Recently, I found myself in another fight on facebook. It would seem that I have a gift for pissing people off. Here is the post I commented on:
Willy the Spy:
If you constantly complain about the town you live in, yet have the means (money) to move somewhere else, maybe you should consider doing so. Unless you secretly enjoy looking down on the community around you since it gives you a greatly needed sense of superiority...
--
OK, now I didn't know it at the time, but he was referring to college professors who live in small towns, specifically Mt Pleasant, and then complain from their ivory towers about the "lack of culture." But I was referring to St. Louis, where I am currently living, because that is where my family has lived and will always live, so I commented:
Whinger the Ginger:
--
and my point was that she was stung by what I said so she assumed that I was stung by what she said. The only thing I was thinking was "what an idiot." Because she was making these huge assumptions about me and then ranting about all this bullshit when she didn't even know what I was talking about in the first place. Instead of engaging that kind of stupidity, I just egged her on until she felt stupid, and then sent her a little fake apology to.. I don't know.. make myself feel better, I guess. The thing is everything I say at this point is a rationalization because I don't want to feel like I was intellectually beaten. I was making silly little snide remarks and she was being a colossal bitch. I think that I feel inferior to her because my best friends think she is the smartest person they know.. but to me she is an educated idiot.
I realized tonight that we mock the people we hate when we feel inferior to them because it is pathetic to pick on someone who is less than you. Everything that she said to me could be equally applied to her with the "intellectually superiority" and "still flailing at me with half-baked insults." I hate how vocal people like this are. And the problem has become that I feel shitty not because I was wrong, or because she was right, but because I got in a fight with someone.. anyone. Last week it was something very similar with another girl over music taste. Oh well, one day at a time.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Fading Anger
It is strange how quickly the anger a resentment wanes after all this time. I've been living home now for about a month, and I have run into many people I haven't seen in over five years. Some of these people were very mean to me in high school, and now they are all the friendliest people you'd ever talk to--I'd never have thought they were the same fucks that gave me a hard time growing up.
Not that I'm not reserved against some of these people, but I have a hard time remaining so seething about these things when they seem to have moved past it. It is hard to be mad at someone who has been stuck in the month after graduation for eight years. I say the month after because that is the point at which most high school graduates finish receiving their celebratory money and have to start working. Many of those graduates tried to go to college, but like baby sea turtles, only a small fraction make it out to sea. That in itself is pathetic, and I shouldn't be mad at people that I pity.
It is such a strange feeling; I'm sure these people haven't changed THAT much, and yet everything is different. I don't feel like I have changed that much either, but little by little, I have over a long period of time. What I thought was important as a teenager is no longer important--which leads me to believe that what I find important now will seem irrelevant in ten more years.
I find most things boring anyways. Everything anyone says to me always sounds like old news. Because I believe in practicing good pragmatics, I always placate and accommodate people. Some call this enabling, and in many ways I enable people's bad habits, but it beats having no one to talk to all of the time instead of just most of the time.
Not that I'm not reserved against some of these people, but I have a hard time remaining so seething about these things when they seem to have moved past it. It is hard to be mad at someone who has been stuck in the month after graduation for eight years. I say the month after because that is the point at which most high school graduates finish receiving their celebratory money and have to start working. Many of those graduates tried to go to college, but like baby sea turtles, only a small fraction make it out to sea. That in itself is pathetic, and I shouldn't be mad at people that I pity.
It is such a strange feeling; I'm sure these people haven't changed THAT much, and yet everything is different. I don't feel like I have changed that much either, but little by little, I have over a long period of time. What I thought was important as a teenager is no longer important--which leads me to believe that what I find important now will seem irrelevant in ten more years.
I find most things boring anyways. Everything anyone says to me always sounds like old news. Because I believe in practicing good pragmatics, I always placate and accommodate people. Some call this enabling, and in many ways I enable people's bad habits, but it beats having no one to talk to all of the time instead of just most of the time.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Facebook Flamewars
I was told not to inject any more misery into the world, but I simply couldn't resist this time. There was a certain person on my Facebook friends list who posted their weekly top 3 from last.fm. I recognized two of the three bands as indie rock bands. I made the comment that there must be a hipster/indie kit that kids can send away for--which in return opened up, as my aunt would say, a can of worms, which ended in many sensitive people flaming me and one girl saying that I was a waste of existence. It's funny because at one point I was unfriended by the original person, and couldn't respond to the comments being made towards me.
It is funny how music is more sacred to some people than philosophical or religious issues. If you insult someone's music, you can be sure that they will take it more personally than if you were to make fun of their prophet. And that was more or less the reaction that I got. Flamed by several like-minded individuals and banned from responding.
You see, I'm used to people disliking my music. I've heard nasty remarks made about it since I started listening to it. This is why I don't try to share my music with people, and I don't care to hear what other people are listening to. I know for a fact that my music isn't accessible to the standard issue American because I have put a medley of tracks I enjoy on the jukebox at last call to drive everyone out--and it works. That doesn't mean that I like shitty music anymore than it means that the majority of people don't like good music.
It's not my fault that I hold myself, and those around me, to a higher intellectual standard, and don't think that it is particularly conducive to happiness to constantly be living in the past. "I should have been born in the '70s, '60s..." blah blah blah. That isn't happiness, it is deluded and I have every right to burst that bubble as you have to annoy me with it. So if it pisses you off, that is your problem, not mine.
This, of course, is a rationalization because the only casualty on my side in a "war" like that is my pride. Since I had a million and a half good retorts to the kiddies, and wasn't allowed to voice them, I have to dwell on them. But I should be used to this kind of reaction by now. After all, people are sensitive about their music because they believe that who they are is defined by what they listen to. They also deny it too.. which in turn reinforces their tendency to be defensive about insults towards what they listen to.
Further, eclectic listeners are like people who are friends to everyone. A friend to all is a friend to none. You simply can not trust them. Same thing with music. A person who likes everything has no taste, and therefore has an unreliable opinion. All opinions are unreliable.. really. That's why they are called opinions. What annoys me is that I'm wasn't criticizing her as a person.. simply pointing out that people who listen to indie music like Bob Dylan and the Beatles because the former genre is a derivative of the latter artists. What's more, people think that being informed makes one judgmental. If you are following along, you can kind of see how a slam against the music is a slam against the person because the music is a de facto personality. When I point that out, because I have seen it over and over and over again, I'm the enemy.
People don't like to have their existences invalidated. Hense the reason that the last comment was explicitly, "[Whinger the Ginger] is the biggest waste of existence..." because without anything clever to say, they are left with only the obvious. Actually what insulted me the most was the crack some kid made about my T-shirts. He was most likely projecting, but what he said was something along the lines of me going to Goodwill to get ironic T-shirts.. like most indie/hipsters are known to do. I don't know why this comment bothered me at all, but mostly it had something to do with the fact that all of my t-shirts say something funny. They don't necessarily say something ironic. Perhaps one does. It says "Sarcasm: Just one of my many talents" which I'll admit is ironic. The rest of my shirts say something like "Hope is for Sissies," "Everybody Lies," and "Normal's Overrated" which aren't ironic at all.. and I didn't get them at Goodwill, I got them for donating to the House charities. This is why I think he was either projecting, or trying to do what I do.. predict people by their cliches.
Obviously the fact that I blog about this at all demonstrates how insecure I feel about the situation. I usually don't mean for people to get so upset by what I say. But like I said, you can't comment on someone's music without them flipping a lid. Music is the new religion. Even though I feel the need to rationalize the situation so that I don't feel so much like a turd--flexing my intellectual muscles to humiliate others--I am reminded how much of a pest Socrates was for caring about truth over politeness. Being nice is overrated, and when I see the truth about a person I will sacrifice the friendship for the truth. Interestingly, most friends are friends because of the lies, not the truths they tell each other. That is probably because most friendships in 21st century America are based on what one person can get out of another person, and the fear of being cut off keeps people smiling and lying through gritted teeth. Ha. Now whose project....
It is funny how music is more sacred to some people than philosophical or religious issues. If you insult someone's music, you can be sure that they will take it more personally than if you were to make fun of their prophet. And that was more or less the reaction that I got. Flamed by several like-minded individuals and banned from responding.
You see, I'm used to people disliking my music. I've heard nasty remarks made about it since I started listening to it. This is why I don't try to share my music with people, and I don't care to hear what other people are listening to. I know for a fact that my music isn't accessible to the standard issue American because I have put a medley of tracks I enjoy on the jukebox at last call to drive everyone out--and it works. That doesn't mean that I like shitty music anymore than it means that the majority of people don't like good music.
It's not my fault that I hold myself, and those around me, to a higher intellectual standard, and don't think that it is particularly conducive to happiness to constantly be living in the past. "I should have been born in the '70s, '60s..." blah blah blah. That isn't happiness, it is deluded and I have every right to burst that bubble as you have to annoy me with it. So if it pisses you off, that is your problem, not mine.
This, of course, is a rationalization because the only casualty on my side in a "war" like that is my pride. Since I had a million and a half good retorts to the kiddies, and wasn't allowed to voice them, I have to dwell on them. But I should be used to this kind of reaction by now. After all, people are sensitive about their music because they believe that who they are is defined by what they listen to. They also deny it too.. which in turn reinforces their tendency to be defensive about insults towards what they listen to.
Further, eclectic listeners are like people who are friends to everyone. A friend to all is a friend to none. You simply can not trust them. Same thing with music. A person who likes everything has no taste, and therefore has an unreliable opinion. All opinions are unreliable.. really. That's why they are called opinions. What annoys me is that I'm wasn't criticizing her as a person.. simply pointing out that people who listen to indie music like Bob Dylan and the Beatles because the former genre is a derivative of the latter artists. What's more, people think that being informed makes one judgmental. If you are following along, you can kind of see how a slam against the music is a slam against the person because the music is a de facto personality. When I point that out, because I have seen it over and over and over again, I'm the enemy.
People don't like to have their existences invalidated. Hense the reason that the last comment was explicitly, "[Whinger the Ginger] is the biggest waste of existence..." because without anything clever to say, they are left with only the obvious. Actually what insulted me the most was the crack some kid made about my T-shirts. He was most likely projecting, but what he said was something along the lines of me going to Goodwill to get ironic T-shirts.. like most indie/hipsters are known to do. I don't know why this comment bothered me at all, but mostly it had something to do with the fact that all of my t-shirts say something funny. They don't necessarily say something ironic. Perhaps one does. It says "Sarcasm: Just one of my many talents" which I'll admit is ironic. The rest of my shirts say something like "Hope is for Sissies," "Everybody Lies," and "Normal's Overrated" which aren't ironic at all.. and I didn't get them at Goodwill, I got them for donating to the House charities. This is why I think he was either projecting, or trying to do what I do.. predict people by their cliches.
Obviously the fact that I blog about this at all demonstrates how insecure I feel about the situation. I usually don't mean for people to get so upset by what I say. But like I said, you can't comment on someone's music without them flipping a lid. Music is the new religion. Even though I feel the need to rationalize the situation so that I don't feel so much like a turd--flexing my intellectual muscles to humiliate others--I am reminded how much of a pest Socrates was for caring about truth over politeness. Being nice is overrated, and when I see the truth about a person I will sacrifice the friendship for the truth. Interestingly, most friends are friends because of the lies, not the truths they tell each other. That is probably because most friendships in 21st century America are based on what one person can get out of another person, and the fear of being cut off keeps people smiling and lying through gritted teeth. Ha. Now whose project....
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and I get chastised by my mother for embarrassing her by putting down St. Louis, MI.
--
Private Rachelle
--this person graduated from the same high school, and is best friends with a family I also consider my best friends.
Whinger the Ginger:
--It may sound snide, but I thought it was an honest question
Private Rachelle
Private Rachelle
--
Stop. I want to say for the record that at this point I was not on the defense because she doesn't know what she is talking about. I wasn't about to say that to her, that I am a broke ass, that I was so poor recently that I had to move back in with my parents, but only because my entire savings and credit was wiped out by living with people much like who she is describing; "you act just like all those brats that come up here from the burbs and act like you're doing the town a favor by living here, even though you hate it, cause theyre too lazy, too mediocre, and too cowardly to actually try to be the people they think they are." The thing is.. I like Mt Pleasant, too. I was talking about St Louis. For a country bumpkin like myself, I can find a lot to do in a place like Mt Pleasant. Where she is dead wrong though is that I don't have any money. I have nothing to my name but a bunch of college debt. So instead of of defending myself.. I deflected:
Whinger the Ginger:
Private Rachelle
----
I don't know why, but this one pissed me off because she said my mind was second rate. Now if my ego wasn't first rate like she said then I probably would have just laughed it off. But again, she is wrong, I have spent more time with her than she realizes, and I can read her posts on Facebook because we have all the same friends... in fact.. when my friend lived with her for three years in the last decade he would come over and tell me how horrible it was to live with her because she was such a slob. But she is an annoying vocal political leftist who grew up poor and studied marxism in college, making her a college-educated poor person who holds a grudge towards people from the suburbs for being who they were raised to be. I should have said that.. instead I just said
Whinger the Ginger:
Private Rachelle
Whinger the Ginger:
Private Rachelle
Whinger the Ginger:
Private Rachelle
Whinger the Ginger:
Private Rachelle
Whinger the Ginger:
---
Later that evening, I was sitting in my garden going over the events of that scuffle, and I was brooding, obsessing because I felt like she was just a fat idiot, and yet I didn't want to get back into it with her--because then she really would be right about me being a bitter child. So instead I thought about all the things that I could say that placate her own ego and sent her this message:
I'm sorry for the things I said to you earlier. You were right, it stung when you said my mind was second rate. I was being presumptuous, self-righteous, petulant, unscrupulous brat. I need to be more discrete on facebook. I am often insecure about my writing, and it hit a nerve when you told me I'm a mediocre writer. So, I just want to let you know that I'm sorry we had words, and I deserved everything you said to me.
And I know I could be happier somewhere else, and have the means to move on, but like you said, I'm lazy and mediocre, and it is easier to simply act superior than everyone else around me. I should just suck it up. I just had a bad night at the River Rock last night, and was feeling belligerent when I woke up this morning. I know I probably didn't even phase you, but I don't like embarrassing myself on other people's profile pages, so for everything, I apologize. It was my fault.
Whinger the Ginger
---
And shortly after this appeared on the conversation:
Willy the Spy
--She didn't say anything to me, but that may be as good as it gets. Now the asterisk I wrote refers to this:
*FROM WIKIPEDIA:
Psychological projection or projection bias (including Freudian Projection) is the unconscious act of denial of a person's own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, such as to the weather, the government, a tool, or to other people. Thus, it involves imagining or projecting that others have those feelings.
Denial: you'd hit a lot closer to home if you sounded like you had the first clue what I do with my life.
Attribution: you're just coming off like the bitter child that you so clearly are. it's clear who's stung here, [whinger].