some of you might be feds, but i still respect the vast majority of you anonymous posters and lurkers, way more than most people i talk to irl. that means i also care more about what you think about what i say. is it the same for you?
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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This is a place where people are left and progressive but who don’t assume the west is an inherently more trustworthy place and that non-western media sources are worth listening to as though their at least as trustworthy as western media.
It’s always surprising to me when this isn’t the default for leftists and that makes this place a breath of fresh air.
Also the way this place can be extremely inclusive and opposed to intolerance without being a bunch of pious jerks.
Somehow this place is unique even though all those things should be default.
At least they have the sense not to comment and message, I cannot stop it seems
Uh my brain is having trouble with this one, I like the online people in the bear website within my phone. Non shockingly I have no irl friends
ur phone is really comfy. I like squatting here. 
You're not bad at talking to people, you just care too much and are overly anxious about how you are perceived
Yes, and also people will read incredible amounts of malice into my words anytime for free. I like that bear website actually follows its assume-good-faith rule.
I like your posts
Thank you, I guess I should clarify this is not a bear website subtweet. Every interaction I've had here has been great, even disagreements are pretty civil, despite what 
might say about us
Noone's capable of talking to people on the internet. The detachment from personal interaction messes with how people empathize with eachother. Forums have always been famously nasty places. Try to be kind and respectful, but don't be too hard on yourself when you don't manage to do that.
Yeah hence the unnaturally vicious dogpiling shit you see on reddit all day, although people only hold up a veneer of niceness irl. You don't even have to be rude or disrespectful to get raged at, ask me how I know.
I've seen people get vicious and dogpile in work slacks and those workplace facebook clones. Screens scramble our brains so much people are willing to risk an HR writeup over a minute disagreement.
Wildin.
Some forums have always been famously nasty places. For those of us old enough to remember the internet pre-2010, and lucky enough to stumble on the right corners of the internet, plenty of forums were actually super cool, tiny, self-moderated niche communities with like 20-30 active users tops where you could genuinely share passions and make friends. All but one of my good online friends I have now were made back then.
No idea how anyone would find many nice interactions now. Hexbear is as close as it gets for me, but it's still significantly different.
This is spot on, all of my longest and closest friends in life are people I met on a niche web forum pre 2010. The internet used to be so different before social media, that’s why I enjoy being on the fediverse so much because its the closest call back to that
Me browsing the rpg codex and 4chan in past 
Yeah I think the loss of face/body language and also tone/loudness of voice is an insurmountable gap in our ability to recognize each other as real people on the internet. We're all just random encounters in the posting RPG and generosity/kindness/compassion have to be conscious choices rather than instinctual. I do wonder what effect that is going to have on the next generation as they grow up completely online.
Optimistically they'll adapt and learn ways to be good to each other. Pessimistically... well uh... nvm at least they have video and voice chat?
It's better here because I recognise so many repeating names, but even on leddit I'd often peruse somebody's profile to try to figure out what kinda person they were.
I never look at people irl and can barely read tone anyway so 
I like arguing irl because there's a clear end point and people are generally way more measured face to face than hiding behind a screen, but I really can't handle arguing online. It can legitimately ruin my mood with anxiety for days, so I mostly just don't do it.
I've never read a bit of malice in your words.
Lol more power to ya, I find in-person is even scarier...
I have anxiety for days now, and it kind of ruined a thing I really like =) I never really go in intending to argue, it's rare for me to start an argument online now. Maybe when I was 20 I'd gripe at people on 
Also thank you, I try not to be a dick generally 
I wonder if I've given myself brain poisoning by spending at least an hour (often more) arguing on the internet every day for almost twenty years. No wonder I assume everyone I talk to is only hiding their disdain behind a mask of politeness and that everyone secretly hates me lol
I mean I tend to assume people are annoyed at me too, but what you describe I assume to be the normal internet user experience, I guess that's why people are always out for blood
I won (according to me anyway) an irl argument with a Zionist last week. Internet fighting is helpful background as long as you touch grass a little bit to temper it.
Embarrassing a zionist irl must feel better than sex.
it was OK. I just dodged the standard canards (Hamas hates gay people, end the war by surrendering, river to the sea* is genocidal, etc.) and hammered on the recent 972 mag revelation of explicit Israeli policies of 10-15 dead civilians allowed when bombing 1 suspected Hamas militant's house. He didn't really have anything to say about that because once you get down to any raw fact of the genocide it's inexcusable.
*This part was very funny because he said "do you support From the River to the Sea" and I said "what do you mean by that?" and he had no idea what to say
Same I rarely post. It's not worth the fight-or-flight response I get when people are mean to me.
Icy hands, cold sweat, uneven breathing, staring at the computer screen. Combine with rejection sensitivity for worst results.
If people fail to communicate with you who is the real embarrassment? I don't know if it's any easier to talk on the internet, there is so much that can be lost in interpretation.
But I agree, fuck talking, we should communicate via vibe waves only
dolphin communication channels
Me because I get told to shut up and am embarrassed publically. Easy.
If it's the internet, don't blame yourself.
The internet is an asshole by design, at the very least, so I suppose you need to touch grass every once in a while to calm down from its bs.... go on a walk or smthn...
No it is me lmao. The sweet smell of grass is long gone from me now.
Oh no! What happened? It's ok if you don't want to talk about it but I think you're being too hard on yourself and I hope you feel better soon.
Thanks... What happened is I fucked around & found out. Shit like this is brutal on my self confidence and physically exhausting, I wish I did not desire to speak.
So on one hand, you did "fuck around" while also "finding out" but on the other... holy shit just wading into a place all 
... you've got guts kid!
The stupid fucking thing is, it's not even like that. It woulda been way cooler if I'd busted down the door and put a huge analytical rant in there, but I really was not trying to start shit or anger anyone. I literally just extracted
this
"A lady loves to hear herself talked about in exacting detail."
Murati laughed a little. "I'm a lady too, you know."
"It's the principle- it's the principle of the thing, you understand."
dialogue exchange, and asked what "the principle of the thing" was. I think I was probably prodding at nerves though, with how irritated people got when I said 'ok, I won't try to understand it cause I probably never can'.
HAH....
Don't worry, when I tell this story to somebody else's kids, I'll make you look real good 
Also... Did nobody give you a decent answer then?
Nah, I mean what I say in that linked comment is the guts of it, tl;dr it's a butch/femme bit so I'm supposed to shift my brain into the most archetypal 'male' and 'female' gender roles possible, it's like that, I guess. Femmes and ego-flattery apparently being the most iconic duo. I'm probably in a very small minority for having never really understood the butch/femme "thing", but oh well y'know?
That sucks, the more I think about it, the more I'm wanting to know what the author was going for.
Bad writing in the "men writing women" pile or friendly ribbing based on gender and stereotypical behavior pile?
I guarantee you 99% of lesbians & other sapphics will not read this the way I do, it's supposed to be fun and flirty and you aren't supposed to view it like Karuniya views Murati as a comedy replacement trad husband.
Considering that the author is a trans woman (first thing she said to me) that would be a really stupid charge. It's a cascade of subjective factors that make it read weird.
As an autist I only have the most vague relation to gender roles and even as a teen reading Stone Butch Blues, the butch/femme thing was lightly mistifying to me. I'm not overly surprised that making the "butch" a trans woman resulted in this, the weird neurotypical gender-norm woo-woo shit is just bonus trouble.
This has very quickly become my least favourite subject, I truly wish this chapter had just been cut. I think it's underwritten, Murati barely reacts throughout the entire thing, it doesn't give us much on Karuniya and my SPECIAL MIND has resulted in a whole mess.
It's worthy to note, I don't really get this shit, but that is fine and I've never once felt the need to yell loudly about how I do not comprehend butch/femme dynamics, I uncritically support people doing what makes them happy in their relationships. The main reason I'm doing so here is because (in this fictional context) it feels to me like it all comes from Karuniya's side and Murati barely reacts, so the balance of *weird gender role shit* feels deeply off. Murati just kind of exists while Karuniya is foisting all of this on her.
Me 
You
Not always understanding an author's/editor's choices in a written work of fiction and it causing a brain itch...
For what it’s worth , I wouldn’t have started reading it if you hadn’t been posting. That’s done more to increase readership than any discord mod has by being mean to people asking for clarification.
And your criticism seems totally valid. I’m only on 1.7 and have already gotten weird vibes from that character
Woah, I'm flattered, thank you. I'm happy to know people are reading it and stuff, although it terrifies and amazes me to think people agree with this wild take I have. No, bear website people, I have the autism! Don't think like I think!!!
Karuniya always gave me weird vibes too, but I'm autistic & several characters who are very cool gave me strange vibes to start, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt for like a hundred kajillion chapters.
Idk if it helps but maybe there's a way to look at what happened without berating yourself, like even if you want what happened to have gone differently don't just make it about attacking yoursefl :<
Thank you, it's the getting embarrassed in public that murders me in cold blood. Like looking at it objectively, the thought process was
-
I want to talk about the thing and there is a big server for the thing, but the creator of the thing runs it
-
Ergo I will ask about something simple I don't understand, surely that'll be fine, hopefully the creator is alseep
It blew up in my face way more catastrophically than I think anyone could reasonably expect, I was freaking out anxious as I was having that disaster conversation. Looking back at it I realise I was somehow prodding nerves I didn't realise existed, and I also seem to have a random talent for pissing people off. So what did I do wrong? Try to talk about the thing in the place where the maker of the thing is. Nobody including me thinks it's a good idea to air out your criticisms of a thing at its creator, but I didn't even do that and yet I may as well have said "fuck you choke on my shit and hair" for how bad the reaction was. So lesson learned, don't talk there.
The problem is I still have fuckloads of thoughts days later, thinking about it still flips the fight-or-flight response and my hands go icy. It's thinking about being put in the Muted Time Out Zone by an irate person for trying to explain myself, it hits the "autism-mangles-communication" spot very hard. Shit hurts. It's also kind of thrown off my ability to engage with the thing and cratered my mood for the last few days...
I think my problem is it's impossible for me to treat any communications channel as a "space". Sometimes I deliberately zone into a Mastodon instance to post huge angry open letters at the admin because it just doesn't bother me.
I recommend reading fiction it gives a lot of perspective on life even if you're just kind of analyzing how it was written. I got stuck reading nonfiction for too long 2021-2023
Fiction allows me to kind of absorb other people's experiences in a cryptic way. Maybe I'm out of my fucking mind or maybe I'm over-explaining a basic concept familiar to everyone who did better in school ☺️
Wow, I respect your inability to be bothered by writing huge angry letters at admins, sounds non-stressful. Between the autism and such I'm basically not allowed to be angry at all or people will scream at me. Out of the many reasons I don't do much antagonising people these days, one of the big ones is I do not have the social energy to be fighting with people who think I am the great fuckin satan.
I am an enthusiastic reader of fiction, I've been reading novels and novellas and bits of internet fiction constantly for the last three years. The conflict I describe is ironically over someone's internet fic, so uh rip. Also I guarantee I did not do better than you in school lol
Thank you to everybody who commented on this post, I'm feelin' a lot better today and that's thanks in part to all of you.
