“I am fascinated by natural forms and their order resulting from geometry, mechanics and physical tension. To logical structure/cosmos, I add feeling/chaos. A permanent sense of loss is a fundamental emotion that drives me.. and beauty is equivalent to a loss- freezing of moments in sculpture is a way to trick time and postpone the inevitable.” The emotive and expressive sculptures created by @goornicki.tomasz touch our hearts and souls. This piece highlights ‘counterphobia’ that leads to actively seeking out anxiety- and fear-inducing situations instead of avoiding them. — #beautifulbizarre #tomaszgornicki #sculpture #artist #sculptor #art #figurativeart #counterphobia #mentalhealth #newcontemporary #contemporaryart #contemporarysculpture https://www.instagram.com/p/CoFM_G3I0ha/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
Dream is strangely difficult to write an introduction for. On one hand he seems like an aggressively normal nerd, on the other hand he’s got a set of qualities that people either connect with intuitively or completely do not grasp. Dream comes at us from the notoriously paradoxical type Six, known for their careful and obsessive planning… as well as their impulsivity. Still, Dream is deceptively simple once you know what to look for.
Like Clockwork
Much like Tommy, Dream sees YouTube like a video game. He’s pursued it intensely for years and strategized his rise to the top, paying careful attention to what kinds of techniques work and why. He’s a natural information gatherer and tries to be a couple steps ahead of what he’ll need when the time comes, looking for ways to create and sustain his success. Overall, YouTube has served as a structure to stabilise himself, giving him purpose and direction.
As his primary game, Dream has fused Minecraft into his DNA. The way he got to be a speed runner to begin with was the combination of the type Six affinity for systems and their ability to marry that system-based thinking with instinct. Manhunts show what happens when his systems brain meets his reflexes under pressure, making for an interesting watch.
The Loyal Sceptic, part ii.
Dream kind of needs to be structured from the inside out to orient himself. Because this is so personal to him, he has a strong stake in being sure that him and other people are going off sound, sturdy information. Dream can be quick to spot holes in plans and logic, fixating on them and trying to find ways to work the problem based on what he already knows.
Dream is concerned with ideas and figuring out ‘right’ from ‘wrong,’ sometimes from engaging directly with other people. He doesn’t do this smoothly, but he certainly does it a lot, getting into big and small arguments about things to come to shared conclusions about the truth. The thing is, Dream ‘debates’ people that he doesn’t like as well as those that he likes, to be sure that people are following sound logic and making ‘the right decisions.’ He’s not combative just for the sake of being unfriendly, but boy it can come off that way if people don’t know how to interpret him or he's getting carried away.
MCC serves as an example of times when Dream takes on a troubleshooting strategist role with other people. He’s good at analyzing both the players and the games themselves, seeing things down to the detail and optimising plans for better results. In general he likes using his skills to help people reach their potential and lean into their strengths when he can.
The Five Wing
Dream’s Five wing makes him slightly less expansive than a seven wing, preferring to keep to his established sphere of friends. He likes spending low-key time with people, but also has a tolerance of thinking and working alone for long periods.
Dream has been isolated for years now, largely out of stubbornness around his face reveal, and some of his ability to handle that is his more withdrawing nature. The online setup is probably a good middle ground for him, stimulated by the ongoing company of people but without direct person-to-person contact. While it’s likely that Dream will enjoy face to face interaction, it may tire him out a bit faster than it would a seven wing.
Oddly Casual
Something worth noting is that Dream still seems to think of himself as ‘just a guy.’ He doesn’t separate who he interacts with by rank or status, meaning that he’ll engage with anyone if posts are available on a public forum. He replies to people, posts on reddit, jokes with fans and gets into scuffles with fans and enemies alike.
This might be his version of Tommy’s “awkwardly social” quirk, having fleeting engagements with other people to feel stimulated and connected, but with added room for confrontation. He can be abrasive, but that abrasiveness comes from being oddly genuine, preferring direct conversations without too much polite pretense. People talk a lot about parasocial audiences, but truth be told Dream is parasocial right back, preferring to start conversations as though the ice has already been broken and it’s okay for him to 'play-fight' with the people around him.
Counterphobia
Like most Sixes, Dream also has a counterphobic streak. Dream pushes towards danger when he feels like something is threatening, and this comes out as reactive aggression when he feels like he or one of his friends is being targeted. Yes, this is where a good chunk of his social media fights come from.
This is a fire meets gas situation where his built-in anxiety makes him sensitive, and his instincts make him reactive. It makes sense that he tested as an Eight—he can be very combative when he’s in this state, wanting to try and fight things out hands-on. It’s taking him time to be less immediately aggressive when he feels attacked, learning to step away from things that set him off and calm down before he says something regrettable. He is capable of cooling down once the reaction window passes, but it’s a deeply wired reflex so it’s hard to get rid of entirely.
Shoot First, Ask Questions Later
Dream is protective of his friends. Like, very protective. This is both from his loyalty and his ability to see the potential for danger in situations. This means that he’s willing to go into situations guns blazing to protect the people he cares about… even when they’re in the wrong. If a friend of Dream genuinely fucks up in public, he’s likely to try and defend them publicly, and then grill them brutally behind closed doors to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Dream also has a habit of throwing himself under the bus when his friends have done something, preferring to take the heat himself.
Dream is slower to loosen his grip and not see things from a ‘his people’ vs. ‘attackers’ perspective. The exceptions to this situation tend to be when either two people or two groups that he’s equally invested in start fighting, in which he gets more conflicted but equally compelled to intervene.
O Captain, My Captain
Dream slots himself into the leader role for a number of reasons. For one, it puts him in the driver’s seat and lets him strategize in situations. On top of that, it gives him a unique place in peoples lives, which helps him feel secure in his relationships. Being a leader-type both gives him the connections and the freedom that he finds most comfortable.
Like most Sixes, Dream also comes from a place of anxiety around abandonment, and inversely a desire for connection. His inner circle is defined by people who he expects to be with for a long time, looking to both give and receive loyalty. In return he takes care of the people around him, both as a social support and materially.
Dream has a deeply held sense of “his people” who he wants to extend his skills towards and protect from harm, and this includes his audience. Dream’s ongoing choices to change for and defend his fanbase are a significant part of his rapport with his community, and is a nonzero factor in his success. His default reflexes to defend his audience may not be popular, but he was one of the few popular male gaming CC’s who were willing to see a young majority female audience and defend them warts and all, which most male CC’s up until that point would be more reluctant to do. Like his friends, Dream wants to see the best in his following, for better or for worse.
It’s kind of hard to make a six stereotype that actually fits any living six neatly. It’s also really hard to introduce them succinctly. One can say that they’re anxious and safety-driven, but unlike other types that can be flattened into an (often wrong) caricature, it’s generally too obvious from the get-go that it isn’t the whole picture. If you’ve glanced over a six profile with Tommy in mind and gone “He’s like that but also not at all,” welcome to the Six experience.
Child of the algorithm
As soon as I first saw a Youtube analytics page, whatever questions I had about Tommy’s streaming/youtube persona went out the window. YouTube literally quantifies attention in every way you could possibly want, which works incredibly well with someone who has an abundance of two things:
A mind for systems and frameworks
A very strong drive to avoid abandonment
Over time, the internet has been designed to mimic the attention-grabbing impulses of humans, but other humans did it first, and sixes in particular can be good at engaging nearly every form of attention to avoid abandonment. A big drive of the core six is stability (internal and external), preparedness and maintaining a safety net.
Tommy has always talked about relating to YouTube as a video game, finding enjoyment and comfort in being able to look at engagement in solid, reliable measurements. He can make the number go up, he can relate to his performance and behavior with a score, and he can break down other people’s strategies for getting the best results. YouTube is a system that he finds comfort in and literally gets engagement from.
A mind for systems
I have a book lying around with a self-identification questionnaire for each type. There’s a standout line in the Six section: “I might not follow the rules, but I at least want to know what they are.” Sixes naturally gravitate towards thinking in systems, in spite of how chaotic things might look from the outside, or feel from the inside. They tend to feel lost without them and like to orient themselves using them, even if they choose to not follow them or explicitly go against them.
Sixes also tend to have a low-grade fight-or-flight thing going on. This makes for a very interesting combination with their systems-brain, when the systems that they commit to memory become like reflexes. Structures and rules become second nature, and they can flow between following them perfectly and breaking them intuitively. This shows up in Tommy’s use of language (one of the first systems we learn), as well as his remarkable skill in Jazz Piano.
The Seven Wing
Tommy’s Seven wing makes him up-beat and expansive. He’s got a fun-seeking streak, using humor to blow off tension and lighten people’s moods while he’s making friends. He likes to reach out and make connections to a lot of different people so he always has the option of company, even if something else falls through.
While 6w5’s are more withdrawn, 6w7’s have more of a physical and mental wanderlust. Basically, the seven wing lends him part of his chaotic streak.
Counterphobia
Ah, the reason this account exists, explaining counterphobia.
Think of the fight or flight instinct (putting aside freeze and fawn and the other bonus F’s.) When anxiety wakes you up, you have a set of instincts that you can react with reflexively. Regular phobia makes you want to pull away from something, but counterphobia moves you towards it so you can handle it. Most Sixes have a mix of the two, but Sixes who lean primarily on counterphobia more can lead surprisingly dangerous lives for people who are secretly anxious.
Counterphobia can compound onto the Six tendency to anticipate danger. The irony of this happening at an extreme level is they can come off as reckless, seeking out danger and charging right into it for the rush. Tommy does this one a lot, and I wonder if it’s intentional that the people around him have to pay extra attention and take on a disaterbrain way of thinking in order to keep him… alive. When I asked a Six friend about this, they said that it was also very comforting to receive acknowledgement of care, as acting up without anybody reacting can be incredibly shameful.
I’ve seen this line tossed around enough in YouTube comment sections to be comfortable quoting without a source-- “some people are socially awkward, Tommy is awkwardly social.” Tommy turns his social anxiety into forward-moving energy and can get into some fascinatingly bizarre situations because of it. This also makes some of his humor just about as dark as he can get away with, knowing exactly what button he’s not supposed to push and then power-slamming it down.
Sixes are able to burn their anxiety like fuel to propel them forward, sometimes on purpose (deeply valuing bravery) and sometimes on impulse. They can feel the contrast within themselves between what a phobic life and a counterphobic life look like, and in the name of puffing themselves up big to protect themselves and those they love, they choose the latter.
Tommy still has a working sense of self-preservation (sometimes) and is capable of getting nervous about abstract fears as well as practical ones, but more specific situations are more likely to bring about his counterphobic side.
The Loyal Sceptic
One of the things that made Tommy successful as a content creator in the beginning was his impulse to reach out and ask other people how to do things. Sixes like to pool information and opinions to be sure that the choice that they’re making is the best one, and like to have a wide range of references to fall back on. Hell, he asks people for advice as a verbal tick, just inventing questions for people to answer.
Sixes are sceptical. Because systems are so important to the way they get through life, they want to be sure they work first, and can be a natural trouble-shooters if they don’t. Tommy will ask for advice from all kinds of people, but he’s more than capable of arguing against something if it doesn’t seem right. Still, he has faith in people who seem to know what they’re doing—and sometimes a headass decision is good content anyway.
An interesting thing about sixes is they have a complex relationship to being in charge. Someone on the top (in a conventional sense) can’t rely on other people to guide them and are the first to get in trouble if something goes wrong, which is a nightmare scenario for Tommy.
Enter: Wilbur. Wilbur’s willingness (and natural inclination) to act as a mentor to Tommy played a huge part in keeping him stable in his rise to fame, even when Wilbur himself was on the rocks. Having someone to fall back on, ask advice from, and share some blame (in Minecraft) was a big deal for him. Tommy put down an iron-clad attachment to Wilbur, but a detail that gets missed is that although Tommy is very loyal and appreciative of what Wilbur has/can/will do for him, his attachment doesn’t come from pure idealisation.
This clip is a very good example of how Tommy holds onto relationships even when he knows they aren’t ideal. C!Tommy is actually very realistic about C!Wilbur, and you can probably guess what that translates into in real life. Tommy doesn’t burn many bridges and likes to keep his options open when it comes to people. Tommy’s attachment to Wilbur isn’t because he’s perfect, it’s because he’s Wilbur and he’s there, and Tommy can handle troubleshooting and the bumps in the road for as long as he’s got something to hold onto. Dream, Philza and many others also played a mentor role to Tommy during his rise, and he likely has a good sense for who to go to depending on the problem.
Come and go
Sixes also need freedom and space. Most people have to balance their need for connection with their need for personal autonomy, including (and maybe especially?) Sixes. Tommy’s habit of just picking up and leaving when he feels like it? Pretty classic 6w7 behavior. Tommy needs to exert a certain amount of agency over his day to feel alright, so he doesn’t feel merged with the people around him or suffocated.
People who put down roots with Sixes get used to a kind of come-and-go pattern, where their attachment to you is secure enough to last an absence. Tommy is just as likely to get energy from interacting with people as he is when he’s alone, since Sixes are known for being some of the truest ambiverts.
Disintegration to Three
When a Six is under a certain kind of stress, they can act like a version of an unhealthy Three, feeling that they are the only thing in life they can control. Feeling too insecure and suspicious of other peoples input, Sixes can shut down and begin to rely only on themselves, while also having a huge crisis of self-esteem. From here, Sixes take a turn into good old-fashioned overcompensation, becoming concerned with their own image and effectiveness (that word again.)
Most people have versions of who they want to be, but the image-driven influence of the Three contrasting with the fear that they lack the qualities that they want most can make them desperate to prove themselves. The issue with this is that panic makes them put on a funhouse-mirror version of what they think will help them, which tends to be abrasive and maladaptive.
Tommy seems to have toughness, confidence, humor and status as some of his core values that get distorted by Three. He comes off as showy and loud, making a scene of trampling over other people to create a contrast between himself and them. When something doesn’t seem to be working out, he doubles down, thinking that the only way out is through. He generally needs a wrangler to keep this from getting too out of hand, which he is both glad to have (attention) and will fight to the death (agency.)
The interesting thing about this is that Tommy seems to have taken a snapshot of this personality and uses it as part of his streaming persona when he’s In A Mood. It’s reasonable to assume that he may have genuinely slipped in and out of this place in the past, but judging from where he’s at now, this isn’t his full emotional truth anymore. Still, it pops up on stream on occasion, and this might be why people swear up and down that Tommy is a sweetheart off stream but can be a whole other thing when he’s on.
Counterphobia, n.
the fear and/or dislike of seeking a phobic situation rather than avoiding it. #counterphobia #phobic #situation #fearful #phobia #TPhobias
So far at Craft Boston I’ve learned that #SlugSlime actually has healing powers, as, discovered by escargot handlers. You can buy it over the counter at Walgreens. Also there is a psychological term called #CounterPhobia wherein an individual has a tendency to go towards and seek out what they fear rather than shy away from it. #DeepThoughts #Sunday It’s the last day of the show y’all. Open ‘til 5. Come on down! (at Boston Center for the Arts)
