Jessie of the Day: 3/2/2025
Added 2025-03-03 11:32:04 +0000 UTCstill trying to figure out time-stopped palette style...
Comments
i would agree with that rule, on its face -- although it's worded in several loaded ways. social groups are at liberty to refuse their social resources to people who harm other members. social stress is a very real harm that can, over time, cause physical damage to the body that is difficult if not impossible to "undo." one person's desires or needs cannot be prioritized over multiple other people's well-being. it is not just an issue of pragmatism, but the philosophical implications to push an alternative agenda: if some people are allowed to force their wants onto others because they feel like they've suffered more than everyone else, then autonomy is out the window. consent is out the window. then it is a matter of whoever has the most resources to assert their whims onto others. the entitlement to someone else's love, attention, or time is a foundation to pretty much every abusive relationship. which isn't really to say that it's fine to leave it at that, it's fine if some people are ostracized and suffer because fuck them anyway, i got mine. it IS highlighting that it's a problem, and it isn't an easy or simple one to resolve. there are people who dedicate their lives to trying to help the struggling, yet there are so many struggling, they must create hoops to jump through -- paperwork and local borders and technicalities to filter out the ones with the least resources, least likely to recover with a little help. there are social workers who spend decades tracking just a couple of cases and trying to keep them above water. there are doctors willing to try to help patients literally threatening to kill them. it isn't even always a lack of resources; the panicked (or malicious) flailing of just a few of these "problem children" can hemorrhage resources that could have helped many others. from the position of someone designated as not worth trying to help, it's frustrating. frustrating is really an understatement. there's a disgust as you see how much our society is still like wild animals at its philosophical core, where everyone is looking out for themselves and their own in-group, all based on pure luck, and the ones who don't make it are, at worst, collateral. some people end up lashing out and deciding to also act like wild animals, aimlessly venting their frustration onto whosoever is in the wrong place at the wrong time. and we all get a little less trusting, a little more aware that this lonely guy we try to help might go postal and we'll be the target. lashing out, then at best, makes it even worse for the next guy in their exact position. there are many people who prey specifically on the kindness of others looking to help someone struggling, totally indistinguishable from someone who does need help until it's too late -- and then there are the people themselves looking to help, often riddled with savior complexes and healing fantasies they try to force onto the ones who need that help rather than helping. it's not easy. none of it is easy. obligating or otherwise emotionally coercing people to deal with someone they clearly don't like is also not the easy answer it appears to be, nor petty retaliation, even though i can see the power fantasy aspect. but, back to your original point: social exchanges are games. they have rules to make outcomes more efficient, more predictable. the rules can become complicated. often, when people are ostracized from a social group that WAS otherwise already allowing them to participate, it's because they didn't like the rules, but wanted to play the game anyway. in your wording -- when someone is described as a negative person, they usually point out unpleasant facts, talk about uncomfortable and painful emotions, and react with pessimism to a degree that the average person would find excessive. because of the subject matter of the first comic that i wrote, i've dealt with a lot of these people. it was a learning curve. in my experience, these types of people are not really questioning the point of what they're saying. the end result for negative input is a negative emotional response from the person you're talking to 90% of the time. they are perhaps desensitized to feeling negative emotions constantly or just too socially inept to even think about the fact that there is another person with emotional experiences based on how they're treated in social exchanges. for most groups, some negativity is allowed, but it's understood that the rest of the group is voluntarily taking on the stress with you. there is both a limit to the amount of stress that's tolerable, and a mutual obligation to ease the stress of the others, since they are doing this to help ease your own stress. this is why you'll get people like... putting it in a joking way, or apologizing for going on about it, and so on. they are smoothing it over in exchange for the opportunity to vent. the people who've pushed the limits the most have usually adopted the negativity as part of their identity due to how much it consumes their thoughts. they don't seem to be able to bridge the gap of self-awareness there, that how they are REACTING to that negativity is the defining point of their personality, not the negativity itself. one person feeling suicidal may decide to deal with it by threatening suicide to their group of friends while another may deal with it by wanting quality time and attention to distract them from it, like playing a game with their group instead. even though they are experiencing the same emotion, they react to it differently. some feel like not having their preferred way of expressing these emotions is not being able to be their authentic selves -- although, this also is also a failure to understand that MOST social interactions are not bringing the authentic self ENTIRELY to the table, because they're games. intimacy opens up a type of social interaction for genuine exchange and exploration without these rules, but this simply isn't as feasible in a group. a group is inherently less intimate, more anonymous, more unfocused, less authentic.
gray Folie
2025-03-04 00:21:02 +0000 UTCAt a time of my life like this, i might need this comic as an escape of some sort. I got told by a friend that a very important social rule i have to be okay with is that social groups have to get rid of people who are negative to avoid it spreading to the rest, even if that negativity is coming from mental illness or trauma. I took that very badly because i think it's an abhorrent idea. Jessie here embodies all the things i keep inside, and all the vengeance i quietly wish to inflict on every healthy, happy 'normie' type who has thrown me under the bus to protect their fragile little bubble. I watched taxi driver the other day, and this story hits the same kinds of spots, the feelings of resentment and anger building up and up underneath the surface of a downtrodden person until it has nowhere else to go and it all comes out on a wave of righteous, if maybe hypocritical fury. I like that kind of thing, and you should keep creating this story because i think it is very culturally important, it touches on issues few dare to speak up on.
aidan
2025-03-03 23:19:07 +0000 UTC
