A creative on DRAGONFRUIT: a mother's love I want to write the stories I needed growing up. // Much older than 18. ๐โโ๏ธ ๐ฆ๐ ๐ข๐ฆ๐ค ๐๐ฐ ๐ด๐๐ฑ ๐ข๐ฉ๐ฏ ๐๐ฑ. ๐ฒ ๐๐ฎ๐ญ๐ฅ๐ฉ๐.
I don't quite think it's a perfectly normal distribution around the midpoint. There's obviously magnitudes more amount of jestery reblogging this on April 16th over April 14th. I think I'd call it bi-modal. But we'd need bleeding edge Jester Scientists to determine the truth.
Totally understandable. Jester Scientists deserve to be compensated for their research and not everyone can afford them. I'd offer to contribute, but I'm still paying back-taxes because I missed the deadline this year.
I don't quite think it's a perfectly normal distribution around the midpoint. There's obviously magnitudes more amount of jestery reblogging this on April 16th over April 14th. I think I'd call it bi-modal. But we'd need bleeding edge Jester Scientists to determine the truth.
I feel like >90% of internet arguments/discourses are people conflating the world that *is* and the world that *ought to be* and then getting madder and madder that they aren't getting their point across to the point of isolating themselves in a very small group of like-minded people
I feel like >90% of internet arguments/discourses are people conflating the world that *is* and the world that *ought to be* and then getting madder and madder that they aren't getting their point across to the point of isolating themselves in a very small group of like-minded people
WIFE? If that's a sincere term and not just a name for a friend, holy shit congrats! I hope you get to fall asleep next to them all the time ^.^
Please dont interpret this as creepy or anything, Its just... Really fucking nice, seeing people grow and find family an community. Something to be celebrated, always!
It's all good! <3
It's funny, I've been married nearly seven years now. I think I'm officially getting old lol
power. grace. ample storage capacity. youโre coasting through an aisle, both feet on the back of the cart, inching closer and closer to destroying fifteen hundred dollars worth of marinara sauce as the cart veers inevitably to the right. you feel the cart shake in your grasp, human ingenuity and a few millimeters of metal the only things keeping your groceries from falling to the floor. youโre learning to adjust for the broken wheel, growing around it like a weed, forming new muscle memories for every new trip to the store. it was broken when you got it, and you never learned on what errand it was damaged, but you donโt care. youโre caught up in the thrill of shopping, knowing that this is where youโre meant to be: in this store, holding this cart, right before rush hour traffic. the cart knows you. it was made for you. sometimes you think that it sings to you. youโve never felt this alive before: the past pales in comparison to the now. who you were before you took up the cart seems small and unimportant. youโre not just another customer, no mere body of flesh and blood, no, youโre an impassable roadblock in aisle seven, and two more carts are trying to get through while you fish through your bag for your shopping list. theyโll just have to wait. youโre cooking pasta tonight
A couple weeks ago the SSC reddit had a discussion "If people want a community so much why aren't we creating it?" I found it really odd since it comes from a place of "here is why community building doesn't happen" and you can tell that in the tone of the comments.
But obviously communities are being made, every day. (There is a secondary problem which is that all communities have some problems - drama, eventual collapse, inequitable burdens, exclusivity, cults of personality, problematic members, etc - but they do EXIST, and presumably people want them despite knowing that problems of some form are likely if not inevitable.) It would be like a reddit thread on "why does no one date" despite, you know, a lot of people dating out there.
So a more legit question would be "why are our community efforts not succeeding? What is the difference between our efforts and the communities that are made."
I don't have nearly all the answers to all their questions, but reading it and thinking on the topic let me crystalize some thoughts I've had for a long time. Thoughts that are very important about how communities start, and how they go forward. I'll put them below the fold.
The Golden and Iron Laws of Communities
The Golden Law of Communities is that you need something shiny to start the kernel of any community. It is nominally the thing the community is "about", but even when it's not explicitly that, it's still the hook that gets people interested.
It could be "we have the word of God and this is how to avoid Hell." It could be "we are all descended from this sacred bloodline." It could be "Sharon hosts dinners and her husband is an executive chef so they are amazing." It could be "this famous blogger is part of the community and you'll get to meet them." It could be "we talk about and run alternative theater." It could be "there are lots of sexy young people and who knows what might happen." It could be drugs, going to water parks, arguing about charities, talking about politics, a favorite scifi author, watching black and white movies, speedrunning videogames, a particularly charismatic founder of the group, or any damn thing.
But you can't just say "hey everyone, let's have weekly dinners and help each other babysit or play boardgames, because community is nice." You have to advertise (even if just by word of mouth) a short idea that motivates people to want to get in on that.
Got that? Can you admit that dark truth? Okay we can move onto the second law.
The Iron Law of Communities is that the thing the community is about doesn't matter.
Two seconds after you have enough people in your group to begin enjoying themselves, someone will ask if they can invite their friend "who is totally cool but aren't really into X" where X is the thing in the Golden Law. Or someone will invite the people in the community to a completely generic event that has nothing to do with X - because they're cool people and you're enjoying hanging out.
And that's... fine? Like you might say yes or no to the request, but either way it will start happening, and your group will do the same things and have the same type of people and same discussions as every other group. Your identity that separates you from other people will dissolve away slowly. (In very official institutions, this will take the form of adjacent informal activities.) Congratulations, you have now made a Community with the potlucks and babysitting share-schedules and networking and incestuous dating drama.
There are of course, communities that fight against the Iron Law harder than others, but it just doesn't really matter. They're just as likely to wither and die as any community eventually, and if they had admitted those adjacent people that wouldn't hasten that day. Most of the communities you see have plenty of "members who don't care about X, are just here for the people/stuff."
If everyone was coming to the events just to see some famous blogger or sparkling charismatic leader, they would soon find out they get very little face time with that person, but there are other people around, and they're fun, and they'll start coming back for those other people and the group activities.
There's a running joke that no matter WHAT your Discord server is about, eventually they'll make a #politics channel, then an #nsfw channel, then a #nsfw-hardcore channel, etc etc. And that's where most of the chatter will take place in, eventually.
me, deranged: I can fix them (parasocially hallucinated ideal of a real-world developer being crushed under the hell of a worsening work crunch who has since left the industry in the following years due to burnout) (fictional character(?))
turnnoffyourmind
snowghoul
izzy806
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