ceri | Mind games, grr

There aren't all that many things that make me leap into an instant frothing rage, but giggling over messing with other people's emotions is one of them. This morning, someone I felt I had a reasonably good acquaintance with mentioned in an obviously pleased sort of way that he sometimes randomly un-friends people he likes. Why? "It reminds people that life is too short to worry about this 'stuff.' To be honest, I have no cares. I refuse to live my life in worry."

A few minutes later, he was off all the friends lists I'd had him on.

Now, someone could turn to me and say, "You're reacting this way in overcompensation because of your embarrassment at choosing to live so closeted." And there's some truth to that. I'm not going to claim absolutely pure motives here. Certainly a lot of this is my reaction to past experiences being stalked and manipulated by guys who'd singled me out as targets for their "experiments" - that's happened to me three times, and that's three times too many.

I don't think there's anything fundamentally more important than the integrity of self. We are entitled to choose our responses to the world, and society owes us the space in which to think and feel our own thoughts and feelings. (This is, for me, a measure of oppression: how far is your soul constrained to suit someone else's agenda?) And I think there are few things so gratuitously, contemptibly mean as pranking others' sense of the quality of their friendship with you in effort to teach them not to care. Friendships and acquaintances do matter - they help us define ourselves, they enrich our lives. Sometimes they save our lives, literally; I would not be here now writing this without the timely intervention of people who cared about me in moments of profound crisis. The idea that we should strive to think of all that as expendable appalls me.

So my circle of acquaintances is a little smaller today. But stronger for the removal. I'll have to find some cool new folks to get to know. In the meantime, I'll coax down the fear and rage I always feel at these moments; I've closed up the files for today's work and will get back to them later. This passes, I know, I just wish it were past already.

Current Mood: angry

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

drakyn

What the flying fuck? Who does that shit?
You are completely right for defriending him. >.<

From:

ceri

File under "privilege", crossfile under "If your life is that dull, you need to go engage better."

From:

willow

I befriended a jerk like that once. In all truthfulness dealing with him helped me get out of my shell. He was just SO VERY WRONG ON THE INTERNET.

But I think one per person is quite, quite enough. And after a time his various antics got kind of old and our friendship drifted. Plus, it's effort to keep up that kind of friendship, when you're basically gonna be rubbed raw whenever you hang around the person, online or off.

From:

ceri

It is hard work, and there's a point where you have to ask, "Is this worth it?" These days I'm drawing the line much tighter when it comes to people who periodically make me horrified, enraged, or whatever. They have to do a lot in other ways to make me want to keep them around.

From:

lisaquestions

I've got one of those in my LJ friend list. I really should just remove him entirely after the last time we actually had a conversation about anything, but I always feel bad about defriending.

My own fail.

From:

eagle

Various mental meanderings coming off of this, not directly related to your reaction (which I wholly support):

I wonder if "this stuff" in this context is any sort of connection to people on the Internet and the line drawn here is a sharp distinction between in-person friends and Internet friends.

There seem to be a lot of people like that. Ironically, Usenet was (and is) full of them. It seems to be one of the troll pathologies: nothing that happens on-line is actually "real" and you can be whatever sort of ass you want to be to people there because it's all just a big game.

I wonder if that attitude will die, or at least become quite rare, as more people grow up with on-line interaction and don't have quite as sharp of a life distinction between "people I met on-line" and "people I know in person." But I suspect at least some of it stems from fundamentally different processing of human interaction.

I prefer writing for most (not all) interactions. Even for people I know in person, I frequently communicate in writing. Particularly for topics that are emotionally fraught, I often do better in writing because I can re-read multiple times, carefully chose my tone, and express what I want to express instead of whatever nonsense happened to fall out of my mouth within the five seconds permitted for a conversational response. But that's a personality and communication style thing, and I know people who are very much the opposite and who do not deal well with important communications in writing or electronically mediated. Some small percentage of those (maybe in part because they feel semi-consciously that they're missing out on something other people have?) seem to actively denigrate electronically mediated relationships.

I'm vaguely interested in the different reactions out of a sense of abstract curiosity, but where I'm at personally is that I'm not interested in interacting with people who can't at least respect that on-line relationships matter to me. If they happen to be local, I don't require that they interact on-line to be friends with me, but they have to respect that those relationships are real and just as important to me as any in-person friendship or they don't get to be part of my life.

From:

ceri

I'm vaguely interested in the different reactions out of a sense of abstract curiosity, but where I'm at personally is that I'm not interested in interacting with people who can't at least respect that on-line relationships matter to me.

This is where I'm at, too. I'm really interested in ways of bridging the gaps between styles. I'm not interested in trying to make others uncomfortable and messed up. (Even when I want to help blast someone out of obstinate ignorance. If I could painlessly spread enlightenment to all, I would.) But things that actually do help people with different styles get along, yes, that a lot.

And I'm sure you're totally shocked to know how much I agree with you about the personal merits of writing emphasis.

From:

eagle

I used to be a bit of a curmudgeon about preferring e-mail or netnews, but I'm trying to get over it.

To an extent, I'm using Dreamwidth as an experiment to try out this web board thing, since finally the LJ code base has gotten far enough that, with tracking, I feel like I can follow a conversation. I was doing a bit of that on LJ, but not as much, and I'm vaguely planning on trying to get involved in some communities. I'm commenting lots more here than I ever did before. I feel like I should get to know how web boards work since it seems to be much more comfortable for a lot of people than e-mail or netnews.

I wish I had the time and mental attention for IRC (both Dreamwidth's and Debian's), since I know real-time conversation works for a lot of people for whom any sort of asynchronous conversation doesn't. But I'm already at the point where I mildly resent IM messages because I don't have enough attention for it and I have five other active real-time chats for long-standing relationships or work, so I just can't muster enough free attention.

It looks like I'm going to get a chance to play with Jive (which does a bunch of social networking, web board, and wiki stuff) in a professional context at work, and I'm trying hard to keep an open mind about the possibilities.

From:

ceri

I freely admit to missing a vigorous netnews environment. I miss the speed and range of options.

Twitter reminds me a lot of Usenet's fluffy side.

From:

piranha

unfortunately, the internet fosters that sort of attitude, because it's such a huge, vague, "thing" that doesn't feel like a community to people. it's several order of magnitude more anonymous than your average huge housing project. and people often interact with those not of their community as if they weren't quite real. that's not new; it's just that being an ass on the internet has even fewer repercussions that being an ass in meatspace. i don't think that will change in our lifetime, because tribalism is part of the human condition at this point in its evolution as far as i can tell (those who don't feel some form of it are few and far between).

but just as people in general can be taught to get at least along with others in meatspace, they can be taught to do so on the internet. i think it's been getting better as the net has become mainstream. getting along because we must isn't quite the same as perceiving other people as real, but it's a step in the right direction. i figure if we all fake it for long enough, some of it will become reality.

as to ceri's ex-acquaintance -- yeah, absolutely, i'd kick him off my flist as well, and it's got nothing to do with closets for me. i am not interested in being a sociopathic playground for somebody who clearly lacks the emotional maturity i require from those with whom i try to actively engage.