Magpie Instinct Activated

i have friends that would rather send me voice memos or talk on the phone because they worry that text messages would "leave a trail" if they talk negatively about their job. i have friends who, after telling a political joke on discord call, will say things like "don't worry fbi guy, it's just a joke!" that shit is not normal. they're not things that i remember doing a decade ago.

just like how a decade ago i could watch a youtube video covering recent news where they didn't censor the words rape or murder. or a video about reproductive health that could say the words penis and vagina. now if i decide to watch tiktok i am forced to hear "unalive" and "SA'd" and various fumbling, inappropriate euphemisms for serious topics. and that's not even counting the censorship of cursing.

How to identify, and then deal with, your emotions

Emotional regulation skills

Conflict resolution skills

Creating and enforcing boundaries

Dialectical Behavioural Therapy skills

Emotional intelligence ideals to aim for

Axes of self-care/wellbeing

Self-care self-evaluation (find out where you’re starting)

How to make a self-care checklist

How to start a self-care habit

Reparenting resources

Crash Course Psychology

KhanAcademy: Understanding the Self and Society (some units more relevant than others)

Emotional education activities for children and teens

If your friend shares something that they care about way more than you do, a really great response to this situation is something along the lines of: "Thanks for sharing! This isn't my usual wheelhouse, but it's really interesting/intriguing/[other adjective here]! I'd love to hear more about why this spoke to you!" And if literally nothing speaks to you, just leave that out and say something like "Ooh, thanks for sharing! Tell me more about why you love this so much!"

(An example where I was on the "meh" side: a friend shared a heavy metal song with me and made a comment about how it had really hit them in the feels. My response was more or less "Wow, I usually don't listen to metal, but I love the wording in this section [quote lyrics here] and I can tell the guitar riff in the bridge took a lot of skill to pull off. Since you're more of a metalhead, I'm probably missing details, so what else gave you feels?")

This phrasing both allows you to positively acknowledge the thing, gently deflect so you're not yucking their yum, and then open the door for them to infodump about something they clearly care about. It takes the onus off you when it comes to talking about details or pretending to love something you're indifferent about, AND it allows your passionate friend to gush about something they love. And who knows? Maybe their explanation will unlock something that allows you to appreciate it more. (And even if it doesn't, at least you're not shutting them down.)

people carved trenches 3,000 years ago and filled them with chalk in the shape of a horse but what’s interesting is that if you fail to maintain the horse by adding new chalk regularly, it will disappear. for 3,000 years, we’ve been filling in chalk in this horse so it doesn’t disappear.

we’ll never know what the purpose of the horse was originally. we’ll never know if it had ritual or spiritual significance or if it was just art. but we do know that people maintained it then, and, even though the meaning of the horse has long been lost to time, we continue to maintain it now.

the people who made this horse are long dead, but they live through us still, don’t you think?

Back in the 90s and 2000s when I was first going online, you had to go out of your way to communicate and interact with people.

Browsing websites was a solitary experience, not a social one where everyone who was in my circle knew roughly what I was up to at all times.

I saved pictures and fic I was interested in to my harddrive rather than immediately and essentially automatically forwarding it (reblogging it) to an entire mailing list (followers).

Chatting with people was deliberate and intentional. I had to specifically open my AIM, or log in to IRC and join the channels I was in.

In order to communicate with people, I had to deliberately open lines of communication.

Being on the internet used to be a quiet, solitary experience for the most part, with interactions being deliberately sought out. You had to choose to go out of your way to interact with people.

These are also the frogs that bury themselves in a backwards spiral that is seriously relatable.