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How I can I be less bothered ad hominem attacks by randos online? I recently was pushing back against some seed-oil sophistry on substack (not even advocating for no-meat/veganism like you might assume, there isn't actually good evidence that vegan/vegetarian is better than the mediterranean diet), and some dude told me my profile picture looked like that of a prematurely aged teenager (for reference, here is the picture). I know this is bait because most of the time seed-oil sophists don't have any real arguments, but I couldn't prevent it from really bothering me. I've had similar experiences with non-appearance comments about intelligence, personal character, etc. and they all bother me to some extent. In real life this isn't really an issue because it's faux pas to make these kinds of comments (or at least has been since I graduated high school). Maybe a sign of some underlying insecurities I need to work through, or that I need to get a bit more sleep. Thoughts the motte?
Psychological pain is like physical pain. You have to use willpower to push past it until it has happened so many times that your psychological nerves are dead and it no longer hurts.
But then you will either appear to be dead inside, or you will just be dead inside.
The way I do it is to think of it sort of like spheres of influence. You currently see the situation as that dude attacked your avatar and you felt hurt, but that's not actually the situation. The actual situation is that you are sitting at your computer or on your phone and you read a comment and the way you interpreted that comment hurt. Yes you interpreted the comment the way it was meant, but that doesn't matter, what matters is that all of it took place within your own head - influenced by others, but unaffected because only you have any impact on your thoughts. And when you read that comment, inside your brain you know that it is bait, and more importantly you know you are right, that's why you argued in the first place. That might change in the future, but right now you know your argument is correct, and the fact he replied with an ad hom is further evidence that you are right. So who cares what that idiot thinks? He doesn't live inside your head, you do. Brush that dirt off your shoulder.
Like training physical pain tolerance it will still hurt, until it doesn't. And it won't work all the time regardless, and if you are betrayed or attacked out of nowhere it can fail. But that method definitely helps even if you aren't planning on becoming dead inside.
I think this is actually the crux of the issue -- I can't speak for @thejdizzler, but the bait that hurts the most is the bait that appeals to areas where you're not certain you're right. Like @Southkraut says, ad hominems have their appeal because they bypass any attempt at actually engaging with the issue substantively. The intent is to make someone doubt their judgment, not by criticizing the judgment itself, but by imposing doubt on their ability to make a judgment at all. If that hits at the right place at the right time, it can hit a sore spot, where someone already doubts their ability to make a judgment or even fears that they've made a dangerously wrongheaded one.
Obviously the solution is to find a firm footing for yourself and place some trust in your own judgment, but that can be very hard, especially when the issue in question is as intense, emotionally charged, and hard to answer as the sorts of questions that are summoned by the culture war. That's why you see so many ad hominems that target people's relationship with the opposite sex -- relationship length and satisfaction is cratering, sexual mores seem to change by the hour, and there's a sense that the bottom has fallen out of all the stable norms that allowed people to understand themselves as good and worthy partners. That moral vaccum enables malicious actors to exploit uncertainty by claiming the 100% guaranteed, certified, free range moral high ground, a kind of moral arbitrage in a market that's not sure what the price is. There are whole twitter threads now where progressive and conservative men shout slurs at each other, both implying that their ideologies are so pathetic that they alone make them repulsive to women. ("Incel!" "Cuck!")
I also get the sense that jdizzler is pretty agreeable, and agreeable people find it very hard to stomach people not liking them for reasons totally outside their control because of their drive for social harmony. There are also a lot of people who don't so much argue as think out loud, and if someone's earnest thinking-out-loud prompts an ad hominem, that can be pretty destabilizing, like kicking someone when they're trying to get up.
Agree with what you said here and with your assessment of me. I am very agreeable, which is why I think I struggle with these kinds of attacks so much. I also tend to doubt many of my beliefs about the world. There are only a few (veganism, various Christian moral virtues) that I'm very sure about, which makes it very easy to poke holes in my armor.
That example works for me because I understand the underlying principle then - only you live inside your brain - but it absolutely works, I wouldn't be able to hang out on the motte if it didn't, because despite having no trouble on chans and lolcow farms, opinions on the motte hurt more because they matter to me. And on the motte the labels and attacks that hurt me aren't even meant as attacks it seems, or at any rate are never insulting enough to regular people to merit any mod action.
If an ad hominem feels accurate, step back a little and reassess - @urquan says we see many ad hom attacks based on success with the opposite sex allowing malicious actors to exploit a vaccum, and he's absolutely right, but it's not just pure maliciousness motivating them, it is also deep insecurity. (insult threads blur the line though, not everyone engaged is serious). You don't need to aggressively attack others when you are happy with yourself.
It all circles back to only you live in your head though. You can't be sure your attacker did it out of insecurity, but inside your head that makes as much sense as anything else. If it doesn't, find something else. What good are rationalisations if you can't use them to get out of a funk?
One thing that really upsets me (and I really hope me telling you this doesn't backfire on me, although that is what I expect) is when people use schizo or schizophrenic to mean violently insane or stupid. It used to make me so angry when people did it that I would burn with rage, because it affects me personally. But nothing ever happened if I reported it and me slinging a bunch of insults at the person who said it didn't do much except make people dislike me. But then I remembered I already had the answer, I'd had it for decades, since the days when I would get the shit kicked out of me on a daily basis - the only person who lives inside your head is you. Now when someone uses schizophrenic insultingly, or when one of our wealthier members casually insinuates something despicable about the working class I can respond in good humour.
The fact that you doubt your beliefs is a cool aspect of your personality you should be proud of, and it's probably looking like the biggest stumbling block for this method to work, but as a recovered schizophrenic I doubt my beliefs more than anyone. But beliefs inside your own head, beliefs with no outward facing elements about fleeting interactions with strangers, those you don't need to doubt, because they fundamentally don't matter. That's probably the one good thing about schizophrenia, the way it helps you delineate the difference between internal thoughts and thoughts that interact with reality, and see how your core thoughts remain distinctly internal at all times. But as I said, I have been using this technique for decades, schizophrenia is not a prerequisite.
You can prove it to yourself actually, by engaging in a bit of light trolling. Next time someone throws an ad hominem at you (I can't see the picture you linked or I would try to give you a better example) take what they said and instead of dismissing it amplify it. They say "you look like an incel" you say "and I fuck like one too". They call you a manlet you say "yeah my mum smoked when she was pregnant because she's fucking cool as shit." Or more universally, they say something about your appearance and you reply "yea that's true but my grandma says my dick makes up for it."
The only people you will be insulting will be yourself and your own family, and yet it almost always defuses the situation entirely, because you immediately demonstrate supremacy over your own mind.
I know I'm not very good at explaining myself, so if you have any questions I am happy to answer them. Or if you want to give it a go and someone insults you and you don't know how to handle it shoot me a pm and I can give you a new perspective on it.
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