Lotus Eater Conference

There's really this strong temptation that everyone has which basically says "to have interiority is to be like me; ordinary people are surface everywhere." And this manifests in different ways in different spaces, and becomes really pronounced when you cluster together with similar people. So tumblr users often act like straight people don't have any interiority because it helps you feel the deepening of social bonds with other gay people. This happens professionally too. I think it was Summer or Sharks who was saying that programming people think that intelligence is just being really good at writing code. Not surprising but very strange to me! I am (equally ridiculously) used to thinking that intelligence is being really good at philosophy, having command of a lot of sources that you can use creatively, etc. This reflects a kind of dynamic on tumblr and reddit. On reddit to have interiority is to be a science guy and on tumblr to have interiority is to be a humanities girl (and the dynamic is gendered in exactly this way). And I think there is something dangerous about habitually regarding other people as automatons. It's good to have people outside of your niche to remind you that other people from different walks of life are quite deep and complicated. They are full of love and fine grained attention to things you never thought to care about. And I think a lot of people go through life thinking of themselves as perpetually victimized by basically empty people rather than having genuine confrontations with full, genuine people who are committed to subtle, complex and real values, who have detailed and intricate histories, and who have a bond to you that you might never quite fully understand. But we rarely even try at understanding these things. We just decide that they're stupid and ridiculous and unreasonable.

Whatttt is with the tendency of Tumblr users to seek absolution from every single person who offhandedly posts about disagreeing with something they do

I say this not unkindly, but firmly: to function as a member of a social species, you have to get comfortable with the idea that not everyone will like you

the thing that other gender members don't understand is that members of my gender are constantly being judged and scrutinised by society and the world around us, so we often end up having to become very self-conscious as a survival mechanism; unlike other gender members who i presume probably float gently through life on a cloud of passive acceptance or something

havent seen the odyssey and have not really been reading anything anyone's been saying about it. but i like when there's a movie that "everyone's talking about". makes me feel like we have a cohesive culture. its like water cooler talk. remember water cooler talk? i dont, ive never had an office job. and also im pretty sure it hasnt existed for at least a decade anyway. but sometimes people talked about water cooler talk. "did you see the episode of Lost last night? crazy stuff!". sports

imagine coming home and your mom found your steampunk clothes and shes just there with her arms crossed

she's holding up a ziplock bag of gears and springs asking you what they're for

i bet girls hated it in 1902 cuz you would constantly go on dates w guys who are working on an invention to present at the world fair