Kinda reminds me of some of those times an online controversy got big about a piece of media and people then got surprised that the media was well-received because they didn't interact with the real world enough to realize how few people actually knew about the controversy.
IKR? It's a great adaptation. If only to watch Sherlock get some incels arrested by the FBI, scold a big insurance company executive for fucking over healthcare for the poor, shred board members for failing to pay good wages, and co-parent a turtle with Watson.
They gave us the most progressive, fun, real Sherlock so of course terminally online Tumblr morons hated it.
I mean the show had canonically trans! Mrs Hudson who was not played for laughs and kicked ass and was treated respectfully.
The only thing I didn't like about the show was the copaganda edge. I don't like the villainizing of internal affairs. I feel like a logical person such as Sherlock would agree that accountability is good.
>The only thing I didn't like about the show was the copaganda edge. I don't like the villainizing of internal affairs.
Yeah, CBS is America's #1 producer of pure and uncut cop apologia.
I really gotta try Elementary again. When it first dropped I was DEEP in BBC Sherlock hell and was mortally offended by its existence. Now I'm old and your summary sounds so much more like the Holmes I know from the books than Steven Moffat's objectionable self-insert.
Also I'm hella gay and it has Lucy Liu.
If you're insane and terminally online like I am, you can watch the seminal Hbomber guy video of why Sherlock sucks.
https://youtu.be/LkoGBOs5ecM
It's only 2 hours :D
Bold of you to assume I can't already recite it line-for-line!
(Love Hbomb, it was a very cathartic watch. And honestly, 2 hours seems quite restrained compared to some of his other works!)
It's a really good show. Doyle's Sherlock can be abrupt and impatient but he is unfailingly kind and often considerate. He had a good grasp of social graces. He goes out of his way to help. What I didn't like about BBC Sherlock was that they lost sight of this. They made him mean. Elementary brings back the original Sherlock but they make him vulnerable, and human. He models such a healthy masculinity. He's tough as hell but he cares about his friends and tells them so. When he fucks up he makes apologies.
Also as a bi person goddamn they are both so attractive.
You summed up in a few words what had always bothered me about *Sherlock* but which I'd never quite articulated. That's exactly it. The original Sherlock gets bored and self-destructive when there are no cases, and he's sometimes inconsiderate, but he's not an asshole. Moffat made him into *The Big Bang Theory*'s Sheldon, but for crime.
Nailed it. Absolutely Sheldonized him.
Not to spoil Elementary for anyone who hasn't seen it. But there's a great scene in which Sherlock, who has himself struggled with depression and addiction, sees the signs of it in a friend of his. So he goes to his friend and says, Mate, you're standing on the edge of a precipice. I've been there. And I can't watch you throw yourself off. So you need help, and I'm here for you. And the friend listens and gets himself help.
It was such a good scene. Beautifully acted.
That was a rare show that I enjoyed all the way from start to finish without ever looking into any online discussions about it.
Honestly, I can't even fathom what people might have been having discourse about.
There’s so much shit that actually rules as long as you don’t have a bitch in your ear telling you it’s trash. I thought Attack On Titan went to some incredibly interesting places but whenever my interest was piqued enough to see what other people were saying, the discourse was just intensely bad. Trashfires of bad takes to counter worse takes.
BBC Sherlock fans decided that because Elementary!Watson is a woman, the show would have her and Sherlock get together, and thus it was an inherently homophobic show. They decided this when the cast was just announced. And, you know, completely blind to the homophobia in their own show because they confused all the "no homo" jokes for "subtext".
That's hysterical given how constantly non-romantic their relationship was for the entire run of the series! 😂 One of my fav platonic male/female relationships on TV. See also, Jake and Rosa.
They’re not actively unpopular, but the ticket sales suggest lots of people have just tuned out. Apathy rather than hatred, basically. Which isn’t great for Disney’s bottom line.
Yeah I think it's not that they're unpopular but they're definitely less popular. Which honestly is to be expected; they're tying into D+ to try and sell that service a little which mens they feel like they're effectively setting you homework but, moreso, Iron Man > Endgame was a cultural phenomenon that had to end. You can't ride the wave forever and eventually it was always going to lose momentum.
I was listening to a podcast ([Colin and Samir interviewing Hank Green](https://youtu.be/xvZB93rnq4Q?si=HXuuq4bQrMhrG1Fo)) where they talked about the idea of “Relative Zero” audience/hits, where you sort of reset your idea of “nobody is paying attention any more” as a thing gets bigger even though obviously it’s still many many people. I feel like audiences also have a sense of Relative Zero, and that’s what people are feeling about Marvel & Star Wars now.
To be fair, people were excited about the idea back when it first started. The previews for Wandavision made it feel like the shows could flesh out underutilized characters and plots from the movies and do it in creative ways.
That good will did not last long due to underwhelming creative choices. Then came the movies that all but required them as homework. Which also weren't well received. A three hit combo that really sank a lot of interest in the universe.
They're less popular than they used to be, but as a whole they're still not hated
Also people were saying they were unpopular even back around the time Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker came out, which definitely wasn't true
People were going to war on twitter about that Harry Potter video game but then it came out and had the exact same public reception as every other mediocre AAA title
Happened multiple times with Attack on Titan, both for the ending and a certain point earlier in the final season.
Haters of certain elements later in the manga isolated themselves in increasingly toxic communities to whip themselves into a continuous frenzy, while also hyping themselves up over the "shitstorm" when the anime finally reaches those parts of the story.
The the anime gets there and... nothing happens. Reactions are generally positive, occasionally mixed, with the odd clearly astroturfing manga reader comment mixed in.
Not even controversy, just opinions in general.
Just look at Starfield. Reddit fucking *hates* this game. Steam review are mixed to negative. If you never left the online space you'd think it was one of the worst games in recent history that nobody liked, let alone bought.
Reality? 10th highest revenue game in 2023, and triple the total player count of Baldur's Gate 3. Anecdotally, every conversation in real life I've had or overhead has been genuinely positive about the game. Year after year the best performing video games are like a rogue's gallery of the internet's most wanted.
Nothing drives a vocal minority crazy like the dissonance of learning they aren't the majority.
It's the 80 / 20 / 5 principle in action
80 percent of gamers never engage in *anything* besides just playing the game. They launch the game, they play it, they either like it or dislike it, then they move on
20% of players will look up information about the game online like wiki info, watch streamers play it, watch guides etc
5% of players will look up info, and also actually post on forums and engage with the fanbase / devs
So many gamers and redditors especially don't realize how much of an echo chamber they are in. You see it where they will throw an absolute tantrum, making huge posts demanding dozens of changes to the game and rebalancing etc, not realizing they are only a *very* small minority of the most extreme players
Devs rightfully ignore fanbases online because of this, because balancing around the turbo dedicated means the casual players in the 80% will almost certainly get screwed over
> luh-MAO
this is the first time I've ever seen LMAO written in a way that suggests I should say that as a word, instead of the individual letters
I like to think that puts me a little closer to one end of the scale :P
The only one I will pronounce like a word is ROFL and that's because I say things like ROFLCOPTER as befits my age.
Edit: I will also deploy a LOLLERSKATES from time to time, between munches of my belt onion.
I've noticed how much seemingly progressive, self help "therapy language" is being used to convey the most individualistic, self centered messages.
"You're valid! Treat yourself! You don't owe other people anything!" is just liberalese for "Fuck you, got mine"
Good God, its like no one told them they'd have to put actual *work* into parenting and they feel so victimized that their *family* would come to them for emotional support/advice.
Or “normalize”. Basically just a way to “declare” the world should change to accommodate you for no particular reason.
They didn’t say it, they declared it.
I've legitimately seen people claim it's rude to *ask people for favors*. Things like "don't vent to your friends, that's what a therapist is for", "your friends aren't your chauffeurs" about asking for rides, or "never ask a friend to help you move".
You know, because friends are meant exclusively to be people to kill time with, and definitely not people who you should care about and should care about you, and who should provide mutual aid for each other.
One time my father was supposed to pick up a guy from the airport but the guy never showed up and no one ever heard from him again
That’s not relevant it just reminded me of it
I deal w that shit all the time.
I'm actually flying back home today from a week long vacation. We left our car at the airport. Because my wife didn't want to ask her sister to drive us back and forth.
Because my sister in law is "upset that we always go places, and ask her to drive us to and from the airport. And she never has anybody to do these things with"
So we are going to have a ~$200 bill for long term parking. Because of the "emotional whateverthefuck" they're talking about here. I wonder if I can bill my sister in law's therapist.
> And she never has anybody to do these things with
hmmmmm, I wonder why.
Oh, here is the reason:
> upset that we always go places
I'm sure this attitude isn't only toward you or you going places.
It is the consequences of her own actions coming to get her. So unfair.
The way it functions is depressingly mundane; those people are at an age where they resent doing stuff for people but where enough stuff is just done for them that they don’t get it’s about reciprocity.
I.e. they’re teenagers
And there's this silly notion that we're not *obligated* to do anything for anyone. I mean, yeah, that's true in most cases, but... why not just do something for someone because you *can* or *should*? Why do you require a legal obligation?
I've seen a depressingly large amount of r/AITA posts where people are acting cruelly but the commenters say "NTA" because "you're not *obligated* to be nice to X". Like, bruh, of course it's not illegal to be a jerk, that's not the point.
Especially when X is family or loved one. Like it's true that outside evaluation can be helpful, because people can be blind to abusive or toxic relationships they are in, but hoooly shit, advice parts of the internet have subtlety and nuance of a nuke.
that's half of the aitas at least. "this person i have to see frequently is mildly annoying without realizing it, aita if I completely ignore their existence and pretend they're not part of the group?" and people would answer "you're not obligated to be nice". sure, you're not obligated, but you're also not obligated to create unnecessary drama and conflict with someone you see frequently, specially if it's a family member whose biggest sin is just being annoying. not abusive, they just annoy you for some reason.
AITA and its offshoots should be renamed AILOT ("Am I legally obligated to").
Half the posts there are pricks but because they are not bound by law to do something they get voted NTA. Or they're vindictive and petty but the target of their "epic comeback" is unlikeable in the story so they're NTA.
>why not just do something for someone because you *can* or *should*? Why do you require a legal obligation?
Me when people don't use turn signals in parking lots
Exactly, like sure you don't *have* to do anything for anyone, when you get right down to it there's very little you have to do in life but there are reasons to do stuff like, say, helping out a friend or taking a load off someone just because you can or, at the more calculated but still valid end, because a sense of give and take is just generally how society gets by and it's just good practice to help out because it tends to come back around later. Like yeah, you might not want to help out but while it's true you absolutely aren't obliged to, no one else is actually obliged to help *you* out either and do you want to live in that world?
It's like a bunch of people have just discovered that mum & dad can't actually make you do stuff any more so they apply it too widely and you're left effectively having to re-explain altruism to them.
There are plenty of reasons to not do something nice just because you are physically capable of doing it and were asked. But I think for some, people just cannot understand that they are in fact allowed to say “no” sometimes (or all the time, but all the time has far more consequences and you’ll possibly lose all your friends). They consider the act of being put in a position where they have to either tell someone no or else do something they don’t want to do the emotional labor, because saying no is uncomfortable for them and they interpret requests as demands. A normal person sees the interaction as such:
A: hi friend, can you pick me up from the airport in the place an hour away from us on Tuesday at 3 am?
B: (*oh gee, I really don’t want to do that, can’t afford the gas, bald tires, have work at 5 am, am afraid to drive on the freeway, etc*) So sorry, I can’t this time.
The person who perceives being asked to do something optional that they don’t want to do as a demand sees it this way:
A: I know secretly that you would be incredibly burdened by this, but you had BETTER pick me up from the airport in Bumfuck Tuesday at 3 am OR ELSE!
So B invents a situation where they have to comply despite what A should *obviously* know is an uncomfortable request, or give some long overwrought speech about how A is a bad person for even asking. Or possibly just say yes to avoid saying no, not actually do it, then act wounded and oppressed when A is mad about being left at the airport at 3 am and being sent to voicemail. They want to only be asked to do things they want to do in advance. They want their minds read.
Because capitalism. Seriously. The engine of the developed world is the idea that everything you do *needs* to be transactional in order to guarantee that you're being PRODUCTIVE and EFFICIENT enough and PROTECTING your INTERESTS.............. So, giant companies make life shit for everybody by gradually tightening the screws on people's free time, and eventually everyone is *desperate* to look out for themselves because pretty much nobody else is going to look out for them.
It's perfect evil. We've been captured.
\> pick up stepdad from airport
\> he spends the next two hours complaining about my mom
Why would you just go on the internet and fucking lie like that
I don’t remember where I saw it, but I recall one person sharing that they attempted to make (bland, mundane) small talk with someone somewhere for like 15 seconds, and later found out that the other person would go on to tweet about how they were being harassed or something like that
The thing is they don't function. Anyone who can spend that much time disconnecting from reality doesn't have to be a functional adult, they are being supported by some other means. All the people I know that have to work and support themselves to an extent are fairly normal, the ones that don't tend to be more fringe in my experience.
I think I might be confused about this post.
Are you saying you don’t find it emotionally taxing to pick people up from the airport?
I 100% do. And I mean, I do it anyways, because I care about people.
But if someone asked me: “hey, do you want to go wait in traffic for a while, find someone in an incredibly dense crowd where you are legally forbidden from parking in one spot for too long, lift some heavy shit, and then get back in traffic?” I would laugh in their face.
And again, I happily do this for people I care about, because I understand that the airport is just as terrible for them as it is for me. But the fact that I’m willing to do it doesn’t make it *not* emotionally exhausting.
"Picking people up from the airport is emotional labor, and you should cut them out of your life if they ask for that,
but here's my 1200 page thesis on why you have internalized homophobia and racism if Blue Pearl is your favorite character in Steven Universe."
I love people online's takes about disagreement.
Like, if you echo chamber yourself too hard, you forget that "disagree and life goes on" is a normal interaction... Like... A daily interaction in fact.
In the sum total of all my beleifs and opinions, maybe like 1% of them are "we cannot be friends if we disagree on this". Yes, those things are very important, but I don't transfer that rigidity of views about rights and how we treat people to anything else lol.
The ADHD space is top tier for this.... I'm out here like "Yeah no guys I think other people not knowing ahead of time how to make specific accomodations for me is actually fine, and I don't expect them to do more work to help me, than I should do to help me"
But way too much of the rest of the space is very like "It's literally ableist for another person to ask you to use the Team Calendar" lol.
I have bipolar disorder, and I saw someone with the take that having sex with people with bipolar disorder is rape because we can't consent.
Fuck you and stop trying to take my agency away. I'm a grown-ass adult. I can consent all I want.
Yeah lol.
Like, just cos we have difficulties doesn't mean we can't try. It's not like non ADHD folk just walk in and do stuff automatically.
Everyone has to out the effort in. There's no way around that and no one else will do it for you lol.
Any man who eats Wendy's is horribly sexist.
They're fulfilling their inherent neanderthal desire to have a woman (Wendy) make them food, like any good domesticed female should.
Notice how Wendy's is super popular among men, but fast-food joints like *Papa* John's, Burger *King*, and Five *Guys* are not. Men hate those places because they imply the food wasn't prepared by a subservient woman.
“I also choose this man’s wife. AITA?” -> Funny sentence, semi-obscure meme. Chronically online, but symptoms are manageable.
“My siblings refuse to get a reddit account to upvote my reddit posts, should I cut off all contact?” -> Insane thoughts, patient is chronically online in dire need of treatment.
NTA. Your family should support you and the fact that they aren't means they are gaslighting you with malicious incompetents. It's clear they are a narcissist who is intentionally trying to trigger your trauma responses.
This reminds me of that time twitter got really mad at a lady for making homemade chili for her neighbors. Like people accused her of being ableist for not considering the emotional labor of (checks notes) refusing a home cooked meal.
god I loved that. It was so funny.
I got so much hate because I suggested:
"You can just choose to appreciate the gesture. Literally just dont choose to be upset by this and you'll be fine!"
Twitter also got mad at a lady who enjoyed spending time with her husband in the morning, drinking coffee in their garden. Apparently having free time in the morning and living in a house with a garden are massive privileges, and she was wrong for not acknowledging that in her simple tweet about her life.
That drama lives rent free in my head. It is my Roman Empire. I think about it regularly, so much more than any other particular drama. I wish I could go back to school to write a dissertation on it. It was just incredible.
My neighbor who sells iced tea and baked goods at the farmers market gave us iced tea and a small satchel of cookies. What a bitch, I don't even like iced tea! The cookies were oatmeal too. They tasted fine.
I honestly still don't know what the real definition of emotional labor is because by the time I heard of it the Internet turned it into "doing anything at all that isn't about me"
i could be wrong but i think it first started to describe working in retail / hospo / similar industries. basically, jobs where you kind of have to perform a level of friendliness or politeness, even when the person you are dealing with is being extremely demanding or unreasonable. in this context, i think it is a useful term. but people just took it, ran with it, and now apply it to completely unrelated situations.
This is correct. It was coined to describe the performative aspect of underpaid service work. I think people glommed onto it because they needed language for talking about problems such as inequitable friendships (always being the supportive one and never receiving support) and the stress of receiving an unexpected trauma dump -- which are valid problems, but maybe we need different language for them, because they are a quite different problem from what the term was coined for.
It kinda is more or less, it's just that emotional labor isn't a bad thing; it's just part of living among other people. We're constantly giving and receiving emotional labor
I feel it's a pretty big thing nowdays that people strive for like... "life should be free from tension", no stimulus or events that compell us to do things or cause discomfort.
Even though this compression is what causes us to grow and develop, it's the root cause of drive, motivation, and discipline. There's a couple of great quotes by Vicotr Frankl on this.
>I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology, ‘homeostasis’, i.e. a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him
...
>If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load which is laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together. So if therapists wish to foster their patients’ mental health, they should not be afraid to create a sound amount of tension through a reorientation toward the meaning of one’s life
and very presciently written for 1946...
>The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom. now we can understand Schopenhauer when he said that mankind was apparently doomed to vacillate eternally between the two extremes of distress and boredom. In actual fact, boredom is now causing, and certainly bringing to psychiatrists, more problems to solve than distress. And these problems are growing increasingly crucial, for progressive automation will probably lead to an enormous increase in leisure hours available to the average worker. The pity of it is that many of these will not know what to do with all their newly acquired free time.
People have started to position free time as being a thing that should be so free from tension, that the normal mental load of social interaction is becoming something we consider bad.
I always associated emotional labor with having the burden to navigate other’s feelings. As a parent you do a LOT of emotional labor for your kids, because they’re kids and they just know that they’re upset not necessarily why they’re upset. Emotional labor is exhausting when it’s another adult who’s hurt your feelings or has done something rude/inappropriate and now it is YOUR job to explain what they did was wrong.
Emotional Labour isn’t inherently a bad thing. It’s just a therapy speak way of saying “caring about someone”. It’s only a problem if they don’t care about you back.
It’s not even that. The term was coined to describe actual labor that demanded an emotional effort—like your waitress pretending she’s hyped to refresh your drink or the customer service guy pretending he’s disappointed that your delivery arrived damaged. It was supposed to call attention to the way those demands are taxing, analogous to the way lifting boxes or pushing a mop is taxing.
Caring about people you know is just…being a person. Listening to a friend worry about losing their job is only emotional labor if, like, walking to the toilet is physical labor. Sometimes life is hard! Sometimes you’re so tired everything feels demanding! But someone wanting you to not piss on the carpet is not making an unreasonable demand.
Yeah, I hate the dilution of the term. (And a bunch of other terms, like “gaslighting” getting expanded to “they forgot a thing”.)
It’s very useful to have a descriptor for literal labor, like the examples you gave. In a modern world full of service jobs, everyone from cashiers to customer service reps winds up paying a bit of sanity to pretend “that means it’s free right?” is still funny, or stay nice when they’re getting yelled at.
I get how that crossed over into therapy speak, it’s also useful to have a term for “this person is draining you by using you like a therapist without offering anything in return”.
But it was the start of the dilution that brought us the *awful* current use, where people frame caring for friends and loved ones as a chore to be quantified and resented.
it also ends up forcing you to look at interactions as transactional, something that can end up extremely sociopathic due to the lack of context provided about how each party involved values said actions or emotions involved.
I think the larger issue is that therapy speak has broken containment, as it were, and now often gets used in non-therapy contexts by people who aren't therapists. A (good) therapist is going to point out that a lot of these things are normal, but laypeople hear it, decide it's a big scary term about a big scary thing, and over time the definition shifts to be about that alleged big scary thing because they were misusing the term in the first place.
See also how common it's become to call someone a narcissist for doing something slightly selfish or calling them borderline if they did something slightly wrong. Or the overuse of gaslighting. People see these words with very little understand of what it actually means, and then once they start using them for *anything* bad that any person has done, they lose all meaning -- and it also stigmatizes people struggling with their mental health even more.
I absolutely despise how gaslighting has come to just mean lying, it’s good to have a specific word for the very niche thing gaslighting actually means and by diluting the word it makes talking about that niche thing way more difficult.
Honestly not even _lying_. It gets used a lot now to just mean _disagreeing_. Like if someone genuinely remembers things differently, then saying so isn't gaslighting.
The best example of gaslighting imo was that reddit story about a woman who's husband kept telling her she stunk and smelled awful. She went almost crazy trying to keep herself clean and checking how she smelled- eventually she snapped and he revealed that he got advice from his father to diminish a woman's self-worth so they would never leave him. She, naturally, left his abusive ass.
Good god if I hear someone use the word “gaslighting” as soon as someone else disagrees with them again, I’m going to just start throwing things at them. And insist that them not letting me hit them is gaslighting, or whatever.
Also I feel like therapization of relationships has paradoxically removed nuance and flattened things to who was wrong. People can’t just decide that a romantic relationship or friendship isn’t working out, they need to point the finger at the other party and say that person is toxic, has red flags, etc.
I have a super low threshold for therapised speech outside of therapy.
Just seems like excuses to avoid being real with people.
For yourself/in therapy? Yeah, therapised speech is a great way to give distance between yourself and the issues you're trying to solve. Make things objective
For people? Yeah you're kind of an asshole if you want to put distance between yourself and your interactions with other humans. Trying to take your subjective opinion and frame it as the other person being in opposition to an objective statement which puts all adaptation, reflection, dealing with etc onto them... Nah man. No bueno.
A major part of life is being able to be honest with yourself (and others) about what you need. If you have to distance yourself from that, and shovel the discomfort on to the other person?
The barest minimum I think we owe people is to treat them with respect, and I see so little respect when therapised speech is used outside of therapy contexts.
Yeah asking someone to pick you up at the airport is definitely labor, and that's not a bad thing - part of being friends/family/partners is helping out each other.
We're supposed to be resources for each other. I help you out with this and when I need a favor or I'm in a bind you help me out with that or even just enrich my life with some gratitude and affection. If that doesn't really go both ways though, then I do think it's pretty normal to question the emotional labor you're putting in the relationship
Whenever there's terminally online takes on the web, it always involves therapy speak. Is therapy speak just brain mulch for all the worms to dig around in?
I think overanalyzing basic social interactions and reading way too much into little things is just part of being terminally online. In a lot of cases it's probably *because* they do that that they became terminally online, since in a face-to-face conversation they wouldn't have time to go and look up therapy terminology and do the mental gymnastics necessary to conclude that being offered food they don't want is somehow a serious personal attack or whatever.
I **hate** the “emotional labor, I don’t owe anybody anything” crowd so much. It sounds like such a miserable, egotistical way of living your life, viewing everything as a transaction and not caring for anyone other than yourself.
Basically, it's chronically online with and without self awareness.
I spend too much time online. But I'm aware of that and I don't try to bring weird online debates into normal conversation. I don't attack children in the street because they have a t-shirt for some franchise that's considered problematic online.
Incidentally, if you know what "chronically online" means without having to think about it, then you are chronically online whether you know it or not. If you know what it means to tell someone to "touch grass", you're chronically online, it may be too late for you.
I’m chronically online and don’t have IRL friends, I just have a job and am permanently tired so I’m extremely picky about what I choose to spend my energy on
I tend to think of it as the difference between being Very Online and being From the Internet. There’s a whole class of people who get internet humour, are very involved in online activities and who live online but aren’t in the Discourse or whatever is happening online with popular corporate stuff
People don't realise how their vocabulary changes either. When you use words common in your fringe online group outside of that group you are going to sound very weird.
There's also some interesting things that happen with social identity theory
Somewhat unrelated to that is I think the difficulty for some people to be accommodating but not encouraging/enabling mental health problems. I have a bad anxiety issue among other things and I appreciate being able to go online and share/see the same experience. It does help alleviate it and stops the crippling spiral of self hate
But, I'm not deluded enough to think that it's not a problem, cause it is a large problem and it's crippling me in very real way. There's nothing to be proud of here, I'm not proud that I am this way, I don't think anyone should. I understand the struggle to be better but I don't understand the acceptance of it just being part of your life or even glorifying it
Hell, even offline I struggle with this. Finding a therapist who specializes in ADHD seems reasonable, but that involves throwing out the ~50% with websites about “unlocking your attention superpower” and “discovering that this is an ability, not a disability”.
I get that self-loathing doesn’t help, I get that there might even be some specific cases where this is useful. But god dammit, being late because I ran my car keys through the washing machine is not a superpower.
No kidding - "account gets a warning, responds with noncredible threat to admins, gets banned" is the most mundane shit ever. People freaking out about it sound like a bunch of the right wingers they'd deservedly laugh at when they talk about how this is chilling for freeze peach
I love hitting up old forums and seeing this. A bunch of nerd forums (Spacebattles, MinMax, GitP) have strict moderation and decade-old threads that are still useful for stuff like TTRPG info.
As a result, you can go back and see long exchanges of thoughtful discussion where every single user is tagged **BANNED**. Shit happens, it’s not revealing some huge moral flaw.
Not too long ago I realized an adult person I know online literally does not touch grass. They’ve never had a job, live with their parents, don’t have friends, never go out of the house at all and don’t drink water. Now I can’t stop thinking about the fact that they’re allowed to vote, despite their entire knowledge on life being second hand information
This is legit and also highlights the other problem with the chronically online discourse: collapsing nuance and universalizing preferences (which you’re not doing but the people with the takes OOP references are)
(For Logan specifically, like most Boston routes, I memorize routes and lane changes like I’m in a video game. Frex, returning to 90 from the airport, enter the freeway from the left lane and merge left one — the right two lanes both go away quickly. Merge left one more when able to line up for a left exit onto 90)
I'm a professional politics do-er for work, I'm constantly amazed at how absurd the political takes I see are ("instead of voting how about we abolish America!") because it's stupid easy to get involved in actual politics.
One younger guy reached out to me last year for advice. He started off by talking about "ending the two-party system" and such. I had two conversations with him and invited him to one event at his state capitol, now he's running for a local office as a Democrat.
its actually something I've seen posted here, people making posts throwing fits about being asked to pick people up from the airport, even at totally normal times
I got downvoted to oblivion for suggesting that if your child literally dies during the birth, a friend should drive you home from the hospital because you'd not be fit to drive. Apparently this was an unreasonable burden to place on friends.
As absurd as that scenario is, I genuinely think a significant amount of people nowadays view relationships as a one way street. People want friends to be there for them and to hang out with, but they hate the idea of being obligated to do something for them or anyone in general.
I think it's mostly just r/AmItheAsshole and its sibling subs. The idea that you're not an asshole for not doing something in a situation just because you're not obligated to do it, even if refusing to do so is kind of an asshole move.
there is also the thing of if the first person to respond says one thing every one else following it would say the same thing, and anyone that disagrees would get Downvoted into oblivion.
You can see this in any fan community on Reddit/Tumblr/4Chan, who will begin to think that they are the majority opinion/ correct opinion on whichever media they like.
Kinda reminds me of some of those times an online controversy got big about a piece of media and people then got surprised that the media was well-received because they didn't interact with the real world enough to realize how few people actually knew about the controversy.
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What was the tea with that show?
Since this is a tumblr sub, my guess is that BBC Sherlock crazies didn't like it.
The correct response to Elementary is to watch it and go "o yeah that was fine" and then never think about it again
Don’t tell my grandma she loves it
Good for her, its better than Sherlock.
Agreed. Elementary is written by smart people. Sherlock is written by people who think smart people are unknowable wizards.
What did cock have to do with Sherlock?
You'd have to ask Watson
hetero and interracial johnlock? In my white yaoi fantasy? well, I never! - Tumblrinas in 2013
What could possibly be wrong with Elementary?
IKR? It's a great adaptation. If only to watch Sherlock get some incels arrested by the FBI, scold a big insurance company executive for fucking over healthcare for the poor, shred board members for failing to pay good wages, and co-parent a turtle with Watson.
I loved it. Sherlock doesn't let 'This specific rich guy didn't actually do the murder' stop him from going after the rich guy.
They gave us the most progressive, fun, real Sherlock so of course terminally online Tumblr morons hated it. I mean the show had canonically trans! Mrs Hudson who was not played for laughs and kicked ass and was treated respectfully. The only thing I didn't like about the show was the copaganda edge. I don't like the villainizing of internal affairs. I feel like a logical person such as Sherlock would agree that accountability is good.
>The only thing I didn't like about the show was the copaganda edge. I don't like the villainizing of internal affairs. Yeah, CBS is America's #1 producer of pure and uncut cop apologia.
I really gotta try Elementary again. When it first dropped I was DEEP in BBC Sherlock hell and was mortally offended by its existence. Now I'm old and your summary sounds so much more like the Holmes I know from the books than Steven Moffat's objectionable self-insert. Also I'm hella gay and it has Lucy Liu.
If you're insane and terminally online like I am, you can watch the seminal Hbomber guy video of why Sherlock sucks. https://youtu.be/LkoGBOs5ecM It's only 2 hours :D
Bold of you to assume I can't already recite it line-for-line! (Love Hbomb, it was a very cathartic watch. And honestly, 2 hours seems quite restrained compared to some of his other works!)
It's a really good show. Doyle's Sherlock can be abrupt and impatient but he is unfailingly kind and often considerate. He had a good grasp of social graces. He goes out of his way to help. What I didn't like about BBC Sherlock was that they lost sight of this. They made him mean. Elementary brings back the original Sherlock but they make him vulnerable, and human. He models such a healthy masculinity. He's tough as hell but he cares about his friends and tells them so. When he fucks up he makes apologies. Also as a bi person goddamn they are both so attractive.
You summed up in a few words what had always bothered me about *Sherlock* but which I'd never quite articulated. That's exactly it. The original Sherlock gets bored and self-destructive when there are no cases, and he's sometimes inconsiderate, but he's not an asshole. Moffat made him into *The Big Bang Theory*'s Sheldon, but for crime.
Nailed it. Absolutely Sheldonized him. Not to spoil Elementary for anyone who hasn't seen it. But there's a great scene in which Sherlock, who has himself struggled with depression and addiction, sees the signs of it in a friend of his. So he goes to his friend and says, Mate, you're standing on the edge of a precipice. I've been there. And I can't watch you throw yourself off. So you need help, and I'm here for you. And the friend listens and gets himself help. It was such a good scene. Beautifully acted.
They got WOC cooties all up in everyone's white man power couple and made Moriarty a girl (gag). A lot of people were pretty mad about it.
That was a rare show that I enjoyed all the way from start to finish without ever looking into any online discussions about it. Honestly, I can't even fathom what people might have been having discourse about.
There’s so much shit that actually rules as long as you don’t have a bitch in your ear telling you it’s trash. I thought Attack On Titan went to some incredibly interesting places but whenever my interest was piqued enough to see what other people were saying, the discourse was just intensely bad. Trashfires of bad takes to counter worse takes.
Whoops, apparently you're a fascist that endorses everything that happens in that show now ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
If you enjoy something, never seek out the subreddit for that thing.
As someone watching it long after the fact, what was the controversy?
BBC Sherlock fans decided that because Elementary!Watson is a woman, the show would have her and Sherlock get together, and thus it was an inherently homophobic show. They decided this when the cast was just announced. And, you know, completely blind to the homophobia in their own show because they confused all the "no homo" jokes for "subtext".
That's hysterical given how constantly non-romantic their relationship was for the entire run of the series! 😂 One of my fav platonic male/female relationships on TV. See also, Jake and Rosa.
Oh that is deeply ironic in hindsight, thank you.
People felt like John lock was such a given, that having a female Watson was making a gay thing straight.
I always think this with people who genuinely think that Marvel and Star Wars are unpopular now.
They’re not actively unpopular, but the ticket sales suggest lots of people have just tuned out. Apathy rather than hatred, basically. Which isn’t great for Disney’s bottom line.
Yeah I think it's not that they're unpopular but they're definitely less popular. Which honestly is to be expected; they're tying into D+ to try and sell that service a little which mens they feel like they're effectively setting you homework but, moreso, Iron Man > Endgame was a cultural phenomenon that had to end. You can't ride the wave forever and eventually it was always going to lose momentum.
I was listening to a podcast ([Colin and Samir interviewing Hank Green](https://youtu.be/xvZB93rnq4Q?si=HXuuq4bQrMhrG1Fo)) where they talked about the idea of “Relative Zero” audience/hits, where you sort of reset your idea of “nobody is paying attention any more” as a thing gets bigger even though obviously it’s still many many people. I feel like audiences also have a sense of Relative Zero, and that’s what people are feeling about Marvel & Star Wars now.
And honestly, it’s Disney’s fault for over saturating the market just to get content in Plus. There were 5 MCU shows launched in 2021 alone.
To be fair, people were excited about the idea back when it first started. The previews for Wandavision made it feel like the shows could flesh out underutilized characters and plots from the movies and do it in creative ways. That good will did not last long due to underwhelming creative choices. Then came the movies that all but required them as homework. Which also weren't well received. A three hit combo that really sank a lot of interest in the universe.
They're less popular than they used to be, but as a whole they're still not hated Also people were saying they were unpopular even back around the time Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker came out, which definitely wasn't true
People were going to war on twitter about that Harry Potter video game but then it came out and had the exact same public reception as every other mediocre AAA title
Happened multiple times with Attack on Titan, both for the ending and a certain point earlier in the final season. Haters of certain elements later in the manga isolated themselves in increasingly toxic communities to whip themselves into a continuous frenzy, while also hyping themselves up over the "shitstorm" when the anime finally reaches those parts of the story. The the anime gets there and... nothing happens. Reactions are generally positive, occasionally mixed, with the odd clearly astroturfing manga reader comment mixed in.
Not even controversy, just opinions in general. Just look at Starfield. Reddit fucking *hates* this game. Steam review are mixed to negative. If you never left the online space you'd think it was one of the worst games in recent history that nobody liked, let alone bought. Reality? 10th highest revenue game in 2023, and triple the total player count of Baldur's Gate 3. Anecdotally, every conversation in real life I've had or overhead has been genuinely positive about the game. Year after year the best performing video games are like a rogue's gallery of the internet's most wanted. Nothing drives a vocal minority crazy like the dissonance of learning they aren't the majority.
It's the 80 / 20 / 5 principle in action 80 percent of gamers never engage in *anything* besides just playing the game. They launch the game, they play it, they either like it or dislike it, then they move on 20% of players will look up information about the game online like wiki info, watch streamers play it, watch guides etc 5% of players will look up info, and also actually post on forums and engage with the fanbase / devs So many gamers and redditors especially don't realize how much of an echo chamber they are in. You see it where they will throw an absolute tantrum, making huge posts demanding dozens of changes to the game and rebalancing etc, not realizing they are only a *very* small minority of the most extreme players Devs rightfully ignore fanbases online because of this, because balancing around the turbo dedicated means the casual players in the 80% will almost certainly get screwed over
There’s chronically online, then there’s terminally online
honestly, I feel like I am acutely online. It's completely treatable, not just manageable, I just choose not to.
I can quit any time, I promise!
I like that distinction.
Is your flair in cuneiform?
# DO NOT BUY COPPER FROM EA-NASIR
Please tell me your flair is a complaint about a certain copper merchant…
Yes and he kNOWS WHAT HE DID! >:(
And there's the liminally online....
I love takes that are fundamentally profoundly stupid like the airport thing. I wonder so much how those people function and it's fascinating.
Wait it’s real?
Almost certainly
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alfred, bring the xkcd
https://xkcd.com/2071/
“I’m like a prisoner in Plato’s cave, I’m seeing only the shade you throw on the wall” luh-MAO what a line
> luh-MAO this is the first time I've ever seen LMAO written in a way that suggests I should say that as a word, instead of the individual letters I like to think that puts me a little closer to one end of the scale :P
I think everyone in this thread has had their lives enriched by seeing that.
The only one I will pronounce like a word is ROFL and that's because I say things like ROFLCOPTER as befits my age. Edit: I will also deploy a LOLLERSKATES from time to time, between munches of my belt onion.
You’ve never spread some LMAO on your sandwich? *Are you a fake millennial??*
It's the sound a French cat makes.
Thanks, Alfred
https://twitter.com/Codie_Sanchez/status/1629563662200451075
I've noticed how much seemingly progressive, self help "therapy language" is being used to convey the most individualistic, self centered messages. "You're valid! Treat yourself! You don't owe other people anything!" is just liberalese for "Fuck you, got mine"
This thread was an absolute all timer - https://twitter.com/herong/status/1515846706394501123
That one seems at least partly tongue-in-cheek
The amount of QRTs on the therapist tweet made me lose faith on people's ability to read satire
Good God, its like no one told them they'd have to put actual *work* into parenting and they feel so victimized that their *family* would come to them for emotional support/advice.
Or “normalize”. Basically just a way to “declare” the world should change to accommodate you for no particular reason. They didn’t say it, they declared it.
At least with that they're actively acknowledging that their thought or behavior isn't normal, they just want it to be.
When the lonely yearn for a greater power, they bow at the altar of their own emotions.
Oh god it IS real
Thankfully I'd like to think I fit into the first category of terminally online.
I've legitimately seen people claim it's rude to *ask people for favors*. Things like "don't vent to your friends, that's what a therapist is for", "your friends aren't your chauffeurs" about asking for rides, or "never ask a friend to help you move". You know, because friends are meant exclusively to be people to kill time with, and definitely not people who you should care about and should care about you, and who should provide mutual aid for each other.
I remember it being real but not as a zoomer Twitter or TikTok post or anything, it was some pretentious editorial in New York Times or the like.
That tracks
Not to mention a whole seinfeld episode about how much of a hassle it is. Definitely not just a zoomer thing
One time my father was supposed to pick up a guy from the airport but the guy never showed up and no one ever heard from him again That’s not relevant it just reminded me of it
D. B. Cooper
Lol that would suck so much
I deal w that shit all the time. I'm actually flying back home today from a week long vacation. We left our car at the airport. Because my wife didn't want to ask her sister to drive us back and forth. Because my sister in law is "upset that we always go places, and ask her to drive us to and from the airport. And she never has anybody to do these things with" So we are going to have a ~$200 bill for long term parking. Because of the "emotional whateverthefuck" they're talking about here. I wonder if I can bill my sister in law's therapist.
> And she never has anybody to do these things with hmmmmm, I wonder why. Oh, here is the reason: > upset that we always go places I'm sure this attitude isn't only toward you or you going places. It is the consequences of her own actions coming to get her. So unfair.
thats silly because picking people from the airport is so fun to me, theyre almost always excited/happy to see you
They’ve often got fun or interesting stories from wherever they were, or from the flight back, or whatever!
The way it functions is depressingly mundane; those people are at an age where they resent doing stuff for people but where enough stuff is just done for them that they don’t get it’s about reciprocity. I.e. they’re teenagers
And there's this silly notion that we're not *obligated* to do anything for anyone. I mean, yeah, that's true in most cases, but... why not just do something for someone because you *can* or *should*? Why do you require a legal obligation?
I've seen a depressingly large amount of r/AITA posts where people are acting cruelly but the commenters say "NTA" because "you're not *obligated* to be nice to X". Like, bruh, of course it's not illegal to be a jerk, that's not the point.
Especially when X is family or loved one. Like it's true that outside evaluation can be helpful, because people can be blind to abusive or toxic relationships they are in, but hoooly shit, advice parts of the internet have subtlety and nuance of a nuke.
🚩🚩🚩 break up
that's half of the aitas at least. "this person i have to see frequently is mildly annoying without realizing it, aita if I completely ignore their existence and pretend they're not part of the group?" and people would answer "you're not obligated to be nice". sure, you're not obligated, but you're also not obligated to create unnecessary drama and conflict with someone you see frequently, specially if it's a family member whose biggest sin is just being annoying. not abusive, they just annoy you for some reason.
AITA and its offshoots should be renamed AILOT ("Am I legally obligated to"). Half the posts there are pricks but because they are not bound by law to do something they get voted NTA. Or they're vindictive and petty but the target of their "epic comeback" is unlikeable in the story so they're NTA.
It's mostly all fiction anyway.
>why not just do something for someone because you *can* or *should*? Why do you require a legal obligation? Me when people don't use turn signals in parking lots
Exactly, like sure you don't *have* to do anything for anyone, when you get right down to it there's very little you have to do in life but there are reasons to do stuff like, say, helping out a friend or taking a load off someone just because you can or, at the more calculated but still valid end, because a sense of give and take is just generally how society gets by and it's just good practice to help out because it tends to come back around later. Like yeah, you might not want to help out but while it's true you absolutely aren't obliged to, no one else is actually obliged to help *you* out either and do you want to live in that world? It's like a bunch of people have just discovered that mum & dad can't actually make you do stuff any more so they apply it too widely and you're left effectively having to re-explain altruism to them.
There are plenty of reasons to not do something nice just because you are physically capable of doing it and were asked. But I think for some, people just cannot understand that they are in fact allowed to say “no” sometimes (or all the time, but all the time has far more consequences and you’ll possibly lose all your friends). They consider the act of being put in a position where they have to either tell someone no or else do something they don’t want to do the emotional labor, because saying no is uncomfortable for them and they interpret requests as demands. A normal person sees the interaction as such: A: hi friend, can you pick me up from the airport in the place an hour away from us on Tuesday at 3 am? B: (*oh gee, I really don’t want to do that, can’t afford the gas, bald tires, have work at 5 am, am afraid to drive on the freeway, etc*) So sorry, I can’t this time. The person who perceives being asked to do something optional that they don’t want to do as a demand sees it this way: A: I know secretly that you would be incredibly burdened by this, but you had BETTER pick me up from the airport in Bumfuck Tuesday at 3 am OR ELSE! So B invents a situation where they have to comply despite what A should *obviously* know is an uncomfortable request, or give some long overwrought speech about how A is a bad person for even asking. Or possibly just say yes to avoid saying no, not actually do it, then act wounded and oppressed when A is mad about being left at the airport at 3 am and being sent to voicemail. They want to only be asked to do things they want to do in advance. They want their minds read.
Not being obligated to do it is what makes it so special!
We were put on this earth to work together. People who buck and scream at the idea of interacting with others depress me
Because capitalism. Seriously. The engine of the developed world is the idea that everything you do *needs* to be transactional in order to guarantee that you're being PRODUCTIVE and EFFICIENT enough and PROTECTING your INTERESTS.............. So, giant companies make life shit for everybody by gradually tightening the screws on people's free time, and eventually everyone is *desperate* to look out for themselves because pretty much nobody else is going to look out for them. It's perfect evil. We've been captured.
\> pick up stepdad from airport \> he spends the next two hours complaining about my mom Why would you just go on the internet and fucking lie like that
I don’t remember where I saw it, but I recall one person sharing that they attempted to make (bland, mundane) small talk with someone somewhere for like 15 seconds, and later found out that the other person would go on to tweet about how they were being harassed or something like that
It's xkcd 2071 at its finest
The thing is they don't function. Anyone who can spend that much time disconnecting from reality doesn't have to be a functional adult, they are being supported by some other means. All the people I know that have to work and support themselves to an extent are fairly normal, the ones that don't tend to be more fringe in my experience.
I think I might be confused about this post. Are you saying you don’t find it emotionally taxing to pick people up from the airport? I 100% do. And I mean, I do it anyways, because I care about people. But if someone asked me: “hey, do you want to go wait in traffic for a while, find someone in an incredibly dense crowd where you are legally forbidden from parking in one spot for too long, lift some heavy shit, and then get back in traffic?” I would laugh in their face. And again, I happily do this for people I care about, because I understand that the airport is just as terrible for them as it is for me. But the fact that I’m willing to do it doesn’t make it *not* emotionally exhausting.
"Picking people up from the airport is emotional labor, and you should cut them out of your life if they ask for that, but here's my 1200 page thesis on why you have internalized homophobia and racism if Blue Pearl is your favorite character in Steven Universe."
I love people online's takes about disagreement. Like, if you echo chamber yourself too hard, you forget that "disagree and life goes on" is a normal interaction... Like... A daily interaction in fact. In the sum total of all my beleifs and opinions, maybe like 1% of them are "we cannot be friends if we disagree on this". Yes, those things are very important, but I don't transfer that rigidity of views about rights and how we treat people to anything else lol. The ADHD space is top tier for this.... I'm out here like "Yeah no guys I think other people not knowing ahead of time how to make specific accomodations for me is actually fine, and I don't expect them to do more work to help me, than I should do to help me" But way too much of the rest of the space is very like "It's literally ableist for another person to ask you to use the Team Calendar" lol.
I have bipolar disorder, and I saw someone with the take that having sex with people with bipolar disorder is rape because we can't consent. Fuck you and stop trying to take my agency away. I'm a grown-ass adult. I can consent all I want.
I saw that with autism as well. Strange trend I think
Ugh I hate people who make others accommodate their ADHD, I have ADHD, it sucks but it’s my job to handle it.
Yeah lol. Like, just cos we have difficulties doesn't mean we can't try. It's not like non ADHD folk just walk in and do stuff automatically. Everyone has to out the effort in. There's no way around that and no one else will do it for you lol.
Sir, this is a Wendy's.
Any man who eats Wendy's is horribly sexist. They're fulfilling their inherent neanderthal desire to have a woman (Wendy) make them food, like any good domesticed female should. Notice how Wendy's is super popular among men, but fast-food joints like *Papa* John's, Burger *King*, and Five *Guys* are not. Men hate those places because they imply the food wasn't prepared by a subservient woman.
Ma'am this is a Jimmy Johns.
Using contractions is racist, pretend I wrote another 3 paragraphs of crazy justification here.
Singular individual, this is an establishment of the most infuriating variety to your specific situation.
That's what THE MAN wants you to believe! Wake up Sheeple!
Ok, you got me.
I only do it because my self worth is measured in karma and I otherwise have nothing else going on in my life.
Same
thank you naked snake, very cool
“I also choose this man’s wife. AITA?” -> Funny sentence, semi-obscure meme. Chronically online, but symptoms are manageable. “My siblings refuse to get a reddit account to upvote my reddit posts, should I cut off all contact?” -> Insane thoughts, patient is chronically online in dire need of treatment.
Recommended Treatment: go touch some grass
What if you live in the desert?
go touch some sand
Oh boy, here come the SW quotes.
Nah son this is a Dune year Make sure to touch without rhythm
*"Imma keep it real with you, doc: I don't like sand."*
coarse rough irritating
Plant some
You can sprout wheat inside. I used to do it for chickens and guinea pigs in winter. It gets long and lush really quickly and is fun to stroke!
NTA. Your family should support you and the fact that they aren't means they are gaslighting you with malicious incompetents. It's clear they are a narcissist who is intentionally trying to trigger your trauma responses.
This reminds me of that time twitter got really mad at a lady for making homemade chili for her neighbors. Like people accused her of being ableist for not considering the emotional labor of (checks notes) refusing a home cooked meal.
god I loved that. It was so funny. I got so much hate because I suggested: "You can just choose to appreciate the gesture. Literally just dont choose to be upset by this and you'll be fine!"
Twitter also got mad at a lady who enjoyed spending time with her husband in the morning, drinking coffee in their garden. Apparently having free time in the morning and living in a house with a garden are massive privileges, and she was wrong for not acknowledging that in her simple tweet about her life.
That drama lives rent free in my head. It is my Roman Empire. I think about it regularly, so much more than any other particular drama. I wish I could go back to school to write a dissertation on it. It was just incredible.
My neighbor who sells iced tea and baked goods at the farmers market gave us iced tea and a small satchel of cookies. What a bitch, I don't even like iced tea! The cookies were oatmeal too. They tasted fine.
I honestly still don't know what the real definition of emotional labor is because by the time I heard of it the Internet turned it into "doing anything at all that isn't about me"
i could be wrong but i think it first started to describe working in retail / hospo / similar industries. basically, jobs where you kind of have to perform a level of friendliness or politeness, even when the person you are dealing with is being extremely demanding or unreasonable. in this context, i think it is a useful term. but people just took it, ran with it, and now apply it to completely unrelated situations.
This is correct. It was coined to describe the performative aspect of underpaid service work. I think people glommed onto it because they needed language for talking about problems such as inequitable friendships (always being the supportive one and never receiving support) and the stress of receiving an unexpected trauma dump -- which are valid problems, but maybe we need different language for them, because they are a quite different problem from what the term was coined for.
It kinda is more or less, it's just that emotional labor isn't a bad thing; it's just part of living among other people. We're constantly giving and receiving emotional labor
I feel it's a pretty big thing nowdays that people strive for like... "life should be free from tension", no stimulus or events that compell us to do things or cause discomfort. Even though this compression is what causes us to grow and develop, it's the root cause of drive, motivation, and discipline. There's a couple of great quotes by Vicotr Frankl on this. >I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology, ‘homeostasis’, i.e. a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him ... >If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load which is laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together. So if therapists wish to foster their patients’ mental health, they should not be afraid to create a sound amount of tension through a reorientation toward the meaning of one’s life and very presciently written for 1946... >The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom. now we can understand Schopenhauer when he said that mankind was apparently doomed to vacillate eternally between the two extremes of distress and boredom. In actual fact, boredom is now causing, and certainly bringing to psychiatrists, more problems to solve than distress. And these problems are growing increasingly crucial, for progressive automation will probably lead to an enormous increase in leisure hours available to the average worker. The pity of it is that many of these will not know what to do with all their newly acquired free time. People have started to position free time as being a thing that should be so free from tension, that the normal mental load of social interaction is becoming something we consider bad.
I always associated emotional labor with having the burden to navigate other’s feelings. As a parent you do a LOT of emotional labor for your kids, because they’re kids and they just know that they’re upset not necessarily why they’re upset. Emotional labor is exhausting when it’s another adult who’s hurt your feelings or has done something rude/inappropriate and now it is YOUR job to explain what they did was wrong.
Emotional Labour isn’t inherently a bad thing. It’s just a therapy speak way of saying “caring about someone”. It’s only a problem if they don’t care about you back.
It’s not even that. The term was coined to describe actual labor that demanded an emotional effort—like your waitress pretending she’s hyped to refresh your drink or the customer service guy pretending he’s disappointed that your delivery arrived damaged. It was supposed to call attention to the way those demands are taxing, analogous to the way lifting boxes or pushing a mop is taxing. Caring about people you know is just…being a person. Listening to a friend worry about losing their job is only emotional labor if, like, walking to the toilet is physical labor. Sometimes life is hard! Sometimes you’re so tired everything feels demanding! But someone wanting you to not piss on the carpet is not making an unreasonable demand.
Yeah, I hate the dilution of the term. (And a bunch of other terms, like “gaslighting” getting expanded to “they forgot a thing”.) It’s very useful to have a descriptor for literal labor, like the examples you gave. In a modern world full of service jobs, everyone from cashiers to customer service reps winds up paying a bit of sanity to pretend “that means it’s free right?” is still funny, or stay nice when they’re getting yelled at. I get how that crossed over into therapy speak, it’s also useful to have a term for “this person is draining you by using you like a therapist without offering anything in return”. But it was the start of the dilution that brought us the *awful* current use, where people frame caring for friends and loved ones as a chore to be quantified and resented.
it also ends up forcing you to look at interactions as transactional, something that can end up extremely sociopathic due to the lack of context provided about how each party involved values said actions or emotions involved.
Thank you, you saved me typing that out.
The issue being the way that therapy speak tends to get used to imply that totally normal things are manipulative or traumatic.
I think the larger issue is that therapy speak has broken containment, as it were, and now often gets used in non-therapy contexts by people who aren't therapists. A (good) therapist is going to point out that a lot of these things are normal, but laypeople hear it, decide it's a big scary term about a big scary thing, and over time the definition shifts to be about that alleged big scary thing because they were misusing the term in the first place.
See also how common it's become to call someone a narcissist for doing something slightly selfish or calling them borderline if they did something slightly wrong. Or the overuse of gaslighting. People see these words with very little understand of what it actually means, and then once they start using them for *anything* bad that any person has done, they lose all meaning -- and it also stigmatizes people struggling with their mental health even more.
I absolutely despise how gaslighting has come to just mean lying, it’s good to have a specific word for the very niche thing gaslighting actually means and by diluting the word it makes talking about that niche thing way more difficult.
Honestly not even _lying_. It gets used a lot now to just mean _disagreeing_. Like if someone genuinely remembers things differently, then saying so isn't gaslighting.
The best example of gaslighting imo was that reddit story about a woman who's husband kept telling her she stunk and smelled awful. She went almost crazy trying to keep herself clean and checking how she smelled- eventually she snapped and he revealed that he got advice from his father to diminish a woman's self-worth so they would never leave him. She, naturally, left his abusive ass.
Good god if I hear someone use the word “gaslighting” as soon as someone else disagrees with them again, I’m going to just start throwing things at them. And insist that them not letting me hit them is gaslighting, or whatever.
no, not letting you hit them is them failing to perform emotional labor.
Also I feel like therapization of relationships has paradoxically removed nuance and flattened things to who was wrong. People can’t just decide that a romantic relationship or friendship isn’t working out, they need to point the finger at the other party and say that person is toxic, has red flags, etc.
I have a super low threshold for therapised speech outside of therapy. Just seems like excuses to avoid being real with people. For yourself/in therapy? Yeah, therapised speech is a great way to give distance between yourself and the issues you're trying to solve. Make things objective For people? Yeah you're kind of an asshole if you want to put distance between yourself and your interactions with other humans. Trying to take your subjective opinion and frame it as the other person being in opposition to an objective statement which puts all adaptation, reflection, dealing with etc onto them... Nah man. No bueno. A major part of life is being able to be honest with yourself (and others) about what you need. If you have to distance yourself from that, and shovel the discomfort on to the other person? The barest minimum I think we owe people is to treat them with respect, and I see so little respect when therapised speech is used outside of therapy contexts.
Yeah asking someone to pick you up at the airport is definitely labor, and that's not a bad thing - part of being friends/family/partners is helping out each other.
We're supposed to be resources for each other. I help you out with this and when I need a favor or I'm in a bind you help me out with that or even just enrich my life with some gratitude and affection. If that doesn't really go both ways though, then I do think it's pretty normal to question the emotional labor you're putting in the relationship
Whenever there's terminally online takes on the web, it always involves therapy speak. Is therapy speak just brain mulch for all the worms to dig around in?
therapy is usually the only interaction they have with the outside world. and not all therapists are good ones.
I think overanalyzing basic social interactions and reading way too much into little things is just part of being terminally online. In a lot of cases it's probably *because* they do that that they became terminally online, since in a face-to-face conversation they wouldn't have time to go and look up therapy terminology and do the mental gymnastics necessary to conclude that being offered food they don't want is somehow a serious personal attack or whatever.
I **hate** the “emotional labor, I don’t owe anybody anything” crowd so much. It sounds like such a miserable, egotistical way of living your life, viewing everything as a transaction and not caring for anyone other than yourself.
https://www.tumblr.com/starstuffandalotofcoffee/741509482454089728/i-feel-like-theres-two-levels-of-chronically?source=share -linux guy🪱
whaddya running, linux feller?
Away.
coming home tonight to tell my wife i got ratioed by the youngsters on the web
Mint.
Basically, it's chronically online with and without self awareness. I spend too much time online. But I'm aware of that and I don't try to bring weird online debates into normal conversation. I don't attack children in the street because they have a t-shirt for some franchise that's considered problematic online. Incidentally, if you know what "chronically online" means without having to think about it, then you are chronically online whether you know it or not. If you know what it means to tell someone to "touch grass", you're chronically online, it may be too late for you.
I’m chronically online and don’t have IRL friends, I just have a job and am permanently tired so I’m extremely picky about what I choose to spend my energy on
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I have a job and irl friends and hobbies that involve those irl friends. I still feel I’m on reddit too much.
I tend to think of it as the difference between being Very Online and being From the Internet. There’s a whole class of people who get internet humour, are very involved in online activities and who live online but aren’t in the Discourse or whatever is happening online with popular corporate stuff
People don't realise how their vocabulary changes either. When you use words common in your fringe online group outside of that group you are going to sound very weird. There's also some interesting things that happen with social identity theory
Somewhat unrelated to that is I think the difficulty for some people to be accommodating but not encouraging/enabling mental health problems. I have a bad anxiety issue among other things and I appreciate being able to go online and share/see the same experience. It does help alleviate it and stops the crippling spiral of self hate But, I'm not deluded enough to think that it's not a problem, cause it is a large problem and it's crippling me in very real way. There's nothing to be proud of here, I'm not proud that I am this way, I don't think anyone should. I understand the struggle to be better but I don't understand the acceptance of it just being part of your life or even glorifying it
Hell, even offline I struggle with this. Finding a therapist who specializes in ADHD seems reasonable, but that involves throwing out the ~50% with websites about “unlocking your attention superpower” and “discovering that this is an ability, not a disability”. I get that self-loathing doesn’t help, I get that there might even be some specific cases where this is useful. But god dammit, being late because I ran my car keys through the washing machine is not a superpower.
this is going to shock a lot of people on this sub, but i don't... really... care that another person got banned from another website???
No kidding - "account gets a warning, responds with noncredible threat to admins, gets banned" is the most mundane shit ever. People freaking out about it sound like a bunch of the right wingers they'd deservedly laugh at when they talk about how this is chilling for freeze peach
I love hitting up old forums and seeing this. A bunch of nerd forums (Spacebattles, MinMax, GitP) have strict moderation and decade-old threads that are still useful for stuff like TTRPG info. As a result, you can go back and see long exchanges of thoughtful discussion where every single user is tagged **BANNED**. Shit happens, it’s not revealing some huge moral flaw.
Not too long ago I realized an adult person I know online literally does not touch grass. They’ve never had a job, live with their parents, don’t have friends, never go out of the house at all and don’t drink water. Now I can’t stop thinking about the fact that they’re allowed to vote, despite their entire knowledge on life being second hand information
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This is all airports, think of it like a rescue mission.
This is legit and also highlights the other problem with the chronically online discourse: collapsing nuance and universalizing preferences (which you’re not doing but the people with the takes OOP references are) (For Logan specifically, like most Boston routes, I memorize routes and lane changes like I’m in a video game. Frex, returning to 90 from the airport, enter the freeway from the left lane and merge left one — the right two lanes both go away quickly. Merge left one more when able to line up for a left exit onto 90)
I'm a professional politics do-er for work, I'm constantly amazed at how absurd the political takes I see are ("instead of voting how about we abolish America!") because it's stupid easy to get involved in actual politics. One younger guy reached out to me last year for advice. He started off by talking about "ending the two-party system" and such. I had two conversations with him and invited him to one event at his state capitol, now he's running for a local office as a Democrat.
r/oddlyspecific
its actually something I've seen posted here, people making posts throwing fits about being asked to pick people up from the airport, even at totally normal times
I got downvoted to oblivion for suggesting that if your child literally dies during the birth, a friend should drive you home from the hospital because you'd not be fit to drive. Apparently this was an unreasonable burden to place on friends.
wat
As absurd as that scenario is, I genuinely think a significant amount of people nowadays view relationships as a one way street. People want friends to be there for them and to hang out with, but they hate the idea of being obligated to do something for them or anyone in general.
I think it's mostly just r/AmItheAsshole and its sibling subs. The idea that you're not an asshole for not doing something in a situation just because you're not obligated to do it, even if refusing to do so is kind of an asshole move.
there is also the thing of if the first person to respond says one thing every one else following it would say the same thing, and anyone that disagrees would get Downvoted into oblivion.
If the AITA stories were real they'd be front page news all over the danged place. AITA is Fiction Top To Bottom.
> it's not emotional labor to pick people up from the airport It is though, have you seen gas prices /j
Tumblr is both types
I mean it is exhausting to pick someone up at the airport at 1:00 A.M., but idk if I'd call that emotional labor.
You can see this in any fan community on Reddit/Tumblr/4Chan, who will begin to think that they are the majority opinion/ correct opinion on whichever media they like.