That Moment...

TMW you get back online for realsies and find out all you've missed is the NY Times tweeting sausage roll recipes and fall off your chair laughing because apparently it's a thing, and then you wonder if America has been missing out on chocolate modge too, 'cause you're eating chocolate modge, and you google chocolate modge and find out that actually it's just you. No one else has chocolate modge .

 

(why did I do an impression of Mordecai and Rigby when I read that?)

 

TMW you get your new glasses and are amazed when you see the world a lot more clearly, the edges more sharper.

THIS IS WHAT THE WORLD LOOKS LIKE?! HOLY CRAP!!

 

TMW you wake up in the middle of the night and you can't sleep unless you check the expiration date of your passport even though you know full well you checked it like three times this month and every time it was 05/2016, but what if I was wrong?!

Turns out it was still 05/2016.. Trying to remember that now.

That was me as a second-grader. Of course, the price you paid for seeing the world sharp was that of becoming a four-eyes insta nerd.

 

Being a nerd is worth it.

 

TMW when you start your first blog and begin putting yourself out there. Makes me feel proud and nauseous at the same time.

 

One word: contacs.
Solves both the vision problem and the nerdness problem.

 

I didn't get them until I turned 14.

 

People want to wear eye glasses, these days.

 

I'm too much of a wimp to wear contacts. Nope, nope, you're not making me touch my eyeballs. <shivers>

 

Not everyone can wear contacts. Yes, even these days with their wonderful tech.

 

I know, I know. And I do feel genuinely sorry for those who cannot use them, but want to.

 

TMW you change your Fallout 4 character from a black lady to a ginger-haired white lady with freckles and scars and your SJW/PC side comes up to nag you about how un-SJW/PC you're being.

OK, whut? Where and how ... I don't even ...

 

I always play as the dwarf in Golden Axe, but I pretend he's a bearded dwarf lady to be even more inclusive.

 

That's cool and all, I was asking why my PC nature has to dictate the way I play my games? Choosing one option over another in a game doesn't mean you're a bad person. It's. A. Game.

Damn, no wonder I have trouble writing. My PC nature has its talons sunk deep into it.

 

I was just kidding. I don't choose him because of that.

I usually want to play with a character I consider cool or I make them look like what I think is cool. I've never thought I'd, like, owe it to someone who isn't a white woman to play as "them."

If PC has you by the short and curlies, it might not have the best possible effect on your writing 'cause you'll constantly worry about offending some imaginary reader, and that can stifle your creativity.

 

Link, read very carefully.

Your job as a thinking, critical minded adult is to go back and undo all the brainwashing that education, peer pressure, and media have done to you over the first ~twenty years of your existence.

Having racist thoughts is bad, and not having racist thoughts is good, but being able to not have racist thoughts because you got yourself there, rather than because that's how you were conditioned, is even better.

If you seriously have trouble picking the skin of a video game character, then you should consider that maybe you are brainwashed, and then work to change that.

 

That moment when a heavy weight is lifted of your shoulders and you can't help but smile at how beautiful your life is.

 

Linguistic codes are simply a fact of life. Every side uses humor, word tint, and symbols to project their own worldview and stomp on their competitors, even if they may decry political correctness or other liberal manifestations. In fact, attempting to stifle any given expression of sensitivity is a form of language-policing itself. It would be a mistake* for one real-life faction to abandon their ability to exert social force while the others continue to take aim at it, but I like to think that we can at least find some respite in individual works and relationships.

* I've said differently at times, but some pragmatism is needed.

 

"Sides" nonlonger exist when you break them up into individual persons, each of whom then applies critical thinking. This is what I am telling Link.

 

From The Story of O (paraphrasing, free translation): "Your freedom is always someone else's prison."

 

I spent the last week purposely suspending my impulses to take offense to words and symbols, and the first thing I noticed was that everything in the environment seemed designed to drag me back down. Talk show hosts, liberals, my right-wing US government teacher—they all mock each other for operating on that level, but they all do it themselves. It can be as large and jingoistic as flipping off every black person or political rival verbally, or it can be as small as taking offense to an insult directed at your friends while you snark quietly at hordes of strangers. The people I see display the most contempt for the feelings of others are often the people who react most violently to criticism of their own behavior and beliefs. We idealize and shun sensitivity in equal measure.

It's a tremendously hypocritical process, but the most obvious antidotes are to either take compassion to a global extreme or trash it altogether, both of which encourage severe reactivity of their own sort. One compromise I've found is to hold a justifiably low opinion of individual behavior while treating them all as victims of it, but you still need some ability to defend yourself, which is where pragmatism comes in.

 

Folks, all I was saying was that I was being overly sensitive about my character's skin color. Tolerance is cool, inclusion is cool. What I do in my own spare time with my own videogames matter very little to most people, I'm sure so why was I getting into a mental hang up about offending some invisible audience that only existed in my head??

That's what I was saying. Besides, I've four other characters set up, different sexes and races all so...what was I afraid of?

 

I already told you. You've been conditioned and are behaving automatically.

 

Don