The goal of this post is to function as a vent post. Tell us what’s on your mind, yell, post pics, do whatever to clear your mind.
So yesterday my father in law and I went to this lake for a morning swim. It was 8 degrees celsius (46F) outside, the water was probably of a similar temperature. There were a few fishermen walking around in special wetsuits as to not get hypothermia and they were staring in disbelief at two guys walking into the water in underwear.
It was cold as fuck to the point that the cold water did nothing but hurt my skin. I swam for around ten minutes I think and the entire time I kept thinking: why would anyone do this? Why do humans feel the need to go to great lengths to do stupid shit like this? Surely it has to be more than just adrenaline.
Did I enjoy swimming in cold water? I don’t know. It made feel alive-ish. Would I do it again? It does have a certain lure to it.
It did make me think about people bragging about ‘suffering’. For example, my gf and I want to try to keep the heating off until at least the 21st of December, because shit is expensive yo. But when someone mentions that they already have the heating on, I start feeling proud of myself in a way. Because I don’t have the heating on yet, and I’m fine. Money is not even what I think about then, just that I am able to tolerate more cold or something stupid like that. I have no idea why I do that. It’s completely in line with my ideology and party work. But it still happens. Why do humans do this?
Also: FUCK CAPITALISM
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For me, it was worse before I joined a party. Now, the party asks so much of me that a lot of people I talk to are marxists or MLs as well. I feel much more connected than I did before all of that.
I do sometimes still have this problem with non-party people. It’s especially bad when people keep complaining about things despite me saying there’s ways out of this.
Before I joined the party I felt disconnected to the majority of people. There’s so much bad shit happening in the world that I could not understand why we just didn’t tear shit down and start doing things that actually benefit people. I had not found out about communism yet. People frustrated me to no end because of ther inaction. With the party I have now found a way to deal with these feelings.
Mfw want Marxist-Leninist friends/partner but don’t want to join a party with the expectation of being a pest
Phrasing may be off, but I just mean that the line between comrade and friend can be blurry as hell and I find it somewhat difficult to remain entirely cognizant of that boundary. Just been difficult for me to socialize in my limited experience with party work, as everyone is (and probably should be) considered professional peers/coworkers. Wish there was just a large communist dating app sometimes.
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Ah I don’t think so at all. I liked all my comrades, the only thing is to be cognizant of that comrade-friend line, as in try to be as professional as possible during actions and meetings and don’t let personal feelings get in the way of self-criticism, or unfairly aiding someone with advancement in the party, or drink a beer at a meeting or whatever. Not that I think you would. I think the real problems arise from the romantic aspect, we’ve probably all heard of DSA dudebros joining up simply to be as sex pesty as possible.
I feel ya. I consider my fellow party goers as comrades, but not friends. And my friends are not always my comrades. Maybe now that I’m setting up a youth movement that I find more peers to be friends with in the movement, but otherwise those things remain seperate. It’s not bad or anything, but there sure does remain a line between comrade and friend.
Would you say it SHOULD be that way or it just is for you?
Because I know that I’m a person who connects to others very easily when doing something I’m passionate about and would almost certainly want to become friends with someone, especially speaking from an anxiety perspective. I would function much better being liked and known rather than just another comrade, you know?
Maybe this is something I need to get over before/while organizing, I don’t know. Of course I would always try to keep it professional and like others said never let there be any shenanigans within the organization simply because you’re friends but I just feel like I am a very sensitive person and kind of need that human connection to operate.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying entirely but yeah I don’t know
It can be that friendship forms in the party but it has not really happened yet in my situation. There’s nothing wrong with friendship. But it feels more like coworkers most of the time. We have fun, we get things done, we sometimes hang out outside of party work and we get along fine. But I don’t know if I consider them good friends or anything. Just party coworkers. We have different interests in our personal lives. For me, that’s fine. I feel liked and I like my party people, but we’re not really friends or anything. But we’re all very connected and we all support eachother regarding a lot of things. It feels like a very close group.
But you could be friends with people from the party. I’m getting to know more people my age right now with the youth program and I feel more connected to them on a personal level. Also, I see a lot of people in the party being friends outside of party work. It’s just my experience that is different lol.
I believe he is saying that is the case for him, not necessarily that his way is the correct way for all individuals.
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I feel you on the accommodation. I’m a very patient listener (I think) and people often like to unload their problems onto me at work or elsewhere. I can be peoples’ shoulder to cry on, but only for so long. That accomodation seemingly lends itself to people dehumanizing me as an individual with their own issues they may like to vent about or their own interests, and picturing me more as simply their vent-wall. It’s a weird, unpleasant feeling.
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Absolutely lol. Something absolutely incredible to hear, after having listened to someone vent their frustrations for hours IRL, is that they don’t have the “spoons” to listen to me talk about myself whatsoever. We can be expected to be the savior when loved ones (or even strangers) are having a mental break, but the moment our own issues shine through suddenly it becomes a burden. I might be projecting my experience onto you here, but hell it does get tiresome.
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When they say they don’t have the spoons, they’re referring to Spoon Theory, which is a way for people with various chronic conditions to visualize the amount of energy they have using spoons. Essentially, you start with a certain amount of spoons which represent energy. Every time you do something, some amount of those spoons are subtracted, based on how much energy the task takes. Once you run out of spoons, you have to either rest to regain them or “borrow” from the next day, which means you will start with less the next day.
However, if I ever vented my problems to someone, I would feel really bad if I didn’t let them do the same to me. Personally, I’d rather have less energy the next day than be so selfish as to prevent people from venting to me, especially after I did the same to them.
Yes, I like the spoon theory conceptually and have used it for myself in the past (physical and mental), though I’ve found its real-use value, in my own personal life, to skew mainly in the direction of manipulative people utilizing it as a sort of transactional cop-out to escape from emotional reciprocation or as a means of emotional control. Not to say it’s worthless or anything, like I said I’ve used it, but more and more in my own relationships it’s become the sort of thing that people get to levy against me, and I never get to utilize at all lest I get accused of being manipulative. Does that make any sense? I think I just need better friends lol.
Yeah, I’ve known those kinds of people. They expect you to sacrifice everything but never do anything in return and get angry if you call it out, accusing you of being selfish. I really despise that kind of behavior.
I’ve discovered at least 3 textbooks narcissists in my life recently (new friend, new roommate (gone now, he was illegal so we were tryna help out ya know), and father in law). Definitely wary of how common these traits are.
I live in a communist country, but I live in a capitalist city that has its capitalism legally protected until 2047.
It’s shit here. A handful of tycoons and big landlord conglomerates own everything, including in their number the successors of the opium peddlers/smugglers that kicked off the fucking opium wars. They carry the same name as they did back then.
All of the difficulties of this shithole stem from the private sector, but the government cops the blame for practically everything.
And me? Son of a colonizer, and colonizer-brained myself until I went to university in the imperial core and travelled and widened my field of view enough to see the bigger picture.
It’s exhausting here. As a native English speaker my friendship circle is saturated with high-minded brainfart liberals who are the nicest people in so many ways but completely fucking braindead when it comes to class consciousness and critical consumption.
It’s so frustrating. They love to hate on the CPC and they hate when I query the gaps in their logic about blaming the CPC for whatever mundane 1st-world hardship inconvenienced them that day.
I’m guessing you are from Hong Kong?
Yeah
I had a nightmare today that my family found out about my skirt. Still thinki about it
the strange downvote conundrum strikes again
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Aaron Sorkin Ate My Mac N Cheese And I Hunger For Revenge
Obviously we’re all feds here, I’m guessing someone at the office wasn’t informed so they’re going around downvoting us.
must be Steve again
I don’t know, Jimmy’s been at the frozen peas again and you know how he gets
yeah, but Steve’s the one who always instigates Jimmy’s rash behaviour
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They’ll probably not believe it since I don’t got not friends 😔
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you can say that one of your Internet Comrades™ sent it to you
B I worked hard for this skirt 😤
I had a nightmare 3 nights in a row this week that I had to take a shit in front of my entire extended family. The 3rd night in a row in the dream I ended up punching my brother in the face for not respecting me SHRIEKING FOR EVERYBODY TO GET TF OUT WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU MFERS
Tf
I wish my dreams were this eventful
If they find out IRL just come out as scottish
It’s black, do I come out as goth Scottish?
Gothish
The Goths and the Hi-vis Goths
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Amab
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Say its a really cool hat
Responsibilities are piling up, I’m failing my classes after coming back from a college hiatus, nothing is right.
What are the responsibilities, how do they interfere with college and why can’t they be mixed you think?
It’s a bunch of stuff, but I think maybe I’m exaggerating how much it is. I don’t know. I have to apply for a bunch of government programs, gather some files for something the apartment management is asking for :(, class, work, party stuff, and some weird family stuff is happening and all these deadlines get so overwhelming at times…I think I’m just poor at planning tbh. Been missing a few meetings and some deadlines for stuff.
I FUCKING HATE LIBERALS I HATE THE CIA I FUCKING HATE THEM ALL!
IF I COULD NUKE LANGELY, I FUCKING WOULD. I WANT TO BREAK IT UNTIL THE CEMENT TURNS TO DUST, THEN REMIX THE CEMENT AND SHOVE IT DOWN THE THROATS OF THE AGENTS THAT ARE LEFT! DEATH TO AMERICA!
Just dropping in here to say fuck Israel 🇵🇸
From the river to the sea, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!
I hate the Bolsonarista protests in my city, worse on the track where I train is on the side of the military barracks in my city listening to them during training makes me super annoyed
All of the people in my country only care about race and its mostly the only thing people talk about nowadays. A certain group of people in my country have ‘special rights’ btw. That ‘certain people’ also have a nationalist political party, said political party held a protest against ICERD as well. (I’m Singaporean but moved to Malaysia)
Just learned my gov’ment is looking to declare me disabled (cfd/me), and… I’m conflicted.
At the least, it’ll guarantee me some income for the rest of my life, but… I’ve always worked when able, and to be “not able” forever more is quite hard to come to grips with.
Got a couple of medical interviews before the process wraps up, but this isn’t what I expected when I asked my doc (18 months ago) to figure why I’m always exhausted :/
As someone with ME, I know it can be really hard to deal with this disease and your new reality. It probably won’t be easy, but you’ll learn to live within your energy envelope with pacing.
I hope you’ll get a reasonable income and good support from friends and family! And I’m sure the comrades here on the 'grad will be here for support if you need it 🫂
Thanks Tito, appreciate the comment <3
Financially, I’ll be able to set aside ~5000 NOK (~500US) a month so thankfully that part should work out well enough. Local support will be interesting though, as right before covid we moved to a part of the country where we didn’t know anyone heh. We’ll be fine though, there are lots of worse countries than Norway to have this in.
Our side is too bogged down with culture war bullshit to ever do anything productive.
NO
Ugh I hate how everything is going in the US rn. Tech oligarchs doin mass layoffs before holidays,Biden BARELY does student debt relief and it’s being challenged by a motherfucking Judge. Not congress itself but some wanker judge. G20 is not doing actual work on climate change this decade, everything for climate change is like “oh yay we funded a thing that’ll work in 2050!”, like wtf we don’t have 30 years to dick around and continue on our path. Getting emissions back to 2007 levels or whatever is still not enough. I hate that despite Bernie’s problems, we won’t have a decent candidate like him in a while. He was arrested in the early 60s for resisting arrest at a protest in Chicago. He used to read Eugene V Debs speeches. It’s very upsetting that Bernie is like, the furthest left that the US is willing to go, and even then, people call him a communist sigh
So many things to vent about; perhaps it’s going to be a ventroduction of sorts (or maybe a rantroduction).
Should i perhaps start with the fact that i greatly like games of tabletop (boardgames, wargames, games of role), even if i don’t necessarily play (or run) them well or can afford those of them whose components require monies and effort? So yes, one day (was it 2019? 2020?) i decided to check LANCER (that one mech rpg by the author of Kill Six Billion Demons the webcomic, which i was also reading for occasional angel designs if nothing else).
It was during my stay on the game’s discord server when i first heard of the term “tankies”. Then, i decided to learn more of these mysterious tankies (who, apparently, were people with reasonable positions who were also hated on the server for some reason); discovered r/communism, then r/genzedong and r/genzhou. “Hey, as long as i don’t speak too much about politics in there, i might stay for the rules, previews, playtests, and various other tabletop discussion”, i thought, even as i saw the denizens - and admins - post about DPRK bad no light satellite photos, Holodomor, and a local game designer proudly posting artwork of airplanes with two-arrow emblems obviously inspired by those of the Iron Front (and receiving words of approval). Then, later days of this year’s February happened (not the 24th yet, the ones before); they reopened and rethemed their crisis channel, and someone from among the staff said something to the effect of “no truth can come out of Russia”.
This was the last day of my stay on that server. Shame; the eponymous roleplaying game of the server is perhaps one of the most thoroughly playtested among those focusing on grid combat. “Can still run it and have fun”, i thought.
Then, the 24th happened. Given that one of my players was from the blue-and-yellow country, continuing to run the game with that exact party turned into an unfeasible prospect.
Worse yet, a number of discord-based (and sometimes supported with meatspace gatherings) communities i belonged to decided to show their support for the blue-and-yellow state and whoever’s in charge (these communities being primarily russian-speaking; loathsome meduza-and-doxa-and-TJ-readers they turned out to be).
Worse still, i should really have expected a dear partner of mine, one living somewhat away from me (a difficulty we have cleared temporarily two times, both of them some years ago, and haven’t found a permanent solution yet), to not share with me the position on the conflict many of you share; one of her close friends (whom she is familiar with for longer than with me) is a literal white-red-whiter, a slavaukrainer, and, unsurprisingly, an IT spec who moved to Georgia and urged her to do the same (she hasn’t followed yet); she thought that clearing the distance difficulty this year (and communicating face-to-face) might help our relations, but i got the current virus on the exact days i was due to board the train; now, she’s found herself a new primary candidate (one from among these communities above, also a denier of ukronazism), although she doesn’t want to cut comms with me either.
I am now seeing it everywhere.
The head admin of a certain russian-speaking rpg discussion site, surprisingly, happened to be a supporter of the Special Operation; in response, another user (who translated Apocalypse World) decided to delete all his posts; in response, the head admin banned him to prevent such a loss of materials. Yet another one (from the blue-and-yellow state) decided to do the same and also called the head admin a rashist.
Heads of Russia-based tabletop rpg outfits and those linked (video gamedev, game journalism etc.)? Often these exact sorts of libs; meduza-reading, TJ-reading, doxa-reading. I’ve been reading Лучшие Компьютерные Игры (Best Computer Games), while the magazine was alive; now, i have discovered that at least one of its staff was adoring the maidan paraphernalia when it was happening, and another one now lives in the United States and actively posts anti-Russian stuff for that sweet money.
Current leadership of Pinnacle, those who make Savage Worlds? According to some from among the team of Red Land (a Russian Civil War-based rpg setting), these are open anticommunists who won’t accept their material for licensing again (apparently because the Reds aren’t the absolute evil in the Red Land).
Evil Hat, those who make Fate? All the same stuff; evil dictatorship genocide Holodomor etc. Same with SJ Games (of GURPS fame).
I am double-checking many things now. Site users, “proposed friends” over VK, discord servers. Left the /gdg/ server when they started talking about helping the blue-and-yellow state; left Facebook when the same happened; left the EYES Project (a deep rework of Adeptus Evangelion) server when one of the regulars began telling that Vaush is their fave political youtuber. Pruned my friend lists over discord and VK as well.
Many such “friends” have left the country, fearing mobilization or other things. Guess i should’ve got better educated on communism stuff much, much earlier - as not to become attached to such characters too much.
In hindsight, should’ve kicked some of these from campaigns much earlier as well.
There’s one or two meatspace-based acquaintances left to explore their positions. Perhaps a gathering is in order; i should, however, expect answers i would fear the most.
The one developer i mentioned above, the one with iron front airplanes, got an entire game already; among the playbooks (character archetypes), there is the Believer. Playbooks have their regulations on their trust of other characters; the Believer’s trust block says “Trust no one” in bold, underlined several times. Despite the flawed politics of the author, i feel like i’m approaching that.
Running and playing games of role (or other tabletop) proves to be somewhat difficult now, as i start selecting potential players in a more thorough fashion. This is, however, not the worst thing that could happen - and not the worst thing you here might be experiencing; at least i still have a place to inhabit, some (family-based) guarantee of sustenance, and time to waste on games.
