The Problem With (Certain) South Park Fans

I’ve been active on the internet for almost a decade now, and what primarily got me active on the internet was fanfiction. I started out with fanfiction of Digimon, and from there I became involved in the fandoms of Shaman King, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Invader Zim and Jhonen Vasquez’s other works. There was a lot of overlap of fans in these shows/comics, and another common franchise my internet acquaintances shared was the South Park fandom – which, naturally, I eventually fell into as well. This is all circa 2005-2006.

In 2007, I got married to my first husband, who severely controlled my access to the outside world (along with the fact that I had also suddenly become responsible for the welfare of children, which would have kept me off the internet for long periods of time anyway). This hiatus lasted until our divorce in 2010, and by then, it was like Rip van Winkle waking up after centuries to find that the world he knew no longer existed. Most of the acquaintances I had once considered my internet “friends” either didn’t remember me or vanished off the face of the interwebs themselves. I was able to reconnect with a very small percentage (as well as make some new net buddies), but what really bothered me was how much everyone’s ideologies had changed…for the worse: girls who were once hand-holding lipstick bisexuals with online girlfriends were now claiming to be genderqueer (even though there was no prior hint at gender dysphoria), they preached feminism and follow-the-herd leftism even though they (unlike me) had little to no experience with any of the injustices they complained about, and what’s more, they started to shit on every perceived controversy in the very shows and comics they had loved for years (while still claiming “fan” status). This is when I realized something: these people have no fundamental understanding of of the media they claim to enjoy.

This is most notable with certain fans of South Park, particularly after the Season 19 episode “Safe Space” debuted. Instead of taking an introspective look at their immature college campus mentality or even just deciding not to watch the show anymore, several fans took it upon themselves to create a community called “Safe Park” (which ironically, is full of bitching about the “problematic” elements of the show that supposedly trigger them in the first place). This shows that they don’t give a Lemmiwinks’ ass about taking the responsibility and protecting themselves from things that might not sit well with their convictions, they just want to be part of the zeitgeist. A retrospective look shows that this has always been the case.

There was a particular fanfiction writer back in the day who basically made up her own canon for her fandoms, and then it became Word of Dante among everyone in the fandom, whether they read her works or not. She was the one responsible for the popular idea that Craig’s last name was “Donahue” (even though it was later revealed to be “Tucker”) and that Kenny’s dad is physically or sexually abusive (which may be hinted at, but Stuart McCormick is never shown to be hitting anyone in his family other than his wife in a mutual fistfight). While fan theories and artistic license are not necessarily a bad thing, the fact that the majority of South Parkers have chosen to rely on deuterocanon rather than drawing inspiration from the source raises a lot of red flags – perhaps they have been unaware of the show’s nature from the very beginning.

Then again, I think the opposite might be just as true. Much like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, South Park often falls victim to having the satirical elements go over people’s heads and having the audience instead focus on the bizarre. I’ve been noticing that a lot of older episodes more or less predicted the current social justice warrior trend, and may have inadvertently fueled it. For instance, in “Mr. Garrison’s Fancy New Vagina,” a man who is notorious for exploiting his sexual orientation for controversy once he comes out of the closet decides to up and get a sex change without any of the prior counseling or hormone treatment that is involved in proper sex reassignment, and later this inspires Kyle to become a tall black man and Gerald to become a dolphin. Years later, we have Brianna Wu, Rachel Dolezal, and a fuckload of “otherkin” and other genderspecials. Were these assholes inspired by South Park? Did they completely miss the point of the episode (that you can’t just randomly make yourself what you want to be physically without understanding what it is you’re getting into) and think “Oh hey, this is what I am, I’m gonna do this”?

The truth is, I don’t know what’s wrong with these people, or why they all changed in the exact same way while I went off in the other direction. I can only speculate that it had to do with me missing a crucial period of an internet hivemind or being a part of a certain fandom. But it’s certainly something to think about, isn’t it?

Mother’s Gonna Help Build The Wall

A while back I posted about this one liberal nutjob that was the mother of a high school friend/ex of mine, and believe me, she’s gone completely out to sea. I was gonna use pseudonyms for this rant, but fuck it, I’m too lazy to censor the screenshots. Recently, she and her kid have unfriended me from Facebook in a blaze of glory so hypocritical that I felt it necessary to explain the backstory in full detail once and for all. While I’m obviously annoyed that people like this exist and inconvenience me, my real problem is that there are cancerous women like Debbie Chaffey that are well within their legal right to manipulate and control their – and other people’s – children, and that someone I was just starting to consider a friend fell victim to her mental problems.

Trigger Warning: This point on contains references to sexual experiences that might be construed as abuse, so read ahead at your own discretion.

It started back in high school. I was seventeen years old, and definitely going through my angst period, compounded by the loss of my first love. I don’t remember quite how I met Justin – through mutual friends, obviously, since he was a year behind me grade-wise, but other than that I can’t quite recall how he got there. I remember my opinion about him at the time was more or less neutral, but he seemed to have an interest in me and wanted to get to know me better, so he started inviting me and the older of my kid brothers over to his place. We met his mom, who seemed welcoming and amicable despite being unfiltered, and we would hang out. After some time, I had a falling out with my brother and I started going to Justin’s place alone, and that’s when it started getting uncomfortable.

Obviously he liked me, and I guess at some point I enjoyed the one-on-one attention I got from him. I was also fond of his mom at the time, as I didn’t have a very good relationship with my own mother back then. The trouble was, back then, I didn’t really understand how to discern between feelings of infatuation (which I didn’t have) and the feeling of wanting to be liked, and more to the point, I did not know how to reject people (part of this had to do with my abusive father, but I don’t want to blame all my problems on daddy issues). I remember he and I took my youngest siblings out for trick-or-treating, and after he dropped us off, he insisted I let him kiss me on the cheek. Lacking in confidence and any real conviction on sexual boundaries, I relented, but then tried to put it out of my mind.

A short time later, we were at his place again and there was tension, so I asked, “Justin, what are we?” (in regard to relationship status), and from there, we decided to be a couple. We ended up kissing, and I enjoyed the sensations at the time, but also felt guilty and dirty for not standing my ground (although I was agnostic at the time, I came from a very Christian background). Later that day I remember going home and Robotripping for the first time, to try and escape the confusion I was feeling. The next day at school, I had the worst hangover I’ve ever had in my life. I downed Robitussin again when I was scheduled to see Justin again, and in spite of the fact that he knew I was inebriated, he made out with me anyway, which was a very ungentlemanly thing to do. As the “relationship” progressed so did the sexual experimentation, all of which I had initially objected to and been coerced into being acted upon. Although I remained a virgin – by the accepted social definition of the term – until college, one of the aforementioned experiences resulted in physical damage that I was certain had destroyed my integrity, and I was angry. All of this was made permissible by Debbie – herself a sexual abuse victim – due to her liberal lack of supervision and devil-may-care attitude toward teenage sexuality.

In addition to this, Debbie was the one who gave me my first alcoholic drink – she was one of those types of the mindset that “as long as they only drink/fuck/whatever in my house while I’m there, it’s okay.” Being the lightweight that I am, I got instantly tipsy, but for whatever reason Justin only wanted to play Yu-Gi-Oh! cards that day – I think had he not been struggling with transgenderism (although I would not find out until years later), he probably would have raped me at some point in our involvement. Incidentally, Debbie also told me that she didn’t believe in bisexuality, but boy would she change her tune when her baby came out of the closet and she began to post ad nauseam about trans awareness!

(Heh…Facebook did a thing on my news feed.)

Speaking of bisexuality, when he and I finally broke up (on somewhat mutual terms) I decided to explore an aspect of myself that I had discovered when I was thirteen, and he told me he knew a girl who was interested in possibly being my girlfriend (let’s call her “Jeanette”). Well, the day comes where I finally got to meet Jeanette, after weeks of hype, and it turns out that she has a serious boyfriend – like, someday going to be married serious.

I don’t put the blame entirely on him for things going downhill, though – still being the pussy that I was, I decided to get passive-aggressive revenge by romancing an ex-boyfriend behind Justin’s back for a time, which I’m definitely not proud of considering who said ex was. If I could go back, I would just woman up and stand my ground with him…but alas, hindsight is always 20/20.

Fast-forward to several years in the future. I reconnected with both Justin and Debbie on Facebook, and later found out through the former that he was transitioning to female. Although initially I had my doubts, assuming that Debbie’s Andrea Dworkin-inspired mentality had instilled internalized misandry into him, but then I realized that it was possible that all of Justin’s past aggression was an attempt to present as how a male might be expected to act, and a cover for gender dysphoria. We forgave each other for past transgressions, and I found a new friend in “Rena,” who generally seemed like a nice, average girl. Most of our conversations were about video games, because it’s teh vidya that brings people together, and rarely about serious issues.

Her mother, on the other hand, proves herself batshit insane with the social justice issues – LGBT rights, feminism, bleeding-heart liberal, the whole nine yards. Despite insisting over and over that she’s the most tolerant person in the world, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so easily and unironically offended over fuck everything. Nevertheless, I did my best to tolerate her radicalism because she was the mom of my friend, and she claimed to care for my well-being:

But then I made one innocuous post, and the shit hit the fan.

(The censored name is my BFF, who I won’t drag into this drama. Because she will win every time.)

Notice that this woman was so triggered by a stupid meme that she ended over a decade of perceived family-level friendship. Remember, this woman apparently considered me family:

And yet someone who has repeatedly gone on diatribes about how wrong it is to disown your children for being queer finds nothing wrong with cutting them off for a difference in opinion. No wonder Rena seemed so meek regarding her mother. Speaking of which…

At first I thought there were no hard feelings about the falling out, but apparently once she read my after-the-fact reply (where I pointed out her old lady’s hypocrisy), I got an earful – er, eyeful:

At first I was disappointed that I had unintentionally hurt my friend’s feelings, and I wanted to give her some space until the whole thing blew over. But a couple of days ago, she unfriended me out of the blue, and I couldn’t help if it had to do with me reacting to this Facebook post. Bear in mind, I didn’t laugh at the comic because I found it to be true; I found it to be such an over-the-top exaggeration that was meant to rustle jimmies that I couldn’t help but be amused by it. That’s kind of the point of satire, and you would think someone accustomed to watching Monty Python and Family Guy would get that. But I suppose with that one final blow, I have to accept that I lost yet another friend to toxic parenting.

I hope that one day Rena escapes from her mom’s influence. Right now she lives with and takes care of her mom for a meager living, so God only knows what will happen from there. I know that she thinks that her mom is the only one who has supported her in her troubling and confusing time, and I can respect that. But remember the parable of the bird in the cow pie who was pulled out and eaten by a cat: not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend. And I’ve seen other friends who were victimized by crappy parents as well: I knew one person who was molested by a respected family member and had their mom spoil them their whole life to make up for it, and another who was adopted by two incestuous relatives that treated them more like an equal friend than a ward of their household. There is little more that disgusts me than a permissive parent, because it’s shit like this that creates murderers, rapists, and people who can’t function in society. Permissive, overly-liberal parents are a threat to their own children and to other peoples, and for all the fuckery I can tolerate in this world, I have to draw the line somewhere.

The Lost Sheep Syndrome

I don’t know if I ever explicitly stated it before, but part of the reason the whole internet social justice warrior fad bothers me so much is that it has corrupted people that I previously considered to be friends. About ten years ago, I was pretty active on the internet with a lot of these people – in fandoms, in art/writing communities, whatever – but in 2007, a lot of serious life changes happened to me that kept me out of the loop for about five years until my divorce left me with some bitter resentment and free time. I probably would have gotten sucked into the same mindset as my former comrades had I not posted an opinion that a bunch of said assholes disagreed with and realized that they weren’t as smart as they’d like to believe. While I don’t fully disagree with everything these keyboard crusaders rant about, I do think that most of them are just parroting rhetoric without taking the time to research their “cause,” and many of them – being my age and younger – have not actually experienced life enough to make an informed opinion on such.

Which brings me to my next point: most of these SJW followers are middle class, white or half-white, and have some sort of debilitating issue that makes it difficult for them to function socially – a disability, a series of neuroses, autism/Asperger’s, a history of abuse – which leaves them home-bound (living with parents, no less), with the most prominent connection to the outside world being the internet. And that’s how the SocJus get them.

There is one person in particular that comes to mind when I think of this “lost sheep syndrome,” as I’ve come to think of it as…this person was someone I was acquainted with on DeviantART about a decade ago, through a mutual friend. They started off as a relatively normal teenage girl, albeit with an autoimmune illness that kept her indoors and off her feet most of the time, but she had a loving family, a boyfriend who had been with her longer than any of my relationships (including marriages) have lasted, and a penchant for many of the same fandoms that I was active in. Fast forward to the Tumblr Age, and suddenly she’s a nonbinary, rhetoric-spewing feminist/social justice slactivist. What the fuck happened? Well, I don’t presume to know this individual on a personal level, but seeing as she is a very public person, there is a lot to go on as far as speculation is concerned:

(Note: This image is only a representation, not the actual person I’m talking about.)

First, let me clarify that unlike previous SJW analyses I’ve written, this is not meant to judge the person in question, but rather a critical analysis of what makes someone open to this level of conditioning. Therefore, I’m not going to include screenshots in this one. Also, I’m using feminine pronouns in this segment as not to make this more of a grammatical clusterfuck than it already is.)

A 2012 post on her alternate DeviantART account documents that she had broken up with her boyfriend of about half a decade – whom she previously revealed had become her first (and at that point, only) lover – and that she had just gotten a Tumblr account. While I believe that this was the catalyst for her corruption, it’s worth noting that her biological father walked out on her as an infant and never returned and she was raised as the daughter of her rather liberal mother’s common-law husband, which may or may not have played a part in her susceptibility toward a Tumblr mindset. Granted, she had gone through the “bi with an internet girlfriend” phase that most of the teenage girls I knew on DeviantART were part of way back when, although she still identifies as bisexual to this day (and has a nonbinary “girlfriend” to show for it).

While she had previously been very open about sex and social justice, she had taken more of a humanist approach to both, even criticizing the male virginity stigma (on a journal that her bitch of a friend harassed me on, but that’s another story). She was a part of many fandoms that are very anti-SJW in nature, such as South Park, Dan Vs., MLP: FiM (two of which have openly voiced against the politically-correct “safe space” mindset in-universe). I remember about a year ago, she made a Tumblr post crying that she hated the fandoms she had voluntarily inserted herself into and made a plea for a safe space against them. Slowly, she spent less time focusing on art and more time focusing on making her now-generic opinion known on posts about feminism, cultural appropriation, and gender identity. Then out of the blue, she suddenly began to identify as “genderqueer” and use “they/them” pronouns, despite having not even the slightest previous hint of dysphoria in all of the time I had known her – and once again, this is a person who has less shame than I do when talking about themselves, so it stands to reason that if she had any confusion or uncertainty about her status as a female, it would have come out. Furthermore, she continues to present as feminine, and even had the audacity to call out a nonbinary female who dressed androgynously as being a poseur simply because she didn’t like their opinions on unrelated matters.

Not too long ago, I finally gathered some courage and asked her anonymously (for fear of other “friends” coming after me) on Tumblr about all the changes. She was fairly tactful about it, which I respect, but her reasoning behind the transition (as it were) was that her views have become “more nuanced and complex since [she] has learned more and matured.” This tells me exactly what I speculated before – that she has too much time on her hands and, in her desire to do good for the world, she has been sucked in to the social justice cult that is poisoning the minds of socially awkward but otherwise well-meaning twentysomethings that want to feel useful or have some sort of recognition.

Once again, I want to make it clear that I have no ill will toward this person, but rather concern – had I not been busy dealing with life kicking my ass from 2007-2010, I probably myself would be sitting in a dark corner of my mom’s trailer with a rainbow-colored mowhawk and a box of Twinkies as I blamed men and Republicans for not paying me enough welfare cheese. To further this example, I should note that my best friend – who is a year older than me – lost both of her parents in the span of a few years and was also forced to sink or swim, and she too is over this social justice bullshit that the younger generations are coddled by. Perhaps, then, these poor lost sheep only need to encounter a parental tragedy in order to pull their heads out of their asses – there’s no time to question how much of a woman you really are when it’s fight or flight time. Or maybe nothing so grim – maybe they just need Jesus, or a hobby, or a job weaving baskets for charity that keeps them off of the far left corner of the internet and allows them to fully experience life – and draw their own conclusions from it.

2015 in review

Why am I not surprised that this post was the most popular? Gringo Supreme and his band of burritos may have won the war, but at least I won this particular battle…Remember the Alamo and all that good stuff.

Anyway, here’s my blog stats for 2015:

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 820 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 14 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Love in the Time of Christianity

I’ve been feeling a little down lately, and it’s because I’ve come to realize the truth in what I’ve always suspected to be true – romantic love is not real. It’s probably because coming from such a broken upbringing and being such a weird kid left me rather lonely, and I always wanted that one special friend who would be mine alone, protect me from my dad and make me feel special, blah blah blah…and over the years, I guess that translated into finding my proverbial soul mate. Throughout the course of my late teens and into my late twenties, I came to the conclusion that what we as humans consider to be “romantic love” is actually an amalgamation of separate feelings – lust, infatuation, limerence, passion, responsibility, companionship, partnership, and the desire to see a task out to the bitter end all play a part in this otherwise farcical concept. Even though I’ve always known this, I’ve always felt this overwhelming desire to be proven wrong – that maybe the person of my dreams was one day going to take my life by storm and magically make my life better.

After a failed first marriage, several failed relationships, and being all but disowned by most of my family and friends, I thought I’d finally found what I was looking for in a much-younger but very similar man named Zane. Once I moved in with him, I realized that at best, he was just another human being out for what all of us think we deserve most, and at worst, he’s a high-functioning sociopath. I grew weary of his childish attitude and jaded hobbies, but given my track record, I decided to settle with him – after all, I loved him before, and I could just as well discover those feelings again if one or both of us changed. At times I developed side feelings for other people, but that’s normal – attraction doesn’t mean love, and it’s neither a crime nor a sin to have those feelings for others as long as you don’t nurture them or act on them. The best thing to do in such a situation, I’ve been advised, is to try redirecting your passion at your current partner (as long as nothing else is wrong) to keep the fire burning. But given that, doesn’t that mean that I’d basically be forcing my attraction?

They say that love is like a fart – if you have to force it, it’s probably crap. But also like a fart, sometimes you have to force it just to fight the itch. I guess I can live with that, but at the same time, it’s such an empty way to view life. And when I feel empty, that’s when I’m supposed to rely on my spirituality to bring me peace…so I began looking for answers from various Christian blogs and forums. I started with advice specifically meant for Latter-Day Saints, because a) marriage is a crucial cornerstone of said denomination and b) I’ve recently converted to LDS because this way of life has answered all of my other spiritual questions thus far, and I feel like for the most part, it’s the right religion for me.

However, I’ve mostly come up empty on this particular topic…the most helpful advice I’ve found was on this LDS.net forum thread, which pretty much just confirms what I already believe about true love not being a real thing, and that long term relationships need constant reworking to kid the participants into believing that they still feel for each other after X number of years. The interesting thing I’ve noticed is that because LDS members have the goal of getting married and having a family, they are more likely to settle down sooner – this is probably because they take a basic set of necessary criteria for a suitable spouse, narrow down the batch by weeding out the people that don’t have compatible temperaments, and then go from there (in my own cynical opinion, I think this oftentimes means that the last step is picking out the best-looking kitten in the litter, but that’s just me).

But what about non-LDS Christians? Being raised Protestant, I’ve found that these types of Christians tend to be far-less organized in their religion (despite what Reddit atheists might have you believe), to the point that I’d even consider more than half of self-identifying Christians in the United States to actually be agnostic. Nevertheless, religion is meant to give people guidance, not social status, and so I broadened my “romantic love” search to include other types of Christian advice.

While I did find one article contrary to my confirmation bias, the overwhelming majority (several of which are linked to in the aforementioned article) describe romantic love as being a new concept built largely on lust and infatuation. And given this combined information, I finally realize why many Christians are so adamantly against same-sex marriage: it’s not that they don’t understand how two people of the same sex can be in love with each other, it’s that they don’t understand how two people of any sex can be in love with each other, so they default on what “works best” for evolution and society.

So, now I’m back at square one, slowly realizing that I’ve been right all along and my Prince(ss) Charming will never come sweep me off my feet and give me that fade-to-black, happily ever after feeling I so desperately need to take me away from the Kafkaesque nightmare I was delivered into back in February 1988. From what I’ve gathered, the myth that is “romantic love” can be described as follows:

• Develop attraction to somebody, and hope they reciprocate.
• Once they reciprocate, enjoy the nerve-racking excitement of getting to know them even better.
• Decide that you don’t want these feelings to end, then foolishly take the next step – get married, move in together, have a kid, whatever.
• Realize that once you’re forced into close quarters/constant contact with this person, you get tired of their crap easily…but are now too far down the rabbit hole to pull back (and probably have too much baggage to start over).
• Keep telling yourselves that you love each other because “you’re in it for the long haul” and mistake minutiae as subtle signs that the fire is still burning (e.g., the husband putting the toilet seat down or the wife not faking a headache on their anniversary).
• Suppress the desire to find or act upon desires for someone who, at this point in your life, might actually be more compatible for you, because there is too much at stake to start over.
• Wait “till death do us part,” or in the case of Latter-Day Saints who are sealed together, this goes on forever.

Granted, I’ve known more than a few couples who have been together for years and claim they are still madly in love with each other, but I think there is more than meets the eye to these claims. Most of these couples I know have some semblance of financial stability, several good friends that are exclusive to each party, alternate work shifts, and other favorable circumstances that prevent them from actually having to be around each other all the time, which keeps their relationship in a sort of stasis while still allowing them to reap marital and common-law benefits. This dynamic proves my point exactly.

All-in-all, Christianity at it’s core is not a bad religion – when followed properly, it promotes altruism and spiritual fulfillment that is meant to bring peace to yourself and those you encounter. But if you were hoping for some mystical guidance on knowing when you’ve found your “other half,” go back to Disneyland – the (wedding) cake is a lie.

A Living Wage

I haven’t updated with a new entry in a while…that’s mostly because I’ve been getting to enraged over things and needed to take time to be more productive and positive. But as Trent Reznor said in an interview with SPIN magazine, “There’s still no shortage of things that piss me off.” Today, I’ll start with an issue I legitimately believed was going to die in its infancy (but still persists): raising the minimum wage.

I’m not against the idea to raising the national minimum wage in the U.S. To $15 per hour because I’m some bigoted conservative who thinks that the middle class is just looking for handouts…I’m against it for the opposite reason. I believe that raising the minimum wage will, at best, only treat the symptom, but not cure the disease. Yet uneducated plebians are coming out of the woodworks to push for this, not realizing that it will lead to:

1. corporations making up for the loss in profits by overhiring young and inexperienced workers who really need the money/job experience and giving them each about two hours of work a week, effectively eliminating any chance to attain benefits, or even thrive financially,
2. corporations continuing to illegally hire undocumented workers for two tortillas a week (paid under the table), which not only exploits and abuses underprivileged minorities but also keeps nationals out of the job market,
3. forcing the existing higher wages of qualified professionals to increase – along with prices of services – effectively increasing inflation, and/or
4. causing burger flippers to earn the same amount as, say, an ambulance driver, resulting in the nullification of incentives to shoot for higher career goals…which in turn will most likely result in a loss of employees in higher level jobs (not the least of which will be STEM careers, which third-wave feminists have already taken issue with for the lack of women in these fields).

That’s not even bringing into account the sheer force of class warfare that will be exacerbated by raising the minimum wage – class warfare being one of the few true remaining prejudices in the United States today.

I do think that employees deserve to be paid well for their job without exploitation, but raising the minimum wage is like injecting yourself full of morphine to deal with a painful cut on your leg when a simple Band-Aid will help the situation much better. So what are other options to solving the problem at hand? The most effective solution, like a Band-Aid to a cut, is the most simple: Rally for laws that protect employees from corporate exploitation. There are already whistleblower laws to this effect, but if you really want to make a change, why not eliminate the loopholes that cause the need for an increased minimum wage in the first place? Put caps on overhiring employees, legally reprimand companies that hire (and underpay) undocumented workers, require companies to push propaganda reminding whistleblowers that they are protected under the law – these are just a few things that will help.

And remember, if you are in a position where you can’t provide for your family under your given circumstances, you may also qualify for government assistance – food stamps, cash aid, WIC, and the like. I myself know how stigmatizing it is to have to apply for these things, especially after not needing them, but they are there to assist those who need them, along with the (often mandatory) programs and seminars that can help you live sustainably and even break out of your situation.

Tales from the Friendzone

We all know the stories – a self-proclaimed “nice guy” goes out of his way to show what he perceives to be kindness to a girl he is interested in, ends up driving her away by being forward and/or talking shit about every girl except for the one he’s pursuing (or maybe she’s already spoken for and he just thinks that she “can do better”), she lets him down easy, and he wallows in self-pity, confining himself to the purgatory of unrequited love known as “The Friendzone.” But looking at most people’s stories of such, it becomes clear that most of the time, both parties involved are idiots.

Now, I’m the last person on earth who will go to bat for a Nice Guy™ – I’ve had my share of bad experiences with them, to say the least. But it seems like short of Nice Guys™ themselves, no one is willing to actually take a look at what the other side is doing that, if they changed their attitude or behavior, could actually make the situation in question less stressful, or even nonexistent. And of course, the guys themselves are one-trick ponies who base the entirety of their personality around the concept that they’re “nicer than other guys” the way most SJWs on Tumblr do with their sexual orientation and gender. I will take a semi-objective look at both sides of the coin and tell them what they are doing wrong (ladies first):

For Girls:

If you already have a boyfriend and are touchy-feely or play-flirtatious with other guys, especially those who are most liable to have an invested interest in you, you are being a cocktease, pure and simple. I’m not talking about girls who hug their friends or pat them on the back, or playfully punch them in the gut à la “one of the boys”; I mean those girls who try to be cute by jumping on their guy friends, kissing them, changing clothes in front of them…I wouldn’t even do that shit with other girls (granted I swing both ways, so it takes on a different meaning when I do it anyway), much less guys I had no intention of screwing. I don’t say this to slut-shame (although when you look at the word, it says something…after all, “dog-shaming” is the shaming of dogs and “fat-shaming” is the shaming of fat people, if you catch my drift…), I speak from personal experience – I’ve had boyfriends who put up with this shit from their exes, and even one close friend whom I developed feelings for had some Jenny-come-lately try to play-flirt with him like this (even after he repeatedly told her it made him uncomfortable), even though she claimed she already had a boyfriend and was a Christian. If you have balls enough to be this forward with a guy and claim it’s platonic, then you shouldn’t have any problem putting a guy in his place if he steps out of line, either – he’s not your “friend” if he’s only pretending to be interested in you to get in your pants, so kick him to the curb once his motives become clear.

In addition to physical miscommunication, if you have a boyfriend and are confiding emotionally in another man – particularly about problems in your relationship – that’s borderline infidelity. And if your problems are actually serious, such as domestic violence or something, you shouldn’t be talking to some fedora-wearing social retard who is only interested in getting a pretty girl’s attention. Ask yourself – is this guy you’re confiding in going to confront your boyfriend? Beat the shit out of your guy for laying a hand on you? Go to the police if the situation spirals out of control? No, he’s not – and once your man finds out what you’ve been doing, if you’re lucky enough to not land in the hospital or worse, he will leave you, and the Nice Guy™ homewrecker will either conveniently lose interest in you or become your next controlling, abusive boyfriend. Also, there is a good chance that you’re not the only girl the Nice Guy™ is stringing along – he’s probably sleeping with or attempting to stir up a relationship with someone society deems less than ideal girlfriend material (fat, crazy, poor, single mom, etc.) who actually cares about him as practice until he gets his trophy girlfriend.You could be needlessly hurting some random Jane who actually wants this guy you’re unintentionally leading on, and she might come after you for it, too.

For Guys:

Take a look at the way she interacts with other friends of both sexes. Chances are, if she is “flirting” with you (which in all likelihood, is just her being genuinely nice and refraining from punching you in the balls for saying “Other guys hate the hair on your arm, but I think it’s cute”), and you’re just a friend, she does it with all of her friends – you’re not special. And if you spend all of your conversation time with her verbally jacking off about how much “nicer” or whatnot you are than other guys, not only do you come off as a cynical asshole, but you’re indirectly talking shit about the men in her life that she loves – be it her boyfriend, her father, her brothers, whatever. If you’re really interested in a girl, try to find common ground with her other than perceived insecurities – her hobbies, her life goals, her religious/political beliefs…and if you’re intentions are purely sexual, make sure that is clear from the beginning. If she rejects you, it’s not the end of the world – there are other girls out there who will sleep with you. That said, if you have a FWB or other girl who is interested in you, stop wasting time and energy on a lost cause and pay more attention to the one woman who thinks you have some redeeming qualities.

If she’s telling you things in confidence that she doesn’t tell her boyfriend, she’s being dishonest to him and disrespecting their relationship. If the guy finds out, he will either a) do physical harm to your pedestal princess, b) come after you for meddling in their affairs with obvious ulterior motives, or c) dump her on the spot – after which she will rebound with you only to find some other Friendzone Johnny to confide in once you and she are an item and repeat the process. If she has the audacity to have an emotional affair behind one guy’s back, what’s to say she won’t do it to you?

Always make your intentions clear from the start. If she doesn’t want to date you, it could be for any number of reasons – besides being spoken for already, maybe she doesn’t want to ruin the friendship (that happened when I dated a Nice Guy™, plus he ended up being a sociopath who was still overly attached to his mom), you could be fun to hang out with and even date but suck balls as a relationship partner (same guy I mentioned before), or maybe she just flat out finds you unattractive – unlike guys, women generally don’t fuck people beneath them out of desperation.

 

Well, that’s about all I can think of that hasn’t already been said…and I don’t think I even need to state the usual “not all X/same-sex couples/blah blah blah political correctness” disclaimers here, because most people in general are smart enough to figure these things out…I hope. Then again, I did just break down and explain basic human interactions, so maybe there is no hope for this planet after all.

100 Reasons to Why You Shouldn’t Give Anti-Suicide Advice

So, I came across a chat post on Tumblr the other day titled “100 Reasons to Why You Shouldn’t Commit Suicide,” and I felt my pent-up constipation sink deeper into my lower intestines. Despite all I complain about, I don’t find many things truly offensive…but things like this that insult my intelligence offend me.

I believe the original poster’s heart was in the right place (assuming that the above link is the OP – I’ve seen it a few different places), but most of the suggestions on this list sound like shallow attempts at making an acquaintance feel better – things like “It gets better” and “Sherlock Season Three.” Not only do I feel like this list is dismissive of actual suicidal feelings, but this person also doesn’t understand that the desire to end one’s life is often caused by clinical depression (or the medications taken to control it), which can cause people to lose interest in things they once loved to the point where they feel life has no meaning. That means that these helpful hints would be useless in the long run, even if they can get you to crack a smile for a few useless minutes before you sink further down the spiral. (At least, that’s how it has always worked for me.)

That’s not to say that these things wouldn’t work for some people, but for me, repressing suicidal desires takes a lot more than some stranger on the internet telling me I’m beautiful. The only thing that has successfully stopped me from committing suicide lately is imagining that I’ve succeeded and having my ghost stick around long enough to watch the people I love (read: my young children) having a breakdown upon finding my body, and that is an ordeal I couldn’t bear to leave them with. But I understand everyone is different, and if butterflies and unicorns are enough to snap you out of it, then by all means, think of those.

Still, I’ve found other, similar lists on the internet, and all of them are equally trite and rage-inducing – and to the wrong person, it can make them go from suicidal to homicidal. Now, I’m no psychology major or therapist, but I’m an opinionated cynic with a past, and I’m going to deconstruct the “100 Reasons” list for all it’s worth:

100 Reasons To Why You Shouldn’t Commit Suicide

1. We would miss you.
To someone who has given up on life completely, this means nothing. Besides, remember when you graduated high school or said goodbye to your ex for good? Didn’t you hear (or say) something along these lines as well? Well, how long did that yearning last?

2. It’s not worth the regret. Either by yourself if you failed or just simply left scars, or the regret everyone else feels by not doing enough to help you.
I can agree with the first part of this – there is a great deal of shame involved with a failed suicide attempt (which may make the desire to end your life stronger). The second part, no – it is nobody else’s fault that you want to kill yourself. The pre-disposition for suicidal tendencies largely has to do with a chemical imbalance.

3. It does get better. Believe it or not it will eventually get better. Sometimes you have to go through the storm to get to the rainbow.
Without proper guidance and work to get where you want to be, life does not magically “get better.” There is help available for that if needed.

4. There’s so much you would miss out on doing.
There’s also so much suffering you would miss out on experiencing, which is probably more akin to what the suicidal person is feeling.

5. There is always a reason to live. It might not be clear right now, but it is always there.
Most atheists I know don’t even believe that we have a purpose in life (not to say none of them believe that, just many of the ones I know), so why would a suicidal person see the light at the end of the tunnel?

6. So many people care, and it would hurt them if you hurt yourself.
This actually isn’t bad advice, but once you’ve gone past the Despair Event Horizon, you can’t always see past the end of your nose. In fact, you may even start to resent the people who care about you for “keeping” you in this world.

7. You ARE worth it. Don’t let anyone, especially yourself, tell you otherwise.
If other people are telling you to commit suicide, they’re the ones that need to die, not you. (BTW, people like that are probably just trolls who sit down to a ham dinner on Sunday with a set of parents that only married each other because the snarky little troll was conceived out of wedlock and the abortion clinic was closed for lunch.)

8. You are amazing.
Everyone is amazing at something, but why would you casually fling this sentiment around at someone you don’t know very well, if at all? People can tell me I’m great all they want, but once they see that I have a dark side they usually side with the Sunday dinner trolls in #7.

9. A time will come, once you’ve battled the toughest times of your life and are in ease once again, where you will be so glad that you decided to keep on living. You will emerge stronger from this all, and won’t regret your choice to carry on with life. Because things always get better.
Again with the “things get better” line…isn’t that universally regarded as one of the worst things you can say to somebody struggling with depression? For what it’s worth, things don’t “get better” without taking steps to make things “better,” such as seeking proper help/guidance, eliminating negative influences, or even changing your attitude. And it’s not always an easy process.

10. What about all the things you’ve always wanted to do? What about the things you’ve planned, but never got around to doing? You can’t do them when you’re dead.
When the first thing on your bucket list is something as simple as, say, “Eat buffalo wings at Hooter’s” (that’s the first entry on my bucket list, anyway), it’s easy to be jaded by life. This statement is apparently targeted at teenagers who seem to know everything there is to know about the glass ceiling and the way the vagina works when it’s penetrated but apparently haven’t experienced jack shit when it comes to the real world.

11. I love you. Even if only one person loves you, that’s still a reason to stay alive.
Well now, if that isn’t condescending as hell…my former fiance loves me, but he’s also a high-functioning sociopath who would have become the next Elliot Rodger if he had stayed a virgin. In fact, I’ve often contemplated suicide just to get away from Zane’s obsession.

12. You won’t be able to listen to music if you die.
This might convince an atheist not to jump off a bridge, but I’m pretty sure most world religions view their version of the afterlife/next life as a celebration with fanfare (or something to that effect). Even in hell there will at least be death metal – isn’t that supposedly Satan’s music of choice?

13. Killing yourself is never worth it. You’ll hurt both yourself and all the people you care about.
Much in the same way as we are not responsible for “making” other people want to commit suicide, suicidal people are not responsible for the happiness of everyone else. Way to place that burden on ticking time bomb, OP.

14. There are so many people that would miss you, including me.
That may be, but remember, this entire list was typed out of some random Tumblrina’s ass, and was intended to be read by everyone comtemplating suicide – chances are, they don’t even know who you are. Hell, they could be that anon sending you hate messages right now.

15. You’re preventing a future generation, YOUR KIDS, from even being born.
I already have four biological children and have since gotten my tubes tied. Suicide doesn’t apply only to teenage scene girls…

16. How do you think your family would feel? Would it improve their lives if you died?
Honestly, most of my family either hates me or has given up on me. I don’t even talk to my family much anymore except online. In fact, I’m probably closer to my ex-husband than I am to my immediate family.

17. You’re gorgeous, amazing, and to someone you are perfect.
Everyone is somebody’s reason to masturbate. And that’s not necessarily a good thing.

18. Think about your favourite music artist, you’ll never hear their voice again…
Most of my favorite bands have stopped recording music. One band in question, Pink Floyd, put out their penultimate album over twenty years ago, and their next album is primarily instrumental. (I look forward to hearing it, though; I liked The Division Bell and David Gilmour’s On an Island.)

19. You’ll never have the feeling of walking into a warm building on a cold day
I hate the cold. In fact, the cold makes me feel more depressed.

20. Listening to incredibly loud music
That might drown out your suicidal thoughts temporarily, but it won’t make anyone around you glad that you’re alive…

21. Being alive is just really good.
Not always, and it’s arrogant to imply otherwise.

22. Not being alive is really bad.
I’d like someone with experience in that department to confirm that…but Nosferatu and I aren’t currently on speaking terms, so I’ll just have to sit in speculation for the time being.

23. Finding your soulmate.
Personally, I don’t believe in soulmates. And this strongly implies that it is imperative that every sad teenage white girl have a boyfriend to make things better – isn’t this what people hated about Twilight?

24. Red pandas
Aren’t they violent? Oh wait, this is obviously meant to distract somebody from committing suicide. It’s like the Arabian Nights or something.

25. Going to diners at three in the morning.
I’ve been to Denny’s at three in the morning…it’s like their witching hour or something. They also don’t replace the syrup in their soda fountains until daylight, from what I’ve experienced.

26. Really soft pillows.
Really? Like I’ve said before, a few mundane phenomena might get a suicidal person to crack a smile, but it won’t stop them from putting a gun to their head altogether. I’m not even sure if OP is trying, or if they’re just listing off personal turn-ons like Princess Kashmir in that one episode of The Simpsons.

27. Eating pizza in New York City.
I think Maddox already has something to say about this…

28. Proving people wrong with your success.
I’ve always believed that success is the best revenge, and that one day I would surpass my dissenters…but then I watched silently as these assholes escape their fate like Houdini on meth as I fell into two shitty marriages, perpetual unemployment, and a slew of other heartaches.

29. Watching the jerks that doubted you fail at life.
Isn’t this just the previous reason restated? OP is really grasping at straws here…

30. Seeing someone trip over a garbage can.
Isn’t schadenfreude something that leads other people to suicide?

31. Being able to help other people.
After they trip over the garbage can? Ah, I see what you did there…but seriously, how can somebody help other people when they can’t even help themselves?

32. Bonfires.
Only if I can burn my problems in them.

33. Sitting on rooftops.
I’m afraid of heights.

34. Seeing every single country in the world.
While that sounds exciting in theory, the reality is that the people this list was originally intended for would probably want to stay the hell away from places like the Middle East and North Korea – hell, most of them wouldn’t even go to Detroit in broad daylight.

35. Going on roadtrips.
I went on a roadtrip to Colorado once…it sucked. Not just because it was with my ex-husband, but because I hate sleeping in moving cars and peeing on the side of the freeway. But to each their own.

36. You might win the lottery someday.
Haha, that’s cute.

37. Listening to music on a record player.
While I don’t claim to be a hipster, I do think there’s something special about hearing music on a cassette player…but then again, that might just be nostalgia talking. By the way, you are aware that the music you listen to can affect your mood, right?

38. Going to the top of the Eiffel Tower.
Again, the heights thing.

39. Taking really cool pictures.
I’ve taken plenty of interesting photos in my time, but I’m no photographer.

40. Literally meeting thousands of new people.
A suicide bomber can have the best of both worlds.

41. Hearing crazy stories.
I browsed r/incest out of curiosity one day and I wanted to bleach my brain out. (I am so not linking to that Subreddit.)

42. Telling crazy stories.
You mean, like…rumors?

43. Eating ice cream on a hot day.
This might not be a good thing for the lactose intolerant (or those with a life-threatening milk allergy).

44. More Harry Potter books could come out, you never know.
I think J.K. Rowling’s incessant retconning to stay in the limelight has pretty much distanced me from the franchise. Besides, only the first five books were enjoyable to me.

45. Travelling to another planet someday.
Why, so the same people who ruined Earth can fuck up the next world?

46. Having an underwater house.
As much as I’d like to go to New Orleans and try authentic Cajun food someday, I just don’t see the appeal in an underwater house.

47. Randomly running into your hero on the street.
I recently had a daydream where I ran into Dexter Holland while walking down the street…okay, this reason is actually pretty good. Of course, you know what they say about meeting your heroes…

48. Having your own room at a fancy hotel.
I’ve been to plenty of hotels in my life…most I can’t remember, and the rest I don’t want to remember.

49. Trampolines.
Suicide in their own right.

50. Think about your favourite movie, you’ll never watch it again.
Granted, I’ll never get tired of seeing The Wedding Singer. Right now, my ex-husband is borrowing it, and if the fact that he constantly owes me money is anything to go on, I’ll probably never see my DVD again, either.

51. Think about the feeling of laughing out loud in a public place because your best friend has just sent you an inside joke,
Not something a socially awkward person would feel great about…

52. Your survival will make the world better, even if it’s for just one person or 20 or 100 or more.
With the exception of my underage children, I’m not responsible for other people’s happiness. Even your shrink can’t guarantee that their drugs and therapy will cure you.

53. People do care.
It’s not that suicidal people think nobody cares about them (though that can be the case), just that oftentimes they either a) don’t want to burden their loved ones or b) are aware that the people who care for them are unable to help.

54. Treehouses
Do people still have trees anymore? Do people still have property on which to grow trees anymore?

55. Hanging out with your soul mate in a treehouse
Tumblr is the hub for the sexual devolution – there are so many offshoots of asexuality springing up that AVEN has no energy left to try and be recognized seriously by the rest of the queer community. Granted, I know that “soul mate” isn’t synonymous with “lover,” but still…pitching this idea to a bunch of gender-confused teenagers probably isn’t the best way to advertise anti-suicide.

55. Snorting when you laugh and not caring who sees
I’m pretty sure I’ve already outgrown my need to impress people by now.

56. I don’t even know you and I love you.
That’s…creepy. Unless you mean in a religious sense, which can still be offensive to a lot of people.

57. I don’t even know you and I care about you.
You’d probably be sending me anon hate if you knew I’m not a feminist and I find demisexuals to be pretentious.

58. Because nobody is going to be like you ever, so embrace your uniqueness!
Either OP is trying to hard, or they’re just really relieved that there will never be an exact carbon copy of Adolf Hitler.

59. You won’t be here to experience the first cat world emperor.
Even if this didn’t trivialize the sensitive subject of self-murder, I would have complete faith that my cat Livvy would take over with the least resistance ever given during a coup d’etat.

60. WHAT ABOUT FOOD?! YOU’LL MISS CHOCOLATE AND ALL THE OTHER NOM THINGS!
Lots of people overeat when they’re depressed. And junk food like chocolate, when eaten in large quantities to the exclusion of all else, actually contributes to my chemical imbalance. I try to maintain a healthy diet of primarily produce to maintain both physical and mental health (but again, this doesn’t necessarily work for everyone).

61. Starbucks.
But what if you’re a Latter Day Saint? They only have, like, two Mormon-friendly drinks at Starbucks (yes, I checked). Besides, Starbucks doesn’t support our troops.

62. Hugs.
This probably wouldn’t work out so well for somebody who doesn’t like to be touched.

63. Stargazing.
Arguably, death could make you part of the cosmos.

64. You have a purpose, and it’s up to you to find out what it is.
I support GamerGate – do you still want to stop me from committing suicide?

65. You’ve changed somebody’s life.
Not necessarily for the better.

66. Now you could change the world.
Anita Sarkeesian became the Eva Perón of video games because she comes from (or married into) money and looks pretty. I’ve got more talent, common sense, and probably even education in my little finger than she does in her whole body, yet nobody’s heard of me. What could I possibly do?

67. You will meet the person that’s perfect for you.
There is no one person who is “right” for anyone else, at least, the way I see it. You find someone because you don’t want to be alone/need to breed/need money, tolerate them, and eventually die together. Sounds depressing to me.

68. No matter how much or how little, you have your life ahead of you.
That phrase doesn’t really mean anything. If the whole point is to change somebody’s mind about taking their own life, walk a mile in their shoes and consider the following: Is this person terminally ill and in constant pain? Have they done something so grievous that they can no longer live with themselves? Do they owe you money? If you really care about somebody’s life, try seeing things from their point-of-view and working that angle accordingly.

69. You have the chance to save somebody’s life.
As long as they don’t sue me for it afterward…hey, if it can happen to Mr. Incredible, it can happen to anyone.

70. If you end your life, you’re stopping yourself from achieving great things.
Money, power, and rumors also cockblock my creative success, but I’ve yet to see a meaningful solution to any of those problems.

71. Making snow angels.
It doesn’t snow where I live, a fact which I’m actually grateful for.

72. Making snowmen.
See #71.

73. Snowball fights.
Most guys I date aren’t into that sort of thing anyway.

74. Life is what you make of it.
So is death, if you think about it. But more to the point – if “life is what you make of it,” why do I need this condescending list telling me what my life has in store for me?

75. Everybody has a talent.
But when everyone is special, no one is.

76. Laughing until you cry.
The other day I went to a little toy shop in Seal Beach with Zane, and he cut the cheese so bad that it consumed the whole store. If I laugh about it any harder, though, I’ll die anyway.

77. Having the ability to be sad means you have the ability to be happy.
This works both ways, and to somebody with bipolar disorder (not me, even though Zane thinks otherwise), I’m pretty sure this isn’t a reason to want to live.

78. The world would not be the same if you didn’t exist.
The point of suicide is not to undo your existence, it’s to remove yourself from an existence you can no longer live in. If death meant that you were never born, no one would exist because we’d all have gotten away with murder.

79. Its possible to turn frowns, upside down
But a smile is usually the greatest form of deceit…

80. Be yourself, don’t take anyone’s shit, and never let them take you alive.
Doesn’t this contradict the point of this list?

81. Heroes are ordinary people who make themselves extraordinary. Be your own hero.
This makes me think of the “an hero” meme (which I’m not overly excited about, but there you go). And villains fit the same definition…see #66 on this list.

82. Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. It means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.
That’s not happiness, that’s contentment, if not outright Stockholm syndrome.

83. One day your smile will be real.
I thought that the whole point of this list was to give suicidal people a legitimate reason to be happy. Now what?

84. Having a really hot, relaxing bath after a stressful day.
I’m pretty sure that when you’re suicidal, every day is a stressful day to begin with.

85. Lying on grass and laughing at the clouds.
I don’t smoke pot.

86. Getting completely smashed with your best friends.
Gee, there’s no way that could possibly end badly, amirite? What’s that you just coughed into your hand, “eight grapes”? Is that some sort of Persephone reference?

87. Eating crazy food.
Well, I’m hungry right now, so I guess I can give ’em this one.

88. Staying up all night watching your favourite films with a loved one.
That’s assuming you’ve already scratched off #55 on this list. Or maybe you can kill two birds with one stone (as it were) by watching movies in the treehouse.

89. Sleeping in all day.
Isn’t that actually a symptom of depression? I know I’m personally happier when I’m more productive. Which is good, because I have, you know, responsibilities, and I can’t exactly sit on my ass all day…

90. Creating something you’re proud of.
…Then living long enough to see it be usurped, stolen, perverted, or destroyed.

91. You can look back on yourself 70 years later and being proud you didn’t commit
I’m 26 years old…I’m pretty sure I’ve got about 50 years left, at best. In fact, don’t most human beings only live to be in their 70s in the first place?

92. Being able to meet your Internet friends.
I’ve met two guys in person that I’d previously only met online. Both times ended in heartache and eventual regret.

93. Tea / Coffee / Hot Chocolate
Violation of Doctrine & Covenants Section 89. (Well, not the hot chocolate, but still…)

94. Sherlock season three.
I’ve seen it. It’s enjoyable, but I would have prefered a sixth season of Fringe instead.

95. Cuddling under the stars.
What’s with all the cuddling and stuff listed? OP is assuming that everyone attempting suicide is some teenage demi-vierge who can be cheered up with a beaded friendship bracelet and a cup of warm cocoa. Maybe some advice as to how there are ways to recover from being laid off at work or wrongly accused of sexual harassment…but that would mean you have to know your audience.

96. Being stupid in public because you just can.
I’m pretty sure you can get arrested for that. And again, a lot of suicidal people suffer from social anxiety so…

97. If you are reading this then you are alive! Is there any more reason to smile?
Actually, reading this patronizing bullshit makes me want to die.

98. being able to hug that one person you havent seen in years
Maybe said person is already dead…you do the math.

99. People care enough about you and your future to come up with 100 reasons for you not to do this.
I was offended enough to come up with 100 snarky responses to this listicle, does that count? Besides, many of these “reasons,” besides being trite and dismissive, were also just restatements of the first twenty questions or so.

100. But, the final and most important one is, just, being able to experience life. Because even if your life doesn’t seem so great right now, literally anything could happen
While this isn’t false, I reiterate: not everyone considering suicide is a first-world teenager whose problems can be hand-waved with a list of quirky non-sequiturs.

It took me months to finish this rant (it usually only takes me a day or two to write these things) because I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I’d like to say it was a good concept with a bad execution, though coming from Tumblr – a site where people regularly reblog crap like “remember to eat and not cut yourself because I love you!” but unfollow you at the drop of a hat if you post something questioning feminism – I took it as mental masturbation more than anything else.

But in all fairness, this list could potentially help someone, even for a moment. If you can manage to find anything worth living for in this crapsack world, so long as it doesn’t hurt you or anyone else, then by all means, live for it.

One Toke Over The Line

There is this woman on my Facebook friends-list whose kid I dated in high school that is only on my friends-list by virtue of the fact that I know her IRL. In spite of the fact that she is about almost twice my age, she is liberal to the point of being borderline SJW. I’ve vented about her somewhat on my Tumblr already, so you can read the full backstory there, and I’ve removed her from my FB feed so that her posts don’t ruin my day, but every now and then my heart softens a little and and I check on her page to see how she’s doing…and every time, I get suckered into reading some sanctimonious liberal fuckery that I can debunk in a minute.

Finally, I broke down and decided to do the dick thing – I screencapped all of the worst offenders, and now I’m going to sound off on each one as to why it’s entirely wrong and unfounded.

(All names censored except for my own):

This right here sets the stage for what follows. Let’s just see how many “open-minded observations” she contributes her insight to…

Granted, this is a joke. Still, everyone’s idea of what constitutes as being an asshole is subjective, and then some.

Ebeneezer Scrooge notwithstanding, I’m pretty sure nobody openly objects to somebody wishing them a “happy holiday” unless they’re in a bad mood…as described by this post here:

(By the way, as I was capping these screens I noticed that she shares photos from that “ATTN:” page a lot. I peeked at it, and it looked like a bunch of mindless political nonsense.)

You know, I happened to be born on Elizabeth Taylor’s birthday, but in no way does me celebrating my birthday infringe on the glorious Liz Taylor’s special event. And in a country where you have the freedom to bitch about holiday semantics, chances are you also have freedom of religion. Just because you celebrate Yule or Hanukkah or Secular Tree-Decorating Day or whatever doesn’t mean that Christmas doesn’t also happen around the same time, just like the fact that I exist doesn’t mean Liz Taylor never existed. And for what it’s worth, Democrats can be Christians, too.

According to history, the indigenous people of the American continents emigrated from other parts of the world, same as good ol’ Whitey. I can’t account for the terrible things that happened to the Native Americans back in the day, seeing as I wasn’t there (trust me, I’d apologize for the counterculture if I could). However, I can speak for my own experiences, and I’ve spent my entire life around Mexicans who thought they were better than me because of the color of their skin, terrorized me and my family, stolen from me, and forced me out of my home – hell, it wasn’t until high school (or maybe even college) that I realized not all of them were like that. And those were just the Mexicans I’m biologically related to. So if you want to get into a pissing contest about immigrant usurpation, bring it on.

This one was so bad I had to comment on it myself (notice she didn’t respond). I see atheists in particular do this all the time – what was once the mere disbelief in any deity or higher power has now become the unofficial Church of Science vs. Religion. I particularly dislike the ones who try to preach the Bible verbatim to make some kind of counter-point without taking into account the context of said scripture – what they mistake for “hypocrisy” is actually a history of the early Jews, which documents the ways their laws and doctrine changed over time. Some denominations of Christianity believe in a continued revelation, meaning that through prophetic guidance their doctrine can be modified yet again if need be for salvation. And of course, if you say something like “science and religion aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive”to a militant atheist, they’ll generally lose their shit and start quoting Dawkins or whatever their version of “scripture” is, same as any fundamental theist when their own beliefs are challenged.

Seriously, though – just replace “Christians” with atheists, pagans, whites, blacks, gays, or any other demographic and the rest of the status reads exactly the same.

Personally, I don’t think Republicans or Democrats as a whole give a dry cat crap about where the United States ends up, just so long as the oligarchy gets their cut. Every time one side gets elected to office, the whole country gets fed up with them and wants the other side to win, then the other side wins and the cycle repeats. But considering that the last Democrats in the White House prior to Obama were Clinton and Carter, I wouldn’t be so smug.

First of all, never take anything a comedian says as a life lesson (people like to do that with George Carlin and Louis CK a lot). They’re just joking. Second, I’m pretty sure Margaret Thatcher was involved in more than just “intense negotiations”…

But if I’m divorced and I’ve cheated on both of my husbands, that gives me every right to talk about gay rights, right? All kidding aside, while this image is right in pointing out a very real hypocrisy, coming from her it’s the pot putting on blackface and calling the kettle racist (I didn’t make that one up, but I wish I did).

Not even the President’s wife kisses his ass this hard. I voted for Obama in the 2012 election too, but damned if he didn’t take my vote and run it into the ground. Bank bailouts and Obamacare were meant to bring up the middle class, not to help outliers in the ass-crack of the ghetto survive. One of my best friends told me that thanks to Obamacare, her health insurance rates have gone up, and what the hell are people supposed to do when they don’t qualify for Medicaid but can’t afford Obamacare? While the state of the nation is far from being Obama’s fault, he certainly isn’t helping the situation.

This is the post that finally made me snap. Minimum wage isn’t meant to be a living wage. Those who are using it as a living wage are generally applicable for government assistance – if not cash aid outright, then at least food stamps. You would think that a woman who has spent God knows how long on government assistance and takes issue with being stigmatized for it would know that – you know, like I somehow was aware of that. In fact, in order to qualify for government assistance in California, you have to be working a shit job that doesn’t pay enough to meet basic needs if you’re not in school, disabled, a breastfeeding mother, or some other asterisk on a form. If minimum wage goes up, all other wages have to increase, which will just result in more inflation.

But what is more likely to happen is that to make up for the cost, employers will overhire people at a maximum of two hours a week per employee so they won’t have to worry about benefits or any other technicality, same as they do now. Raising the minimum wage is treating the symptom, not curing the disease – if you really want these people to be paid fairly, start putting better business practice laws into place.

(Bonus fact: the current minimum wage varies from state to state depending on the cost of living.)

Clickbait yellow journalism aside, her commentary is inaccurate. When a child is born out of wedlock, the alleged father has to sign a Declaration of Paternity indicating that the child is legally his, but if he’s not there to do it by the time the hospital kicks his baby mama’s ass to the curb, the mother has to declare on the birth certificate that the child’s father is unknown…and Daddy has to go to court to get his name on there. At least, that’s how it works in California – in Texas, they probably just go the shotgun wedding route and avoid all that messy paternity paper nonsense.

I personally disagree with this statement because I was born a welfare baby and I’ve been the means to someone else’s end for most of my life – parents, foster parents, exes, the works. Things I should have learned from my parents I learned from the ex-husband who groomed me into becoming his trophy wife and eventually became my surrogate stepfather, or else numerous life failures that earned me criticism rather than guidance. I’ve found ways to survive and better my situation because I ignored the people on government assistance who told me it wasn’t possible. I’m not saying that all people on government assistance have that mindset, because they certainly don’t – what I’m condemning is the negative attitude that many people who spend their lives in poverty adopt as a defense mechanism for dealing with stigma. It’s been my experience that people who survive and climb out of the pit are more likely to look at other people this way – not because they’ve forgotten where they came from, but because they start to think “I did it, and you can do it too” while forgetting that not everyone has the same strengths (I myself fall into this trap). Obviously, there are ignorant trust fund babies who think that people on welfare are just receiving government handouts because they don’t want to work, but the world isn’t so black-and-white as saying “the rich hate us for being poor.”

And in typical SJW fashion, if somebody calls you out on your bullshit, become the victim:

Honestly…you claim you’re “open-minded,” you claim you can take criticism, and though you can dish it out, you can’t eat it when it’s served.

Okay, rant over. I think it’s finally out of my system this time.

Matthew Reynolds-Hollon is an Asshole.

We all do some crazy things when we’re young, dumb, and full of cum – but it’s easy to chalk it up to hedonism when you’re not the victim. While a one-night stand or a few drinks with fair-weather sycophants might be remembered as “good times” for some, for others, it may be the biggest mistake of their lives. Yeah, that’s right – I’m venting about crap from the past again.

Flashback to two years ago: October 23, 2012. Obama is running for re-election against Mitt Romney and “Gangnam Style” is still relevant. I’m 24 years old, my divorce is final, it’s about ten days after I published my first (and to date, only) graphic novel, and I’m feeling pretty invincible. A couple of weeks earlier, my first boyfriend from high school, Matthew Reynolds-Hollon (known back then by a different surname but was later adopted), and what started out as simple catching up soon evolves into a “road not taken” scenario:

Wait a minute, didn’t I write something about this guy already? In brief, yes. In fact, that’s probably the summarized version of what happened – but the story runs a lot deeper than that. I’ll leave out some of the messier details, but I don’t think I’ll have true closure until I bring out the bulk of it.

So anyway, eventually we get to reminiscing about the past, and then sexting, and eventually agree to meet up one day after I get out of class for “catching up” before he left to be stationed at the USAF base in Lakenheath (which we all know was code for “fucking”). This was at a time in my life where I was young and stupid, and I had that Elliot Rodger mentality of thinking I was missing out on life by not having causal sex and that I was owed a shot at the wild life for my shitty upbringing…this is also the incident where I realized the hard way that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

So, Matt picked me up at my campus…I got into the passenger seat of his car and we immediately hugged, passionately. He kissed my neck and I hugged him tighter, and I sought to make our lips meet (which they did). We drove off to the Holiday Inn Express in Beaumont, talking, listening to music, exchanging knowing glances with affection…we parked and walked hand-in-hand to the elevator, up to room 243, where we removed shoes, backpacks, sweaters…and resumed making out on the king-sized bed. I won’t go into the play-by-play of what happened next (though I have all the cheesy details elaborated on in my diary), but I will stress the significance of what transpired: the experience left me feeling freshly devirginized, in a sense, and just the way he did what he did with me made me feel more…connected than I had in previous sexual experiences, even those with my ex-husband. I guess what I’m trying to say is that even though it was supposedly “just sex,” it felt like more to me, and he let me believe that he felt the same – eye contact, gentle caresses, whispered sentiments…things you don’t really get with a normal fuck buddy (if you do, don’t kid yourself you’re not getting attached to them).

Anyway, after that we went out with some of his friends to a bar, where I had my first drink since before I turned 21 (but those are stories for another time). One of those friends, John, became my boyfriend later (which I’ll get to in a moment), but at this time we were all just friends having a few drinks. I did get tipsy enough to make out with Matt while nobody batted an eye, though, which should have been my first clue that this guy was probably a sleaze and that his friends would cover his ass no matter what God-awful stunt he pulled. But as I was saying, we were having some drinks, and one of the friends had a little too much and things went badly – I touched upon that incident before, so I won’t elaborate again, but let’s just say I showed my human side that night and it did not go unnoticed. Later, Matt and I went back to the hotel and spent the night, and the next day we went to see his family and out to Olive Garden with them and another friend. Finally, Matt and I said our rather bittersweet goodbyes, even going as far as to say “I love you”…but as you know, I’ll be the first to confirm that the phrase means nothing without explanation. In my case, I meant it as one would think it would mean when said to someone you’ve recently slept with, but in Matt’s case, I wasn’t entirely sure. Granted, he did eventually send me these texts:

But of course, not before he sent me these (and many other messages that were similar):

And most significantly, this one, which shows that there wasn’t a misunderstanding over the definition of “I love you” in this context and that he truly was leading me on:

(I forgot to censor the phone number out, but he changed his number before he was deployed to England, so that one is no longer current.)

Now, I understand that there are instances of unrequited love where one person goes to far and you wake up with your pet rabbit boiling on the stove, but once again, I have to emphasize that up until his conscience finally got the better of him and he told me a month or two later that he “loved me as a best friend, but nothing more,” he was stringing me along while feeding into my fantasy that he and I could actually be together in spite of the circumstances. And once he did tell me that it was “over,” as it were, I backed off and left him alone. Matt, on the other hand, decided not to take any half-measures against what he perceived as his would-be stalker.

The friends from the bar/Olive Garden that I mentioned earlier became Facebook friends as well, and while none of them knew what was going on between me and Matt at the time (to the best of my knowledge, although now I suspect otherwise), one guy in particular – John – seemed to take an interest in me and help me feel better about my heartache. I was a little attracted to him, but had no intention of pursuing him. However, when I went to his birthday party at the beginning of December, we got drunk and one thing led to another (which I also made reference to before). Now, I don’t consider it rape because a) we were both drunk by choice and 2) I might have slept with him even if I was sober, since I was volatile. But all the same, I think I was set up to be in a position where I was meant to be taken advantage of, and I think Matt and his friends were the ones pulling the strings. You see, that was the most alcohol I’d ever had to drink in my life at that point, a fact that I had alluded to back at the bar when I told them I wasn’t a drinker, so they would have known I wouldn’t know how to control myself when it comes to alcohol. Then one of the friends refused to drink at the party, citing the excuse that she didn’t like the kinds of drinks John was serving, but if she was as good a friend as John claimed her to be (she also happened to be one of his exes), why wouldn’t he have had something there for her? Why did she just leave when we went off to the room together when she may have known he couldn’t be trusted? And why did John suddenly want to be my boyfriend when we woke up together, only to forget I existed three months later? I think these people set me up because Matt wanted me away from him.

But even without the conspiracy theories, there is no doubt that Matt is an asshole. I mean, I know for a fact that he blocked me from Facebook chat while pretending to be “busy” – I found this out through John. And even though John himself wasn’t a great person, I feel sympathy for him because he had recently lost his grandmother (who had basically raised him) and was struggling with alcoholism and possible depression – which just proves my point further that Matt is a piece of shit, because he was willing to use one of his alleged “closest friends,” who was going through a crisis, as a patsy in an attempted assault just to make a girl he was done using go away. But I guess it’s not entirely Matt’s fault that he’s a shitty human being. In fact, I blame myself entirely for everything. And I myself am not the greatest person alive by any stretch – I once convinced a guy I gave him HIV, I logged into my then-fiance’s email and sent a letter to his ex begging her to give him a second chance just so I could be rid of him, I found nudes that an ex-girlfriend of a different cheating ex-boyfriend had sent while he and I were together and posted them to his MySpace, I posed as a guy on Facebook and friended John to get evidence that he was cheating on me, and I once planned to leave a flaming bag of my own poop at my ex-husband’s door and take a video of him stomping it out. I am a horrible human being, but as such, I’ve faced the consequences for all of these actions. However, I did absolutely nothing to Matt to deserve to be humiliated, used, and hurt by him and his allies – even Hitler doesn’t deserve what Matt did to me. But Matt can keep partying all he likes – one day, karma will catch up with him and knock him the fuck out.

 

EDIT TO ADD, 8/22/15: So, apparently the douchebag in question got wind of my blog post about him (it’s been up for almost a year, and only after I reposted it the other day on my friends only FB does he say something? How uncanny) and had some things to say that weren’t very nice…so I got nasty right back. And to be fair, if he had asked me nicely to cease and desist my diatribe, I would have.

As expected, he not only blocked me to keep me from responding, but is continuing to send out his groupies to do his light work. (I wanna say it would be nice if I had friends like this, but then I remember that my friends are tactful and capable of independent thought, so never mind the trade.)

So let’s see where this goes. If I get a day in court, I’ll keep ‘ya posted. 😉