Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Conversation >

Talking about your own irritability

10:04 / 02.10.05

This is something I’ve noticed about my own posts here for a while, enough so that I thought it might warrant a thread. I’ve been becoming more irritable here. More likely to post quick comments that don’t add a great deal, one-liners and a general pissiness.

More concerning is that my posts have been reactionary rather than about setting forth something that I positively believe. I find myself hitting out at imaginary arguments, usually born from skim reading, and am now feeling pretty out of touch with what is actually here rather than what I think is here. I’m knee-jerking too much and being too much of a cross-patch. I’m fairly sure I’m not the only one here who’s doing it, so I thought it might be useful to chat about it in a way that’s different to the usual “interest in Barbelith waxes and wanes” type argument.

I guess a lot of this is coming from seeing my own contributions as a bit… played out. There’s not a huge amount of my magical practise that I feel I haven’t posted about before. Music-wise I tend to bang on about whatever band I’m passionate about at any given time, but increasingly feel that reviews are just that little tad too passive. On the other end of the scale I’m getting tired of writing about the music I’m making, as though I’m imagining how boring it must be for everyone reading about Seth’s latest obsession.

There aren’t many threads that I’m chomping at the bit to engage with at the moment, and I’m starting to have a few ideas for new threads (which include returning to some of my long-running themes: an NLP surgery, a thread intended to be a prototype for a kind of church, a oblique strategies style music thread for methodologies… don’t know if I’m just rehashing old ground), but do I really want to be a poster that sets up my own Barbelith ghetto by only posting to my own threads and rarely to anyone else’s? Between these and giving HL updates I just feel like I’m spamming or even trolling.

And in the meantime, sorry to anyone I may have pissed off. I’m looking at you, Flyboy.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

10:20 / 02.10.05

I hand't noticed you being exceptionally pissy, Seth (but then I tend to stay out of Music, where the cool kids would only mock my eyeliner and black nail-varnish).

I have noticed myself getting increasingly pissy and obnoxious lately, something I'm frantically trying to rein in. I'm also having a certain amount of trouble engaging properly with the board; I'm getting increasingly distracted by things that annoy me, things that I had previously been happy to blank out and work around. Instead of rolling my eyes, thinking "Oh yeah, that guy" or "Oh, yeah, that concept" and moving on, I'm getting in people's faces. Maybe more than I should.

I'm also finding myself with less and less to offer in terms of input, or at least breadth of input. My magical practice has undergone some pretty drastic changes in the past year, and I'm acutely aware that much of my posting in the Temple has consisted of "Well, this has happened and then that occured, and now I think I'm supposed to do this, do you think that's right? Blah blah blah..." And that's just the stuff I feel I can talk about on the board. There are questions I'm bursting to ask, but they're hard to verbalise, too nebulous. And a lot of what's going on with me now is just too personal and too heavy to bring to a public forum. I guess this is making me twitchy and hard to be around at the moment.

Sorry, everyone.

10:35 / 02.10.05

Maybe to put this in perspective:

The "pissiness" you´re talking about is here, yes. But as far as I´m concerned, that´s nothing compared to what´s going on in real life. Whether it´s people I meet on the streets/in shops/wherever. Or the wretchedness of the media/government/business people. Or all the problems I have with people at/from work.

So, I see Barbelith still as quite relaxed compared to non-online life. Maybe it´s real life bitchiness seeping into virtual communities.

We just have to watch out, that the negative vibes don´t get too much. So it´s good that you are bringing attention to it.

--

11:54 / 02.10.05

I can relate, Seth, in fact I'm almost the poster boy for Barbelith pissiness. It's gotten quite bad recently, which is why I asked Haus to "ban" me for a week, because I knew that if I stuck around situations would just get worse and there would just be pointless arguing.

For the most part I'm laid back unless I assume someone has misinterpreted what I say. I'm referring to my "dark side" thread in Temple, which for whatever reason people eventually assumed was about the qliphoth, despite the fact I didn't once mention them in that thread (and this assumption spilled out into the related threads that popped up as the result of my initial thread). Granted, I may have thought what I was doing a year ago was qliphoptic in nature, but since then I've changed my mind (reading the intro by Fowler to "Shadow Tarot" had a big influence on my perceptions... yes, I was aware of it well before it was posted in my thread) and I'm in agreement with much of what was said in the resulting qliphoth/da'ath thread, despite what others may think.

I guess I need to keep the long, rambling introspective personal stuff for the blog, be less stubborn, and so forth. And maybe just shrug off the few posters who throw negativity at me on a regular basis. I mean, at the end of the day it's just a message board, nothing to get too bent out of shape about.

Unconditional Love

12:16 / 02.10.05

I think with alot of different people, with differing opinions this place is going to get hot sometimes an sometimes it will be me or you recieveing the heat.
Its not just a message board its a community of people communicating, which means sometimes miscommunication occurs. I think all we can do is forgive each other and move on, learn from our own experience and keep going.

Some of the things i post challenge my own emotional sensibilitys, i do make myself irritable sometimes by doing that, but i see this as a safe place to look at those things. my own morality hits me in the face here alot, and for me it has been a learning curve, a curve i am still on, but getting less wavy hopefully(or more?).

Sometimes i start a post with the best intentions and by the end of it i realise its getting so bloody confrontational, i wonder what happened to the original sentiment, of late ive just been deleting them rather than posting them.

I really dont like that aggressiveness, and try to avoid confrontations in daily life, so why would i bring that here? It certainly doesnt help me or anybody else, a safe release of the feeling? Or is it just having a negative knock on effect on the community?

16:16 / 02.10.05

I had a problem with being a plain out biatch on another forum. Then someone I really respected flipped out on me, and she's a very calm person so it hit me hard. Basically she said that one of the virtures of this being a forum is that you have the ability to reread what you post. You cannot possibly "accidently" type something rude. It can't just fall out of your fingers and then you accidently press "Submit" (or "Post Reply" here). So there's no excuse. For a while, I decided to type all my posts out in another text editor and then copy and paste it into the forum and then have to press submit. I don't know why, but that extra little step (and also having that bigger field) gives you extra time to think, "Man that was a mean thing to say. I need to delete that." I had to do that for like... 6 or 7 months before I started just typing things nice enough as I felt postable the first time.

Counting to ten makes people feel horribly childish and it's very condescending to tell someone to do that, but something as simple as putting a post in a text editor first serves the same purpose without some of the negative conotations, ya know?

Though, I think I'm going to have to start doing that again. As the mods who approve of my edits can attest, I've been having serious problems with my "it's" and "its". The text editor will also make you look over it a second time for mistakes, just because you have to see it one more time before you press that publish button.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

16:23 / 02.10.05

I decided to type all my posts out in another text editor and then copy and paste it into the forum

Yeah, I used to do that. May have to go back to that for a bit; I think I'm dealing badly with some of the stuff that comes up here. My buttons are ultra-pressable right now, and it's affecting the way I respond to certain people and situations. An anger response is usually inappropriate, especially online where the cues that might tone everything down are absent.

Goodness Gracious Meme

16:38 / 02.10.05

This is an ace thread. Will have a think and be back, but just wanted to give thanks to Seth for starting this one.

17:02 / 02.10.05

A text editor also gives you a much larger box in which to be able to see your piece as a whole, and encourages editing and more careful consderation, since you're free of that underlying worry that your browser might crash or you might close the page by accident while doing something else, so you have to post quickly. Anything longer than a paragraph or two I do in BBEdit - oh, and anything where I might want to use HTML tags too because it has keyboard shortcuts for them.

Um, on the other hand I have to say that sometimes that just means I'm more effective in being unpleasant and sarcastic. If I actually want to be nasty, extra editing time is just going to sharpen it, unless I end up falling asleep before I get round to posting.

Oh, and I'd agree with Mistoffeles that any pissiness here is nothing compared with real life; it's also nothing compared with any other forum I've ever seen on the internet.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

17:06 / 02.10.05

I think Harsh Words stand out here more because we're moderately chilled out the rest of the time.

Lilly Nowhere Late

05:57 / 03.10.05

Could it just be that old thing about "familiarity breeds contempt"? Doesn't everyone get more sarcastic and even ferocious once they feel familiar and comfortable with a place/space/group? I certainly do. Which I feel may or may not be a bad/good thing.
Then it could just be that all the careful consideration of one's posts is perhaps causing toooo much examination. Over-anal-lysation, etc.
You only hurt the ones you love...

11:24 / 03.10.05

Haus loves me?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

11:36 / 03.10.05

There's also the old thing about saying stuff on Barbelith that you wouldn't say in real life, and the fact that I get on better with some people IRL than I do with them on the board. The arguments I have got into (and discussing them with other people) make me wonder if I sometimes get into the trap of behaving online as though I have Aspergers, I can't 'read' the behaviour of the person I'm reading so have to guess, so if (poster a) were to write something I might jump to the conclusion ze's being pissy when ze's not.

Maybe I'm just being an irritating kid.

As to whether I 'post irritated' I don't do that so much, but I do have to often post quickly because I'm sneaking a post in at work which, combined with my muddled thinking, often comes out as more aggressive than I perhaps intend.

12:04 / 03.10.05

"This is something I’ve noticed about my own posts here for a while, enough so that I thought it might warrant a thread. I’ve been becoming more irritable here. More likely to post quick comments that don’t add a great deal, one-liners and a general pissiness."

I quoted this because it was actually one of the major reasons why I dropped off the board in 2003. I still feel kind of disengaged from a lot of Barbelith, because I don't spend as much time online as I used to, and I visit more places with more people and different rules, so I become less inclined to spend the time in one place. Therefore, I miss a lot of in-jokes, I get confused by which poster is which, and I don't have enough time to read through, let alone formulate answers to many posts, which all leaves me feeling less inclined to post much of serious note.

When I do post, if it's more than a quick oneliner then I usually tend to go away and write it in a text file offline and think about it some more. (Not today, though, probably because this is stuff that's been rattling around in my head for a while so it's all fresh anyway.)

If I find myself getting too irritable, then I usually leave the board, or at least that thread. If I'm still bothered about it, then I might post a rant about it over on my livejournal, but just as often as not I'll type it up and then decide that there's no point in dwelling on it, and the act of writing it up has got it out of my system. I'm wary of posting nothing but negative comment over there just as I am over here.

What I have noticed is that when I do post something snarky in tone, even if it's remotely justifiable (like in the dance card thread when people didn't read the FAQ and kept PMing me questions I'd already posted answers to), then the fact that it might be justifiable doesn't matter because I get so guilty about my snarky tone. I think it's because I post so much less than I used to on here that when I'm not a nice, smiley, courteous person then it really stands out that I've been nasty... And I always think that there must be a nicer, better way to get that across. But mostly, I just don't post when I'm feeling snarky. I feel snarky a lot more than I post snarky, so be grateful! (tongue firmly in cheek, there, in case that's not obvious).

12:42 / 03.10.05

I'm more irritable IRL. In fact I was thinking this morning that the main difference between suit and self is that face to face I'm much more sarcastic, because people can see I don't mean it except for comic effect, online the same comments could be much more cutting. So I often roll my eyes at something or laugh mockingly out loud at a post, but try not to respond on the board. Usually successfully.
Of course, I'm pretty irritable in real life.

Tryphena Absent

13:05 / 03.10.05

When I post aggressive one-liners I'm usually snickering in the corner as I think about how badly behaved I am and frankly I'm kind of bad at them so they're never very effective. I'm really the only person snickering. It's worth it though.

14:14 / 03.10.05

I try desperately hard to reign in any irritability. And I feel terribly guilty if I loose snarky one-liners at anyone, except Nina, who deserves everything she gets.
I’m far less restrained in real life, and I can be verbally cruel in the way that only the physically unintimidating ever learn to be. But I keep it off Barbelith, partly because it makes me sound like Flyboy, but also because I know the impulse to slap will pass, and I really don’t want the feud. You can’t unsay things – and that fact feels particularly acute when there’s a written record.

However, I sometimes wonder if it isn’t better just to let fly with the pissiness – get it out there. I’ve noticed old posts of mine, which I know were rewrites of some outrageous invective, that just come off as horribly passive aggressive, and I’m not sure that’s any improvement. And I know that, personally, I’d prefer someone just to call me a cunt than be all mealy-mouthed about it.

14:19 / 03.10.05

Smoothly you're a... oh wait, I'm not irritable today.

01:01 / 05.10.05

I think I'm getting a handle on this, slowly but surely. A lot of it (for me) is how I frame my expectations of this place, and if I do it as a forum for learning then I find much of my irritability subsides. You just have to be sure of why you're doing things in life... to just aimlessly meander through what you're involved with with no clear objectives means you're likely to stagnate and get frustrated.

14:32 / 05.10.05

Word.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:46 / 05.10.05

Have you considered altering the geography of your brain in order to simulate the thought processes of Mark Millar?

14:48 / 05.10.05

I'm writing a letter to Wizard about that. Right now. I'm gonna go do it.

23:00 / 06.10.05

I think I sound more irritated in my posts than I really am. Sometimes much more so. But really, that wouldn't matter so much, if I ever posted anything worth reading. All my posts are self-absorbed drivel, the kind I hate to read, both when I see other people posting it, and when I come upon one of my own posts a while later. My favorite forum is the head shop, but I can't seem to actually post anything there. It's too hard, and I'd rather just read. It makes me sad to see that nearly everything I post is garbage, and sadder still that everyone else notices it and ignores me. It's not a coincidence that every time I post something in late shift, every else just stops posting there. Fuck, at least I'm posting drivel in late shift and not clogging up the head shop with it. And it's sort of annoying to see how much attention the trolls get. Maybe if I started talking about the apocylypse and polar bears people would pay some attention to me. Oh, and I have a very bad habit of posting and then never returning to the thread I posted in, or never responding to what people have said in responce to me. It forces me to think about the stupid things that I've said if I do, and that's hard. So really I shouldn't complain about people ignoring me, since I sort of ignore them. I'm really trying to follow up after I post. That's something I'm totally working on. And I'm trying to wait before I post something stupid, so that I can realize that it's stupid and not post it, but if I wait, then I realize that everything that I post is stupid, and it leads to me not posting anything at all. Maybe that would be better, I don't know. Maybe I should go back to haunting barbelith and never posting anything.