the fun of watching drama unfold...
like callously detached/disinterested observers experiencing schaudenfreude and drinking the heat of its flames, as if we thirsted for water itself-- but "its not deep, its just fun" and so on, because not many people would really think of it as a form of indirect self-sabotage. stoking the flames cultivates a population of reaction to irony that uses irony as a form of distance regardless of whether or not it was natural to us. callousness masked with irony becomes callousness in earnest, and the schrodinger's cat of irony causes our arguments to have a bite to them that boils and scalds the flesh of the more sensitive among us-- which must seem funny to watch from the sidelines, because we love drama, don't we?
and then we type "haha why would you take that seriously" or "why did you type a paragraph about this" like people couldn't have responses other than interpreting us accurately and responding exactly the way we believe is proportionate--
--well no, we didn't say that...
but why did we react with confusion when someone had responses we didn't expect, as if we had a complaint about it, as if it was someone else's fault that they responded poorly/reactively to statements and questions that were presumably looking for reactions to begin with?
we just wanted an interesting conversation, so... presumably that long paragraph means we got it, right? but we don't really take long paragraphs of serious sincerity without viewing it with dumbfounded mockery, it seems
...
true to form, we continue to write off-topic tangents on this off-topic subforum;;
...let me peel off the third-person collective "we" thing as if i was speaking on someone's behalf, because i regret it and doubt that any of it ever reflected the reality of what people were doing. it's more of a theory than anything real, as far as i know
i don't have an answer for whatever politically went on in that thread. some people have weak/neutral opinions, some have stronger opinions, and a serious answer to any of them would be pretty hard to negotiate between people who prefer to just watch and either quietly quote each other or laugh a little about how silly someone appears when they have some kind of opinion you thought was dumb. we love performative irony to illustrate our points, and we critique one another for not catching on because irony is now the norm and it's our job to make it funny and sufficiently casual, possibly because we didn't know how to be funny and sincere at the same time (i would be guilty of this, probably)
it's not like i'm not biased in my own right, but... i end up being rather reserved about it because the only affordable position appears to be some strange disinterested centrism or otherwise-moderate tone if i can't write a confident and stoic paragraph to defend that supposed bias (although i suppose that bias could also be moderate too). it's just a little... exhausting, to make an attempt at something serious without someone else being exhausted by you being serious, or without accidentally inciting a small local wildfire of bitter ironic statements about how we each respond to each other
i genuinely wonder about that culture-cultivation thing during these "shit-show" moments, though... like, how much of our responses would really be necessarily untouched by the culture of this off-topic subforum? we seem to view anything more than a paragraph that isn't a pre-established review/analysis thread as "too much" or as an overreaction. irony displaces that sincerity with its discerning gaze, so the sincerity that does exist is itself superficial or casual. or maybe i genuinely am making this up in my mind, where i'm perceiving hallucinations of people who simultaneously don't care but appear bitter with each other anyway, finding arguments and insults to be a form of escape from their boredom. of course, that's not all of off-topic, it's really just a tunnel-vision photograph of what i tend to dislike about being here
i do try to believe that people just respond naturally and this is how each of us individually happen to talk and think. it really is hard to tell which parts of our responses are caused by something else, though... and i find it difficult to navigate what it is that each person seems to want here. maybe people don't really want anything in particular, and maybe this is just a youtube-channel of entertainment except it's more interactive, or something
not that i'm all that different, i waste my time here like anyone else, although i really only ever lurk 95% of the time nowadays, because i would probably be too reactive in ways that never really seem purposeful or constructive. and even if i viewed it as constructive in my intent, i can't really expect that people will receive it and interact with it the way i would. maybe everyone really is sincere, but deeply disconnected to the point that their conversations devolve into bored arguments anyway. or maybe people really didn't think of it negatively at all, i don't really know, i once again could just be projecting my own sensitivity
so much to be curious about, but... it's hard to know or trust that there's an environment here to enable that curiosity, and even harder to deliver that curiosity while navigating the thoughts of people i don't understand
i'm kind of unfairly opinionated about people, partly because i don't know how to parse all that irony and sarcasm without interpreting it as a bitter-tasting concoction of troubling toxicity, albeit possibly a different flavor from that stereotypical twitter-argument image people have of toxicity
maybe that's just the nature of me being socially dense and unable to "not give a fuck" like many people seem able to do...? i imagine the truth could be closer to "i make up an idea of who people are without really knowing how to listen and internalize the way they think, and i struggle to recognize what exactly their real/actual/natural personality would be, not without misunderstanding them and failing to navigate the intersections of our intentions", but...
i'm not sure yet. we will just have to see, and i will just have to hope i can listen well enough