cool links III: against stories and self-neuroticism, therapy criticism, male flight
What I recently read/saw worth sharing has mostly resulted from one big rabbit hole I went down on, so they're mostly linked together:
- Against Narrative by Rayne Fisher-Quann (discovered thanks to tiramisu); Rayne is talking about how we craft stories to make sense of things, search for conclusions and reasons, and to make it digestible for others to hear about and learn from. But sometimes, stories don't serve us so well and we are better off accepting that we are confusing and messy.
- Against Self-analysis by Haley Nahman; it taps into a similar thing like 'Against Narrative' and even uses the same base (Susan Sontag's 'Against Interpretation'), and I found it through being linked in the aforementioned post. It's good to remember not to be in our own heads too much and hyperanalyzing all of our thoughts and actions immediately, drowning in neuroticism.
- Maybe You Shouldn’t Talk to Someone by Melissa Dahl. It's part of the Overanalyzed theme on TheCut, which is featuring multiple articles about how therapy has shaped our culture and us recently. I think this is the natural consequence of the therapy boom the past few years; not just the flippant "seek help" that gets thrown around, but being inundated by BetterHelp sponsorships, every other online persona releasing their own self help book, therapy work sheet or journal, the focus on self care, TikTok diagnoses and therapy speak filled clips. The pendulum is swinging back and we ask ourselves if throwing therapy at everything is the solution; it's not. I think we even use it to absolve ourselves of our own agency; we'd rather go to therapy and speak about it than take action sometimes, and instead of practicing being there for people emotionally we refer them to therapists, label it emotional labour and trauma dumping, and absolve ourselves of the responsibility of being a parent, a sibling, a friend, a partner in tough times. I even recently saw someone who said the topics in the game Kind Words are too much for strangers and should be reserved for professionals - I wonder how these people think we did things before professionals came along and were more accessible. This isn't about electricity or building statics where real professionals are needed else you'll dangerously hurt yourself and others. We've painted our own and others' emotions and hardships as these monsters only professionals can deal with, and it's becoming harmful.
- Online is absolutely real life by Anne Sturdivant. Quote: "The hurt I feel from an online altercation leaves just as much of a sting as one with someone face-to-face." For chronically ill and/or disabled people (me included), no matter if physical or mental, online is basically the main option to hang out and meet people. When online places get poisoned, abandoned, closed and other people just swear off of it and go outside, this group of people gets left behind as their online third-place is the only hangout spot they have. As others can afford to treat the online world un-seriously, a place to brag and troll and harass as they still have their separate offline life to live, the lines blur more for others who don't have this offline life.
- SOFA - Start Often Finish rArely; Start Often Fuck Achievements by Dozens. This post got a lot of negative comments where I found it, and I was surprised. It is about not letting perfect be the enemy of good, to not put off starting something because you're scared you cannot finish it. It shows that there is enough value in starting and that most people have a little trail of unfinished projects because they moved on, got better, lost interest, got sick. There is no shame in it. Of course perseverance is important and discipline is a key skill. Making yourself do something you don't wanna do can be hard but in the end, rewarding. But that's not what this is about. This is encouragement to start what you have wanted to start for a while, and just focus on that right now - not the future. It's like the 5 minute rule for when you cannot get started with something at all, just more zoomed out. Instead of making yourself anxious with what can fail along the way and how you'll maintain or finish it, see if you can make it first. Worry later. It's also against the sunk cost fallacy - just because you already spent x amount of money, or already had it for a while now, read y amount of pages doesn't mean you have to force yourself to finish it. Stop beating the dead horse and move on. Don't be beholden by "It would be good for my CV" or "I need a finished product for my socials and GitHub". If you wanna read about the arguments leveled against it and some refutes, you can read about it here in a Mastodon thread of the author.
- Accountability Sinks by Mandy Brown. This piece is about how organizations and their bureaucracy holes form accountability sinks in which responsibilities and their consequences just vanish. We can see it in how customer service has gotten worse and worse over the last decade: the companies stop offering email addresses or telephone numbers with real call center employees and instead delegate everything to chat bots, or point to other vendors, who then point back to them, trapping the customer in a loop. I also recently had a disapppointing experience with Square Enix, which lets you fill out a customer request form with many unclear dropdown menus in multiple very arduous steps and multiple requests to summarize your issue with some dead ends hoping you will just give up, and then you get an auto-response saying that they will not respond to any customer inquiry with a personalized message; your efforts were for nothing, and the ability to contact them is just to fulfill a standard.
- The Real Reason Male College Enrollment is Dropping by Celeste Davis. An interesting piece about how many podcasts, articles, videos and other forms of media talking about the lack of college enrollment of men are missing the key reason. Instead of pointing to the costs of college as a reason (which hits women just the same), the reasons are more gendered: Historically, as soon as women were entering male dominated work spaces or university programs, male enrollment in it would drop and it would soon get devalued, seen as women's work, and paid less, which would again keep men away. Now, education is filled with enough women that it is seen as something feminine altogether; together with a rise in being science-critical, conservative, traditional etc. in younger men, college or university education is more and more seen in a negative light. This phenomenon is described as the 'Male Flight', likened to the 'White Flight'.
Published , edited 1 year, 8 months ago