Thread by @visakanv

i think a lot about all the harsh and critical things people have said about me over the years. i don’t have an actual thread about it because that would come across as psychotic, but i kind of have an informal thread of threads about it in my head

A bit of conventional wisdom i dont agree with is “ignore the haters”. i try to keep tabs on my haters with the same sort of general curiosity that i use to keep tabs of everything else. its a kind of dark and dangerous knowledge but so is learning about people, i think

the danger of immersing yourself too long in your worst thoughts is that you lose all sense of proportion and mistake it for reality, but my antidote to that is to simultaneously immerse myself in the best things, and also to periodically disassociate/depersonalize entirely

a sort of cool consequence of this is that i have basically (took about 15 years?) preempted and accounted for what seems to me to be basically every possible criticism people can have. which is a large but finite set. people are neither very perceptive nor imaginative

people sometimes see my friendly nerd utterances and assume that i must be this naturally cheerful naive happy clown who isnt constantly obsessed about total societal/ecological breakdown

i have a very dark nihilism about me i just dont think its helpful to share too much of it

sometimes people are like “oh that guy is so happy cheerful all the time what a fake act” and im like lolll you really wanna hear the dark shit huh. it isnt even particularly interesting. i mean, thats the critical flaw of the dark side, theres no fun or play. just bleakness

Or, well, sometimes people just dont wanna hear from you at all and would prefer that you didnt exist at all. and, yknow, theres a tiny tiny part of me that relates 😂 but for the most part i am basically devoted to Existing On Purpose and im truly sorry if some1 cant handle that

i dont mean that as a fake apology- i actually am genuinely truly sorry that i cannot please everyone and that my existence is offensive and upsetting to some people. i truly wish it werent the case and i truly wish we could all be friends

https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1269482528118673409

but we live in the real world, and having experimented, i find my current formulation to be the best balance of being true to myself + doing the best i can for others. i‘ll always be sorry about those i cannot be a friend to, but i cant let that distract me from those i can help

But enough about me anyway lol - how are you doing??