From the Heart of the Scorpio.

I kind of wonder what you’re picturing when you hear this, because what I’m picturing is stuff like critiquing the fanfic we read way more frankly than we ever would to an author’s face.

“Gossip” has a number of important social functions, and like any other social interaction it is a tool that can be used in good or bad ways.

We discuss positive and negative interactions we’ve had later and in private with our friend groups because this helps us process them. It can be a vibe check (“does it seem like this person was acting out of line towards me?”) or an analysis (“why do you think they did that? what do you think I should have done?”) or data compilation (“is this a pattern? has this happened to anyone else?”) or data sharing (“hey this alarming interaction happened, watch out”) or just venting to channel emotions into a place where they’re safe to have (“friend is processing bad thing and I’m upset on their behalf, so I need do my own processing somewhere else”).

If you can’t complain about your boss to your friends, how do you even figure out what bad boss behavior looks like?

And when some stranger’s being a dick on social media it is usually infinitely healthier and more constructive to go chat that argument out with your friends than to let yourself get sucked into fighting with someone very likely more interested in hurting people than listening.

If you aren’t a liar now, time will make you one. You’ll eventually repress enough stupid little bullshits that you didn’t properly process for the back pressure to turn you into an asshole who thinks you’re justified. Worst kind of asshole, in my opinion.

This is part of that. If you convince yourself that Only Bad People Think Mean Things, that you must never be annoyed or frustrated and you must be good and charitable and kind in your thoughts 24/7, it will twist you up inside. You will begin to evolve elaborate justifications for why your bad feelings are actually good feelings, how it’s not that you’re annoyed or frustrated it’s that the thing is evil and you are righteously outraged and you are right to be so.

Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t do that to others.

The people who are most likely to be awful to me, to treat me like crap, are people who have fully bought into the “I’m nice and nice people are always Good and Moral in every way” BS.

See, with that kind of person, they can’t just dislike a person for no reason. They can’t just have incompatible personalities, or bad vibes, or be mildly annoying. No. They are a Good Person, they are above such pettiness! Therefore, if they don’t like you, there has to be a good reason for it. You must be an awful person that they are righteously justified in disliking. Therefore, they can be as cruel and hurtful to you as they want and still be a Good Person, because you deserve it. You must deserve it, because otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it.

If you try to protest, if you try to point out that the problem is not that you are bad, just that you are annoying, they will not listen. Because if they are not perfectly Nice and Good and Moral, their entire self-understanding collapses. If they are treating you worse than you deserve, their entire self-understanding collapses. Therefore, you must deserve everything they do to you and say about you.

jan: forgot

feb: forgot

march: forgot

april: forgot

may: forgot

june: forgot

july: forgot

aug: forgot

sep: forgot

oct: forgot

nov: forgot