urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:sushispook \\▼ \\▼ 2022-09-26T16:56:05Z urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:sushispook:3202224 2022-09-26T16:55:24Z 2022-09-26T16:56:05Z [Manually x-posted from - <a target='_blank' href='https://sushispook.dreamwidth.org/3165337.html' rel='nofollow'>https://sushispook.dreamwidth.org/3165337.html</a> - please comment there!]<br /><br />O HAI DREAMWIDTHS & LIVEJOURNALS<br /><br />I think any one of us reading this has been alive long enough to understand exactly how difficult it can be to practice and maintain kindness in a world that's increasingly designed for exactly the opposite. I know that I came to it especially late, having to un-knot learned reactions of being cruel and caustic for so many reasons - coping mechanisms, social clout, deflection, personal identity/branding... the list goes on... and it's just a gradual process that doesn't yield big immediate and easily-measured results.<br /><br />Every so often when you get one of those moments out of the blue of remembering a moment of being shitty when you didn't know better or how to be better, it's difficult to be able to say "I've traveled this many miles from being that person".<br /><br />The other day I was reading some customer service horror story, remembering just... how much I could not stand dealing with the public when I was younger, and how much of that was a coping mechanism of me framing everyone as fuckin' stupid so I didn't have to closely examine myself and my own unhappiness, terror, and awkwardness*... and I remembered one site that I just thought was the fucking best, the funniest, the greatest dunk on the big stupid public: <a href="http://actsofgord.com/" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Acts of Gord</a>.<br /><br />2002 me thought this was great. Like, I just delighted in the tales of telling off customers, framing anyone without a clue as some sort of sub-human shithead, and just gushed over how he stuck it to people with a I-don't-give-a-fuck attitude. It was just righteous revenge all the way down, and I could not see anything problematic about it whatsoever.<br /><br />Holy shit it's gross. The absolute sneering down the nose cruelty of it. The unearned superiority of it. The total okayness of hyperbolicly using genocidal terminology (remember gene-pool related stuff and how how it escalated for some into xenophobic attitudes and actions?). Just the absolute miserable-bastardness of it all, how unpleasant that sort of thing is to be around, and how much I just embraced it as an ideal. Just... playful hostility as default, that left unchecked, was congealing into the real thing.<br /><br />Sometimes, you see both the work you've done and how far it's taken you. It's an ongoing journey, but I'm better for it.<br /><br />[*that is not to say that there wasn't a large percentage of entitled and unempathetic assholes out there, oh there are stories to be sure, but man did I ever take it to a reactionary and awful place] urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:sushispook:1216129 2007-04-29T02:59:13Z 2013-02-21T02:25:18Z Friends only, y'all.