The Reading Ghost

ok but i’m gonna run out of funny pictures soon

i will remember with absolute clarity, when the thought strikes me that i have a text to send someone, that this is the fourth time in three days i've attempted to send this specific text

see, "sherlocking it", or "inductive reasoning" plays a huge role in my everyday life, as I re-figure out what I'm doing, who is the friend that I'm talking to right now, what was the last and the next step of whatever work task I'm doing, have I had any water or food in the last ten hours, what is the subject of the presentation I'm giving right now, which part of the website I'm making do what again, what bus stop am I travelling to, are there spices in this soup already, how many people am I cooking for again, what ingredients I do have that are edible now (without reliable sense of time, it seems like they spoil randomly), what bank card am I typing the password for and do I currently have enough money there to cover the groceries, etc.

it's a key skill when you keep being thrown into the middle of situations and have to figure it out from there without letting people around know any of it, because they get very upset if you do. "if it were important (to you), you'd remember", people say

(and then they get upset despite all the guessing, because knowing the date of their wedding doesn't mean you spotted on time that the yesterday's date was the same; time is harder to figure out than people are – time changes around without enough physical cues to re-guess it precisely enough: I can't just look at the sun's position and figure out it's a Thursday, but that doesn't mean I'm excused from knowing it's a Thursday)

and then there is the random remembering of stuff not connected to the situation at hand; that thing I said in middle school was too careless; I have a halfway-done craft project... somewhere... (is there like five years worth of dust covering it?); oh, I don't know which immune response that animal would have to this thing and it's been urgent to check that at some point so I might as well do it now! don't remember why it's urgent but it is (have I studied this for a test a couple decades ago?)

some things are easier to figure out than others.

when I'm sawing through a marked piece of wood with all the tools and materials and sketch of a plan laid out next to me – that's pretty self explanatory.

when there is a form in front of me that I can't even put cue-dots on because it's digital, where was I? oh, it's a tax form, the bit that asks which tax office it belongs to is empty, where am I living now again, let's look at the map and what options are there.

when someone is asking me about my age? let's check what the current year is and calculate it from there.

when I have pet treats to give to one of my friends and only one of them has cat hair on the coat – that's a nice easy one!

is this jacket already worn or fresh outta laundry? let's smell for clues.

i will remember with absolute clarity, when the thought strikes me that i have a text to send someone, that this is the fourth time in three days i've attempted to send this specific text

TL;DR: adhd isnt real, its the goddamn phones. /j (While the "adhd" brain might have memory issues, these symptoms have much more to do with the enviroment in the current year than having adhd /srs)

disclaimer: This is from the top of my head, using common language to refer to academic topics, and not properly sourced and researched, so i encourage further readings on the topic! dont just trust stuff you read online!

i don't think adhd really has that much to do with these symptoms.

While, sure, the structure of the brain we typically associate with what we call "adhd" might have a higher chance of having short-term memory difficulties, it is massively exacerbated by the enviroment (including people, geographical location, things, habits, objects, sounds, etc) around you! sad to say guys, it is the damn phones.

Well, not just the damn phones, but theyre big on it. Usually, """"neurodiverse"""" brains have a higher (or lower, but im focusing on the higher) perception of stimuli, like when autistic people have trouble with sounds/smells/touch/etc/all of the above... So how the fuck do you expect us to survive and be normal in current year? Go outside, there are thousands of things happening, very loud things! cars! billboards! people! And thats a small part of it!

we are all fucking stressed all the goddamn time. Capitalism. The current state of things. And stress eats away at your brain, the more stressed someone is, i assure you, the dumber they act.

and about the fucking phones, theyre made to train you to use it, we're literally pavloved to click our lives away on these things. The colors, the constant pouring of content where you only scroll, its stealing your autonomy and preventing brain activity. If you want to gain muscle, you need to train it, you have to use it enough until it grows, and we dont use our brains, simple as that. We are made to not use our brains, its designed that way.

Also, brain and body are linked- and by linked i mean dont fuckin separate them, our consciousness doesnt live in our brains, we are our bodies, our whole existance is defined by the body we are. Humans explore the world through our senses, we need to exercise the ones we have to have a full experience. And guess what senses being online uses... touch and vision, usually. You dont feel anything besides plastic and glass, dont smell anything besides whats around you (even if you do, notice how your senses are dulled while on the phone?).

So that "brain fog" is probably not the adhd. careful not to explain yourself through a label a pharmaceutical company put on you to sell drugs.

i will remember with absolute clarity, when the thought strikes me that i have a text to send someone, that this is the fourth time in three days i've attempted to send this specific text

The overwhelming majority of antivaxxers I've met in real life have been nurses in hospitals. I make it a point not to associate with such people if I can possibly avoid it, so pretty much the only time I would have to hear about it directly is if I'm part of a trapped audience waiting for something else to happen. And so almost all the people I've met who felt moved to take me aside and "warn" me about the fictitious dangers of vaccines have been registered nurses despensing medical """advice""" inside of hospitals.

She's also pretty skeptical off any newish published research, especially about medication, because acording to her they're all being paid by pharmaceutical companies and thus biased. She’s just very ready to belive pretty much any big pharma conspiracy theory going around because "I've met those people".

Every time I've met someone who actively trys to do good in the world in a material way that person is obsessed with villains.

Every time I meet someone obessed with moraly pure characters there at best self centered in a neutral way.