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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 18th, 2023

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  • Would you be surprised to learn that business is actually a network of cargo cults, where the thing they’re trying to superficially mimic is other businesses that don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing?

    I work for an online edtech company that saw massive organic growth during lockdowns, and has been chasing that dragon since lockdowns were lifted. They spent millions expanding their workforce at the time, while they severely pared down their school outreach team. They made multiple moves that only made sense if you assume lockdowns would last forever.

    I raised this with management a couple of times, and their only response was “everyone else was doing it, too”.




  • My ex is surrounded by support, from the same people who I thought were my best friends.

    This is the reason why. Your ex has managed to control the narrative and has manipulated the social atmosphere to ice you out. Emotional abusers are often very good at this. They mamipulate everyone around them.

    And they are really good at choosing their abuse victims. They know who they can love bomb, who they can isolate, and who will keep their mouth shut.

    I have been there. Watched people I thought were friends just evaporate, choosing their relationship with my ex over me. Realizing they were never my friends, they were “ours”, and ij the end they stuck by her, the more openly social and boistrous one.

    It’s taken a long time, and many different therapists, but I’ve come to accept my experiences as abuse, as not my fault, and… sometimes… that I am worthy of love, friendship, and happiness.

    I have found the books The Body Keeps the Score and Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving (available as audio books), as well as videos on toxic shame and attachment by Heidi Prieb, very helpful.

    I know the words feel hollow, because they feel so far the opposite of true, but you are not alone. Many others have been through what you’ve endured, and have made it out the other side. There are people out there who will, one day, be so very glad to have you in their lives.

    Some day, when you’re ready – and much earlier than I did, I implore you – you should join some activity groups. Take up a recreational sport, join a gaming group, take group acting lessons, join a choir… anything that is a) casual and b) a group activity. Bonus points if it’s something you always enjoyed, buy your ex tried to excise from your life. This will help you rebuild your social network, and let you reconnect with yourself.

    Physical activity and a healthy diet is also important here. It may be the last thing you want to do, but it actively helps fight all of your worst psychic injuries. Not only is it physiologically good for you, it’s psychologicallly good for you. You know that it’s good for you; your brain knows it. Doing healthy things means choosing to care about yourself. You need to actively choose yourself at every step of the way. It trains your mind to see yourself as worthy of care.

    Oh, and ritually burn things that were hers, or that were shared and tied to your relationship. You don’t need them. You don’t need her. You’re going to be better off without her.








  • The choice to be on open-source, community-owned social media rather than corporate owned platforms is, itself, a political choice, and one that, in the absence of other focuses for discussion, will attract politically outspoken people. With no other core community here to focus discussion, everything will fall back to the things most people here have in common: FOSS, anti-corporate sentiments, etc., all of which are themselves inherently political topics.



  • I think it’s dangerous to imagine people follow these folks, or let them run rampant over society, because they aspire to be like them. That makes it so much harder to really understand why people support them, or even just refuse to tell them “no”, and makes it impossible to do anything about it.

    People believe that life is a meritocracy. Even when they themselves can look around at the people near them and see that those in positions of power don’t deserve it, they still view society as a whole as “fair”. Yes, they personally have may have gotten screwed over, but, in general, the people who float to the top got there because they were smarter and more capable. Therefore, we should sit back and just let them cook.

    They need some kind of trigger to see the billionaires not as people who have earned their place, but who have stolen it.