarchy of "who's the most important to me?" whereas (I know for fact) that that's not how I see people at all. I feel like I don't even give anyone "special treatment" on any basis if I had to be honest. I mostly just give feedback depending on their behaviors and that serves as a natural normalizer.

>I feel like media is the stereotypical meaningless item
Maybe. Maybe it is. Or maybe there's a good value in me keeping all my playlists saved locally for when the end times come and I become a music baron of my niche genres. How would YOU know??

>Is a group of friends I can hold hands with and read on the lawn with and go to punk rock shows and help the local veteran's home and start a Pokemon game together and some other thousand things with too much to ask for?
Simultaneously no, and sadly yes.

> I've never found anything even close, and I fear that such a thing doesn't exist, that it never existed and is a figment of my imagination I invented as a coping mechanism for the life I had as a child
I often felt this too but I don't think it's the ultimate truth to the reality. Something I have an internal calculus for is overall how much stress is already present in people's lives and how much they can tolerate it. Most my "friend groups" in the past tended to circulate around recreational activities primarily because my friends had less tolerance for stress/effort and already had enough in their lives. Not saying I appreciate those kinds of friends all the lot, but I do feel like they serve some purpose. I feel like its a nature of life that groups/relations have inequal parts that some contribute more X and others contribute more Y and others who simply enjoy being there. Idk? I grew up being the whole "that one funny weird guy in the back of the class who explicitly refuses to make friends with any of us because he's too snobby" and I kinda learned to accept that, lol.

>I would echo my general sentiment that most people do try, it's just that what they try for is not very high up, so to speak. Many people try in their art, but the thing they're trying for is easily digestible entertainment because slop is what appeals to them and what speaks to them, for example.
Maybe. I shared this sentiment for the longest while but I'd be lying if I said my perspective on art in itself wasn't changing lately. I always took pride in my ability to get extremely metaphorical and symbolic with pieces, but sometimes it feels like the simpler things are good to have too. I could never really get into writing, for example. I find it that my formatting always runs a bit "too dry" most generally because I always try to keep it brief and on point (which, is not very much like my posts (heh)) which always felt odd to me in hindsight. Though I don't know. I find it almost overbearing that the average book is expected to be 60-300 pages long. That feels so demanding to me now, especially in between trying to keep-up with enough goals and objectives and people I care about, a book that demands my attention for 300 pages feel almost insulting. Same reason I don't really get into games or series too. I'd rather be making things for my people still. Also the realization that often times, the details don't land as much as you'd expect them to. I don't think this is a bad thing at all, but I did start getting some sense of "who does it even serve if I etch these odd, hyper specific symbols here and there, really? anyone who sees the work? me?" I still enjoy the internal references and coherence and patterns, I just think I'm not as much of a "I want to write metal gear levels of analogies and be kojima" anymore.

>A lot of the things the modern day does is goalless. They are oriented in a goalless way. What is the goal of my job stocking groceries? What is the long-term idea here?
Maybe. Though I wouldn't even try being uppity about working the groceries (hope that's not too tiresome and annoying for you) I feel like goals can "be found along the way" for example. FOR example, I've had a tiny bit of an interest in yugioh cards a while ago. I wanted to buy a single unit of one card, That I initially intended to paint over in hand. The idea ran cool before I could really do it, but I had already bought a sleeved holo card by then (which was affordably cheap) which, the other day I've sealed the sleeve of, and am going to add a tiny little ring at the top end and turn into a necklace. Probably not gonna wear it myself. But I'm pretty sure someone out there likes yu-gi-oh enough to go "wow weird holo-sleeve card on a chain? I want that!" and obviously this wasn't/isn't a profits-primary thing I did. It's something that came up after the fact. I think it'd be gentler to yourself too if you treated your own intents like that. Sometimes you just feel a desire to do something, idk. download something, watch something, play something, GET something? do it. I feel like meaning happens after the fact, not before. Not always, sure. Not everything we download/play/save/buy ultimately ends up serving meaning (at least within our scope of view) but I'd say shutting oneself down before even doing anything desired is just, something I wouldn't want any of my friends/family to be living with.

>What is the long-term idea of watching an action movie? There is no such thing. I have to invent it
Maybe. But did you enjoy it? Was it pleasant? Did you find anything interesting about the characters? aren't you gonna internalize some of their characteristics (quietly (as we all do))? And ultimately, is that not good enough? Not because "good enough" is "good enough" but I find it that, I don't know. Life moves so fast, I'd say you lose time stopping to analyze sometimes. And I'm not saying "introspection is bad". I'm just saying that "sitting down to think about whether something will or won't mean something, sometimes takes longer than to just do it, and other times, sitting down to watch the meaning of something we did, prevents us from doing more meaningful things." Like I don't imagine the jet set radio developers go to bed thinking how I pull from their stylistic choices sometimes. What if they told themselves "will this mean anything?" before having made that game, for example? it's extra funny to me because I never even played the games. I'd die of my internal "this thing has a timer" anxiety if I did probably.

>I have to invent it: what is favorable/undesirable/realistic/relatable about the way the characters handle conflict? How does conflict affect the characters? How do the characters cope with their situations? Does it seem the director believes in finding strength or having strength or needing to be given strength? What do my answers say about me as a person? 
But don't you think that that is THE right way of approaching media? Think about it. There are EIGHT (or some) billions of people out there. Do you know the sheer volume of how many people who go "man joker did a weird face in that scene lol" after dumping their lives into consuming it, and you're the one over here criticizing yourself as if you weren't doing enough? Though it's most primarily about joy, of course. I'd say don't do anything that you don't genuinely find to be enjoyable, or anything that feels like homework. It's always more important that a person keeps themselves feeling good first and foremost, only then can they spread happiness around, too, I feel.

>What is the goal of being around other people? Of learning who they are and what they do?
I personally find this pleasant, although, in brutal honesty, most definitely not with everyone. I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a taste for people, but ultimately, nothing brings me more joy than being around people I like and find relatable to my life. That's why I'm in this conversation anyways more or less. Like, nothing feels more lonely than being around people that feel so abstractly removed from my functioning as a human being that, I see them, and something inside me starts scratching up like "good lord these people are a disease unto t-" and I go like "okay yeah I'm better off not staring at this then." but idk. The world feels 100% more lonely when the people around YOU, are nothing like you, and lack the capacity to take an interest in your interests.

>Life has become goalless on account of these kinds of things, and meaning is generally found through attempts to rectify the meaninglessness imposed upon it. It's a hard thing to parse because it gives me this feeling of dread, knowing that I live in a world where it's more difficult than ever to amount to something meaningful, not because it requires more effort than before but because the outlets for it have diminished
I think you're just being cruel to yourself with this tbh. People appreciate all sorts of things, including reading other people's thoughts on something too. An outlet doesn't have to mean "I break myself apart in the process" it can be as simple as... talking about things, like you've been doing here. We have reviewers, critiques, curators out there and lots of people love that. Photography can be that too, for example. The things we do as we enjoy them and the ways we speak as we enjoy them most irrefutably impact how others around us process themselves too. I think it's just unfair when people treat their own joys as if they were expendable and unimportant. Why should they be? What if I feel more disappointed that you don't take your "unnecessary photographs" than if you did, for example? What if the photographs don't have to be meaningful in themselves but earn that because we as the others see that you saw enough meaning in them to take them? You're the author of the photograph. If you think it's good enough, then it should be. Here's a lone-yet-courageous plushie riding a cart from 2022 for example. That's meaningful now. you may have it.

>Even I have a bad habit of starting to talk to myself while doing mundane tasks (like stocking groceries) like it's before an audience and for their entertainment
I like doing this actually. People like me the most when I act [the way I do when I'm alone] while I'm [around them] but that takes a bit warming up to let out tbh. I don't think that's a bad habit at all I think that's just being someone with the joy of life in them lol. I think our sense of self-image and curating a self-image has always been a thing even before twitch, honestly. Old books are a great example for showing this, for example. Hell, you know what even? If you ever ended up spending too much time around some people (be that literally or mentally) it can start to feel like you're not yourself when you're NOT around them. Identity is strange like that. 

>the ills of keeping dead contacts
Kinda. I feel that. I still have the contact of maybe a handful of people that I have not really talked to in quite a while. Sometimes I do check on them though or at least try.  I think that "yo are you dead?" is a very human thing tbh. Mostly why I do my best to get rid of them, or used to, though. Growing up I did realize I had the tendency to reach back out to people after getting mad at them, so I'd try making sure I literally couldn't, even if I wanted to. But I do kinda like that, sometimes. Idk? watanabe always shows like. the best friends are the ones you can't get rid of???

>I think about people from my past a lot. I often have the thought, "I wish I could be with them again, say hi to them, talk about things we like again." What a stupid though, right? I did be with them. I did say hi to them, probably a thousand times. I did talk about things I liked with them and listened to them talk about things they like. Look where that put me. Why on Earth would I ever want to go back, to do it again?
Yeah I get that tbh. Idk? that's human though isn't it? Like I also get "man I wonder if xyz ever changed?" and I look back at them and go like "ohhh okay they didn't change one bit as usual okayyy byeee" but like, you know? That's not YOUR fault.

>My turning to the internet is mainly to do with my incredible, almost prideful nicheness. I have an unholy ability to pick interests that zero other people on the planet have. Let's use alternative manga for an example. There's a few videos on YouTube showing alternative manga collections. There's a couple of lectures on YouTube about alternative manga. That's kind of it. I have no real outlet for that kind of thing, even on the wild and open internet
You should share them. with us! Like Idk if I'd make "good talk" over alt manga art but I personally make sure to screenshot odd comic-book-covers I come across that make me go like "hmm this could be a good ref if I feel like painting this in the near future." so you're not THAT alone on that. Sometimes it just looks nice or has cool typography or this or that but ultimately people would still appreciate the sharing if I'm being honest

>I don't think I've ever seen the internet as any kind of replacement for local conversation and contribution
I think my perspective is that of the opposite. Growing up I had a driving insecurity of "I don't wanna be like the loser kids who only have friends online" but people IRL started feeling like a hassle sometimes. There was this british girl I knew once before. Girl was so busy in between school and work she only had online friends despite being conventionally attractive and financially well off. And she was happy with that. I feel like seeing someone else made me go like "okay so I don't have to get all "flesh people" on myself after seeing that" because once I got over the personal insecurity it felt like something I intentionally choose rather than any kind of desperation tbh. 

Also zygarde looks cool I like it. saved it. I'm proudly pokemon deaf in the sense of being the "I pick the most charizard adjacent starter, get a magikarp, turn that into gyarados and then nothing else until I get bored of the playthrough" person lol. 

>but the truth is that I'm not a gamer anymore
Same. feels nauseating to realize "it'd take like 100 hours for me to even get into this" let alone fully play anything. So I just devour their aesthetics now lol

> I had formed an opinion of the piece, but after looking into it more, I realized that's just what Japanese Night Blue cigarettes look like.
YUP! it's just a box of night blues. Painted it when I was all "woaa I buy one pack of these every morning and smoke exactly one outside in the cold before returning to my endless endeavors... I'm like... so cool rn... This lil box of cigarettes is like... my loyal sidekick rn..." lol. Glad you like it though :)

>>8658
Okay I know this is gonna be a very like unnecessary anecdote a 20k characters post but like something I did want to add. Like. Identity is something I love so much. Sometimes you're just moving through the day and something clicks inside and you start feeling some burning hot sense of connection to people and that caveman instinct of like "we ARE a tribe 😈😈" starts kicking in and you just feel like there's nothing in the world you couldn't do. or is that just a me thing that only I get idk?

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>>8658
My own post is probably going to be messier than usual because I feel the need to start crisscrossing topics, so forgive me.
I think I've come to a point in my life where I've not necessarily seen everything there is to see when it comes to aesthetic/art-philosophy/et cetera but that I've managed to make a comprehensive chart of the land, so to speak. It's pretty rare that I find anything new at all, let alone something so different in its execution that it introduces a new tab to my portfolio. I'm an egoist about my taste curation, and even if I do overblow my comprehension, I have put in a good deal of work to see the totality of things. If something is out there that I haven't seen, it's not because I've been staying in the same place and not looking around. The most recent new experience for me was abstract paintings. I was reading a book and was forced by the book to go and take a look at abstract art, it told me to sit and look at this one piece for fifteen minutes, and after that it explained the piece in a way that finally made sense to me. I had a very hard time, but I could finally see the kind of vision an abstract artist would have. It was quite revolutionary, actually, as it changed the way I look at every other visual media, from photographs to movies to comic books. That kind of thing generally doesn't happen, though. Not to say that I never find anything interesting and new. For example, quite recently I discovered this comic book that seems really interesting: https://peow.studio/shop/products/a-garden-of-spheres

On the subject of art, I wasn't meaning to bash action movies in general. I should have been more specific. In my opinion, all art is a conversation between the artist and the audience. The point I was trying to make is that, in this art that is meant merely to amuse, the audience is simply talking to themselves. I'm trying to entertain your worldview, though. Certainly no one should seek out "silent art," but if you happen to find it, maybe it's not wrong to talk to yourself about it. Maybe I'm wrong and am just biased against talking to myself, but I don't think so. I would echo my general sentiment about connection being such an important thing in life and as such talking to yourself necessarily generally involves not talking to others and not reaching out and is the preference of a individualistic America, at least. I don't want a piece of media to mean everything. Of course, I find that I respond much more positively to art that tries to mean everything, but it's not something everyone should do. I think newspaper comic strips use this minimalist-meaning to good effect. If you took one four-panel, you could find maybe five minutes of stuff to talk about before you milked it of literally everything. A newspaper comic is meant to be cumulative, though. You read one new panel every day, and it adds up over time. The newest panel says little on its own, but is monumental as the most recent addition to a massive work. Newspaper comics can reach thousands of strips, and it takes reading many hundreds of them before you can even start seeing a clear picture of the world of the strip. That's what life is like, and the best newspaper strips utilize that effect to its full potential, to where reading a small something feels like life. Of course, nonsequential light art is fine too. A pulp novel is not bad fiction because it isn't War and Peace. It's just that I feel that art made today tends to be made with nothing to say, not made lazily and without voice but meticulously crafted to be mute, and the only interaction I can parse from it is entirely based on myself and has nothing to do with the art, which I feel is meaningless, a waste of time, buyer's remorse, not to mention very egotistical. It's a pale parody of what art is supposed to do. A pulp novel is attempting to speak to me, a superhero movie generally is not, and the latter's the way people seem to like it. And, of course, I recognize not literally every new piece of art is like this; I'm just attempting to comment on what seem to be cultural values through the lens of what art is popular and what it seems the general taste in art among the people is.

To be honest, I just don't like feeling superior to others. I find it quite difficult to do, in fact. I assume I'm just different from other people in ways I can't quite understand. Surely these people are capable of caring as I do. In fact, I think most people can care more than I do. I put a lot of effort in to this life, and it doesn't amount to a lot most of the time. It seems like others have no problem being fulfilled,  being genuine. It is simply a matter of wanting to care. Perhaps people do care, and I just can't understand. Perhaps gleaning nothing but meme material from a movie is caring in the same capacity as I do, maybe it is meaningful as my way of doing things is meaningful. Ultimately, that's wrong, right? Every word I've said here would disagree with that statement. I necessarily feel better than others when I acknowledge that, in practice at least, and I don't know what to do with those feelings. I don't know that it's good to feel superior to other people who are not that different from me, especially people I care about. It's not as though I can "make people better;" it's not as though people stumble into those kind of mindsets. The culture I live in now is not the result of apathy nor the will of a select few but a methodical, lucid, deliberate act by the populace to reflect their own core values and mores. I can't just tell them the "better way" and expect them to agree with me because these are all adults who have carefully and at great length considered my viewpoint and have rejected it. We can merely be together, in whatever limited ways we can. I don't like feeling authoritarian over other's opinions and beliefs, so my feelings of being better than others at having opinions and beliefs tend to suppress themselves - and, despite all of this, my certainty about my own correctness is not complete. You certainly make good points that are entirely out of step with what I see as true, so I don't see why I mustn't assume the same for other people, especially distant and partially hypothetical people.

You're pretty on point about money and self-care, though I would caution against hedonism. I don't mind doing things I don't like, even doing some things I hate, to be able to spend more time with others or to be able to bolster them in some way. I very strongly dislike playing this mobile game for an hour to earn you ten bucks, but I'll do it so you're a little better off. The problem in my life seems to be the totality of that experience as opposed to it's occasional happening.

I've also had to learn your lesson about not being too introspective. I made a good attempt at being very long-winded and thorough and in-depth about everything in my life at one point and found I had not the time to do this for even one thing, let alone everything. I've had to learn to balance the depth I want to reach with the complete set of things I like to do and the time I have to do those things. I don't take it near as far as you seem to, though. You could be right about people not thinking about the meaning other's take from their work, but that is one of those things I really can't wrap my mind around even if it seems like a genuine phenomenon. I naturally ascribe meaning to everything I do. Even my short texts to family have to be meticulously proofed before I send them so I know there's nothing wrong with it. That's what fuels this phenomenon - I find it impossible to be spontaneous because it always comes out wrong, not at all the way I intended it to. If I were ever developing a game, I would have to mull intensively about what all the parts I'm coding are doing because otherwise I wouldn't be able to do it at all. I can't imagine how one could simply just do something, simply just send a text or draw a piece or take a picture, because I just simply can't do that. It's random nonsense if I try. I can't live any other way than that, and even though I know instinctively that at least some others do, I can't envision what that is like. So sure, you would have something to say if I showed you a photo I took, but that would only be because you were confronted with it and therefore needed to respond to it. That isn't indicative of the quality of the photo nor is that a good argument for its existence. It is random nonsense. There is nothing in there. You are talking to yourself because I have forced you into a situation where you have to.

I think the fundamental disagreement behind the unnecessary photographs is whether meaning is inherent in something or if meaning only forms once someone interacts something; is someone provided the meaning and has to uncover it, or is someone provided the tools required to assemble meaning? I want to entertain the latter ideas as genuinely as I can. Of course, I mentioned earlier the conversation that happens in regards to art. This is fairly easy to see; the artist gives you the tools you need, that is the art, and you assemble meaning using them. The artist connects with you, speaks to you, often times speaks the depths of their heart and mind and spirit onto you, and you connect with the author in this vulnerable moment and exchange the vulnerability. That is certainly meaning, but isn't the meaning there already, cemented in the piece, waiting for an audience not to assemble it but to uncover it? Or maybe it's more like laying dormant, meaning nothing outside of observation and only becoming something once interacted with. Art doesn't seem to physically change when we engage with it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't change. Let's take a conversation. Surely, when two people talk, they are assembling something. They are building the conversation, building a relationship, building rapport and a community. I wonder if that assumes too much human agency - obviously, a person has to act in order to talk, and has to choose what to say, and choose how to respond, but how much of the unseen aspect do we truly participate in? Is a connection something we build or something we establish? Do we solder the wires and shape the plugs, or is the mechanism for connection already there and merely needs interacting with? I would posit that we are designed for connection, and it is a presence we simply act on, as unsimple of a thing as that is. I understand there is a lot of depth that I missed, but there is a character limit I would like to respect, and I do have other things to touch upon. I ultimately am sticking with my original position, but I recognize my own biased beginnings: I see people rarely, talk to people seldomly, and my meaningful connections with others have been rather brief, though no less impactful. If meaning is truly made and not found, then I've more or less had to make it on my own without much true physical anchor. I'm sorry if it's too lame to you to pose those questions with only amateurish answers, but this is more novel to me than before, and very wide. I don't have concrete answers for it all. Or maybe I've completely misread you and you don't believe any of that, hah.

I wouldn't say that all necessarily means that my joys are useless and not impactful, but with all of this I have to conclude that many things are only impactful for me. To take something personal and to share it is not inherently ruining it, but not everything is meant for sharing, and I think one of the greatest banes of modern life is the need to take everything and share it. A pretty sunset or the way the light hits a fence or the frog on a tree are not things the world or the people around me benefit from seeing. They are moments with meaning to me, and share them is to take a delicate and brittle moment and stretch and twist it; it breaks immediately, disintegrating into nothing. It is meant just for me. We all have such moments, don't we? A lull that we find ourselves in, meant just for us? There is a difference in taking something that happened to you and molding it into a painting or a song or a short story or anything else and grabbing those small, delicate lulls and thoughtlessly shooting them out to the world. That is what my unnecessary pictures are. This certainly applies to words, too; again, there is nothing wrong with curating a taste and sharing that effort with others, or giving the world your own dive into a piece of art to supplement their own experiences, but generally people don't do these things but rather rattle endlessly into the void of content. It's something meant to share with friends, to gain feedback on, not something to be consumed. I find many livestreamers et alia tend to fall into that category too; there's nothing wrong with playing games with the bros, but it seems like you ruin the moment when you post it to YouTube; you take something which is inherently beautiful because of the fleeting nature of it and curse it with permanence, stripping it naked of everything. It's downright harmful. So, as an addendum, I don't only think it's inherently nonsense that comes from sharing these moments, but that one is supposed to look for these moments in their own life; that is the point of them. I should ditch the camera and just be in the moment, to word it like an old man would.

I would extend that philosophy naturally to making art as well. Art usually is a community thing, but only after it's been a personal thing. You can only make art for yourself and not for any other person. It must mean something to you. It's meaningless to try and make art without consulting yourself first. Art is the truest expression of yourself. You have to know who you are to make art. Even a simple painting of a cigarette box is telling the world who you were, are, what you were feeling and thinking and doing. It's impossible to talk to someone else unless you've talked to yourself first - at least, I find that to be true. I can't say I've ever really felt a part of a tribe, see once again my rural upbringing, but I've seen hints of it. I don't think it's just you. I'm pretty insecure about my internet access, but I was put on it as an older kid and feel like I lost my entire personal life and formative years to it. That's not exactly true, but I certainly sacrificed a lot of real life stuff for an internet life and I feel like I can feel the repercussions of doing that to this day. I also just value physical stuff far more than digital; it's how I'm wired, I guess. 

To be honest, I wouldn't like Pokemon as I do were it not so formative to me, could I not link it so closely to some of the most important moments and times in my life. The game I've had proud ignorance of is Omori. Unfortunately, that was broken last year when someone finally told me something about that game. I have been meaning to play it since then, and was planning on starting it a few weeks ago, but I started Cyberpunk 2077 in January thinking it would take me 30 hours and that I would be done with it in February, but now it's March, I'm 70 hours in, and no end is in sight. I'm not too mad though. 2077 has been probably the best game I've ever played. No game has immersed me more before. If any game makes me a gamer, it would be this one, but to be honest I'm starting to have that feeling of wanting to move on already.

Now, to return the favor of the plushie, which I will try to hold close to me. First is this video of a guy cataloging his collection of alternative manga. This video is a very good starting point, I think, because it's quite comprehensive and shows a lot of different kinds of alternative manga. I kind of use it as a catalog myself, so I know what books to look for. You will probably like it because the guy showing the books is very good about showing the front and back cover and some of the interior art. The one with the art that speaks the most to me is the one with the kana in it. I forget the name and can't be bothered to sit through it all now, but you'll know it when you see it. It's magnificent, I think. Skip five minutes in to dodge the rambling. https://inv5.nadeko.net/watch?v=BkNsDfe3I5M

Here is my selection for a lecture, Ryan Holmberg on Fukushima Devil Fish. No, that's not about the meltdown. It's a collection of antinuclear energy manga from the 1980's and 1990's. Holmberg will spend a good chunk of the intro to this lecture edumacating you that nuclear controversy in Japan is not just 1945 and 2011. Which, it just hit me that this month is the 15th anniversary of that tragedy. Holmberg pretty thoroughly goes through the manga. He asks things like "How does one portray low level radiation in comics?" and then walks through examples of that in the manga. It's kind of a drag if you're not really into manga, but you can take a peek: https://inv5.nadeko.net/watch?v=yd3PeKbNjyk

And, to be nice, since you talked about long writings being a drag, here's my favorite essay, which has less characters than this post. Few pieces of literature mean more to me than this little one: https://members.tripod.com/nature_writer/Naturalist/eiseley.htm

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okay re-write 2 character limit edtion let me see if I can be conscise without losing the emotional thread. I'll reply to each section, as a section. That should maintain some chronology here.

I'll be sure to check out garden of spheres and see what I can take from it. I'm also (genuinely) glad that you've gotten something out of reading about art. I personally despise art-reading or art-that-requires-reading. I prefer being intuitive with basically everything I can afford to be. It feels like reading about art, to me, is like being taught how to parent. It's one of those things I'd rather develop my own ways of approach, and that my perspective of "good art should stand on its own two legs without any text accompanying it." which I try to employ when creating as well. I don't dislike stories/history and I can completely get that certain things make more sense/become more enjoyable when you know things about them, but I tend to conserve that for what I find worthy of it. For which, I have a strong disliking for abstract art. Not to be a contrarian here or to position myself against your taste, but it always appeared to me as things that are too emotionally withdrawn (and my internal "this is something the elite use to smuggle tax money tbh") because, Idk? much as I like the "the art is for the artist" I find it that I have a tendency to care what my art can be received as. Abstract art feels authoritarian to me in the ways it demands that I do work to extract meaning from it. I wouldn't want other people to feel that with my creations. And not even because of any kind of appearance-anxiety but rather that because I care how people feel, and receive, and perceive things. From that perspective, painting something explicit-onto-itself is joyful to me because in my train of thought that is "I created this experience for the viewers and I love the idea that they'll feel exactly like that when they receive this :)."

>I wasn't meaning to bash action movies in general
No biggie on that lol. I personally do hate mindless-action-films and sports/race/cars/etc. but I can't lie that I don't see some overarching reads on certain kinds of films that might otherwise be catalogued as action.
>the topic of talking to oneself
I feel like we all do this, to some extent. This is one of those things that loop back onto itself times and times over as people progress in their connections. Sometimes you share something because you want the other person to be informed, and eventually, trust reaches a certain point that neither of you has to explicitly say certain things in order for that information to be exchanged. I pay attention not to over-share unnecessary things with the people around me for example, not really out of being private (though I am) or being a recluse, but I find it that "if XYZ is popcorn level of amusement, I feel like I'd prefer keeping that to myself. I want to share the cooler jokes/media/this/that/thoughts with my people" is my perspective. I like keeping the 1-4 steps of the preliminary process to myself and THEN share things with the people, nowadays. Less "here's a cool idea I had, do whatever with it" and more "here's a cool idea i executed, enjoy" as much as I can do. I don't find it pretentious or plastic when I do the pre-liminary process on those things, because ultimately, I feel like if our intent with other people, is to share, and someone goes "well I didn't want to bother you with the boring parts" I'd think that that's a way of being thoughtful too. Precisely why I like the 575 format of haikus. That strictness leads to better creativity, and more room for you-as-the-viewer to breathe with your own thoughts about things.
>Newspaper comics
Solid perspective tbh. I personally don't like any kind of serial-creations/styles/etc. but I like familiarity-through-series-of-work and things like "I can technically make solid sense of my own work in chronological order if I just look through them in order (because that means others can as well)" and such. Something about art is that (though I do 100% hate commissioned works), in my opinion, It's not always what a piece says by itself (which, it can still say things by itself) but where it stands in the larger picture. Take the attached picture for example. That's Goya's "The Dog" and by itself, its basically just a dog that appears to be cowering in a corner. But in terms of narrative? People tend to think of it as goya's "the calm before the storm" moment since this was made shortly before he started painting his more "spooky" works later. Same with how Gogh's last piece before his death was a dark night with crows flying over a field of wheats. By itself? basic, yes. But maybe he was expressing his depression there and his death truly was a suicide. Or maybe his death wasn't a suicide, and his last painting being that is a mere cosmically absurd coincidence. But that's part why I've been enjoying the more basic aesthetics lately. They feel part of the overarching narrative, even if they appear plastic in themselves.

>On feeling superior and confidence
I feel like feeling "superior" (although not how I'd word it personally) is a fine thing, idk. The simple reality feels like if you're good at what you do, confident that you do it good, and don't mind expressing that? People like that. People, in fact, LOVE that. In my youth I loved being expressedly confident, in fact, because this made people gravitate towards me. But as time went on, I realized, "man, wait. Why should people gravitate towards me, though?" and I adapted to do the quite opposite of that. Although selectively, I tend to feign ignorance, incompetence and being-broke to strangers nowadays, because I've realized "being attractive" can be a most painful thing if you don't realize what kinds of people that can attract. Demanding people, needy people, lazy people. I'd say it's not anything bad for you to feel superior, just that if you feel good, are good at something, have something of value? The logical end-move is to NOT share that expressedly. Why should you? Do you want grifters approaching you for "investing" or do you want horny-consumers to get all "ah, man. gosh. I am but so lonely, oh but the lords now I have fallen in love with you"? Because I've honestly been the receipient of those kinds of things before and it was always a draining experience. Fitness I've especially grown to hate at least from a sentiment perspective because of this. Throughout the years of my life, being interested in fitness only ever brought me;
>Shallow, lazy partners
>Feeling like a constant target for whoever is the most insecure about their frame in the room
>Physical agony
>Endless sleepless nights, countless amount of finances poured into something I only ever did out of the love of my heart for it
It was especially engrossing because, when you're on "I hope I can sleep at least 2 hours tonight while my body rips itself through a meal that would feed a family of four, and maybe when I wake up I can have enough breathing room to spend with my partner without struggling to speak sentences for her" and you get a "umm, hi sweetie, do you workout? haha I noticed your traps :)" THAT? makes you want to throw the equipment out the window. So nowadays I just go like, "yeah I uhh. I'm broke, no job, no friends, no goals, avg median income of constant debt :) wanna hang out??? be besties??" and people go running. like. thank god LMAO.

>I don't like feeling authoritarian over other's opinions and beliefs
This is fun to do every now and then though. I tend to think of rhetoric as some form of art. Something most pleasant to do (in my opinion) is when you get that "man I can 100% get into this person's mind + heart + feelings + make them spill hard asf" > do it > watch it go off > getting that "awww" hit when they do it. I used to do that very predatorily (which I don't anymore (because guilt and stuff)) but yeah. Rhetoric is like dancing (to the "I don't know how to dance." people) and that's fun to try at when you're in the mood tbh.

>You're pretty on point about money and self-care, though I would caution against hedonism
I 100% get that. But also something that was on my mind earlier today was how "side-hustle" is more of a cultural-norm for our generations than I think they were for the previous ones. I like that with a toolkit as basic as;
>expandable income
>basic market awareness
>low self-inhibition
you can, practically;
>buy useless nonsense for your own joy
>barter to hell in the process of that for the joy of social literacy
>get your kick out of said item
>re-list it when you're bored for an X% markup
>profit from all this
>re-utilize that money for other reasons when you're done
I like that so much because it hits all the nodes of "STUFF I LIKE" to me. It gives me room to buy dumb shit, grow some nonsense "following" on an app intended for second-hand exchanges, have them go "is this like that other one I bought from you a while ago??" like I'm some kind of gourmet of plastic garbage, explain to them, CURATE for them, and get paid in profits. Cuz I agree that leisure spending on its own is, yeah. I 100% feel guilty over that too. But when you re-direct that to simultaneously be profit, inspiration, faux-socialization, some "see? some young little kid is gonna get this toy and have THEIR ride of inspiration with it now :)" thing and whatnot? That's a whole modus!

>on the matters of introspection
I'd kinda agree honestly? introspection is good, but sometimes "what if there's actually a deeper reason I wanted to do this silly thing and that pays off later?" is better. I feel that way about "here's a random image I kept on my hard drive for several years until it came to find purpose this exact day" I suppose.
>on meaning
I feel like meaning can run both ways, one way, or neither. To put it (maybe disappointingly) short, I'd say;
>The artist might ascribe meaning
>The audience might interpret meaning of their own into the body of the work
>Either can also JUST go "it has no meaning I just thought it'd look cool tbh"
and I feel like it's not just "this" or "this" or "that" with these. Like I'm not trying to do some humanitarian larp or be jaden smith here (lol) but I feel like something I consider to be childish/boring/meaningless ultimately does end up with... someone who doesn't see it that way. And maybe further later, someone who can appreciate it without feeling the need to see it that way. Simple joys, can be complex, or can be enjoyed for their simplicity tbh.
>on texting styles
I feel like that's super sweet of you but also I'd say don't bother all that much unless your family is overtly sensitive tbh. I used to be like that when I was young-er too. Then I started talking to mom like she's a "block-boy-gangstar-hoodlum" and she was like "lol you're funny :))) silly little child :)" etc. Like yeah sure okay some places/contexts require a more serious voice/mode/etc. but the beauty of it (imo) should come from the "modular-application of the right dialect/tone for the place" not steadfast-ness. Because when you have "your regular tone" and "your joking tone" and this and that, people get used to that. People even LOVE that (sometimes) because it's texture, culture, identity. It's like what an in-joke is but at a linguistic-texture level.

>So sure, you would have something to say if I showed you a photo I took, but that would only be because you were confronted with it and therefore needed to respond to it
I don't think that'd be the case, idk? I have "something to say" for just about everything I see throughout the day. I don't always say it to someone, or even out loud, but ultimately I always have a thought to myself, so I don't feel like it'd be fair to say "this photo only got meaningful because I asked you to look at it." Like. There is a can of "Monster - Ultra Tropical Island Punch" on my desk right now. Friend of mine bought it on his way here a while ago. I think its can design looks unusually pretty for monster's otherwise ugly product design. I mean if I even had to demonstrate the depth-of-it, I'd say that a stupidly-lengthy name for the most basic, mundane ass item in the world is funny. I mean monster in itself is funny if you think about it? These things contain like, half a cup's worth of caffeine and a tiny little bit of nutrients in them. They don't even """"energize"""" you for most purposes. And then they get branded like "MONSTER - RED BULL - JOHN DIESEL'S +18 HIGH ENERGY NATURAL APHRODISIAC" like, dude, bromanski please. shut up. they produced your ass in a factory. You contain mildly sweetened fizzy hydrogen dioxide you're not that special. RELAX.

YOU KNOW? I think of shit like that all the time about just about anything I see outside anyway I don't feel like "You are talking to yourself because I have forced you into a situation where you have to" would be an accurate way of putting it. Cuz I talk to myself one-way-or-the-other more or less, so its not like its any more "artificial" when you (or someone else for that matter) shares something.

>I think the fundamental disagreement behind the unnecessary photographs is whether meaning is inherent in something or if meaning only forms once someone interacts something
I gotta be honest I thought about this myself a lot in the recent past. Most specifically before I managed to get back-into art. I think meaning is a strangely almost-everywhere thing if you were to want to see it that way. Which I actually almost hate that I felt like that because it made me think of some "so was I just an asshole when I made fun of people's "japanese weird cartoons" then?" because like. idk? like ultimately, I love bullying people? but ultimately I feel like the 13 years-old crying to his mom is just not old nor articulate enough to say "Actually, from a sociopsychological perspective, the reason I watch my """japanese weird cartoons""" is because I'm at a formative age and struggle to develop a sense of "where do I stand in the world" insofar, and you're just a manic adult who's trying to make me cry over the simplest of joys in life simply because you thought I'd lack the rhetoric to respond back" like... lol? idk. funny, yes, but is it not accurate? I feel like that same thing can be said about "my things" if I can most honestly justify how a game I played 15 years ago can inspire a specific stylistic choice today or how "a stupid toy" can give me the idea for an entire piece.

>but isn't the meaning there already, cemented in the piece, waiting for an audience not to assemble it but to uncover it?
I think it runs both ways. I sent my brother a dog-lifting-barbell sticker back in 2013 and he scolded me over "oh so you're calling me a dog?" and now that it's been 13 more years he's the one sending me cat-making-heart-with-paws stickers soo?? silly anecdote, yes, but the premise I trust you to get it. You don't have an obligation to agree with the artist's intended meaning. I like listening to break-up songs most generally because they paradoxically have the sweetest instrumentals while I'm too busy to mind attention to their lyrics, for example. I don't find that depressing, at all. Or sometimes I listen to a song that should have cheerful lyrics, and the instrumentals make me feel like I'm gonna cry so I turn it off.

>I wonder if that assumes too much human agency
I'd say the concept of "agency" in itself gets muddled there, but not in any grandly impressive way if I had to put it? Because here's how I've always seen things;
>a person is, first and foremost, their self
>they feel things, need things, share some, don't share some other things
>even if/when they don't put too much thought into something they say/do, this doesn't necessarily mean that they're being lazy or that it doesn't mean anything, and can even sometimes, intuitively reach something like "pre-cognitive" communication where I as someone used to how they behave understand what's going on without them spelling that out
I'd say that, for example, was how I came to think of women in specific. I'm bringing women up because a lot of my friends tend to go "man, women be like that. They never make sense they're just emotional instability machines structured to work like that." and I always felt like that that was a bull thing to say. And I think that goes both ways. Sometimes YOU don't say something out loud, and maybe you don't even think you're saying it, and maybe you don't even MEAN to say it. But someone hears it like that and then they respond to it. And eventually you go, "man I never meant it like that but now that we're here... maybe I did mean it like that? I don't even know. If I'm glad things got to where they are, and things got to where they are because I said some something a while ago, idk? that's cool?" kinda. yeah? I think "pre-cognition" isn't bull tbh. Things that we do instinctively/impulsively can mean things, even if not outright or from our perspective. And how much of the un-seen aspects of that do we truly participate in? A LOT. Which is what can lead to over-thinking what we say sometimes, like you do with your texts for example. I have a personal respect for women (CRINGE!) in specific that they kind of live like that as baseline, too. Women (at least, for the longest parts, even if not today-anymore) had to learn that "how do I say this without saying it and not get myself divorced by this emotionally stunted caveman?" for so long which I didn't even realize was a part of life until I turned just about 21 years old. 
>I understand there is a lot of depth that I missed
I feel like you do pretty fine honestly dw about it
>I'm sorry if it's too lame to you to pose those questions with only amateurish answers, but this is more novel to me than before
Not at all! It's actually sweet because I like getting to spill the things I've been thinking about to myself

>but with all of this I have to conclude that many things are only impactful for me
probably the other way around honestly. I personally feel like the things from other people that made an impact on me were most generally things that they don't even remember having done (which isn't bad or anything) in the past. Sometimes I share that and they go "wooahh really??? I did that and that led to...??? WOW!" usually. Probably the same for you too, lol.

>There is a difference in taking something that happened to you and molding it into a painting or a song or a short story or anything else and grabbing those small, delicate lulls and thoughtlessly shooting them out to the world. That is what my unnecessary pictures are
What if you take your unnecessary pictures, and keep shooting them into the world, consistently, every time you feel like doing it at least? That's how all the legacies get made, generally. one picture turns to ten, turns to an album, turns to a lifetime's study that is considered beautiful in itself. A project I had on mind was using physical pieces to take as little as one single picture to write an on-going narrative for the rest of my life, and have it complete itself when I pass away. I liked this idea. I'd definitely have done it if I wasn't already creating other things. Or something like a curation-account of some sorts where I simply post my-kinds-of aesthetics once a day. Low effort, no burnout, no expectations. 

OKAY I gotta write a follow up now, apologies. I just have a habit of trying-not-to-overglance anything.

>>8673
I can't say I've ever really felt a part of a tribe, see once again my rural upbringing, but I've seen hints of it. I don't think it's just you. I'm pretty insecure about my internet access, but I was put on it as an older kid and feel like I lost my entire personal life and formative years to it. That's not exactly true, but I certainly sacrificed a lot of real life stuff for an internet life and I feel like I can feel the repercussions of doing that to this day. I also just value physical stuff far more than digital; it's how I'm wired, I guess. 
I feel like that's become a generational thing more than any personal failure, idk? That's not just a you-thing. Like, our generations are naturally leaning towards;
>I don't wanna bother going outside if I don't have to
>I don't really need to do this physically if I don't have to
>Why should I walk to the store when I can just order it online?
And that's just a general, wide-reality of how modern technology changed the ways we live IMHO. something like depop feels to me like what the flea markets were 5-10 years ago. Like "I spent too much time on the internet" might be a point of insecurity from one angle, but its kinda became baseline and thats only gonna grow more in time. Like not to get all "ooo the future is now" lol but I mean, yeah? like kids learn to use keyboards and mice nowadays hello??? like what is "pen and paper"???

>On pokemon
I actually came to start liking pokemon some more especially after seeing it on marzichan enough times actually. Idk. always used to think like "this is the cringe plastic-core toy-selling thing they show around. adults shouldn't be into this" but they technically trace back to yokais and such in terms of design philosophy and what artistic purposes they serve (i.e. mythologizing otherwise antromorphic characteristics into pocket monsters) I save some of that stuff into my art-hoard-folder too actually. It's in the "things i conceptually want to do more-of but don't have the mean-time just yet and I hope I don't neglect it too much too long" box. I hate that. There are so many things out there that inspire me but ultimately I have to kind of dilly-dally-dwindle it down to what can practically work on the canvas when I make something. Pokemon-adjacent-art has been on my mind, though. Along with a lot of things I saved from marzichan honestly. It doesn't always show in the output but I've functionally used maybe 6-8 references (I think more actually) that I got from marzichan so far.

>on cybergunk
I like cybergunk tbh. never played the game (CRINGE! (jk)) but I took my time digging into its narrative/aesthetics/lore/anime. especially the anime actually. for being a netflix normie cringecore anime I thought it was actually good. 

>but I started Cyberpunk 2077 in January thinking it would take me 30 hours and that I would be done with it in February, but now it's March, I'm 70 hours in
god, jesus good lord. The attention span to that. I usually go like "oh this is cool! let me blink some several-days-in-a-row into this, forget it ever existed afterwards, come back two years later because I remembered a specific scene that I now want to paint :)" lol also like.
>70 hours playtime over near three months
>gamer
yeah RIGHT? gosh! sounds like you have an addiction there or something (lol)

>on the shared media
I'll be sure to go through them in proper attention when I have the time and be sure to take what I can into my marzi-chan-art-ref-deco-secret-secret-real-one folder. Also I can definitely see how the kana manga was the one you personally like the most. It kinda shows (in a good way) that you have the specific taste for a certain kind of color palette. that's cool. But like yes. I will have to dip now but I did want to emphasize the uhhh. idk. you know how sometimes you send people like, something? and then you realize they didn't even look at it properly and it feels all disappointing? idk. that's a pet-peeve thing I guess I always do my best NOT to do it it feels super disrespectful is all :)

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>>8673
First, the painting. Almost all of the strokes in it are straight up and down, giving it a sense of tallness, and making the empty space seem more menacing and large. The only outliers to this are the dog and the outline of the log or whatnot it's hiding behind, making it the focus of the painting. The dog is painted to be only a head, without a body, as the dog in the scenario can only witness what it's going through and has no agency. It's looking up at this shadow thing that seems to take up the entire right side of the painting, but it's more difficult to track it halfway up the painting. The painting is very unlucid; the dog is the only thing that seems definitely real, even if the danger and darkness are hard to ignore. That's all I can glean from it. I looked at Wheatfield with Crows, too. Very mosaic. It's like looking through a stained glass window at dusk. The way the night sky is painted, it looks like there is a couple of flowers just about to bloom, a crow flying right into one of them. Most of the crows are flying away from that lighter sky into the darkness on the upper right, fading into black as they go. Maybe Van Gogh thought he was the single crow flying into the light, stained by the light in the same way the paint flows over that crow. An odd kind of finality to it, like you say. I think metacommentary on art can be pretty useful, but certainly not as something to tell you what art is and is not. I've heard plenty of stories of authors who refuse to read after they start writing more seriously because they don't want to absorb too much from other authors. You might be right about abstract art, but I certainly could never tell if something is demanding I take meaning from it. Sometimes I feel like I'm the guy who's strapped a poem in a chair and is holding a tire wrench. I don't know how good that is long term, and I try my best to sit back and let something hit me before I begin dismantling it, but the process is automatic.

Maybe sharing things has a lot to do with how much one feels they can do with them. I often feel like I'm incapable of expanding on any of the things I come up with, so that may be why I'm always so eager and willing to share stuff with others. A lot of the stuff I share is because I feel it makes me more understandable, though. Stuff like being rural or my mixed relationship with the internet would help form the picture of who I am overall as a person, I would imagine. Of course, I'm geared to share things in this way because I'm always trying to put together the "bigger picture" of other people because I find others difficult to understand a lot of the time. Deciding what I share with others depends really on how personal the thing I'm sharing is to me, and though I have a pretty low threshold (as I'm sure you see) and am willing to expand the threshold even more (though only somewhat) if I feel it's necessary to make a point or because I particularly trust that person, there are a small few things I've not really talked about with anyone just because they're too personal and I've never made a connection strong enough that warranted that, even with my close friends through the years. It's a weird mix of not thinking anyone was close enough to me to understand things that personal and not wanting people to understand me that much to begin with. Side note, I know a guy who speaks Japanese and he quite dislikes non-Japanese haikus because the format has something specific to do with the Japanese language. I wouldn't know. The subject of poems and structure is pretty interesting. Before Whitman (generally speaking,) poems always had an obvious internal sense of logic. Generally, people almost always used agreed upon formats, and even when you had an iconoclast like John Donne, their poems did follow a strict structure, just not the normal ones. Whitman came along and threw all of that out of the window. Leaves of Grass deserves the praise it receives, but it's also his fault that now most poems are just:

i put the words
in the funny                 places
and that gives it
meaning.

I guess I'm also fine with sharing things with others because, as you mentioned a while back, I've not really had that people-aversion sense baked into me because I don't really find myself interacting with others that much. I think, generally speaking, that trying to forge a long-lasting connection of even something like being taken advantage of by horny grifter-consumers would be extremely difficult. All connection in my life has been difficult to maintain, impossible in the long-term, though I suppose that's inherent in life and not my fault directly. Relationships of any kind seem to never last very long. I have to make the moments I have with someone count, I guess, give them as complete of a view of me as I can. I can take confidence that nothing will come of being open to strangers, which I have to suppose is a very privileged place to be in its own way.

I've not been quite familiar enough with anyone to track their progress as an artist fully, but I have seen this sense of an artist's canon. As you go throughout their catalog, you can watch them change and grow and morph as a person, see their beliefs shatter and adapt and reform and reinforce, see the way life builds them up or breaks them down, see what they think of the world and how their perspective moves around. There is a sense of internal consistency to it. It's almost like it tells it's own story. Almost. I do have to say to that end, though, that I do try to be as personal to an artist as I can be. I try to seek out interviews especially. Knowing even just a little bit behind how an artist thinks or has thought can make a piece of art more obvious than it was before. It can be revealing, at least I think so.

When it comes to side hustles, there's an entire subculture of trading cars where I live. People will put 5,000 miles into their car and then trade with someone who also put 5,000 miles into their car and are bored of it. I become too attached to my automobiles to do that, but I have occasionally wondered if I could profit by flipping cars somehow in a culture like that. Working on cars is pretty fun, and I could probably make some money. It would just depend on how things work. The very high amount of disposable income needed to burn through to even begin doing that has also put me off of actually going through with that a little.

Things that just "look cool" ultimately have meaning in their aesthetics, though. A fight in your favorite anime looks cool because it represents the clash between those two people's ideals and represents the artist's idea of how those ideas interact with each other in the real world (Middle Ages people could be really good at doing this, too.) Goya's Dog looks cool because it perfectly hits what it feels like to be cornered by life. If being "cornered by life" looks like anything, it looks like being a dog powerlessly cowering before this menacing figure who's realness is obvious but impossible to prove or describe. Your pack of cigarettes looks cool because it calls upon ideas of cultural clash and coexistence, an extremely dangerous feel-good stick from America in Japanese hands for those hands to do anything with, a macrocosm of what life has been like the past three hundred years or so. Even if inherent and not explicit, it's still put in there. The irony is if you really make something "just" to look cool, then that thing won't look cool at all. Looking cool has to do with what it means - to me, at least. You do hit on something interesting though, about how an artist can mean one thing and the audience in general pull something completely different from the piece. I'm sure this comes from some "real world marker," if you will - that is, probably either the artist or the audience is wrong about some fundamental true thing, but I can't put that idea into a cohesive thesis right now. I do agree that meaning (in art) ultimately comes from the reaction between artist and author, regardless of how that coalition ultimately forms and regardless of who ends up doing most of the work in that relationship. Your own anecdote about the stickers is insightful though. You misunderstand me, also. I do not proofread my texts or messages or posts or anything else to "be nice." I do it because I have a bad habit of wording something in a way that makes perfect sense to me but will somehow read as something unrelated to anything I've been talking about to the person receiving it. I simply have to look over something I've written ten times if I want to talk to people at all. I don't know that I really have a "joking tone." I tend to be super serious about everything. Like Japanese comics. 

Maybe there is something lost by doing that, though. You mentioned precognition and meaning something you didn't intend to mean, and I've had that experience entirely to myself before. I'll be writing someone a letter, look over something I wrote, realize it can be taken a certain way I didn't mean for it to, but then realize that the unintended meaning is actually closer to my true feelings on whatever I'm talking about than the original thing I was trying to say. Whether or not I continue hiding my true feelings depends on the particular situation (sometimes I'll find that even in trying to hide my feelings, I make them kind of obvious in this way,) but I've discovered I have a bad habit of being precognitive like that. I probably honed that from the way I interact with art and my neverending proofreading itself. I do have quite a few memories, especially when I was a kid, of talking to someone about what seemed to me the defining moment of my connection with that person and learning the other person had completely forgotten what had seemed to me our most important moment together. When I was a kid, this happening just bummed me, but looking back on it now, and when it happens as an adult, especially with how often it has happened before, it's quite unnerving. 

Putting the pictures in the same vein as drink cans on a desk kind of coalesces with my own point. I take pictures like that specifically because I am trying to elevate it beyond the beauty of something like appreciating a moment you find yourself in and the props that decorate that moment. A more accurate analogy would be like if you took that monster can and sent it in to a local art museum to try and capture that moment forever or whatever. At the upmost positive end of that situation, you look silly and change nothing, and more realistically speaking you take that moment and destroy it completely. In my attempt to make the moment special, I make it cheap and disposable. In trying to preserve something, I only force it to decay. In trying to make something last I only end up conflagrating it. I want to avoid doing that. Your talk of the toys reminds me of this story about Dungeons and Dragons I heard. According to legend, one of the guys who worked on it based all of the main dragons of the first edition on a pack of toys he bought. 

I really don't know what my future on the internet looks like. I have a lot of moments where I think I'll finally find the strength and outlets needed to separate myself from it permanently, but then I have moments where I'm certain I'll never log off again. As much as I hate cyberspace and ultimately fail to justify ever connecting to it, the internet has shaped and changed me as a person. All of my favorite books, comics, art, movies, et cetera would have never entered my life were it not for the internet. All of my most meaningful relationships and conversations by a long shot have been on the internet. I've learned of a lot of thigns through the internet that I may not know without it. The internet is my only outlet for most of the things I hold dear to me in my life, my only chance at decent connection. That is why I always come back and stick around, even though I feel like it's killing me, taking apart my brain, nudging me closer and closer to some kind of mania. To make a lame media comparison (I'm about due for one,) it's like Neuromancer - like, the actual guy, not the book. The most powerful being in the entire world, able to fry a man alive and pull the soul into his own afterlife, to control him completely, endlessly cruel and incomprehensible, all this and just a boy, a little boy doing cartwheels and handstands on the shoreline. I don't know if that makes sense.

Neatly enough, the basis for Pokemon was ultimately connection in an increasingly industrialized world. Satoshi came up with the idea when he saw the advertising for the Game Bot link cable. He spent his time catching bugs with his friends as a kid, and he worried people wouldn't be able to experience that anymore. So he came up with Pokemon, and designed it in such a way that connection - true, real-time connection - was necessary. Red and Blue/Green was a journey you took mostly on your own time, but even so was defined by the time you spent with others. I think, even to this day, people still manage to feel that original core design philosophy. Asuteroid's art seems to mimic that well to me, at least.

I can really only play a video game for two hours at a time. The maximum I can go before my irritation starts bleeding into genuine anger is four hours. I just can't handle sitting down and moving my hands a little for longer than that. Most days I don't touch video games, also. And again,n 2077 has been especially engrossing, but I also try to not quit a game in the middle of it if I can help it. It might be worth mentioning that Wyberlunk 2077 does have quite a few of it's own comics. You probably knew that though. Everything has its own comic series. Even the Minions have their own comic run. You don't have to worry too much about the shared stuff. It is respectful to interact with what others shared, especially when it's difficult to understand or out of your comfort zone, but it's disrespectful to force yourself to pull something from it when you wouldn't or couldn't otherwise just on account of being nice, I think. If you gain nothing from it, then you gain nothing, you know? I do appreciate you looking at it, though.

>>8736
I didn't think you'd look into gogh's piece actually, that's pretty cool. I don't think too much of it myself, same as goya's the dog. Much as I like the narrative to these artists I tend to have a very strong distaste for their styles as with many of the classics. I do feel for gogh though, personally. In a strange way. I feel like he probably was the kind to have done it himself, given his ear incident. Though for which I do have respect. I feel like deciding when life ends is a very "artist's move" if I was being parasocial about it. Not really a fan of goya though, especially the dog actually. I get the narrative of it, I like the narrative. I feel like goya's work isn't as menacing as people (and even I) would prefer it to be. Though I feel like that's the sad thing I have with art in itself. Things feel very cool to me on first glance, even inspiring, but it feels like inspiration is something I have to fuel constantly. A very specific mood of creativity has its own flavor and can hardly be caught twice within quick timeframes and effective succession. It's difficult. Sometimes the feeling evaporates and you feel like your only options are either to shelf the piece, or just sit on it for as long as it takes for it to come back out.

I get why you might not want to share everything all too personal I suppose. I do tend to regret my own habits of sharing sometimes. Often, maybe. I'm not too sure. Sometimes it does feel like I regret getting as intimate as I did with people, other times I feel like I'd be better off without them, which I probably would. The most comfortable years of my life were spent in near complete isolation where I spent all my free time studying things of my interest and exercising. It felt like I was growing in the dark. Internally, it was depressing back then, but looking back sometimes I do feel like I'd've loved to stay there. The version of me that was so stuck on believing I must be below average and undesirable, that I wouldn't even try it with people. That was the healthiest I ever was in life I think, before I started socializing at all. Though I can't help my pull to feel like things can be made better in life, and that I'd be of benefit to people. I still tend to spend some months of the year alone, out of preference.

Also I feel like I can see why someone would dislike non japanese haikus for that reason, I think that's particularly why I like formatting haikus that way. I always liked breaking format to some extent and deviating from it, it feels like one of the "grossly beautiful" things I find about being the author or an artist. When you know what you excel at, it feels like you can weaponize that to some extent, like psychologically edging your audience just to not give them the exact perfect symphony they'd've wanted to hear, or a composition that feels almost perfect to look at, a song that's just a little too short. I like that. I feel happier when the feedback I get is "why isn't this part longer?" or "it sounded like this part was just about to-" even though I almost never say it out loud.

I don't think I've too technically struggled making long term connections, in some ways. I can't say I was too successful at forming the exact ones I wanted, but in all fairness, I think it was mostly myself who walked away from things. I have some (ex) friends over in the U.K. for example. I don't stay in touch with them as it feels like the artist ones stopped caring for art and the rest became full time junkies. If I had to be honest, really honest, it's not even that I fail to make long term connections. I think it just feels like, in honesty, I struggle abandoning them. My memory is uncomfortably strong on these matters. I still remember how to contact some people, if I wanted to, just from memory. I just feel like I have no reason to, though. I can comfortably say I feel like I only left behind the people who deserved being left behind, and knowing that they tend to wonder "where is he now? is he dead? is he X/Y/Z?" I honestly kinda feel glad about that. Same reason I change my phone number often enough. Sometimes people cross a certain line of my misanthropy and, I just disappear. I always do it without an explanation though. An explanation people can argue against, or, much to my distaste, soften me up enough that I tolerate it. I do feel like I'm on point with that, just that I have the tendency to take a lie as "an apology from someone who doesn't know how else to give one" rather than "I believe their explanations." Though I would disagree about the being open to strangers part. As much as I hate the people of my past I feel like they shaped me up a lot. 

I get the attachment to automobiles I think. It feels like some sense of "this is MY thing" of us. Sometimes you don't want to let go of the dumbest things, even when you don't know what to do with them. Bikes are like that as well, at least to me. It's just one of those dumb things where it feels like it has no practical purpose, and life threatening to ride like I do but I can't shake off my desire to keep getting back on the thing and ride it like I'm trying to prove that I can ride like an animal without getting myself killed. It's dumb, but you get on the thing and it starts roaring underneath you and you get this weird sensation of "we have become one, for now. I steer the dragon, it propels me, if I make a mistake, it'll probably send me kicking asphalt and, I have to constantly test the limits of how much abuse this thing can take without breaking either of us." That was my general approach to learning I think. I tried to learn the most extreme attempts as early as I could so I'd know how far not to go afterwards.

I like your comment about goya's dog. I don't think I'd put my cigarette pack that far up honestly, but I appreciate it. To me it was mostly just a matter of "Man, what do I want to paint today? ah. yes. cigarettes. One of my truest companions that don't ask and don't demand more than a pack's worth." and that was mostly it. Though I guess on-
>an extremely dangerous feel-good stick from America in Japanese hands for those hands to-
pffft.
>I don't know that I really have a "joking tone." I tend to be super serious about everything. Like Japanese comics.
>Japanese comics
UH HUH. okay lol. I get it. that was cute.

I do feel like I agree with what you said about proofreading honestly, I don't know. I prefer not to if possible, same as art. Re-drafts and rehearsals feel very wrong to me. I don't know. I feel like I have more regrets from filtering myself than not. 

I'd disagree with your point on the moments being destroyed though, still. Life isn't so simple as undoing things at all, whatsoever. I think the reality is much harsher in the un-undo-ability of impact if anything. 

If I had to be honest, I'd say what you said about being close to mania sounds hot. But it's not healthy. Power games are fun and all only when people know when to stop. 

I didn't really struggle pulling inspiration from what you've shared also, I often times don't struggle pulling inspiration. It feels closer to having a finite amount of creativity I can pour into things and having to precisely choose where I apply that, though, as I'm always selective with the who-gets-the art things.

In hindsight you do seem like you're starting to feel like one of my old friends though, disappointingly. I don't really write goodbyes if I mean to part ways with people. You seem rather immature in your approaches to life still, probably some years younger than me if I had to take a guess. Maybe even my younger self if I had to put it. Our first interaction way back had me wondering if you were really just insecure or not and it does feel that way sometimes. I really dislike people who can't commit to their movements, because it stems from their inexperience. People who are not used to walking often can't take sharp turns, which, ironically enough, is one of my physically apparent traits in how I walk, as I spent a lot of my youth walking and running places. I just, I don't know? I'd say I feel insulted or anything like that. But it just comes off super cute when you're actually trying to be demeaning. Maybe it's hot, I'll give you that. But the effort you put to go there is so endearing. It's just adorable. I don't know. I feel like japanese hands might not fit an american feel-good stick for example, though I don't know too quite well. You should still give it a try and see if it suits your needs.

Ahhh. I don't have art to share this time. I might've came unprepared, so to speak.

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>>8738
Possibly good timing; I'm running out of asuteroid Pokemon images. I think I've become a little attached to that dog. I think the kids would say something like "he's literally me" or whatever. It'll fade, though. Only one art piece has only ever stuck with me, and it's because it's a very personal one - well, maybe not that personal. It just always makes me think of this one person I know. I see the paining and think it must be them. Then, when I think of them in this way, I find myself in this complex where I find them the most relatable person I've ever talked with and yet as antithetical to my person as any other person I've known has ever been. It seems so human and yet so alien to my landlocked life. It's Holmer's The Fog Warning. I don't know what to think of art not sticking with you in general, mainly because I'm not an artist of any kind, so I don't know what it's like to see art from that point of view. As I said before, though, any art that sticks with me for any length of time does so on a personal basis, on how much I naturally see myself in it. It's very few, certainly. Many things I can only recall having interacted with and cannot recall the actual interaction. Of course, even if an absence of art with any staying power is bad, that doesn't mean cycling through art looking for inspiration is also bad. You'd have to be insane to only watch the same five movies for the rest of your life, I reckon.

Art creates a lot of different moods. I've always hated genres for this particular reason. I suppose I could organize art by topics, this one is about war, this one is about living on your own, this one is about having a job, this one has supernatural elements, this one is set in this time period, this one is speculative, this one is (at least making an attempt to be) funny, so on. I could never label a movie or book or painting or anything as "action" or "horror" or something else. Art is about what it's about. I find that everything I consume has its own very specific style, and it's difficult to find something that replicates that style, even when it's trying to. This is fundamental for that feeling you talk about, I think, of feelings on a piece evaporating. I've had a select few media resonate with me in such a strong way that I absolutely must have more, but there isn't "more." It's kind of a silly idea to begin with. What makes the media so special is it's uniqueness. The best you can do is try to dive into the artist's catalogue, but this has mixed success, especially if the author was rather young, thirty years old is the cutoff I think, when they made whatever it is and have since grown up. I'll always have the art though, even if I have to give it a year before I've recovered from beating it to death out of obsession for a month straight. As far as art giving me what I want goes, I was going to meander about that point and wonder about it, but the truth is pretty clear that I've set myself up to want what I don't want and I like art that gives me my conscious unwanted desires (that is, art that flares up a desire to isolate myself might not be my favorite, but art about accepting the fact that someone will likely not have true friends (think Soul Eater (if you can bare to)) appeals strongly to me.) Its hard to know what I think about art meeting expectations because I never really have expectations when going into art. Now, I have had expectations shattered by nonfiction stuff, and that always sucks. Things like "here's 'Biography of John Nightblue' which is actually 70% about the biography writer's own crackpot philosophy on how to fish the right way, 30% about a fishing boat John owned that inspired the writer to take up fishing, and 0% about the subject of the biography or what they're most known for." I hate that. I hate that I don't just drop the book and try to still enjoy it too.

 I don't know that I've ever truly regretted being personal with other people. If nothing else, doing so helps me to grow and change, I find. Beyond that, it's moreso the people than the act, specifically that I'm not familiars with them anymore. It kind of scares me what they might do with the information I've given them, what they know about me, or I think it a waste that I invested so much of myself in something so temporal, but neither of those are likely good ways of thinking about it. It had it's time and I gave what I had. That's what I was supposed to do. I do tend to have regrets, but usually it's over trying to make something permanent that was so fragile and temporal, over wasting my time trying to establish a routine with someone as opposed to just enjoying what being with them meant, as opposed to disliking the way I handled certain situations. It's never "I did this bad thing," it's "I built this out of incorrect assumptions," and even if things did happen the way they were designed to, I certainly didn't make it easy for them to. I guess my only other problem is that I assume a lot of the people I talked to are dead now, especially people from my first touchings of the internet. The strain of living life is ineffable in its difficulty, and it's not easy to convince myself that some of the people I don't know anymore could keep that juggling act going this long.

I think bikes and cars are special. You can interface with a machine in a way that mimics human relationship. With everything else, say my table and pillows and watch and shirts, they're just mine. I take good care of them and do my best not to lose them because I'm their steward and I need to be a good steward. A car, even one that I just drive to and from work and the grocery school, is something I interact with. When I'm driving, I need to account for how the engine will handle the ambient temperature, what fluids are in the car and how much of them, if the automatic transmission wants to act up today I have to work around that. The car interacts with both me through it's environment and it's environment through me. That's not something a rug or jacket or television or shelf does. Fundamentally it's the same, of course, because a car is not a living thing, and I certainly won't weep a car's loss (unless I'm unable to find another one, heh,) but it's something you have to be more attached to than most other objects necessarily. Water mills, sewing machines, and other such things are the same way too, I think. They have this kind of soul-imitation where the way they've been constructed and the trauma they've been met with while since that point alter how they function, and the user is forced to take those things into consideration every time they use it. Me and my car are going to be different for having lived through a tornado sweeping the house, for example. It's nothing major, but again causes this sense of faux connection. So I guess, say, buying a new shirt isn't a big deal to me because I'm just "upgrading," but buying a new car, even a car that is better both practically and statistically, feels more like a trade. It's kind of cruel to feel the way I do way about the most cultural-altering invention in the history of mankind, more than fire or the wheel.

I've always found that the more times I rehearse something, the closer to me it becomes. I'm not good enough to be true about it on the first try. Being true to myself is quite tasking, really. I have to look it over and change it over and over, each pass coming closer to the real me. Sometimes, I feel like I never make it there. Sometimes I feel like I would have to look over a message for many months before it started really and truly reflecting who I am and what I'm trying to see, but of course that would be a ridiculous thing to do even if those rare feelings are accurate. Sometimes I feel like myself is a stretching, gnawing ravine, and most of the time I feel like there's more to me than I could care to find.

I think my greatest hope in life is that I will feel like you say you do about your time away, that my time as a younger person now will seem important and necessary later. I hope these days are something I look back fondly on if I ever come out of them. I have this funny feeling that things have cemented themselves in my life, though, and whatever time remains needs to be spent on living with it. I've tried fighting this isolation pretty viciously, but I've given that up now and am much better for it. I'm pretty sure I'll stop being better if I ever break it. But then, it doesn't feel right. Everything is going good, I'm doing better, but there's some sense of me that finds all of this not good at all, and I can't seem to assign it any kind of moral compass. It's just a prodding feeling, nothing more. An unfeeling and uncaring notion I can't eradicate. Maybe if I find out whatever formed that sense, I can overcome it and be more at peace, but I don't foresee that happening. I think, at this point, I've gathered everything I'm going to find, and I need to start making what I have enough and stop waiting on that imaginary epoch of adulthood, stop pretending that there was a major change in me when I gained awareness of my world and start being an active part of it for once, whatever I can do with what I have. I've found life not to be one single moment but many moments that all look the same. Nothing is permanent in the sense of being immortal, but every little epoch inherits everything from the one before it and will give everything to the one after it. So, nothing is the same thing, but nothing ever changes, either. I think I would say that is my final statement on the matter, that I hold a permanent-temporary view if you will. A cut will turn into a scar, but it is still the cut. It is still damage. It is the worst parts of either viewpoint taken and assembled into one, in other words. I've found in my life that nothing stays but nothing changes neither. Maybe traveling to a city or even, gasp, living there! If I'm even capable (I'm only somewhat joking!) or something would do that viewpoint in for good, though. All I really know is my place, myself. Even when I see other people, go to other towns, it is only ever really my people, my town. 

I think walking gives me a sense of freedom no other transportation does. With a car or train or plane, I can travel between cities, countries, continents, all but the former unthinkable on foot unless my life is at stake, and even then I'll likely simply die. With my feet, though, I can go anywhere. If I see something, I can go there. If I'm passing a sign, I can see it, really see it, see the cracks in the vinyl letters, the warps in the metal, the way the pole isn't quite straight, the small vandalism on the back, things I can't see and things I can't do in a car. Walking gives me this sense of agency, I guess, be it real or imagined. I feel like I exist a little, that I'm not just an apparition witnessing the universe.

As far as Japanese stuff goes, I find the American-Japanese dichotomy can be defined, from the Japanese perspective, in three distinct stages: 1. "This filthy Western garbage is literally going to end the entire country and its people, an incurable illness that will slowly destroy us," 2. "This American stuff kind of slaps actually," 3. Proceeding to create variations on said "American stuff" that are far superior to anything the Americans could have dreamed of. Cars are a good example of this. 1990s-2000s Japanese automobiles still tend to be some of the highest viewed road specimens ever produced. I mean, a Mustang is cool and attainable, but even a Nissan Fairlady would be much better. We're kind of falling out of this now, but pretty much from the second World War up until the 2010s it was generally agreed upon that the Japanese were better at everything the Americans were doing, except maybe politicking. I would trust Japanese hands to do just about anything, that is to say. 

★ Something sweet this way comes ★

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>>8811
Well, okay! You're full of surprises. I felt like my previous response was rather hostile and that I wanted to drop a few corrections of myself. For which still, I don't know. It's difficult setting the tone sometimes. Sometimes I'll do or say something that feels like it was a soft cheeky joke and I can't always tell if they land that way. I hate that about text, you can't hear my "I'm just joshing around" voice and mimics that scream "this isn't a serious statement" which sometimes leads to miscommunication.

I like that asuteroid piece there. I like the idea of spooky things. I don't know why. I was never really afraid of, basically anything growing up. But aesthetically I love ghosts and vampires and zombies and demons. They register in my "ooo approach this not!" thing and I like things that go like that. Then you poke it. See how spooky the demons really are. And then they turn out to be just as needy as the humans. I like that. I'll try referring to that piece for something I make in the future if the inspiration doesn't pass.

>I think the kids would say something like "he's literally me" 
Yeah that, was my bad. It sometimes feels like people will be talking about their own struggles and I misinterpret that as if they were talking down at me and I can't tell until before I already got defensive, apologies. I can see why you like the fog warning. Probably even see why you relate to that. I get this strange sense that we're fundamentally so opposite we can comfortably see each other, only that each of us simultaneously fails to see ourselves from the other side. That's such a strange feeling. It feels like I could take a shot at how I'd fairly describe (albeit, not define) someone else. You're a more planned-person, I'd think. You like schedules, knowing when you plan on doing what, how you'll go about doing that. I think that's why you relate to the fog painting. Because life feels like a storm you're getting through. I think I feel the opposite with myself. For some reason. When there's a crisis, or an emergency, or some kind of something, and that "click in right now get everything done we only have one chance at this" I kind of just become it. Outside of that, I don't feel like I could describe myself.

I'll be sure to look into soul eater when I can :)

>Art creates a lot of different moods. I've always hated genres for this particular reason
Strange. That's probably why I like genres if I had to be honest. I have certain playlists of certain genres but they stay shelved until I'm in the mood for that. Though for this reason also I've grown up so allergic to sentimental music. It's not that I don't like it. I just feel scared of "being in that place" like that. Friends of mine like listening to sad music. I personally don't. It feels like the music has to move me. It has to, because I have to move. It's not wrong that I am definitely obsessed with time in itself, life almost always feels like there are infinite things I want to get done, and I only have so much time. That's why I avoid sad music. And the people of the past I think. I like history in itself, but I don't really visit graves. It's not that I don't reminisce, I just don't have the time for it. I always just tell myself, "man. do the bygones want me sitting here over them? I think they'd be most proud if I was there for who and what is here, now." That's partly why I'm as harsh on some people of the past I think. 

>feelings on a piece evaporating
Well, that was mostly just feelings themselves evaporating. It feels like feelings are some kind of fuel, as with time, and I try my best to pour them into art and productivity when I can, but then it feels as though in the process of making those things, I end up neglecting the people in the process, but when I only just talk endlessly, it feels like I produce nothing of worth to be remembered. It's a difficult balance. Mood and feelings they feel so difficult. The thing about art, way I see it, is that we listen to music that amplifies our mood, yet we listen to music that helps get us in a mood. Sometimes I feel like I have to feel a certain way in a moment, and I struggle feeling that way, and then I start worrying if I'm losing my feelings for example, which then makes me sad, and then I feel guilty and angry at myself for not feeling the way I thought I was supposed to, and then I realize "oh okay. now I feel that way. cool!" 

That's cool that you read biographies also. I think I never could. I like taking a dig at people's lives, I love looking up about the lives of old historical people. But that feels too clinical. I can always listen to caesar's life and be impressed, but it feels so impersonal. Too polished. What if caesar peed his pants because of his poor bladder control during a battle and no one brought it up not to ruin the myth? That's boring. It's only boring because it's methodical, distant, not my taste. The unnecessary details of a moment feel so important to me because of that. Because I like exercising the same things I think. The human realities of "a moment" or a feeling is that, its not so much the grand gestures often, but a tiny, near invisible wink. I like that. I wouldn't call myself an "empath" of some sorts, but it really feels like something I can almost see, or so that I lie to myself maybe, it just feels like sometimes when interacting with people, they seem so much like an open-book even if they're trying not to be, like their mind is some kind of maze, and I can just effortlessly flow in there and tap that one little thing that makes them go "oh. I feel warm now. huh." and then get back out. I've been trying to use it for the betterment of things still. It feels like I've hurt so many people with that in the past, I don't like it.

>I do tend to have regrets, but usually it's over trying to make something permanent that was so fragile and temporal
Maybe. I don't see it that way, sadly. I don't feel like its that things are fragile and temporal, but that if something failed, it must've been my fault. It's not that I don't get mad at other people sometimes, I do. But it feels like life is a simple reality of physics at the end of the day, which, is painful to bear sometimes, because it makes me feel like every step I take is like on a glass panel and I can only hope not to break things as I'm walking ahead, as time slips past, and I can't undo my actions, and that stresses me horribly but I accept it as a brutal fact of life. That's one of the reasons I'm so as people-averse when I get so, because soon as I see something, I start thinking of just how many layers of efforts I'd have to invest into things in order to grow and cherish them, sometimes people think "they denied me this basic thing" but the reality is that I denied myself the failures they'd've brought to me. Harsh, maybe. But if my friend can't stand for his own project, then it'll collapse onto me while trying to help it. That too, goes for me, however. If I can't make things happen on my own, then I never deserved them, and if I didn't have the efforts to make my goals come true, then that is my fault. 

Also it's kind of silly that you'd think people to have been dead. Not dumb, not wrong. Just silly I think. Too caring. A lot of the times, I find it that most people I thought to have died, only was avoiding. That goes for me too, though. A lot of the people that come across me again tend to go "oh. I thought you must've been dead by now." whereas it was probably just a mixture of me not liking them, or me not having the bravado to re-appear there yet, and worst, when I was stuck in a rut and not wanting to make an appearance altogether.

Also. credit. I thought you were messing with me about cars. Tech-talk and all, mkay. solid. fair. I'm super illiterate on the tech aspects in honesty. I know how to abuse a bike. I can probably turn that thing into a dragon when I'm on it, but the reality is I have no idea how the engine really works or how I'm supposed to maintain it. Though I feel like that's a two way street, I don't know. My brother is into bikes too. He's the "I know how to repair this" guy. I'm the "I know how to make this thing look super fucking cool (5% chance I die maybe) and then go "just pay the guy to repair it, I guess?"" kinda guy. Though that's my approach to most tools and utility generally. Sometimes even money. I can generally make broken things work too, in the weirdest ways. I have these bluetooth earbuds for example. A while ago, and I swear this isn't even a metaphor, their charging sockets just went broke. Zero conductivity. The thing just refuses to get re-charged. So I thought, "hmm. this thing is too small for me to try the "punch until it works" method. let me try licking it." and... yeah. that worked. that's how they work. I just its so weird. Like. "yeah my bluetooth earbuds refuse to work until I give them a very personal licking." and I really wish I was making that up.

I think I feel the opposite about clothes and trades though. I'd 100% abuse the bike, break it, probably replace it, but then I'll keep a shirt that was worn, torn, burnt, ripped, dragged through hell. Sew it back, maybe even wear it with the hole. Even if it's second hand actually. It's just as nonsensical but if something's touched my skin, or been there with me through things, I feel like it's not right for me to just let it go. Which kinda satiates some strange feeling inside of me. It feels like my guesses at "your things" were right in some parts, and I like how that contrasts with "my things."

Also I think I'd agree with rehearsing, almost. I'm not too sure to what extent. I rehearse a lot too, mostly on the spot, only mostly because I don't really have the "act instantly" reflexes on all the many things I'd love to, and when I'm unused to something, I have to circle it in my head, going "I can do this. Here's how I'll do this. Here's how that'll work." until the thought of doing it feels close enough that I can just do it. 

>I've gathered everything I'm going to find, and I need to start making what I have enough and stop waiting on that imaginary epoch of adulthood
That's paradoxically, profoundly mature I think. I can't really look back and say "and at this moment I became an adult" but mostly it just seems like I'm somewhere on the way there. I sometimes feel like adulthood in itself is just a vague idea. And I say that for I've seen far too many adults act like my child self. I don't too quite know what I'd even describe being an adult should feel like. I think, by my own definitions, it's a matter of "if I was 16 right now, I would've felt too embarrassed to do this, feel bad about that, spiral into my bed and hate myself. But I'm not 16 anymore. I can... just do it." I guess. Growing up in the city, first and foremost, teaches you to sell lies, only that, they're only lies because you don't know how to make them come true. You just see that the people who say they'll get it done get their way, so you learn that. But the adulthood part? That I'd say is the part of actually getting it done. Young me survived on threats and promises, albeit I learned to keep them as best as I can, as I grew older.

It feels like the sense of feeling unease is a matter of, some kind of "breaking the veil" or perhaps "breaking the ice." This was most apparent to me when I would exercise every single day. Every morning I'd wake up and feel this grudging feeling of "I need to do at least one more thing better than I did yesterday" until I genuinely did it. Exercise really helped with that, because it was relatively safe-to-enter and a simple enough task to execute. Although, in honesty, it's not always that. Sometimes its exercise, sometimes its this strange pull-for-trouble, which I find to be human nature in itself however annoying, It just feels like its our nature to do "something-more" every day, or feel bad from not having done so. Humans thrive on problem-solving, sadly. We always find problems, and there always are problems, and they always have to be solved. Though I find it healthiest with things like work or a hobby, because I remember when I don't have those, I simply start getting hostile. Which is most easier to see in others, for example. I can tell when my family simply feels aggravated from hunger, or fatigue, or work, which I do my best to be understanding of. But sometimes they lose track of the whole idea that we're supposed to be family, and sometimes I do. I find it that that's just how tight-knit people are though, at the end of the day, and "keeping tabs" only makes you resentful of people over time. I think I must've stormed out the house with a "and I'm NEVER coming back!" a million times now. And I kinda just do. Some of my friends I keep trying to cut out of my life and feel too guilty to just do that. 

>A cut will turn into a scar, but it is still the cut. It is still damage. It is the worst parts of either viewpoint taken and assembled into one, in other words.
That's silly. I like the analogy because it's something I feel I can speak with some sense of legitimacy, I think. I have lots of scars. Some burn scars on my right calf from when I was first learning to ride, both my knees are super scratched from when I would sprint a lot, even my knuckles are calloused and all the world's more. Not to be edgy or anything, but I'd say I take pride in them. People say they look cool. Sometimes. Some friends say "you're like a nam vet" and sometimes people look at my arms and go "ooo. you look like a samurai!!!" which is silly but yeah okay I made the point.

I also kinda shorthand completely get the "idk if I could live in a city" thing. I mean, yeah. Going outside feels like someone taps me on the shoulder before I leave the house and goes "good luck out there buddy don't die lol :) also here's some debt" or something.

Also I'd agree with what you said on walking. That was something I talked about recently, actually. I was like, "man. isn't it weird how we almost always live inside rides or on cars or in a bus or this or that? That's so weird. We can just walk..???" and that's a thing. Like. There are people out there who are just... not used to walking places. Walking is beautiful I think. It reminds me of how I was thinking of global cultures being so annoying sometimes. Like politics. I don't dislike politics per-se, I just feel like the people who talk about politics often do it because they have nothing else in common. Politics, finances, and ummm. Philosophy. Feels like those are the "we have nothing in common" topics to bring up. Walking, if I may put it so, is a grounding act (ha-ha). It's a pleasant way of seeing the smaller things. The people and places around you. I mean, think about it. Marzichan in itself technically has a history of its own, right? It doesn't have to be the most expansive part of the internet, for it to be the fact that, this place has a long-winding-enough story of its own. Walking is like that. Which is funnier that I'm using a digital example to talk about real life now. "Dude. the other day I walked down the street and... it felt like scrolling through one of the pre-historic blogspots on the internet, bro!" lol.

That's interesting about the japanese though. I like the japanese stuff, but I feel like their own culture is far too westernized by itself (as per, basically any culture at this point, honestly) Idk? It's a strange-yet-simple-yet-complex matter. Power simply dictates what culture is and will be, is what I feel like is the matter. I wouldn't earnestly consider anime to be "japanese culture" for example. Something that brought disappointment to me was always thinking, "man, why do modern artists SUCK at replicating ukiyo-e?" and then I learned it myself. As for which, I'm not japanese. Which then made me go, "wait... why am I upholding the culture of a land whose people are too busy appealing to the westerners with their quasi-exoticism?" so I started trying to experiment with my own things. I mean, kinda? It feels like such an interesting thing to bring up right at the end of the text. like...
>who even AM I?
>what is "my culture"?
>is it the past?
>is it my ancestors?
>but I don't like my ancestors?
>and it feels like my own up-bringing in itself was super westernized anyway?
>Am I supposed to make art to "uphold the culture of my ancestors"?
>But I DON'T like my ancestors?
>I don't even live in a way that my ancestors would approve of?
>Maybe I'm some weird strange idiot who refused to pick up on the culture of his ancestors?
>Maybe I SHOULD appeal to the western scum like the japanese?
>What if I value certain things too much to make art of them?
>What if I adore some things TOO much that I want to make art of them?
>Wouldn't it be cool if my stylistic choices stemmed from the things I DISlike? so I can take something I don't like and re-purpose it for my own intents? isn't that so anarchic?
and so on and so forth... I do wonder why I couldn't just inhabit the culture around me, but then it feels like that culture couldn't inhabit itself. Which probably sounds super "race traitor" or something but idk? My merits are that of my own. My merits are my appeal. Why should I suffer to uphold arbitrary values that don't feed* me? Some things feel "cruel" but I think that's just the reality of life. People do things when they want something, the people who cover those wants get something in return. Sounds transactional, sure. But I feel like its realistic. And I don't even mean that in terms of money, you know? it's a tit-for-tat. Which feels pretty vulnerable to admit I think. Sounds very soft. Maybe that I shouldn't say it. But uhmm... you know? sometimes you just... need something. Like connection! and then the person in the room goes, "well okay. I can share my HOTspot. What do I get in return?" and then you're like, "uhh, umm, I uhh, I could do some favors haha?" and that's life.

ANYWAYS. You know. Smuggish enough. I don't have the knowledge enough to return you on those cars. BUT. Allow me to return you a beautiful... Ducati StreetFighter. Never had the chance to ride one myself, in all honesty, but it does seem a lot like a monster. It takes off fast, it goes fast, its heavy, its loud. It's not a BMW. Not a kawasaki. Not a ninja. Not EVEN comfortable to ride. It's the kind of bike that makes people go "a what? what's that? oh it beats a bmw? oh its too strong they dont even talk about it in the "we totally get bikes (we don't) circles?" when they hear about it. And I love those things about it. This strange, "I'm not trying to be (that) cool" kind of thing. I feel like I like japanese. But I feel like my liking japanese feels corny in itself. Like every time I see "japan-as-aesthetics" out there I have to recoil from it. 

ALSO. I have brought art this time. I took a picture of this a few days ago while working around but my dumbass forgot to save where it was from. Which, maybe makes it more arts-istic if anything. I believe this was being sold from someone's alt-manga collection but I'm not too sure what the source was. Reminded me of our conversations (at least this specific one moreso than the others) and I decided I'd save it :)

This issue and a possible solutions to it are being discussed in Erischan/chaos/world referendum proposal.

The part about living among foreigners, not knowing our neighbours of having a community is the main focus of it. We spend our time doing a job we hate, spending most of our time complaining about it or our governments. 

Check out the dreeam of a new future, share in your own words and langage, start coding if you know how.

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>>8816
I'm sorry for having made you felt put down. I have to say that I'm not that shocked, though. I find that the more honest I am, the less believable I come off as. It's what I was talking about before, about not being normal and whatever. Usually people, in my experience, can't make themselves believe some of the stuff I say comes from a genuine place. I have to be trying to be funny, or am messing with them, or being obtuse on purpose. Not to say that I hold it against you; I try my best to amend myself and be clear. It doesn't always work, especially when I'm trying to be really, truly honest. Hopefully I can avoid being too demeaning in the future. I don't really mind an edge in your posts, as we're really just here talking.

I find I gravitate towards things people let alone. Someone won't go to this abandoned building because there's rampant rumors of it being haunted? Surely I can be there and be alone, then, be at peace. There's a long history of people taking Christian symbols, the upside down cross is the classic example, and making them as symbols to oppose and rebel the religion. I find that people do this kind of thing all the time, to most of everything, people take things and make them mean the opposite of what they really mean. A graveyard, the resting place of souls, where the living give their last best effort towards the departed, a space of closure so rarely afforded to anyone for anything, tranquil and quiet, open to all, this space a place of evil and wickedness? What an asinine thing to suggest. And yet, it is seen as so, generally speaking. I don't know if the heart behind those two actions are the same, but sometimes it really does feel like people are in opposition to life, nature, the universe itself, and lash out against it violently and totally. Maybe it's a false assertion, but who knows. All of that to say, we like hiding as something we're not, I think, and things that assume traditionally "wicked" expressions tend to be the things most holy, and those that portray themselves as righteous tend to be the most evil. To tie that to the art piece, I think it captures all of that pretty well. There's ghosts and there's graves and a fog obscures what lies beyond the immediate surroundings, but really all the piece shows is a walk with friends. I don't know that I've ever questioned my reaction to something, internally at least, but I do feel disillusioned sometimes. Sometimes I look back on my life and realize I have nothing tangible from it all with me in the present. Sometimes I wonder if it ever really happened. I mean, logically I know it happened, but I just can't see it. The fact that it happened is all theory, at least it feels that way sometimes. I don't know that I know enough about you to make any good statements. I guess, you seem like you're good at dealing with failure but have trouble properly moving on from it, that you can live with past mistakes but can't really overcome them. You might be closer to me in that you don't let yourself move on from anything unless it's either more difficult to hold on than to let go or that your own survival necessitates that you make it over it.

I think the term "sad music" is a good point to use to show why I don't like genres all that much. There's songs about a breakup, songs about death, songs about dealing with sickness, songs about not being able to be yourself, songs about feeling isolated, songs about not being able to see a way forward, songs about a lot of sad things. The list I gave you, at least, is pretty even on topics that move me and topics that don't. Then, all of those topics can be broken down further. say, songs about not being able to see a way forward because you lost something, because you found something, because a door closed, because a window opened, because your mental illness makes it difficult to plan ahead, because there factually is no way forward, and again some of those just don't resonate with me. I don't want to insinuate something like breakup songs being worthless, because those are very important, but it's not something I'm interested in nor can relate to, even though all I really listen to is "sad music." It's too wide of a term, I think. 

My main reason for turning to people of the past is to help deal with that sense of connection I so ravenously want, I think. Reading about someone sharing my interests or having the same thoughts as me makes me feel less alone. It's like I'm able to talk with them, to see how they feel and what they see, measure it against myself, measure myself against them. I can connect with them through what they left behind, with who they were, which is not one one hundredths as fulfilling as connecting with who someone is, but it is still something. I don't know what any person I've felt this way about would think about me, if they would like me or dislike me, find me honorable or putrid, but they were here and I live in their shadows. Of course, a lot of that has to do with how I feel about landscape and inheritance, as I've mentioned before. One biography that I read recently, that I will not point towards as it will doxx me, was about a guy who lived in my town. It was more about his death than his life. It follows his life, sure, but he dies just before the American Civil War breaks out when he's out in the boonies and this group of secessionists jump him. The book turns from talking about his life to tracing the effects of his death through the war and its aftermath. It's never anything major, of course, his death didn't make the Union win at Gettysburg or something, but his death is important and it changes the way his family and friends and the leaders in the community went about the war, changed what they thought about it. It's kind of scary reading something like that, having tangible evidence that my death might actually mean something. Spoiler alert: yes, the killers were identified, no, nothing was ever done despite court efforts by the family in the Reconstruction.

The reality of life is that everything is on the shoulders of all of us living it, regardless of whether or not we could have actually done anything better or different. Living requires active participation, and even the hermit who never sees anyone actively participates his absence, not to mention that his living does indeed affect the people he never sees, never thinks about, as much as the hermit tries to avoid and undercut that. So, when something happens in life, it's because you were there, even if the only thing you did is be there. Sometimes things can only come together in a certain way and no set of actions could affect the outcome, but even so, you did it, I did it. It's on your hands, it's on my hands. We all have a place in life that has been foretold for us, and we are solely responsible for our ending up in that foretold place. I would not comment on your relationships with people, I simply don't know enough, but I just want to mention that grief is the opposite of love. Grief only comes where love once was, where love can be. People need each other, to varying degrees. Your bluetooth story reminds me once of how I smacked a hard drive that had a broken partition of Windows on it and that was what it took to right the issue. Nine times out of nine, a charger stops working because it's too dirty, so unless you particularly enjoy being parental, I'd recommend trying to give your earbud chargers a very personal toothpicking. 

There's something poignant about framing adulthood as results and childhood as mere action. One of my few surface-level insecurities that bothers me none but that still comes to mind sometimes is that my physiognomy has stayed unchanged since about the eighth grade. I still look like I do when I was a kid. Sometimes I worry that I am really still that eighth grade person. Which is odd, because sometimes I also frame my childhood person as completely separate from my own self, who's off somewhere else doing whatever kid me would be doing in this climate. It seems that even though I've matured and gained knowledge and maybe even grown a little, fundamentally I am still a kid, still have the brain capacity of a kid, still have the agency of a kid. Maybe, then, that's why I never seem to accomplish anything, not really. The only things I can really think of where I've "won" is a few video games I played with people sometimes. I put in a lot of effort, I'm doing a lot of things, I'm growing kind of fatigued from all of the things I've been doing recently actually and have been trying to rest, and I look back and I don't see any progress from it, in fact I can't even see what it was that I was trying to produce to begin with. I started doing something, and I look back while I'm in the middle of trying to make it come about and it would seem as though I have never started anything ever. Threats and promises are not enough for me, I guess. I always hear that life changes are supposed to make you feel different, but I never do feel different. Or, maybe my life has never really changed. Different jobs, different people, different aims and goals and beliefs and directions, different places to live, same life. It's just me. I've never been able to define any phases in my life. It's just a life, and I'm living it. 

I wish I could find someone in my life who would walk around with me. I brought this up near the start, but none of the people I ever hung out with would ever want to just be around me. Sure, we walked, about five minutes to a store or to a restaurant. The only exception are a couple of times walking to look at Christmas lights with people. I could never tell someone to just walk in the park with me, and even if we did, it had to be because we were going to play some game there or play Frisbee golf or bring instruments and play or something. I just wanted to be with people, and I never quite understood why I was always denied that, why no one wanted to just be with me. I've developed this whole cultural framework about it, and while I'm both confident in the accuracy of the framework and certain the ills I see that lead to that kind of behavior are true, sometimes I do wonder if it's because no one wants to be with me specifically. Maybe I am still a kid, maybe everyone bloomed without me and it's difficult to be around me even though circumstance seems to necessitate it. But then, if I put off the view I ascribe to the world and I look at myself without any preconceptions, I don't actually see anything so fundamentally wrong with me to bring something like that about. The problem may be me, but it's in my wants and how they cannot coexist with the wants of others around me. I can make connections, but I'm not wired to make anything stable enough to last, because of stuff like wanting to just be with someone, to just sit at their house for a few hours or something. I mean, I can't even talk politics or philosophy with people because I'm always hammering on something no one else seems able or willing to connect with, I can't be too honest because I'll end up being too contrarian. Well, except for some few people online. People like you. I think if I said something like "I find 'sad music' to be unhelpful as a category" to anyone I've ever known in real life, with one or two possible exceptions, assuming I wasn't dismissed out of hand for being stuck-up, I think the conversation would quickly become "just put on a sad music playlist bro" while I'm trying to tell them I wouldn't like that, wanting them to understand why I don't and, far more than that, wanting to understand why they do. Maybe the problem is I don't really know what transaction I'm trying to have with them. Maybe wanting to be with someone in exchange for them being with me is just a bad trade and that's why no one is willing to make it. But then, I'm unwilling to trade my time for doing something stupid with them, would rather never make any transaction again than do that a lot of the time.

I think it's reasonable to compare real-life spaces to online ones and vice-versa. From the beginning, places like this were created to imitate real life spaces where people congregate and meet. The term "forum" comes from Roman forums, places where people would set up shop for their goods, where public judicial concerns were dealt with, where people congregated just because it was a big and lively area. If you wanted to host a debate, meet to discuss a topic, find someone to help you with your house or to trade goods with, you went to the forum. That was the idea the internet was built upon. Walking through the ruins of a place like Ykkaria (though I think that place is inaccessible now) feels not unlike walking through the ruins of a Roman forum, and there are many forums, real and online, that there are now no trace of besides in the dust of the people now living. It is really only in the ruins of the internet, once everything is over, that I can set my cynicism aside and appreciate the big idea of it all. It feels like when it's going, nothing on the internet goes towards any kind of good will, but I can take a look at everything once it's over and see that somewhere, somehow, there was a vision, an identity. I can see that identity in Marzichan too, though I hope Marzimin is happy with the way things turned out.

I wouldn't affirm any claims of Japanophilia on my end, but I wouldn't defend myself from them either. I can be pretty bad about it if I work myself up enough, if I'm being honest. I don't really care much for Japanese culture aside from the art that culture produces, though. When I express interest in it, I'm really only asking myself "what kind of a place could make this?" It's pretty common knowledge that the funny Japanese drawings stuff came about almost entirely on the basis of American media, especially Disney, but then, if there really weren't anything oriental about it at all, it would all have been just more Disney stuff, so then surely there is something original about it all. I would be remiss to deny that I find the comics so appealing because the Westernization of them has made them accessible to me, but some of those drawings make me feel things that Western stuff seems to never incite, makes me feel like maybe there are other people on this planet who are something like me. I can relate much more to a poem making fun of some guy who liked this barbecue restaurant a little too much, and realizing in the middle of the riffing that maybe having praise for good food is not such a bad thing to do and suddenly not being able to tell if you're making fun of him or singing praises with him, but a comic about a boy who's mind is so frenzied and imagination so barbaric that he can't see anything the way it is in reality, not even the girl he likes, can only see it as it looks to him, reaches far deeper into my spirit than the latter can. Surely, then, there's still something at least a little like Japanese in there. I fear a lot of the time that I am just being the weird Place, Japan guy, but again that would be assessing me on a worldly basis. Internally, those kind of thoughts never cross my mind because I'm in far too deep and care far too much for it.

The problem with identity is that it is unmovable and unchangeable. Tomorrow, I could move to a different country, drop my art hobbies and study to be an architect, get a modest job designing suburban neighborhoods, decide that marriage is kind of nice actually and court a spouse, raise kids, do everything contrary and random to what I'm doing now, and still be the same person. I cannot change my core identity. It is not tied to my actions or dependent on my thoughts, it is not determined by what my body is like or how people view me, it is more inherent than all of those things. It is a force of nature, only gravity and motion can be mathematically defined and calculated and I have no idea what my identity is, what my identity really is. Which is not to say that one's environment has no effect on them or anything of that sort, but that there's an ineffable and unavoidable part deep inside of us, deeper than even the acids that define our personalities, and that it's important to assess what you feel about what you're doing, what the right thing to do is, what the options available to you are, and it is important to express what agency in life you do have, that what you do and what you think are both very important and should not be neglected, but all of these things are not involved with who you are as a person. Those things are too surface level in comparison, vaguely ancillary at best. Of course, see beforehand about me being where I am and where I am being me. I do love art about where I am, but of course that sort of thing is deeper than art and friendships and such, maybe even deeper than culture and society.

I've thought about riding bikes now and again. I probably never will, for the same reason I never picked up skating as a kid - it's too much of a "thing." Riding around the neighborhood on a board and doing flips off of the stairs and stuff sounds fun and rewarding, but if you do that, you're a skater, and I'm not a skater, I just want to do kickflips and stuff. Ponying a bike up and down mountains, feeling the wind on the highway, being with the world while riding, riding around and being a punk around all sound quite appealing, but if you do that, you're a biker, and I'm not a biker, I just want to ride a bike. At least, both hobbies have pretty strong communities oriented in this way where I live. I would also wager that the Ducati isn't mentioned in poser circles because they're all too busy talking about the Hayabusa, but I wouldn't know. Thank you for sharing though. Maybe if I ever do try to have my cake and eat it too, I'll grab a StreetFighter. :p

The art is nice, of course. I've seen the (cute-)girl-smoking-cigarette thing before, and I wonder if cultural changes have made that lose its wonder over the years. Maybe, once upon a time, women smoking cigarettes really was countercultural, was making a statement, that flowing dresses and delicate stockings being subjected to secondhand nicotine meant something particular at one point in time, but such a statement that no longer makes any sense to me. The girl is pretty. Generically but neatly dressed and eyeless to remain anonymous; she likely is supposed to be an everygirl of some kind, as opposed to be lacking a specific identity.

I've noticed an awful lot of typos in my past posts I didn't catch before, woe.

>>8854
I think I would have rather that have been straight up malware than some AI nonsense.

didn't read

>>8865
this

marzi essays