Thread by @Aella_Girl

i think most people are operating quite similar to me in life, but are in intense denial about it. I think a lot of the people accusing me of being weirdly robotic and evaluatory are also doing it too, but are so afraid of rejection that they hide it from themselves.

I think I've got good self awareness, enough to know that my insides - and probably yours too - are a mismash of unflattering motivations. I suspect people acting horrified are just failing to be sufficiently self aware. I was also horrified by similar things pre-introspection

Imo the difference between horrified-twitter and me is not that we're built out of different stuff, but that we are the same - only I accept my dark parts, identify the urges that are nonharmful to me, and then act on them despite horrified-twitter's attempts to shame me for it

We have an ideal self image of a pure, authentic person, who is unconditionally loving and loyal and all the things that get the primate wrapped up in the warm embrace of other primates. We cling to it angrily, defiantly, because threats to it feel like threats to social safety

I was ~21 or so when I started dating a guy who was socially impressive to me. I had a friend that said 'yeah high status guys are attractive' and I strongly rejected it. 'no, I like him for [other reasons]. I really did not want to be the kind of person who liked status

but in hindsight, the fact he was impressive was def part of his appeal to me. I was just leaning on the other reasons I liked him in order to deny to myself the appeal of his power. I was wrong about myself in the same way I think horrified-twitter are wrong about themselves.

Around that time I spent a year of very intense introspection, you could call it meditative practice, where I gradually realized that everything I thought I was was just a desperate story I was telling myself to feel like a Good Person, a person other people thought was Good

Spending that many hours so carefully examining my own motivations cracked them all open in front of me and I ended up standing among the broken shell of my ego, and idk. Turns out when I stopped lying to myself, I was full of insecurity and unflattering desires

I think this is okay. The unflattering desires are only unflattering if you're trying hard to keep your shell intact. If you're among other people who have all broken themselves apart too, you get weird, transactional, unflattering-looking things that are nevertheless somehow ok

'Vulnerability' is really chic, but actual vulnerability means presenting yourself as something at real risk of being rejected. Being Socially Acceptable isn't vulnerable, that's the safest thing possible. Horrified-twitter strikes me as clinging to that safety.

in general, the more you clutch pearls at me doing a deviant thing, endorsing a thought that seems weird and inhuman, the more I perceive you as completely out of touch with yourself and emotionally unintegrated