I think call outs are really neat actually in that it lets us get a developmental view of one of the oldest punishment systems, branding/exile. we all witnessed how people came to the conclusion that marking people as undesireable is a good idea - by painting pictures of monsters. Someone in exile is subject to wild beasts and closed off from sources of food and shelter, just like someone disgraced by the public finds it harder to get a job, and people reluctant to put them into the public sphere = job ceilings.

The reason that exile is preferred over other punishment is that it's not physically cruel, but rather socially cruel, isolating someone from human company and subjecting them to the mercy of their mental demons - an element of imprisonment, another common punishment.

Someone branded yet still integrated into society suffers loss of food and shelter as previously discussed but also a form of social punishment where violence toward you is acceptable, often resulting in physical injury... The uniqueness of this repeated injury, like a torture method, is that it does not use something like an elaborate device for causing pain, but rather "humanity" as a tool for torture. Other people, the "Other" in our mind distinguished from the Self. Metaphysical. Promethean.

Doublelift talks to his fans with so little emotion. He has so many scripts now, he masks effortlessly. He's so smooth while he's coldly monetizing his stream and building a successful life with his skinny, hot manager girlfriend. I just think CEOs are lonely and so is Doublelift. He was a bullied overweight kid, and while being one - just like I was - he accumulated a lot of intelligence and a lot of trauma, and right now his rapid successful lifestyle isn't going to give him space to process that trauma, he just keeps seeing people as tools and accepting perspectives that he's a good person and society works.

Thinking about all of those successful people with lots of money - the top of the leaderboard. A lot of them were bullied kids, too. I think it's a type of person, if we think about instinct and pack mentality, I think that it's built into us that when we're the underdogs and we fight our way out of a traumatic situation, we use our intelligence and come out on top, we seize the territory and are confident in our dominance.

(disclaimer: I'm projecting, I don't know the real Doublelift, this is only a version of him that exists in my head based on a curated online persona that he performs that I'm using to understand myself)

What is money? It's an agreement between people that something is worth the same as something else. (rei: a representation of contribution, a pwomise that you will make yoruself useful in the bastract.) It's a statement of trust that a task will be done in the future. It's chains that bind you to promises. It's the power to make people do something.

(this is why I was never good with money, because rather than being concrete like people try and present it, it's a representation of a social concept, which have always been difficult for me to understand)

[rei: when I think about that I think of the pentacles suit in tarot, & like how that's a hyper concentrated version of the "earth element" in tarot, & that quadrant represents material resources & the work those resources require]

[rei: yeah exactly. bc of that I think that people who have a lot of money/assets don't actually *have* all of that like you wouldn't be able to be rich without being involved with a shitload of ppl]

Right like I have no idea how Elon Musk lives but essentially he can wave his hand and make ppl do things for him him right? but he wants to live like a regular guy he doesn't have the attention span for like... solving complex society problems. He wants to focus on tech gadgets so all of that power is going toward making ppl divert attention away from social issues and on how to make cool things. that's why there's no funding for essential things.

Because you're using your power to say stop paying attention thingsl ike taking care of your elderly father, or how to find happiness in life, use it to make cheap food so lots and lots of people can crunch numbers on a computer to make sure something something etc.

I've been living according to my childhood values which include living a humble life and paying little attention to money. But it's a little number (like a follower count) in the corner of your screen and they keep changing the game re: how you can spend those points because reality is constantly changing.

[rei: same here dude T__T I saw this thing recently that was like "if you're disgusted by money you'll never amass it" & I was like :( ]

[rei: like I would love to be wealthy & not have to worry about my material needs]

If I wanted to live a simple life, I could ignore it. But I don't, I wanna be a rockstar! I wanna shake things up in this dump of a world. So I need to use those little points.

There's no way to stay still right now in this world, at least as an urbanite I guess. You can't hold a small piece of land peacefully and grow it. There is a war and resources are constantly being taken from you. When you're under siege, you can't just be a simple humble farmer. You pick up your pitchfork. But they're not coming with pitchforks - A farmer can have a shotgun, too. Their weapons aren't fire or guns, they're an armored squad that will politely put you in a cage, unless you give them your property so they can bulldoze it, destroy everything you have, and con somebody into buying the land for inordinate amounts of money. And the public will do nothing because they agree that it was fair for them to have done so. The weapons were mana to psychically paralyze the people using leylines of magic - money, and logic.

When I was a youngin reading science fiction there was this idea of a dream pod. It simulates a perfect world, and so many people became addicted to it that they stayed within these chambers until their bodies withered and decayed, and they died.

As a child this is a horrifying scenario. That there could be something so pleasant, that you would indulge in it until you died.

Is it a Christian notion, that following your pleasure will lead to destruction?

I feel checked out today. The stresses are so powerful, the pressure so enormous, that I want a holiday. I know when I am on summer break, I want the rigidity of work or school again. I don't like to imbibe forever. So I don't think people who stood to have something to lose out of real life, would be so tempted by infinte happiness as to lose something precious. I think of children who have already suffered so much, and would rather be numb going forward. I think we are meant for short, brilliant lives. If the slings and arrows of fortune have found us again and again, aging our spirit, does that spirit not deserve a peaceful retirement?

I would get up from the infinite pleasure machine eventually. After a month or two. If my experience in the real world was one of pain, it would be nice to have a reprieve from that pain. I think if people have suffered a lot in their lives then they deserve a vacation for their spirit for as long as they want. it's the least society can do for them after failing them.

What I was afraid of as a child was to lose the potential for a happy, tangible existence, with the withering away of my real body. But real bodies are in pain and bondage everywhere. I don't think there is intrinsic value in them, if we can free the spirit.

Any time I'm in public it's a performance.

When I'm talking with my classmates over text I'm anxious and not at all in my element. But in a class,

My task is to absorb and be on top of all of the content and the instructor's state of mind (in order to figure out what they want.) By answering questions posed to the class, by letting classmates have their opportunities to learn, and by making jokes/comments during the material which display my mastery - I am in my element. I'm performing expertly and gracefully. If a stage cannot accommodate me, I leave the theatre. (i'm not present in phys or psych. I only make select appearances and cannot be commanded.)

But I can be in a performance all the time. I can perform "myself" whenever I need to. tehre's no need to have stage fright.

And when I'm alone and I feel mastery of myself, is that a performance? but alone the performance feels so natural. Perhaps I can extend this feeling to everybody around me, take everybody into myself and pose them as the "other" that I commune with when I'm very comfortable. After all, the "other" tells me things such as what the public opinion is at any point.

"First absorb. Find your stability. Then act."

First pause, be in the moment, and evaluate your game field. Then play.

Was watching Broxah stream today. He got really tilted.

He got tilted because he had been coaching somebody on how to not tilt and play well despite setbacks - the next game his protege was on the opposite team, and his own team was playing very poorly, playing emotionally, and Broxah watched them make mistake after mistake, unable to do anything about it and questioning again and again, "Why are they doing this? Why don't they want to win? What can I do? I don't want to play this game anymore."

I think that being a kind person means that you consider effecting good consequences for those around you something that you can control, something that you will to happen, and when someone is behaving badly you wonder why they are choosing to behave that way. You are frustrated at the lack of control that you can have on the situation. You fall into a despair of not understanding why someone chooses to effect negative consequences on their environment. Because YOU can imagine yourself in that scenario and how you would behave to counteract your negative tendencies, you can't see why someone else is responding to a scenario in the way they are responding to it, rather you are hyperfixated on your judgement that the behavior they're exhibiting is the WRONG one - because you hold yourself to a standard where you don't perform it.

Being kind is to act in a way where a group of people have generally agreed upon a standard of acting, which is to say, to consciously change the way you act and be disciplined about it. The problem with discipline is that it can render you inflexible.

A kind person is an angry person in a situation they can't control, whereas an indifferent person who behaves sporadically at most times may be the one who has the energy to be kind when the patience of others fail them, or the empathy to be able to be kind, because they are perceiving the world around them without judgement.

It's very hard for me to accept that someone I live with or choose to spend my time around is not choosing the courses of action that would enable them to be effective, kind, healthy in their life. I think it's definitely true that I've tried to manicure the trajectory of my thoughts and actions to be optimal since a very young age. In Broxah's frustrations I see myself.

"I don't want to play this game anymore. What can I do? This is such a fun game, and if it's not this game it will be the next one. I can't do anything about the fact that people just don't try to win this game. And they get no consequences for it. Here they are, queuing up for the next game, where they will do the exact same thing. What is even the point? What's the point of playing this game?"

I know how he should react. (there's the judgement, again.) (Can you have growth and improvement without judgement? Is it better, or worse?) It's just a game. People have always played like this, so just accept that your teammates will make poor decisions and focus on your own play. (Maybe it's harder for a jungler who always has to look to others to make plays, whereas laners are usually a straightforward duel) 

When Sneaky fought Adam and Eve for the first time in Nier Automata, a scripted biased battle, he came back again and again, like 20 times, while chat told him to just quit and grind some more. He was getting one-hit and hardly doing any damage. But he found enjoyment in learning the enemy's instakill attack patterns. Every time he got just a little further in the scripted fight. The chat was spamming the dialogue that played at the beginning of each fight as a joke about how repetitive it was getting, how it was getting on their nerves. It didn't get on Sneaky's. When he played the fight to its timed conclusion, he gloated at chat. "Who needs to grind more now?" 

When Sneaky had bad teammates, he might be frustrated at them and make snarky comments at them when they made bad plays, but I think he found ways to be distracted doing his own thing. Maybe that's what Sneaky means when he says he's like a dog and doesn't remember bad emotions. If there's a program playing in your head all the time, which you can focus on instead of external things that demand your focus, maybe it's easier to bear the frustrations of the world. Sneaky's fight against Adam wasn't fair. The game was elevating the difficulty curve arbitrarily for that one instant. It's the game's perogative to do so, thought, right? It's not my game, it's the programmers' game. It's Yoko Taro's game. Don't I just have to trust Yoko Taro that this is gonna be fun? So the game League of Legends, when you're playing with teammates who can't regulate their emotions, that's not fair. I will lose a game because of no fault of my own. So, why attach importance to losing at all? Don't I have fun controlling my characters, playing out impossible scenarios, exercising my skill when I can?

To answer Broxah's questions: 
The people he's playing with might not be trying to win. They are walking their own, frustrated path. They do spend their whole day like this, playing out positive openings and raging and quitting negative ones. They don't get consequences because this is a way that works for playing this game. 

The thing is that everyone is playing the same game. Everyone enters the rift with five strangers, many of whom will be throwing the game. My own performance can make it so that we're more likely to win, but I can't guarantee it. So then, winning is nice as a treat, but is not an equal indicator of my effort or my skill. It can come as a result of it, but it doesn't determine it.

I was in a roleplaying session, where everyone was dressed up. we were all collaborating on some ission and it was in an apartment. Then afterwards I improvised and decided to point my sword at one of the other characters calling them the target of my revenge plot for years. We fight. Then eventually I call it quits and laugh it off, saying I was just kidding. I say I gotta go back to my hotel. when asked the number I say ah... I forgot... and they're like 1225? and I say sure... that's it!

I leave the roleplaying session and see other people in cosplay along the hallways of the apartment as I exit. I notice how anxious I am, improvisation always leaves me with so much anxiety. I hoped I could learn to calm down. I think about cutting across the soccer field but I'm nervous that I'll be apprehended by a guy with a knife! There were stories of men killing girls for fun. I decided to walk along the major street. Still, as I approached an intersection, I was alarmed by two people on bikes who almost slammed into me from behind. I thought about kicking their wheels hard after they'd gone by so that they'd crash into the road, that would show them. But I didn't have the dexterity, and anyway I wasn't sure if they'd deserve that.

I turned the corner and there was a bus that had planted its whole front half right into the metal of a gas station. It was a surprise because I hadn't noticed it while walking along the other side of the station, apparently. I think they were carrying the driver out on a stretcher.

There was this big cathedral, looked like the Hammerlocke gym. Or maybe it was a village, or maybe it was underwater. I remember exploring it, trying to fortify it, it was very tall and dark and blue. I had a dream when I was a child about a big blue place, but I think it was made of shining tiles.

My grandpa had been helping out with everything but suddenly he said he had to go. He said he was going to put down, or give up, "my hair, my life, and everything" as he walked off. I ran after him. I respect his choices but I thought I could convince him. I told him there's so many stories he hasn't told me. He told my mom, for every item of ____ she bought him, to exchange it for one story for the little one. I cried and called his name. He looked so shrunken in his ill-fitting clothes and big hat.