Grool The Demon

The FASTNESS

Can’t use Reddit if I’m permanently banned. Fuck them anyways.

Totally. We really just have a lot of mental health problems in this country tied to not seeing therapy as a real tool to aid in building better foundations that lead to better outcomes by being able to build those emotionally intelligent muscles that might get miswired otherwise. Everyone has baggage and no one is perfect, but when we build a world and society that looks down on people with trauma, abuse, or bad/unlucky experiences rather than raising them up we just end up with a sicker and sicker society. We should never be putting people down or outright banning things. Rather, we should be looking at society, its systems, its flaws, and its good points and be trying to better understand it and integrating as much of the human experience into it as we can. Everything can be bad for you if you do enough of it, but it is about finding real restraint through better understanding rather than shaming it all away. At least, that is how I see the world, or at least a better one than the mess we seem to be caught up in now.

No doubt. I think especially in childhood and early adult hood there are a lot of things that get muddled and tied up in shame where coping mechanisms and real self reflection needs to be ingrained earlier. There’s so many little hurdles to overcome in life but having a good foundation probably makes it overall easier.

Indeed. This was the article that started me down the rabbit hole. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/201808/science-stopped-believing-in-porn-addiction-you-should-too All very interesting stuff and there are a lot of peer reviewed papers on the subject as well.

Thank you for sharing that. I’m glad to hear you’re feeling better. Just remember that no one is perfect. The older I get the more I reflect back to times or abuses that may have hindered my emotional intelligence. Getting to the root of my own self loathing or anger has made me realize I don’t need to continue feeling that pain of the past and bringing it to the present. It’s a struggle but I try and just be honest with myself and remember that I am the one that needs to know myself better, learn to rewire that past trauma, and move on with better senses and awareness through my experiences. Let the present mold your future and keep fighting the good fight.

You know what’s crazy? The part about feeling shame. There’s been some recent studies about a lot of previously diagnosed sex/porn disorders and addictions being tied to shame due to misinformed religious conservative upbringing. If anything, we need to be talking about and teaching more about sex. Not learning about it correctly leads to hangups and shame about the human body, love, and self love that makes you nearly incapable of showing or expressing yourself correctly. That’s why all these conservatives are so fucking weird.

… And slice them off on the way down.

Everything is fiiiiiiiine… I mean we’re only talking about:

Alkylated lead compounds

Polycyclic organic matter (POM)

Mercury

Hexachlorobenzene

Polychlorinated biphenyls(PCB)

2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzofurans (TCDF)

2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin

So the cancer rates, neurotoxicity rates, kidney and liver disease rates, and general bad for you vibes might keep happening. Its all for progress right?.. Right?

Yeah it is a pretty neat idea. Not sure how I’d feel reliving the dream that deeply to make a longer story though. I got goosebumps just writing the post.

It was around the time that game L.A. Noir first came out. I ended up getting really sick with the flu and I was having these really vivid dreams where I was a detective investigating gruesome crime scenes and questioning suspects.

Anyways, my girlfriend at the time worked a lot of odd hours and she had a late shift on one of the days I was sick. So I crawled in bed around 6 or 7 pm hoping I’d get to see her and be feeling a bit better when she got home at 11. I’m exhausted so I immediately fall asleep.

So, I end up having another detective dream where I’m going over this murder scene where this lady was butchered in her kitchen. It’s even in black and white. I’m gathering evidence, questioning the neighbors and other passers by and talking with my partner who reminded me of Robert Stack from Unsolved Mysteries.

While all this is going on I start hearing someone calling my name. Real light and slow like it’s far away. At this point I feel like I’m obsessed with the case and really closing in on a suspect. My partner and I stop to take a smoke break and go over some ideas when I hear my name called again only louder. At this point it’s been escalating louder, closer, and clearer for what seemed like an hour.

I look at my partner and he’s reacting as if he heard it. So I ask him if the stress of the case was cracking me up or if he’d heard someone calling my name too. He just kinda wryly smiles as he looks down stamping out his cigarette under his polished black leather shoe and then just sort of chuckles to himself. He says, “Yeah… I heard it… I guess we’ll have to finish the case some other time.”

I start to argue with him asking him what he means. We can’t stop now… we’re getting too close to an answer! That’s when he finally lifts his head, sort of tips his brimmed hat back, and looks me dead in the eye as he puts his hand on my shoulder. We stand there in silence for a second when we hear someone call my name again only louder and closer this time. That’s when he squeezed my shoulder and calmly yet sternly tells me “None of this matters, none of this is real… It’s time for you to wake up now.”

I instantly shot up wide awake. It felt like I was pulled back into reality, like a rope literally tanked me upright in bed. Now, I’m sitting there just heavily breathing and sweating bullets when my girlfriend walked in and asked me how I was feeling and that she’d been trying to wake me up for like 5 minutes because she’s gotten some soup and crackers ready for me to try and eat.

The whole experience was just so odd I couldn’t shake it for like a week. She’d been the one calling me but that 5 minutes in dream time felt so much longer. Also, it felt surreal how my partner seemed to have real agency and how it all felt so real.

In the end, I never ended up having another detective dream or finishing the case. It’s like the facade of the dream world was shattered in that moment and my partner was kind of saying goodbye. I don’t know why I dreamed of a good man, friend , and partner like Stanford McCallister but I still wish I could thank him for waking me up.

I kind of agree… I hated it at first but it grew on me.

In the US it’s probably because literacy and reading comprehension is the lowest it’s been since the 80s.

https://www.platformer.news/leaving-substack-platformer-year-four/ This looks to be straight from the person that BroBot9000 was referring to. Interesting read.

If you can’t do it through legislation there’s always baseball bats, guns, fists, knives, and other useful tools to get the job done.

The fact that everything is controlled through “The Cloud” and some godforsaken subscription service is so terribly sad, funny, and horrifying at the same time. We’ve literally found every conceivable way to gather and sell people’s data while simultaneously milking them out of every last cent with the whole FOMO mentality driven through every piece of hardware and software now sold. It is just absolutely fucking preposterous. We’re living in a virtual hellscape that doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon.

I’ve been saying for years that Mike Judge is the modern Nostradamus. The dude has called everything from dumb teenagers, to American work culture, to misinformed redneck culture, to Trumpism. Now he’s tackling big pharma and government sponsored terrorism and ecoterrorism with Common Side Effects. The dude is just on top of it.

This has actually frightened me for years. There are fucking weirdo’s out there that believe so much in the Bible that I think they are actively trying to make the end times prophecy happen rather than just, you know… Evolve?

I remember when Reddit threads would have 50000 plus comments on the regular that felt like real discussions where karma kept the assholes in control. The front page always felt full of new things and it felt democratic in a way. In recent years it feels empty, algorithmic, and just kind of sad. Reddit felt like a safe place even with some of the grimier subreddit becoming popular. Now it’s just a oligarch pandering Nazi sympathizer platform. I was on there for 12 years and am happy I left it behind.

Thanks!