Replying to Avatar Lyn Alden

I rarely lose my temper, but whenever I do a couple times per year, my writing gets 10x as much reach and likes and shares, and gets basically immortalized. But I'm rarely happy about it when it does.

I still think about this a lot in terms of how I choose to use social media- with reach comes responsibility.

It's both a bad thing and a good thing. On one hand, it's not great that posts based on a combination of emotion and reason get *way* better reach than ones based on more pure reason alone. For "clicks" the best thing I could do for a given post is lose my temper and go all-out on something.

On the other hand, the rare cases where I lose my temper are based on serious built-up frustrations over months. I'm frustrated about something, keep holding it back, and then something becomes intolerable. My socially-compliant self-censorship all unravels at once, not perfectly, but with a clear aspect of *deep* honesty. And people see that honesty because it reflects their own. So it spreads.

So, most of the time, I write carefully, and I know my audience comes from multiple different backgrounds, literally from Indonesian farmers to Wall Street institutional billionaires, and I try to politely move the Overton window from within the Overton window. But a couple times per year, I lose my temper and post my emotional thoughts, which in some ways are more honest, but are also not exactly my ideal self-actualized self.

I end up being grateful for both my constant attempt at control and my rare tempers, because somewhere in the middle is my truth. That blend between controlled reason and built-up emotion is really hard to manage in an era of digital media and semi-immortalized content.

Anyway, I'll post this random stuff on Nostr, not Twitter. You guys and girls get the real thoughts because you're here.

I admire your spirit

You are the human who can come back from the darkness

You are the person who loves humans even after seeing the ugliness of humans

And when you come back, you bring others back

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Discussion

There was a scene in some random cartoon DC movie from 2010 that stuck out to me for over a decade now, mainly because it involved Batman, and I really like Batman. It referenced Nietzsche, as all good kid movies should do.

Batman was fighting some evil version of himself from an alternate universe, heard the alternate’s explanation for why he was evil, and said back to him:

“There is a difference between us. We both looked into the abyss, but when it looked back, you blinked.”

That always stuck with me. Oddly deeply. On one hand, it’s a really good statement for people who deal with darkness or frustration at times. You have to be able to look into the worst things, don’t fall prey to nihilism from doing so, and choose better. That’s your strength and your purpose. On the other hand, and perhaps more importantly, it explains why you simply don’t fuck with Batman.

💜💪

Two weeks ago, I asked the image generator "Rorschach tells the patient his associations to the image" and he gave Batman with barbiturate molecules, u know