#causeknight

Oh fuck! That's actually worse than what I imagined!

I have a friend who has lifelong brain damage because of asphyxiation from her boyfriend, it’s a serious issue

Wow this is an old topic. Ok let's do this in 3 points:

A. I'm sorry to hear your friend has suffered a permanent injury. It's horrible that she was hurt so terribly by someone who claimed to love her.

B. The position I hold is that choking can be done with relative safety so long as everyone involved knows the risks. Being aware of your own strength, knowing what to look for when someone has a lack of oxygen, knowing what it feels like when you're lacking oxygen, making sure to build up gradually until you find the point where it stops being comfortable, etc. There's a lot to learn for sure. My local kink scene puts a lot of emphasis on education and safety because if done improperly a lot of kinks do have severe consequences!

It's the same with things like rock climbing or scuba diving. People do those things for fun, it's exciting, it's a new experience. You probably don't need me to tell you that a simple google search will show you what can go wrong with those activities. And yet, businesses that offer rock climbing and scuba diving experiences are still operating. These things aren't banned despite the risk because there's an understanding that the people who engage with it are AWARE of the risk and are responsible for keeping themselves safe.

Story time:

Right now I'm in London with my partner. We've come down because she needs to visit an embassy to get her passport renewed so she can maintain dual citizenship (story for a different time perhaps).

So we take the train down, walk out from the station and decide to catch a bus to get to our Airbnb. I walk on the bus with my wallet out and there's no hole in the bus driver's screen.

"So... Where do I put the money?"

"No cash, contactless only." My partner proceeds to tap her card twice. "No! 2 separate cards." Luckily my partner has a contactless credit card as well as a contactless debit card; I have only a non-contactless debit card to my name.

Later we need to use the underground trains. Thankfully they have a machine available that accepts bank notes and spits change back out so I could actually pay for these ones. Sadly, this seems to be the only device in the entirety of London that still accepts fiat currency.

The day continues. While we're down here I wanna meet up with a friend from London so we arrange to have dinner in a restaurant. When it comes time to split the bill, can I use cash? No, have to whip out my debit card. At least they still took chip and pin. We went to a pub afterwards for a cheeky pint and same thing happened, I pulled out a £20 note ready to pay for the drinks before noticing the sign behind the bar: "Card and contactless only".

End story time:

Now, I'm writing all this mainly as a way to document culture shock, but also because I find this whole situation to just be insane!

I was born in 1997, I'm effectively gen z. I tell you this so that you understand I'm not an old person complaining about new technology. I am a young person complaining about the lack of options, inaccessibllity, and hostile design of turning a city into a cashless society!

I was LUCKY that my partner happened to have a 2nd contactless card available for me to use! Otherwise I literally would not be allowed to take the bus. Could you imagine not being allowed on a bus because you don't own a specific piece of plastic? Can you imagine potentially being charged with a fine that's 400% the price of a bus ticket, even though you have the ability to pay, except in the 1 specific way they want you to pay?

I hope to christ that this "London standard" never makes it's way to the rest of England. I may be tumbling into the future kicking and screaming simply because I refuse to use contactless shite. I like cash; I like being able to tell how much I've spent in a day when I see the absence of it in my wallet.

I can only imagine how much worse this sucks for kids and the elderly. When you're too young to be issued with a debit card, how the hell are you meant to get around and hang out with friends?

I just had an... Interesting conversation with someone through DMs. I chose to block them in the end since things were getting needlessly aggressive, so I’d like to make something positive out of the experience to get closure on it.

1. Boundaries are important - You can block people for any reason, that’s why the button is so readily accessible. People may criticise you for blocking, hell I’ve criticised people for blocking me in the past, but that comes from ego. Your boundaries are more important than anyone’s ego, and Past-Owen is just gonna have to suck that up. If you feel the desire to block someone, do it. 9/10 times it will make your life better instantly.

2. People have lives outside of the internet - 1 of the things this person said was “Bruh this was HOURS ago, why are you responding now?” as if that’s meant to be a long time? Yes, it was hours ago... Like 8 hours ago... I’ve been out with friends all day so I haven’t checked notifications for 8 hours. A part of me finds it really funny that someone can perceive 8 hours as enough time for something to become irrelevant, but another part of me finds it disturbing. It’s been less than 24 hours and you’re acting as if I’ve dragged up some 2 year old drama, where does this feeling come from? Another anecdote from our friend in the hyperbolic time chamber “You’ve been silent since I responded, got nothing more to say?” Mate it’s been 5 minutes. I went to grab a snack and talk to my parents and you’ve interpreted that as silence?

Personal digs aside, I hope that you, dear reader, bear in mind that time is somewhat meaningless online. You are very rarely having real-time conversations with people the same way a face-to-face conversation would work. Don’t expect immediate responses and don’t be surprised if it takes hours, or days, for someone to reply to you.

3. You should also have a life outside of the internet - I’ve been down this road myself, I think a lot of people were during lockdown. Spending all day, every day online can affect your mood in a lot of bad ways. You become more irritable, less empathetic, generally just more of an asshole. Humans need physical connections, we need a variety of hobbies, we need things that anchor us in terms of behaviour and expectations.

If you’ve recently found yourself getting angry at things or people online over the past few days, I would legitimately recommend a social media detox. You’d be surprised how much your mood lifts when you aren’t subjecting yourself to hostile online environments. Plus the free time you get from not scrolling through feeds and dashes for a week can be put towards another hobby. The 1 big thing that stops a lot of people is FOMO. “What will happen if I miss a week’s worth of posts?” Good question, can you even think of 5 posts that you saw over a week ago? Did any of them change your life? If you answered “Nah mate” to both of these questions, then you should not be afraid to miss out.

4. Pick your battles - Perhaps contrary to what I just said in point 3, SOMETIMES you can justify getting angry and having an argument, but you DO have to justify it. Arguing over politics, or something deeply meaningful to you? Worth pursuing, try not to lose your cool. Arguing over food or interior design or... IDK fucking how to brush your teeth “correctly”? Not worth it, what’s the point? We only have so much time in the day, don’t waste it talking about meaningless crap, let alone getting angry over said crap!

This is just a check in for my followers to let them know I won't be active for the foreseeable future and it's not because I'm dead or missing, this is a deliberate choice.

Super disappointing to learn how long she's been like this

Given that she's clearly middle-grounding in that argument, it reads more like fear than conspiracy theory. Although the former often begets the latter, but she's not "down the rabbit hole" as it were.