Midnight Pub

~mendeleev

~bartender an Irish Coffee for me please

It's been a while since I've been here. I keep forgetting this place exists and I keep remembering it does and randomly popping in so "Hi Guys"

I feel like I come here to vent and I shall make it a point to come here more often just to chat and meet with you fine and interesting people.

But anyways, the rant I came here for:

I keep getting misunderstood. There are 5 scenarios that consistantly happen:

• I am not filtering as much and I then end up miscommunicating tone or emotion - It's not even like its my true emotion slipping out. I genuinely did feel whatever was communicated
• I use very structured, precise and diplomatic language to avoid misunderstanding - has it's obvious issues
• People are talking about something I have no interest in and I feel super out of place
• I have something interesting to bring up but no one is interested in it and I feel super out of place (how tf do only 2 other people here like Star Wars)
• The best case - I ride the right line of having the right amount of filter and the line of the right topic everyone finds interesting

And like, I don't know what I am doing wrong. It could be that the success situation is just less likely but like. I don't know man. I am tired of trying. I keep trying and it keeps failing. I can perform - I am good at being a fun, entertaining person and it brings me joy to make other people happy. But is that all I can do while also being accepted. I dont know man. I have been on this planet for 20 years and its just been oscillating between seeming hopeful that I can change and learn and then back to "Oh what's the point"

AND I HAVE MADE PROGRESS - mostly in the space of not assuming that I am unwanted and automatically prefixing/suffixing with "Sorry to Bother" or "If you even want to" or things like that.

I had a much more structured rant in my head and then it just ended up being... not as structured. Do let me know if you have any questions at all.

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~detritus wrote:

Reminded me of a situation I met yesterday, when I went to the store to buy something.

The guys in the store know me because I go there every so often. We don't exchange much, but they do address me as they would most people their age, even though I'm probably some 10 years older than them.

Anyway, there was a sign on the door and I intended to make a joke based on a double meaning of the word. I already knew it would fail awkwardly, and yet I did anyway, because it's better to try and fail than not to try at all... right?

Predictably, it failed. I blame it on the execution, and yet, everything went exactly as expected. Not as planned, but as expected. The interaction was awkward, the joke fell flat, and though the guy understood what I ended up meaning, he didn't seem to get that I was trying to make a joke..... sigh....

Yeah, I'm not a social person, and though in my younger days I managed to "mingle" more or less successfully, those days are long gone.

So I stay at home, and I avoid interaction as much as possible.

I have friends in the city whom I visit about once a year (recently I got to see them about three times in a few months, after two years of none at all.) With them I manage to interact somewhat smoothly, though with some of them interactions are sometimes still awkward.

Add to that the fact that I have virtually ended all online interactions, for a variety of reasons. I'm becoming something of a hermit.

I've, too, made progress, despite all of this. I was a lot more socially awkward and anxious. But I've been trying to get better at smalltalk, if anything. Yeah, I don't have much common ground with most people and I am not good at the kinds of communication that I often see going between them. So I either say something trivial or nothing at all. At least, I try not to stay completely silent. If it turns out there isn't any kind of mutual understanding, I substract myself from the conversation, there is no point wasting my time trying to make friends with people I don't care about.

~bartender... I'll have a cold ginger beer, please.

~jgreene wrote:

Words might actually be the lynchpin of a worldwide psychosis.

I mean, when you look at a word, and the meaning of it comes to you, that meaning doesn't actually come from the word. I mean it isn't stored within the text. You put it there.

So when you are having a conversation online, that conversation is arguably 99% with yourself. You are talking to yourself.

I mean, maybe the meaning you associate with the word is the same as the person you are talking to, or maybe mostly the same, but maybe it isn't. We pretend it is. We assume it is. But that's a bigass pretense and assumption.

And when you have a billion people talking to themself, pretending that it's a different person, well, that's a lot of crazy.