Dems win big! The Incels subreddit is banned! Celebrate in this open thread

@mrex, you could have said exactly the same thing as you did, but without being harsh. You chose to be harsh. That’s the issue.

Compassion and rationality are not mutually exclusive.

Aw. And Mrex was doing so well not being trollish these past couple of weeks too.

I have no practical advice unfortunately, Z&T. All I can say is I’ve felt the incredible frustration that comes with trying to follow the system’s inscrutible rules and being thwarted by the system itself at every turn. It’s just awful. And with everything else you’re dealing with right now, I’m sure it’s so much worse.

I can offer hugs, if wanted, and sympathy. You’re not a fuck-up. You’re a person trying to do right.

In other news, Mugabe has resigned.
Well now that “Worst President in the World” has been taken, what’s the point in carrying on?

yeah…

I go back a ways, and I remember sitting on lawn chairs in the Oregon sun, fellowshipping with the lefties of the U of O Sociology graduate student section… about Rhodesia-gone-Zimbabwe-here… and Robert Mugabe’s potential as the president of one of the strongest economies in sub-Saharan Africa.

We were overly optimistic as it turned out.

E.T.A. bless you, PeeVee! I never know if it’s me, my computer, or reality! Computers and I have such a… love/hate relationship… I love computers, they HATE me!!

Yes I can see I need a specific professional for these things.

This is not big $ either. Barely over 100 k. And my finances are in the nickel and dime range. And at least 20 of that will go to tax and I’m trying to fix my own messes here and I am not going to come out ahead here at all, it’s all “low bux”.

I cannot believe this is such a mess.

And all this mess keeps carrying on about me, which I had nothing to do with. There’s auto pays doing in and out on various bank accounts, – and I still have no clear idea what this is.

This is all like this guy I used to date, who I found out was big into porno and sex toys, had all these sex toys. It was practically a Tupperware party of sex toys!

So why do I have to be here then? This has what to do with me now?

I feel the same way about life in general. All these constant messes keep happening, and for what?

I also do not care about anything anymore nor want anything. I’m edging into serious depression here….

I don’t understand the point of this, the whole of my life has been a constant mess, WTF am I even here for? For what?

Related to the MRA and PUA people – all the men I have been involved with have been assholes, I gave up completely on that.

What is the point of this all? WTF is this, some kind of a joke?

I won’t say I’m suicidally depressed, but almost, I cannot take this stress. And for what? What’s the fucking point?

@Scild

“@mrex, you could have said exactly the same thing as you did, but without being harsh”

Sadly, I was trying to be compassionate. Obviously missed that mark. Whatever. @Z&T, I’m the moron, not you. Take or leave what I said about the student loan default. I tried giving you free resources, since all your money still sounds tied up in probate. They are;

1. Make sure that anyone that talks to you currently owns your loans. Ask for proof.

2. Get your credit report. Your creditors will be listed on it.

3. Get debt counseling but also do your research. There are a lot of scams. Especially be wary of anyone who wants money.

4. Most lawyers will do a free consult. If you can’t get a recommendation from the lawyer you have now, then worse case, look for lawyers specializing in student loans in the phone book.

5. There is light at the end of this tunnel.

@Z&T
I often wondered what the point of it was when I was deep in grief. I filled my time with things that made me happy once, even if I wasn’t able to feel very happy at that time. It helped me to work through it until I found something to strive for. I hope you find something that gives a point to it all, but it’s okay to feel this way sometimes. It’s part of how our minds deal with stress and grief.

<3

The legal system isn’t designed for honest people. It divides by zero whenever honesty happens in it’s context.

That’s why you need an attorney – professional dishonesty. 😛

Take a break for the night and recharge yourself some?

Hi Z&T

I’m so sorry you have to go through all of this. Reading your posts there is something I wanted to say to you, even though on a practical level, I don’t have any useful advice at all. I’d feel as lost as you do in a situation like yours. Fortunately some other commenters have already mentioned practical tips. What I can think of that might (or might not) help is more about dealing with shitty and overwhelming situations in general. I also hope I’ll manage to phrase this right, since I’m not that good with English at times. But after reading what you wrote I really felt for you and wanted to tell you this.

First, you’re not a fuck-up. Yes, some people who have never met you and know nothing about you apart from the fact that you owe them money, might think so. But they don’t know shit. They don’t know who you are or what you’re currently dealing with or how much you are already trying to fix things. They don’t know, they can’t know, so their hypothetical opinion of you has exactly zero justification. It’s worthless. It makes absolutely no valid statement about you, your situation or your character. On a rational level you can absolutely and safely disregard those opinions. They aren’t true. They aren’t justified. You are not a fuck-up.
That’s what mrex partly meant in one of her comments, I think, when she said that you can let those opinions and judgements of others „roll off you back“. Because their opinion of you? It has to do with them, their situation, their experiences. Not you. It can’t because they don’t know you at all.

From what little I have read of you, you come across as a pretty strong and responsible person, even though you might not feel like it right now. I mean, look at it this way: You have so much emotional strain put on you right now with your mom’s passing, some financial sharks coming after you now of all times and an uncertain economical situation that’s not your fault. Actually not only is the latter not your fault, if it’s due to you working less in order to help your mother, it’s a result of you doing a very decent thing. Of being a good person. And inspite of all these burdens that you currently have, it’s clear that you still accept the tasks before you and try your hardest to deal with them and resolve them. That’s amazing! How more strong and responsible and „trying to fix things“ can a person get? Don’t doubt that this is an amazing feat already, just because it doesn’t feel easy or can’t be solved quickly. No one would be able to deal with this quickly and easily. A lot of people probably couldn’t deal with it at all or wouldn’t be so ready to face these things in a grief situation as you are in right now. So be please don’t be too hard on yourself (I know that’s difficult…). You have every right to be proud of what you are already handling, the steps you clearly have already taken and of every little step you make from now on. Such as asking for advice here, calling lawyers, all of that. Everyone with a bit of sense can see that you’re trying and that given the situation you find yourself in you are doing good. Everyone who does not see that, is not worth listening to, in my opinion. Even if you cannot feel this right now, keep it in mind. Tell yourself occasionally whenever you find you’re mentally beating yourself up over this. Or have someone else remind you.

The next bit is something that helped me in the past. You can absolutely ignore it, if you think it won’t be useful. It’s just an offer.

Someone told me once that people tend to forget how at a certain level of emotional strain or intensity our capacity for „rational thinking“ (cool, objective assessment of situations) starts to suffer. But since we cannot and should not turn such emotions off, as they are often justified, it’s important to remember not to try to do both things simultaneously or to ignore our emotions because we feel we need to find a solution to outside problems right this second. So if you feel grief and anxiety and anger – all justified in your situation – as some of your posts seem to imply to me, make sure you allow yourself that. Don’t beat yourself up because of them. Take some time and give some space to being furious at the unfairness of this all or grieving or afraid. Everyone would be. If you don’t because you think you have to spend every waking minute right now solving your financial problems, those things could just build up until every single, tiny set-back in your attempts to solve your money trouble might be enough to set off an explosion of negative emotions. Not because it’s the end of the world in itself but because on top of everything else you’re going through it might very realistically feel like it. So taking some time for this isn’t wasting time you could have spent on your immediate problem (and it sure as hell isn’t self-pity or some such!), it’s a very responsible way to act, for your well-being and for the stuff you need to get done in the immediate future. So no matter how urgent and important your practical problems seem to you right now, if you feel like exploding or breaking down under all this strain then that is more urgent and more important. Give yourself some time to deal with this first. You don’t have to solve all your problems while feeling like this. You can allow the feelings room and time first, then deal with the rest once the emotional storm has run it’s course at least somewhat. Personally I tend to rant or cry a lot (or both) and after that – once the most intense emotions are out of my system – I get up and attempt to do the stuff that needs to be done. That’s not weakness. It’s realistic and sensible and ultimately – in my experience – the most productive approach, when you’re faced with so much practical and emotional shit at once.

If you’re not like that and this sounds like complete rubbish to you, please just ignore it. What works for one person can be completely useless for others, after all. Same goes for the last bit of advice I could think of, which is a really subjective thing, though.

Once I am at the point mentioned above, I usually sit down and write lists of my problems, the concrete things I need to do to solve them and ideas of how to go about them. I know, this sounds ridiculous, right? I used to get mad at my mother for years for suggesting this because, hey, I bloody know what my problems are, I don’t need to write them down for that. Funnily enough, once I did try, it did turn out to be helpful, because it let me break everything up into small manageable items I could look at and think about seperately. Otherwise I would sit down, start to think about what I had to do and because thoughts work much faster than writing stuff out I would find myself buried in an avalanche of „I have to do this“ and „I have to think of that“ and „but this doesn’t work because x and then that other thing can’t work because y“, etc. Within approximatly a minute I would be send right back into the mindset of panic and „I’m never going to manage this“. Also, knowing I have a list with all the stuff I have to keep in mind somewhere, stops the regularly recurring anxiety of „did I forget anything?“ which would otherwise hound me while I tried to go about solving problems step by step. In the end it’s a possible way to reduce stress and mental and emotional workload a bit in a situation where I really don’t need any more of that.

If you think that you might be a bit similar, you could try this or something similar, like try to talk things through step-by-step with a friend. If you don’t think this is going to be useful, just ignore it.

Lastly, best of luck and lots of strength to you in all of this.

I believe there’s a few other Mary Beard fans here.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/22/women-and-power-a-manifesto-by-mary-beard-review

@Katamount,

I’m a bit late responding, but hey. I happened to read your comment:

It gets to the heart of something I see repeatedly with YouTube edgelords: they really are convinced that their opinions (or “ideas” as they refer to them) are so original and profound as to be as threatening to the status quo … They’re shitty imitations of shitty imitations.

Right after I’d re-watched this – aka “What “Questions for SJWs” Taught Me About YouTube Antifeminism”. What strikes me straight away about the guys who did the original video is their utter, ridiculous pretentiousness, and their conviction that they are the very first people, the only people, to have ever thought of these things.
And as an academic, I’m also personally offended by them. They are the epitome of bad scholarship. Tsk.

how does one eat an elephant

Have you ever got half way through eating a horse then realised you weren’t as hungry as you thought?

But n’thing the break down into chunks advice. I’d also add that, difficult as it is, try to totally forget about all the bits that are still outstanding. Just focus on the task at hand as if it’s the only thing you have to do and there’s nothing else beyond that.

This is at actually the advice they give to people doing that Navy SEAL BUD/S course. They say to just think about surviving until the next meal break as if that’s the end of the course. People who allow themselves to remember there’s weeks more to go invariably drop out.

I always loved this quote from Annie Lamott.

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'”