11.7.24
Defining "chronically online"

Thursday

If you're reading this right now, there's a good chance you've used the term chronically online in a derogatory way before. I came across someone on discord lately who's said to be chronically online by a friend, but after seeing how engaged he is with his friends it made me rethink how I've been using that term and who I've been using it on. As of now, I'm no longer a fan of that term because it could mean so many different things, the internet is made up of galaxies; Someone who spends hours a day researching articles online for work, school or as a hobby fits the label of chronically online. Someone who spends hours a day playing games online with their friends or by themselves could be labeled chronically online. If someone like me spent the vast majority of their time working on their blog or any other project over the internet, they too could be labeled chronically online. But when we use that term, we usually don't think of those people, do we?

I think chronically online really means social media addict, so I looked up what do you think qualifies as chronically online and, at least on a surface level, that does seem to be the case. There's a few reddit threads asking for red flags that someone is chronically online and to me they all sound like behaviors learned specifically from social media and the core web. Some comments include, but are not limited to:

"The one who knows all the Youtube beefs before the people even know they're beefing" -Deleted

"They speak in memes." -BillionTonsHyperbole

"My(24) 18 and 19yo coworkers trying to explain to our 56yo boss who sniper wolf is and why it’s 'such a massive deal' that they 'can’t believe you haven’t heard of this' because it’s 'everywhere.'" -kimjongk80

"Using xpill and alpha/beta shit unironically" -rawgu_

"Censorship of “controversial” words: sewerslide, yatzee, le$bean, grape, etc" -deferredmomentum

"'Women won't date anyone under 6 feet that doesn't have a six pack and isn't rich...'" -Waste_Coat_4506

"Using the same lines word for word as a roast, 'Bro really thought he did something 💀'" -TearsOfAJester

And so on.
Generally I think chronically online isn't best used in this context. It's kind of like finding some super duper ultra racist dude wearing a Texas t-shirt and saying to yourself "yup, that's texas all right" when in reality he's just from Vidor. If Vidor was the capital of Texas. And most people didn't know or acknowlage that there are places other than Vidor.

This was a really shitty analogy...

I think it's about time for a new insult to throw towards people who need to get off their phone and touch some grass. I though of this phrase and it's not super original, someones prolly thought of it before, but I much prefer the term

It's specific, snappy, and easy to remember. Definitely rolls of the tongue better than chro-nic-ally-on-line. Someone who uses the internet for hours of research won't get their information from a 90 second TikTok. Someone who spends hours writing online won't rely on comment section catch phrases in an argument. And someone who spends hours a day gaming with their friends...
...probably will speak in memes now that I think about it.

11.3.24
Oversharing

Sunday

I'll admit that my life is rather boring.

I live a mostly sedantary, easy, and safe lifestyle in a boring town still in an awkward transitional phase from not shit to shit that has very little to do all things considered. I think this is a feeling a huge chunk of gen-z has to sit with and come to terms with; our ancestors have given blood, sweat and tears to ensure their seeds could live easier and safer lives, and now that we have that... we're not sure what to do. There aren't as many risks to take, not as many hurdles to jump over and therefore not as much character to build. Unable to find substance in the world around us, we seek excitement through screens that show us social media feeds, movies and TV shows, games, and porn. We chase the high of various drugs that are now more readily available then they ever have been, either to become interested and involved in the world or to retreat within ourselves. I have my own methods of chasing that lost excitement in my life as well; meeting bizzare individuals on VRChat I never would've come across in real life, losing conscious control of my arms and wrists as they slice ten blocks per second in Beat Saber, and of course, smoking myself stupid just to name a few.(more on that last one later) I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with chasing excitement through digital means and substances,(we've been doing the latter for all of human history) but it's important to ensure that we're learning, growing, and challenging ourselves rather than simply distracting ourselves. If all you ever want to do in your life is distract yourself from it, what's the point of living?

About a week ago I was reading Extremely Online: The untold story of fame, influence, and power on the internet by Taylor Lorenz. The second chapter is all about the rise of the mommy bloggers, and how they were among the first to become "influencers" as we know them today. The blogger at the forefront of this chapter is one Heather Hamilton, or Heather Armstrong as she's often referred to, the webmaster of a once explosively popular blog Dooce.com. Taylor details how most media depictions of mothers at the time were heavily sterilized and either covertly or overtly mysoginistic, often depicting moms as golden gals who always do their absolute best for their beloved children. Of course, if you have a mother, and most of us do, you know this is far from the reality of raising a child. It's messy in many ways, both physical and mental. When the internet came along, these women were given a voice society hadn't been given up until that point.

"So, a generation of mothers turned to the internet, either as readers, or writers, or both. Blogging gave them a needed outlet for their creative energy as well as a way to connect with others like them. What began as a hobby ultimately found millions of readers with a shared, unmet need: solace, entertainment, and camaraderie during a period of life that was often isolating and overwhelming." Pg 20.

Before I had finished this chapter, I'd skimmed through Dooce just to take a look, and haphazardly read a few lines from the entry that greeted me when I entered the site. Some days later, I continued reading Extremely Online and finished chapter 2.

"A lot of bloggers who were super active when I was have left the industry," Catherine Connors reflected. "The spaces got more and more toxic and it seemed to be getting worse and worse." By 2015, for Heather Armstrong, there was only one solution: quit blogging. So, she did. A few years later she returned briefly, once again penning heartfelt and candid posts about her struggles with depression and alcohol addiction. Then, on May 9, 2023, after relapsing at her home in Salt Lake City, she took her own life. She died at age forty-seven."

I was stunned. I had no idea I was reading words written by a dead women. I revisited Dooce and noticed an href to an In Memoria section on the right side. Considering how strongly it pops out of the minimalistic site layout, I felt embarrased for not noticing it sooner. This time around, I had given the entry my full attention.

"On October 8th, 2021 I celebrated six months of sobriety by myself on the floor next to my bed feeling as if I were a wounded animal who wanted to be left alone to die. There was no one in my life who could possibly comprehend how symbolic a victory it was for me, albeit it one fraught with tears and sobbing so violent that at one point I thought my body would split in two. The grief submerged me in tidal waves of pain. For a few hours I found it hard to breathe.

I had isolated myself entirely from the outside world because I didn’t understand what was happening to me. And I was embarrassed. Here, two years into this often frenzied and wandering dance with life, I understand that I couldn’t hold anyone’s gaze because everywhere I looked I saw nothing but my own worthlessness. And so I chose loneliness. I couldn’t handle the idea of anyone else knowing just how bad I felt about myself.

I now understand that “what was happening to me” was a physical reconciliation with pain. 22 years of agony I had numbed with alcohol had come alive and transformed itself into an almost alien life form. I often felt like I was being electrocuted for hours at a time. The core of my body absorbed the shock of it all, and it brought me to my knees. I was forced to stare this wild-eyed savage straight in the face, and now I look around and think, “Oh, this. This is just life. All of this is just a physical reaction to psychological pain.”

Sobriety was not some mystery I had to solve. It was simply looking at all my wounds and learning how to live with them."

That last line really struck a chord with me. I've been weed-free for about a month and a half now and I intend to keep it that way for much longer. I got hooked on THC because my life felt duller than a bag of rocks without it. I remember, when I first started smoking when I was fourteen, it was like the world finally came alive for me; I was curious and excited about life and the world for what feels like the first time in my life. I think the biggest challenge of sobriety for me personally is learning how to find my life interesting without the assistance of free dopamine from drugs. Looking back on all of this, I think back to a line from page 26 of Extremely Online that reads:

"One of the things that had made Armstrong popular, however, was her propensity for a little TMI (too much information)"

This book and this blog have greatly shifted my outlook on blogging: I realize now that if I want to write entries that resonate and stick with people, I'll have to put out much more than shitty small-talk about how my day was. I'll need to put my full self out there - warts and all. My day to day life might be dull, but the context of how I got here is anything but. I realize that few people are reading this, and that's perfectly fine with me. The indie web is about creation, not clout. Regardless of how many or how few will interact with this site, I want them to exit out of it feeling like they read something real and valuable. If they wanted random pointless blurts and monotonous yapping, they could find an unlimited amount of those things on the core web.

I'm not quite sure how to end this entry because I'm not sure who I could be talking to at the moment. But to whoever is reading this, know that what you'll read from this point onward is as truthful as I can possibly manage.




PS, I just read the first ever entry on Dooce from May 6th 2001, and it reads:

"I should probably shoplift something before I die.

Why do I daydream about Rod Stewart in inappropriate positions?"

If there is a heaven, I'm sure Heather's a star at open mic night.

Rest In Peace, Heather Hamilton. You'll live on through your website.

10.31.24
Dream Journal 4 and Happy Halloween!

Thursday

I honestly think it's pretty neat that today of all days is when I woke up from a nightmare. I hardly ever have nightmares so it's pretty interesting to look back on them once I wake up.

It actually started out as a normal dream and then spiraled. The earliest piece I can recall was me working on my website at night and looking at the main hub when my mom walked in. I always minimize the tab when she does but for some reason I didn't this time. Idk if there was anything stopping me or if the dream logic simply said no, but she got over to my desk and noticed my screen. Before she could even get the sentance "what're you looking at?" out of her mouth, I blurted "Close your eyes! It's a surprise!" out of panic. She did, partly because I put my hands over her eyes.
I can't remember what happened immediately after that, but some time later there was A dog that looked identical to my dog Honey sticking it's head through my window. I guess it was standing on the air or something?? It was standing perfectly regularly, as if my window was close to the ground, but I don't remember registering anything for it to stand on... I did register that it wasn't Honey though. I let it sniff my hand, and it started barking violently and even nipped me a little. I panicked and shut the window on it's head, but I didn't think to grab anything in my room to push it fully out with so I could shut the window, and I ran out and closed the door. I came back a little later with my mom (not sure what the fuck she was gonna do) and the dog was gone so I quickly shut the windows. I can't remember if this part happened immediately or later, but I was closing my curtains perfectly to make sure none of my room was visible from the outside when I noticed two people in the backyard.

And they noticed me.

I shut my curtains and ran out to the living room to tell my family what I saw. As we were talking, they started trying to kick down my back door. In the moments before it broke down, we discussed something but I can't recall what. I grabbed a knife and waited by myself for them to break it open. Not sure where my dogs were when this was happening... Now, the final part of this dream was the scariest and also the most... oddly specific. When the door finally burst open, it was two black women who were wearing, like, Rainbow Six Seige type character designs and not robber get ups? They both looked identical to each other, their outfits were very colorful and well designed, and I know they were black women because even though they were wearing masks, they had big beautiful afros that were let loose out of it perfectly! I'm not sure why my subconscious chose them as the attackers... I don't think I'm racist... Anyways, I charged at the one closest to me and pushed their gun away from myself while I tried to stab them with my other hand. I say "tried" because for some reason, each time I tried to stab her, even though my aim was fine (it's kind of hard to miss someone in front of you with a knife...) the knife would somehow dodge her body each time, like two magnets repelling each other. While this is happening, I see the other person shooting, presumably at me, but I don't feel anything most likely because I've never been shot and my brain didn't really know what to do. After like 4-5 consecutive point blank misses, I changed my grip and finally stabbed her in her back several times until she fell down. I charged at the other one and stabbed her in the abdomen until she fell too. I faintly recall looking at the aftermath and all the blood on the walls and floor and all over me. I must've been "shot" because the dream ended with me losing slowly consciousness.

It seems my mind decided to spook it up a bit for halloween...

I have a feeling I know where my brain got the dog at the window part. One time a couple years back, I was babysitting my brothers dogs and I had like four dogs in my room just chilling. My window was open but I shut it once I heard some snarling kinda far away but close enough to be cause for concern. Low and behold, a few minutes later and what do they all gather at the window to bark at but a couple random ass dogs in our backyard? Good god, I am SO grateful I shut that window. If I hadn't it would've gotten pretty bloody and honestly I don't think the intruder dogs would've survived... They were outnumbered and my brothers dogs were fucking pshycos... I wonder if specifically the combination of seeing the people in my backyard while closing the curtains came from something my brother told me... Apparently, the violent crime rate in Lubbock, where I live, is 2.2x higher then the state average! Source. Ever since he told me that, I always make sure to close my curtains perfectly before I leave the house. Oh, and of course, the first part came from me not wanting my mom to ever find this site lol.

I had a pretty good Halloween all things considered! I had to work today sadly, I didn't have(the money for) a costume, so I told people that this year I'm a wagie! :D After work I got to see a friend I haven't seen in a hot minute which was real nice. We drank a decent amount, and I made the foolish mistake of chasing down a couple shots with redbull at like one in the morning, which had me up until damn near FIVE. I got up at 11:30 thanks to that :') but it was a great time! We shot the shit about whatever, video games, work, movies, how our friends have been and whatnot. His roomate moved out recently and he turned his old room into a fucking HORROR MOVIE ROOM which is just crazy. Lately I've noticed I have a bit of a problem with envy but I was just really happy for him and I'm grateful for that in hindsight. There were a few things that made me a bit sad for a minute though, specifically reminders of just how forgetful my brothers weed addiciton has turned him. Apperantly he forgot that i've gotten several raises at work AND the first time I got DRUNK drunk back on January 1st this year...

That day should be seared into his memory, not JUST because we got fucked up but because earlier that day, during an errand we ran with our sister, we passed by a burning house! We could see the smoke from a mile away! In the words of my sister who I think would make a wonderful stand-up comedian in the future, "New year, new house!"
Man, thinking about how my brother has no memory at all of these events makes me pretty sad but also makes me grateful that I've cut THC out of my life and encourages me to keep it that way. Once I came home, I proceeded to drop my $50 no longer available vinyl pressing of the Donut County ost on the ground so whoopsie daisys! It's perfectly fine but fuck me man. I guess that's just what happens when you're drunk lol. Hopped on VRChat for a couple hours and hung out with my friend Tiny. Wish I took a picture or two... He brought up how he's pretty interested in interstellar spacecraft and loves spacey-type maps and I showed him Exoplanet Journey. There, we talked about aliens we would fuck and nerded out about a whole bunch of other nerd shit.

All in all I'm pretty satisfied with how I spent Halloween this year. My only real complaint is that I'll have to wish my friend at boot camp a late Happy Halloween in a letter since he didn't graduate on Oct 27th as originally planned. Other than that, I don't really mind being a wagie for Halloween as long as I get to spend it with friends.

10.23.24
Dream Journal 3 and massive vinyl haul

Wednesday

I always love it when I can vividly remember parts of my dreams. That's another reason why I don't want to get back to smoking weed, you COMPLETELY forget each and every bit of whatever you dreamt about. For a little while after I woke up though, I could remember how they made me feel. Nowadays, every now and then I'll sleep extra just so I can keep dreaming about whatever random nonsense my subconscious cooks up. Anyways...
The earliest event I can remember was being a worker (volunteer most likely) in some kind of youth event. There were kids of all ages and we were in this big ass house. I vaguely remember staying there overnight so maybe it was some kind of summer camp? I don't remember what we did though. On the last day when everyone was being picked up, One person who was there to scoop a kid was a childhood friend I haven't spoken to in years, I'll call her T.

T and I recognize each other and I can't remember us chatting but I know we did because I do remember her offering me a ride. What's funny is I subconsciouslly knew she was there to scoop a kid, but the only person she wound up picking up was me, and I KNEW she wasn't there for me. Next, I remember being in the car. She was in the passenger seat, a man was driving. I don't remember what they're relationship was. On our way to where ever we were going, I spotted an outdoors record store (horrible idea btw) and asked them to drop me off there. They pulled up, we said our goodbyes, I got out, and the male driver, AS A JOKE, which I also thought was funny and was totally cool with, hit me with his car. The dream logic made it so I was totally fine, and I didn't go flying or anything, but you don't bouce off a car the way I did without sustaining a few injuries.

Next, I remember browsing through only a few before I picked one up to inspect it. A gust of wind suddenly showed up even though it wasn't windy at all when I arrived. It was incredibly strong, and blew on the vinyl record I was holding so hard it was starting to bend. According to the dream logic, the wind blowing on the vinyl made it difficult for me to pick up? As if it were heavier? Also, all the records sitting in place were completley undisturbed by the wind, and were only affected when picked up. Despite this, I Insisted on picking up and inspecting this record. After about a minute of struggling, the record was pretty much broken in half, and I got so pissed off that I crushed it in my hands even more and threw it back onto it's place on the display. The following interaction was completely wordless: I look to my side to see who I can feel is an employee. He gives me a look of dissapointment, and I feel ashamed. He presents the palm of his hand expectantly, and I give him some coins in my pocket? It couldn't have been more than $2 but he takes it and walks off.

I can't quite remember what happened in between that part and this part, but the next thing I remember is watching this strange video: So picture an outside area with a big stone staircase shaped in a 160 degree angle leading up to a corridor in between two apartment complexes. The corridor has doors, staircases, and balconies. There's a big flood happening, and the water is flowing towards the corridor but no water is getting into it yet. Apparently the water is moving so fast, that when cars hit the staircase they go flying into the corridor and bouce off the walls. Now, the video I was watching... was a compilation showcasing different cars and how hard they hit the staircase and how much damage they cause to the corridor. I'm not sure with what intention I was watching it, or if I thought it was real or a simulation, but I was watching very intently. I'm not sure if I just got super immersed or if it actually happened, but at some point I was no longer looking at a screen, I was actually there, albeit in some omnipotent viewer form. Like those VR videos on Youtube.

At some point, the staircase breaks off entirely and joins the army of debris in the flood. Then the water level lowers, and the camera pans down to reveal people fighting. Not how they would in real life, but how they would in a game or action movie. One person is using a spear and she climbs up onto the corridor. Suddenly, it transforms into some kind of mobile ad??? Also for some reason, everyone is now lizard people? Anyway, the pacing is super fast paced and ADHD like a mobile ad; Theres loud bombastic music in the backround and the spear women clibs up a ladder or something to rendezvous with her friends. The last thing I remember was her running toward something before my alarm woke me up.

It's clear to me why vinyl records had a cameo but who knows where my brain got the rest of that from...

Moving on, I went to my grandmas today, intending to drop by real quick and pick up this Titanfall 2 poster that was shipped to her house by mistake. I wound up picking up a lot more than I intended... I opened up one of her cabinets to get something for her, and told her how I thought a big stack of photos were little vinyl records for a sec, and she told me she actually DID have a bunch laying around!
These bad boys have been hiding in plain sight for years! They were in a container that had since been used to hold up one of her plants next to her TV. I always see EP's stored like this, not much care for their condition... I guess it's just cuz they're cheaper and aren't really a thing in the modern vinyl age. I'll have to get a spindle adapter to play any of them, but I'm excited to! It'll be nice getting short bursts of old school Hi-Fi every now and then. Right after I took em out of their container and put em in a box to take home, I remembered seeing a vinyl record my dad used to own in my grandmas garage one time when I was helping her with something in there. I put on a mask and looked for some more records in there.
Good news, there were atleast 70 LPs waiting to be discovered! Bad news, they were stacked on top of each other... If you don't know, stacking vinyl records on top of each other is unwise because after a while the pressure will cause the records at the bottom to warp. They'd already been on top of each other for god knows how many years, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to stack them for a little while longer. As expected, they were COATED in dust and tiny dead things like spiders and bugs.
Heres a picture of an itty bitty spine I found :3 it took me about an hour or so to wipe them off just enough to where it was acceptable to bring them into a clean house. My grandma reminisced on certain chapters of her life as I wiped off one forgotten relic after another. I liked the smile on her face as she saw old Elvis albums (yes, she was an Elvis girl, who wasn't back then?), Christmas songs she'd play during the holidays, gospel singers that helped her get through tough times, and we even found a pressing from 1964 made by her high school choir class! Sadly, it belonged to a different family member, and the songs my grandma sung in are likely lost to time. There were also a lot of my dads old records in the mix, including but certainly not limited to: Michael Jacksons Off The Wall, which was sadly at the very bottom of the stack... A few John Denvers. Yes, I have Country Roads on vinyl now! :D Poems, Prayers & Promises was the first record from the stack I played. It was definitely very scratchy and crackly, but considering its age and the condition it was found in, it sounded quite nice! Dad also had some soundtracks, like West Side Story, Cat People, and even The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly!

I was NOT expecting to come home with such Iconic sounds! I took everything I found, ACTUALLY cleaned off what interested me and put them with my vinyls sitting next to my player, and put the rest on the bottom shelf.


Overall, pretty great way to spend my day off! It was great being able to bond with my Grandma over these old records, and my collection has grown considerablely! Still not sure if I'm going to document ALL of them in my vinyl section, that would take Hours. What I DO know is that I'm going to redo my vinyl section; I'm going to give my vinyls and my vintage vinyls their own pages so I have more space to show off their cover art. That's all for today, ya'll have a good one!

10.21.24
Wonderful conversation I had with a troll

Monday

I got incredibly lucky today.
I joined a Furry Talk & Chill lobby and was casually discussing trolls with this other guy. I told him "You know a super cool trick you can use to get trolls to give it up? Be nice to them." Almost as if god himself took that as a challenge, a child immediatly walked up to me and called me the N-word. Most trolls usually give up a few minutes in after it becomes clear that I won't let myself get hurt by them, but this kid was different. Unlike most kids his age, he was patient. He had a level of tenacity and dedication to the art of bullying that most people his age(hell, most people MY age) generally lack. You'll find out why near the end of this entry. Idk what psychopath could be reading this right now so I'm not gonna use his real username, lets call him TB. Now, because I'm not a, oh, how do I say this? PUSSY. I wasn't gonna let a child hurt my feelings, unlike most other furries. As a result of that lack of pussiness, I answered all his questions honestly. Keep in mind, these dialouges are not exactly how the conversation went, I can't remember much of our talk cuz it was like two in the morning and I wasn't even paying full attention, I was playing the Astrobot controller demo lol.
"What's your job?"
"I'm a dishwasher."
"yeah exactly I'm higher up then you."
"You're higher up then me? How much money do you make every week?"
"every week? uh, $50 from chores."
"Wowee! fifty whole dollars? This guys fucking loaded! I make $600 a week."
short silence
"how does it feel being a man working a boys job?"
"How is it a boys job?"
"Bro, it's a boys job!"
"yeah, HOW is it a boys job? How would you even know the difference between a boys job and a mans job? You can't even enter the workforce yet."
"bro it's a losers job"
"How it is a losers job?"
"You're twenty and you're a dishwasher? It's a teenagers job bro, how many teenagers do you work with?"
"literally none."
"none? You work with adults?"
"yep"
"so your whole towns full of losers?"
"My town is full of hard workers who need to pay the bills somehow."
"pfft, 'hard workers'..."
"You laugh now, but when YOU enter the workforce, when YOU step foot in your first dishpit, and when YOUR the slow one and YOUR holding your co-workers back, you'll look back on this conversation and realize hoe naive you were. And that's okay! It's okay for you to be naive, you're a Child!"
He tried to make me feel bad about my life, but the simple three letter questions of why and how were enough to make it clear that his feelings weren't rooted in any logic. Because of course they weren't, children are creatures of emotion, not logic. I was perfectly fine with him bullying my job, how could he possibly know what a mans job really is?

...right?

I'll admit, some of his jokes were kinda creative.

"Did you write a manifesto?"
"A manifesto? Nah, I don't have the attention span to write a manifesto, just blog posts."
"Cuz you seem like you're the type to write a school-shooter manifesto."
"I'm not even in school anymore."
"Nah bro you're a school shooter."
"What makes you say that?"
"Bro. Look at you"
"What about my avatar?"
"Like bro you're literally a demon wolf thing, you're a sociopath."
"Well, I WAS, but then I learned empathy and compassion, and I'm better now."
"Oh you had that compassion arc?"
"yep"
"Nah bro look at you, you're totally a sociopath."
"I don't really think you know what that means, sociopath means you don't give a shit about other people, it means you lack empathy and compassion for other people. It means you're anti-social. How does my avatar looking edgy automatically mean I'm a sociopath?"
I can't remember how he responded to that question, but I don't think he game me an actual answer.
"You sound a lot more anti-social than I do man, you're tryna shit on me and make me feel bad about my life. You sound really depressed and bitter and angry."
"What's wrong with being bitter?"
"It's not good for you, that's not how kids your age should be talkin."

We were talking for what feels like an hour honestly, but I can hardly remember any of it. What I CAN remember very cleary is how the people around us reacted. Whenever they told me I should block him or that I was getting pissed off, I made it very clear that I had no intention of shutting TB down or silencing him, and that I was genuinly interested in what he had to say. They didn't want to take that for an answer. In fact, one guy walked up to me, started clapping in my face, and yelled "JUST BLOCK HIM." I repeated to him what i'd told everyone else, that I was chilling. His response? He blocked me. I used this as an opprotunity to prove a point to TB.

"See that? All I did was politley refuse to do what he told me to and that pissed him off so bad, he blocked me. THOSE are the people you need to bully. THOSE are the people who're gonna let you hurt them. You shouldn't have picked me bro, I know better than to let a child get to me."

We continued on like this for a while. He'd throw shit at me and I'd respond calmly and respectfully. It became clear that he was running out of insults as the silences between us grew longer and longer. Eventually he started saying things OTHER than insults.

"What do you think of the furry community?"
"I'm not a fan, personally. Too fetishized, too amatuer. It's not something I'd like to publicly associate with."

Even throughout this period though, he hadn't completley given up on trolling, even if he wasn't trying nearly as hard and it was obvious he was grasping at straws.

"were you molested by your uncle?"
"nah"

I'm ashamed to say that I forgot what led up to this moment, maybe I made some comment about how lucky he is that his parents make him do chores, let alone pay him for it, but eventually he opened up to me about a chapter in his life. This moment put into perspective why he had lasted so long, why he was so dedicated to trying to hurt me; turns out, he DOES know what a mans job looks like. He mentioned that he lived on a ranch, and talked briefly about his chores there.

"each morning I'd have to feed and water the animals, than I'd have to groom all the horses and sometimes I'd have to herd the animals around. After that I'd walk about an hour to the bus stop to get to school. shit kicked my ass man."

Suddenly his behavior made much more sense. Of course you'd be bitter if the other kids didn't have to work HALF as hard as you do. Of course you'd look down on adults working in the food industry if you were a boy working a mans job. And if you had internet access, of course you'd be taught to take out all that bitterness on easy targets like furries. I think it's likely he'd never opened up to anyone about that on VRC before, not just because he was a troll but also because most kids his age lack the emotional maturity to be vulnerable on a social platform like that. A few minutes later, he said he was getting off. I wished him good luck and a good night. Quietly and shyly, he wished me the same. As a person, he had been seen and heard. As a troll, he had been completley and utterly defeated.

This entry is uber fucking long and I'm tired of typing it up, so I'll wrap up with this: Most people online who think that they're better than trolls really aren't. One listener, after TB had left, accused me of having a savior complex. I just said
"sure bud, whatever you wanna tell yourself."
He definitly didn't get Very fucking mad.
"You know what, sure! I don't care, I dont give a fuck about you, I don't give a fuck about that kid, I don't give a fuck about ANYONE, yall could literally die and I wouldn't give a fuck, thats just how I am! Thats just how my brain works!"
All in response to a condesending comment. Good lord. I think people who hate trolls feel that way because they let trolls hurt them. And a grown adult who prolly knows what hes talking about in some aspects of life shitting on you, SURE, I can see getting offended by that, I can understand thinking less of them for that.
But a literal Child?
Just pathetic.

It's also worth mentioning that many VRC users who claim trolls are losers because they're bullies and pick on the weak are MORE than happy to bully a child for being stupid and naive, things completely out of their control. You are NOT better than trolls. If you want proof of that, just respond kindly to them and they'll either leave you alone or open up to you. If you enjoy picking on people for their mental illnesses, prejudaces, or age, I'll leave you with this quote from one of my favorite short stories, Flowers For Algernon.

"Shut up! Leave him alone! It's not his fault he can't understand! He can't help what he is! But for God's sake... He's still a human being!"

10.18.24
Dream Journal 2

Friday

For once, I managed to put my devices away last night and let my brain wind down from blue light exposure. I guess it paid off, cuz I remember two very vivid and bizarre dreams. They both happened in the same dream "Universe" I guess you could call it. So The first major event I remember was pretty scary, but not enough to be deemed a nighmare. There was this very big tall building somewhat close to my house but not close close. Well, it got 9/11'd. Or atleast thats what it looked like. It was exploding and pieces of debris were falling everywhere. I remember my survival instinct telling me to get the fuck inside, but I just couldn't stop looking away from the spectacle. As i later found out, this disaster was a complete accident. The way this one news article described it, the building was hit by a tiny piece of matter that was shot out from space... by a particle accelerator. You don't need a degree in physics to know that thats not really how those work.

Now, the SECOND major part of the dream, I honestly can't get ya'll to understand just how bizzare it really was with words. Sooo, it was this secret society, right? All the decor was black and white, and our clothes were only black and white. I remember everyone wearing a basic shirt and pants type deal, and one time I mixed it up by wearing a white open jacket over my black shirt. I sat down at some confrence or lecture or something and the lady giving it looked at me kinda weird. Her face said to me "ugh, what a peacock..." Y'know those little tunnels kids crawl through in playgrounds? Shit like that was our primary mode of transportaion from room to room. Sometimes we'd slide down, sometimes we'd crawl. I think the people there got to live there for free, at least, I don't remember money ever being discussed. Now, the one thing that we all had in common? That tied us all together? WEED! Whatever corporate entity that was behind the whole thing had their own brand of weed pens that everyone was hitting. I remember seeing one of my coworkers in a room with like seven of his brothers who looked damn near identical to him(I don't think he has seven identical twins in real life). Meanwhile, he was ripping the fuck out of his pen. I can't remember what the brand name behind the whole thing was, but I know there was one. I remember seeing the wreckage of the aformentioned disaster through on of the windows. I also remember seeing the leader/CEO type dude sitting down and talking in a video played on a big screen. He was an old white dude. The last detail I can remember vividly was going into this one girls living space. She must've been some kind of VIP member. We all had our own room, but not only did she have a whole ass house, it was colored red along with her clothes!

That's about all I can remember vividly, but how strange. I wish I didn't look at screens so much before bed, I think I only put down the screen last night because I was so exhausted. The dish machine at work had short circuited, and we had to wash everything manually for the next four and a half hours. They had to re-wire the entire system. I'd love to make putting the phone away before bed a habit, but I don't really have that kind of motivation anymore. Anyway, I'm gonna go take a walk since it's cloudy out for once! Byebye.

10.12.24
Update on sobriety and other stuff

Saturday

It's going.

I've been sober for almost a month straight and I guess I could be doing worse. As expected, I'm not nearly as interested in my hobbies and interests as I am when I'm high. I've hardly updated this page at all, hardly written any logs or journal entries because there's less that I feel is interesting enough to write about. I've hardly read, I've hardly played any games... What have I done? I know I haven't just been sitting around being idle but I feel like I haven't been ABOUT something in a while. I have gotten into collecting vinyl records as of late, but thats kind of it. The one thing really stopping me from relapsing is the promise I made to my friend who's in boot camp, Gladiator. I promised him I'd get sober.

I'm dealing with the classic stoner dilemma. When I'm high, I wanna be sober. When I'm sober, I wanna be high. When I'm high, everything is so colorful and interesting but then I forget all of it. When I'm sober, I can rememeber everything okay but none of its of much interest to me. I actually met Gladiator during one of my smoking episodes in Febuary. After that, I didn't talk with him at all until late June. I saw his name in my friends list and didn't remember him, so I decided to join him and re-introduce myself. He recognized me immediatly, started telling his friends about how cool I am and how he had so much fun with me and all. I shit you not, i literally did not remember him at all. Not his voice. Not his avatar. Nothing. It was all gone. That is by far the most tragic cost of smoking weed. It shatters my fucking heart when I tell people that no I don't remember those crazy conversations we used to have, and no I don't remember that time I jumped off the roof, and no I don't remember meeting you or your friends. It fucking hurts. Life with THC really is a dream, no matter how cool or memorable it is you'll forget the vast majority of it and all you'll have left are little fragments. I'm just so tired of forgetting. What's the point of having the time of my life if my memory of it fizzles away like cotton candy in water? The most obvious solution is to try and use it responsibly but I just don't know if I can. Each time I take another shot at it, no matter how convinced I am that I'm stronger than the pen or the rig or the whatever the fuck, I always seem to make an excuse to smoke more.

I guess the reason I relapsed last time was because I felt like I didn't have anyone to be sober for. I'm not terribly close with my family and I don't really have close friends irl either. I'm grateful for Gladiator and for the people I've met through him, like Falcon and Tiny. I'm also really grateful for VRChat, without it there would be countless connections unmade, social skills unlearned, and burdens still on my chest. His return date is December 20th, can't wait to see him again.

On a more casual note, my family and my brothers girlfriends family are all doing this secret santa thing. I feel bad for whoever gets to buy my gift, they're paying $73 for a vinyl pressing imported from the UK lol. Juuuuuuust barely fit the allowed price range of $50-$75. That's all from me for now. See ya'll later!

9.27.24

Friday

So the earliest part of the dream I can remember is taking shelter from some kind of natural disaster. I was with two mexican coworkers, one older guy who works with me in the dishpit and a younger guy who works on the line. I guess it had calmed down temporarily because me and the younger guy left to get some more food, and I remember it looking like it had just finished raining outside. I think this part of the dream came from my friend Falcon, who lives in Florida which is having a hurricane atm. I don't quite remember the journey to whatever store we went to, but I remember there just being a big pile of junk food...I can't recall what led to the next part I remember, how the dream logic/circumstances changed, maybe I was traveling with some kind of group? But I found myself in some kind of hospital lobby and the only occupants were me, my Grandma and Great Aunt. They were having a casual conversation and at some point they brought up that my Great Aunt was DYING. I was NOT aware of this and they were like "oh you didn't know that?" super casually as if I didn't know she was taking a road trip or something.

The last part I can remember is of her final moments, but the logic here was incredibly strange... it was in real life, but, also in VRChat??? It was real life yet I could bring up the Oculus menus and everything with my controllers, and I was asked by someone to stream her final moments. She was lying in a hospital bed unconscious, and my dad whos been dead for two years now was also lying on a little bed on the floor somewhere nearby. He didn't look like a corpse nor was he dressed in any fancy way, but I don't think he was alive either and I didn't really acknowlage his presence. Anyway, there was a timer counting down to the moment she would die, about 16 minutes. I was trying to start the stream, but my contollers were glitching out and weren't cooperating with me, something they do far too often. But this was the worst possible time they could've done this. After a few minutes of fighting with them, I was having a full blown panic attack and shouting at the top of my lungs "NOOOOOO! NOOOOOO!". In desperation, I restarted my headset to try and get them to fucking work, and that's when I woke up.

I'm not sure how exactly to end this log, but I guess I'll say that the infuriating experience of owning the Quest Pro controllers haunts even my dreams.

9.23.24
The Redemption Of Time and of the floor in my house

Monday

Just finished The Redemption of Time by Baoshu and I certainly have some thoughts... For those who are unfamiliar, It's an unofficial fourth entry in the Three Body Problem trilogy, officially supported by the original author Cixin Liu. The quote on the front calls it "A thrilling, fascinating new adventure to uncover more mysteries of the Three-Body world". It certainly delivers on the uncovering mysteries part, and I'm certainly glad I read it, but as a book, i think it's a bit weak. The vast majority of it isn't really stuff happening, but rather people explaining stuff thats happened, happening, or is going to happen. There isn't a whole lot of plot we actually get to see for ourselves. To be fair, a lot of what happens is kind of beyond human comprehension, and I don't think taking us for a ride through it was Baoshus goal anyways. It wanted to answer questions and it did that. The Three-Body community is very mixed on this book and I can totally see why, it's contributions to the Three-Body universe are very bold to say the least. I might write a review for this book if it keeps weighing on my mind, and it's only 269 pages anyway so theres not too much to go over. I DEFINITLEY have some thoughts on it's ending!

Speaking of ending, I've been ripping up carpet in my house for the past few days! The house I live in is old and run down. It doesn't look good, and when you walk in it doesn't smell good. One major contributor to that stench was the rancid carpet in my parents bedroom, blackened with dog excrement. The other day, I finally got my moms permission to rip it out! The process of ripping up old carpet is so satisfying to me, almost like I'm banishing a demon! Cutting a line into it with a box cutter, rolling it up and throwing it into the dumpster in the alley, scraping up the tile with padding caked onto it with old piss and throwing all that out too. I love it. I haven't presented this idea to my family just yet but I honestly want to just get rid of all the carpet in the house, it's all gross. I really don't get why anyone would deliberately put carpet down when tile and rugs are so much easier to maintain. If you spill something on tile that's a little "oopsie daisys!" and you can get it cleaned up in like ten minutes. If you spill something on CARPET, thats hours of work just to get that one stain out. And if that's what it takes to clean one stain, how are you supposed to clean years worth of grime and dirt buildup?! If you want a soft surface to walk on so bad, why not just put rugs down everywhere? I can't wait for the day we look at carpet the same way we look at popcorn ceiling and lead paint, a relic of the past.

9.19.24
Psychedelics are fun, but...

Thursday

All I've ever wanted out of a trip was self discovery, and all I've ever gotten was fun. To be fair, I'd rather have a fun trip than a terrifying one, but I was under the belief that Psychedelics would "expand my mind" or whatever. Maybe I just need to let it happen naturally, my buddy Falcon told me his boss took shrooms intending to have fun and wound up, in his own words, "talking to god". He quit pretty much every substance he was using. Must be nice. Maybe it's just cuz I have no god to talk to.

I've never done anything super crazy, just shrooms and acid. I'd try a DMT cart if they weren't $200! Yesterday I decided to have a shroom trip in VRChat around my friends. I DID play VRChat the first time I took shrooms in January, but I didn't have finger tracking or any friends I felt comfortable being that vulnerable around, so this time around I took shrooms specifically with the intent of playing VRChat. I recorded about twenty minutes of my trip. You can watch it HERE if you want.

9.17.24
RIP consoles

Tuesday

I've been thinking a lot about Concord lately.

If you're even the type of person to be on a website like this, I'm sure you've already heard of it. I'm typically not the kinda guy who can enjoy shitting on a bad game for longer than 20-30 minutes, but I can't help but click on a new video dunking on Concord whenever I see one. There's very very little I can say about this spectacular trainwreck that hasn't been said a thousand times by a thousand different people.

"EIGHT YEARS! ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS! SEVEN HUNDRED PLAYERS! WOKE! CRINGE!"

But I haven't heard anyone bring up this point: The blog post announcing that Concord would be going offline didn't say they were taking it down for good, and we both know they're not flushing all that work and money down the lost media toilet juuuuust yet. They're gonna re-release somehow, but I seriously doubt it'll be free to play. How do F2P games monetize? Cosmetics. So the seemingly obvious solution is to get a bunch of sick customization in there for us to waste our money on, right? Well, thanks to those ultra-realistic PS5 graphics they're so proud of, that would be an absolutley MASSIVE undertaking! Making new skins is much harder when you need to render every fucking PORE in the casts skin. Would creating the skins cost more money than they earn from them? Possibly. It certainly doesn't help that the art direction is an absolute clusterfuck. Now that I think about it, a lot of the character designs seem like they'd be better skins than default outfits, don't they? Freegunners like Dutchess, Lennox, Lark, and Jabali come to mind.

On one hand, you really hate to see it. I could tell from the moment I saw gameplay that it wasn't just some cynical cash grab, the gunplay was just too polished. Remember 2019, when we were so sick of all these free to play shitters trying to suck our wallets dry, when we were yearning for a game where the only thing you had to pay for was the game itself? Putting a price tag on a multiplayer only game in 2024 is so bold!(or suicidal depending on how you look at it) Why the fuck did it have to be this game?! Sony is surely going to intentionally misinterpret this as "well, I guess the people really DO want microtransactions!" I honestly believe that this game would've done much better for itself had it come out four years ago. Than again, it doesn't take much to get a peak player count higher than seven hundred... On the other hand, as much as I wish it didn't turn out this way, I can't deny Concords corperate nature, nor can I deny that this is exactly what Sony deserves. Consoles have just complETLY shat the bed this generation, and it's not hard to see why. No games. The fact that Concords getting an episode in Secret Level goes to show how confident they were in this product, because that's really all it is is a product. Pretty crazy how fast a company can go from knowing what their customers want to being completely out of touch. It looks to me that Firewalk Studios never really knew what they wanted this game to be. Four years of pre-production + four years of development - clear vision = Concord. Most people call it a poor mans Gaurdians of the Galaxy because it takes tons of inspiration but has no actual identity of its own. Concord is cemented in gaming history as the embodiment of failure, and it'll be fascinating for me and many other people to see how they try and dig themselves out of this deep deep hole they've fallen into. Far more interesting than the actual game itself.

It's pretty sad to see the state consoles are in this generation, but honestly I think this was inevitable and I doubt it's gonna get much better. In fact, I think this is the beggining of the end for consoles as we know them. For one, consoles don't even have fucking exclusives anymore, they just kind of nonchalantly changed the definition of exclusive from "Only on this platform" to "not on Xbox or Switch". (to be fair, the switch is a given...)They've already surrendered they're greatest strength to the computers. Remember when a PS4 exclusive coming to PC was a huge deal? It's the standard now, because no ones dumb enough to exile their game to the baron wasteland that is the PS5 library. My gaming laptop, the Lenovo Ideapad 3, is strong enough to run Halo Infinite at 60fps with great resolution for about $750. That's not great, but how much longer until we can get it for $650? and then $550? and than $450? Better and better gaming PCs are getting cheaper and cheaper, meanwhile consoles are getting shittier and pricier. Consoles are highly controlled ecosystems, PCs are true freedom! At the rate were going, I seriously doubt we'll ever see a Playstation 7. I hope to GOD Gabe Newell picks a worthy successor, because Steam is about to have a monopoly on the gaming industry.

9.12.24

Thursday

When I was fourteen, I thought weed was the coolest thing in the world. I've realized, now that I've become older and more experienced, that the level of avoidance and neglect in my house was genuinely outlandish. Each and every opporitunity my parents had to leave a positive impact on me, they buried their heads in the sand. After a lifetime of complete and utter ignorance and detachment, TCH showed me what real interest and curiousity felt like. Neuron connections that should've been formed by living and learning with the help of strong role models and life experiences finally began to surface in my emotionally malnourished brain, like an old computer being turned on for the first time in years since its owner left it behind for something better. something easier. For once, I had something in common with my peers! Chances are, if I was in a house that wasn't my own, I was getting high there one way or another. Weed brought us together for the same reason it brought our parents together and their parents before them as well. IT'S FUCKING FUN!!! It strips you of your habits and normal ways of thinking, 1. Forcing you to see things from a new perspective and 2. Making you pretty retarded in the process. Humans like feel good. Substance gives feel good. Humans use substance. In the words of my mother, "It's not fucking rocket science!"

I vividly remember a blunt rotation with my brother one time in 2020, where I innocently said "I wish I could live like this." My brother replied "You can!" but in the context of our lives back then and today, I don't think that was entirely true; You can always have TCH in your life, but TCH won't always be what your life needs. My Instagram feed would be full of adults in their own homes inhaling otherworldly amounts of smoke with the wildest tools you could possibly imagine, exhaling wherever they pleased, having to clean up for absolutley no one. I could've only dreamt about having that life back then.

Well, I had it a few hours ago. Two dab pens, one disposable that I meant to buy and one cartridge that I didn't because I didn't know it was gonna be just a cartridge. My very own dab rig, strong enough to keep me either on my ass or pacing around my room for hours, either way not getting much done. A Telegram group chat that could get flower, dab, dispos, carts, edibles, and plenty of other fun things to my doorstep in half an hour or less. Plenty of Benjamins and Grants to pay for said Telegram chats' products. Countless people to smoke it with and no one with the authority to stop me. From the perspective of an emotionally destroyed fourteen year old me, what else does a man need in life then weed and a homie to smoke it with? I had it all!

Six years later, the trauma that kept me from living my life spontaneously hasn't gotten any smaller, but it's become a much smaller part of who I am. "Quitting smoking is easy, I've dont it hundreds of times!" Mark Twain was right. Getting sober is the easy part, staying sober is something else entirely. I gave anything that could be useful in the process of getting high to my brother to keep away from me, a move that would absolutely baffel young inexperienced stoners who fully buy into the stoner-hippie dude-bro fantasy lived by Cheech and Chong, or Harold and Kumar. I would love to claim that I'm quitting for good this time, but I've quit for good before. Weed isn't just a sacred medicine that transforms my life into nothing but sunshine and rainbows, nor is it just trash that ruins my life but keeps me coming back for more.

Sobriety is what I need to be my best self at the moment, so I'm going sober. But when the day comes that TCH is what I need to be my best self, and that day WILL come, I will happily shrink my lungs just a little bit more.

9.8.24
Writing & Fighting

Sunday

Today was a very good day and a very bad day. I'll start of with the good cuz I don't wanna start negatively and it took up more of my day anyway.
One of my VR friends Gladiator went off to boot camp back in July, and I finally got a letter from him yesterday! Here's what his sona looks like. I'd credit the artist but unfortunately I don't know who they are and Gladiator never told me before he left. The artist IS a total fucking legend tho, he said he wouldn't be able to do Gladi's ref sheet for another few weeks, but when he heard that he was going to boot camp before then he dropped whatever he was doing and got it done right then and there! Say what you want about furry artists, they treat their clients with respect! I focused most of my energy today on writing my letter back. It wouldn't have taken me nearly as long if the Sandbox app didn't give me 6000 characters to work with! He's really struggling and he hardly has any contact with the outside world (for modern day standards that is) so I really really want to make it count. I just kept on writing what I wanted him to know and I kept thinking of more and more things and before I knew it I'd used up 5000 characters. 944 words so far. I'm waiting on a friend to lmk what he wants me to put in the letter for him and I'll send it off on the sandbox app. I don't have much writing energy left so I'll end the good part there.


Now, onto the bad part. My dog got in a fight with the neighbors dog. I was in the backyard with my dogs when the neighbor opened his gate to the alley to do something and his dog ran out from under his feet. The dog walked right on over to a particularly weak portion of our heavily run down wooden fence, and instigated a fight with My pitbull Apollo, who got there faster than I could. The neighbors dog regretted it almost immediately. Apollo immediatly got a strong hold on the neighbor dogs snout, essentially making the poor bastard helpless. Me and the neighbor were trying to pull our dogs off of each other for probably a minute but it felt like a year. My throat hurts because I was screaming bloody murder the entire time. Eventually Apollo finally let go of the poor fucker and I was able to drag his ass back inside. My heart was beating so fast I starter dry heaving. It was pretty terrifying but Apollo is pretty much untouched and I think the neighbor dog is okay because afterwards the guy was really friendly while he explained himself. And besides, he's lucky that Apollo didn't get his fucking neck or anything.
But I also can't deny that I should just fix the fence... I have time, money, energy, and no excuse not to. This isn't the first time this has happened, and if I don't at the very least reinforce the fence, it certainly won't be the last.
I think that's all for today. Good night dear reader.

9.4.24
Furry haters actually like me :3

Wednesday

"I dont usually like furries but you're pretty chill"

Is a comment that I get every now and then on VRChat,and I take it as a compliment much more than an insult. I can think of a few reasons why people tend to be more comfortable around me than other furries. For one, my main avatars character design isn't sexualized (mostly...). I think this is what rubs people the wrong way a lot of the time. It's not SUPER common, but common enough to be noticable, for furry avatars to be dressed in a very sexually charged manor like This. To be fair I don't see this much at all in non furry worlds, but in places like furry hideout or furry talk & chill, I honestly don't even conciously register it when I see one anymore. It also helps that Bone Wraiths are sick as fuck. People are often caught off guard or scared by me when I casually waltz over to try and join in on a conversation haha.

But I think it mostly boils down to the fact that I don't let people hurt my feelings over the internet. The furry community tends to lean left, and with that comes people with the mentality that someone critisizing or making fun of you online is absolutley awful and you should blow it way the fuck out of proportion when it happens. I know better than to respond like that. I realize that the furry community has no idea I exist, and that I owe it nothing. I'm not scared to critisize or make fun of furries and of myself, making it easier for me and normal people to establish common ground. Additionally, I really don't mind being at the receiving end of any VRChat harrassment or bullying, nor would I ever do the cowardly thing and block someone, unless they're literally making it impossible for me to do whatever I'm trying to do. To any sensitive furries or people in general who get really upset when some edgelord comes about spewing words we only describe with their first letter, or calling you a furfag or zoophile and telling you to touch some grass and find a father figure, please don't just dismiss it when I tell you that the best thing you can do in that situation is respond kindly. Whenever some troll or group of kids comes up to harass me, I know better than to let them get to me, and I calmly and respectfully let them know that. And once they see I'm not hurt, they open up and turn out to be cool people! They're always caught off guard too, like this never happens. One time in Feburary, a guy told me he had never met a furry who was a good person. By the end of our conversation, he told me I have a great wisdom and even asked to clone my avatar, which I happily said yes to. I don't remember much of the talks I've had with trolls and bullies because I'm unironically a THC addict, but I do remember both parties feeling really seen and understood, and I definitley remember a lot of unfavorable opinions on furries being changed completely.

TLDR:
1. Be humble
2. quit dressing like a slut

8.31.24
August in review

Saturday

Well, all in all... This month would've been much worse had I not found Neocities.
At the start of this month I was dealing with some really rough depression after a month long tolerance break that gave me an, ironically, sobering reminder of why I have a problem with weed. And it certainly didn't help that an online friend I was really fucking with at the time was leaving for boot camp and won't be back until October 27th. It was probably the second worst depressive episode I've had in my life. In an attempt to rekindle old flames in me, I was redownloading Minecraft when I saw This video on Youtube while waiting for the launcher to install, and I am so fucking grateful that I did.

You can interpret it as me being a creative soul or me escaping reality through work, but generally speaking the times in my life I've been the most content were when I had some creative project to build up. With Neocities, I've been happily scratching that itch bloody, but there are other benefits/reasons for me to commit to this in the future.
For one, I feel much more motivated to journal and write because of this page. A lot of people know that journaling is good for your mental health, but less people know how good it can be for your social life too! There's this great video from Cole Hastings that talks about how important storytelling skills are when translating thoughts to words, and how we can improve our storytelling skills through journaling and learning to communicate our thoughts clearly and gracefully. Of course this is just a helping hand and NOT a solution for awkwardness or anything, the best way to learn how to socialize is by socializing more. But I'm also gonna write about and/or review whatever my autistic mind has it's sights set on, and I think that'll help strengthen my critical thinking skills and give me a better idea of where i'm coming from when analyzing media or reflecting on an event.
I also think it'll be a great tool for introducing myself to people. I'm one of those guys who'll stammer and stutter if you ask me to tell you about myself. Whenever someone voices curiosity about me, I think it'll be great to be able to give them this website's address and let them learn as much or as little about me as they want at their own pace. That is, on VRChat and some other online spaces... I think I'll stick with stammering and stuttering in real life for now.

Outside of Neocities, I haven't had much going on. I never do really. Twenty years old and still don't have my license :) I've lived a suffocating sedentary lifestyle pretty much my whole life thanks to a combination of the spread of brainrot over the past decade and severely mentally ill parents, so it makes sense that I have so little incentive to learn to drive. It certainly doesn't help that my family can't be bothered to encourage or even pressure me into learning since their standards for me have always been extraordinarily low. If you're reading this and ever see me in VRC, bully me for being 20 and not having my license!
Oh yeah and I turned twenty lol that too

I look back on this past month fondly mostly because I think I'm going in a better direction. I've made some progress in learning to talk seriously and honestly, without the shields of sarcasm, detatchment based humor, and the iconic "lol" at the end of a sentance that was the polar opposite of funny. I've been spending more time with my sister and I've been getting closer to my VRC friends. I've still got some weeks before the new(and the first) anti-depressant I'm taking goes into full effect. I've even been enjoying regular games again! I will say though, I've hardly read any books this month, but that's because I've hardly done anything other than build this website, but that's gonna change soon! Now that I've got the basic layout of my site down, I won't have to put so much time into considering how I want everything structured. Well, not that I HAD to...

All in all, I think I'm out of that major depressive rut, and I don't think September is gonna suck but I don't have the optimism to tell myself it's gonna be great either.

8.27.24
Little bit of gayming

Tuesday

Hello peoples! I gotta say, this year I've hardly played any games outside VR. I don't think I'm "growing out" of video games per say, but at this point in my life I guess I find it difficult to dedicate my time to games that don't benifit my life outside of them, like Beat Saber and VRChat do. This past week though, I got back into a few games I have downloaded on my PS5, which has basically become a glorified media player.
Titanfall 2 is one of my absolute favorites and I've replayed the first half of it's campaign at the time of me writing this. This game really is my Halo 3, and I feel so lucky to have played during its glory days as a kid. At the time I really resented how overlooked it was(and still is), but looking back on it seven coming on eight years later, I feel grateful to have been apart of a small tightknit community like that.
For fps campaign standards, Titanfall 2 goes pretty fucking hard; It may not make any sense but it understands that that's not the point. A lot of big fps releases nowadays try to win players over with absolute dog diarrhea stories that give context to gameplay not much different from anything else on the market now and before... Titanfall 2 understands the importance of focusing on the ride and putting the story on the back burner. I should make a section on Titanfall 2 someday :3

Two of the games have been rougelikes! well, Risk of Rain is rougeLIKE, Slay the Spire is rougeLITE or whatever.
Super glad I decided to try RoR2 back in 2019 cus this game really is such a blast! I've been mostly playing the bandit (right) but sadly i've never beaten the game before so I still can't play as the captain (left). I really like how this games item system scratches some gamblers itch in me, especially since they've added loads more content to the game since the last time I've been really into it! In fact, a Whole new expansion for it came out TODAY! :D Funnily enough, the only reason I got back into RoR2 was cuz they're adding CHEF INTO IT AAHAHAAAAAAAHHHHH HES HERE HES FINALLY HERE!!!!11!!!11!!!!!!

Chef was my all time favorite survivor from RoR1! I hadn't been playing RoR2 nor was it in any corner of my stream of consciousness, but when I saw that trailer I literally jumped out of my seat and started jumping up and down out of sheer hype! That's when I decided to re-download RoR2 and give it a shot.
Translating Chefs kit from 1 to 2 would be difficult because in 1 he's fundamentally built for a 2-D environment, so I've always been super curious to see if he would still be so good in the second game. Welp, I'll be getting my answer soon hopefully! I do plan on buying Seekers of the Storm, but idk if I'll have to do anything to get him... fingers crossed, cuz I don't spend too much time on games lately.

Speaking of rougelike where you're at the will of random chance, Slay the Spire! I wouldn't call myself a deckbuilder fan, but I really enjoy this game and Inscryption! My first run back, I got to floor 30 even though I was still getting a hold on the game again! Not bad not bad. When I played it a couple years back I seem to have mained the Defect, but dude the Ironclad is overpowered as fuck!! You need to be super careful in this game cuz healing opprotunities don't come very often, but the Ironclad heals 6 hp after every battle! It felt like playing on easy mode, the amount of damage I ate would've ended my run if I were playing another character. Also, there's a second game coming! Neato!

I've also been playing some Fortnite with friends but I got some other stuff to do so I'm gonna end it right here. Bye bye!

8.21.24
First blunt in ages, nine hours

Wednesday

Now, THC has been re-incorperated into my life and has been coming and going since Febuary this year, and I've realized lately that throughout the past six months of getting high I haven't used flower at all. This was mainly because concentrates are more convinient, significantly less stinky, and have a much higher percentage of THC. However, I'm starting to think that maybe the reason I become so retarded when I smoke concentrates is BECAUSE they're, like, 98% THC.
Well lucky me, because today my brother came over with a blunt! I got too high for this to be a worthwhile "test" of how I do on flower, but i'll tell ya it was nice! My tastebuds have grown accustommed to the smooth dankness of concentrate, forgetting the earthy burn of flower until earlier today. I did feel more functional and found it easier to have honest conversations, but to be fair, that's always how it is before my tolerance builds up. I'm not sure if it's due to lower TCH or lower tolerance, nor am I sure if I'm willing to spend the money to find out...
Buying the weed itself is no big deal, but I'll have to buy a pipe to smoke it out of and a stink-proof container to store it in as well, adding $75-$90 to an already roughly $40 purchase. And keep in mind, this whole flower thing is just an experiment. I don't really wanna spend $130 on something that might not work out for me in the end. We'll see.

I worked my ass off on this site today, I think for about nine hours? Got a lot of work done on my marquees! Originally I was going to have the left side be stamps and the right side be buttons, but there seems to be way more stamps out there than buttons and adding new items to the marquee would be a pain in the dick anyway cuz of the way I've done it. Go ahead, Ctrl + U and see for yourself :3 So yeah I'm gonna have stamps on the right side too and I'll find something neat to do with buttons. I have these marquees layed out the way they are because I think it makes my blinkies, stamps, buttons, and webring(coming soon) much more visible, and also makes the site feel more alive and dynamic. I haven't seen anything quite like what I've done with these marquees, and there's probably a reason for that but I'm more than happy to ignore reason >:3.
I'm really starting to love how this place is coming together!

8.19.24
It's been twenty years

Monday

Freshly Twenty Years Old
I guess a lot of people that I tell are gonna ask me "how does it feel" and I'm not yet sure how to reply in a way that doesn't make me seem generally dissatisfied with my life, even if that is the norm for people my age nowadays. I DO feel a decent amount better ever since I've started working on this website, and I have been doing particularly good these past few days, which I'm hoping is a result of a new medication I've been taking; I went to the doctor the other day to discuss a change to my ADHD medication. He said theres this medication for anxiety and depression called Welbutrin that's been approved to also be perscribed to people with ADHD Along With their medication, and that it can work pretty well for people like me who've built a tolerance to what their taking. Imma keep it real with yall, I think an anti-depressant is exactly what I've been needing for a few months now lol. I should start to feel it's effects one to two weeks in and it should be in full force at around six to eight weeks if I'm remembering correctley.

With all that, even though i'm doing better I'd still be lying if I said I was in a good place atm. It's been a while since I've felt a strong lust for life or interest in learning new things and the reasons why are stories for another day. But all in all, even if i'm not as far along as I'd prefer to be, I do think I've made good progress in terms of working on myself. My self esteem/respect has grown somewhat and I feel like I have a much clearer idea of why I struggle with people and what I can do to help myself in that regard.

Being free of the social media brainrot that poisoned my mind for so many years feels like a curse on me has been lifted! I feel like i've experienced more art, made more money, and felt more genuine connections with people. But video games have become much less of a priority for me, and I can't help but feel like I'm having a mild identity crisis in that regard since gaming has been a massive part of my life for as long as I can remember.
So yeah. Not super excited to be 20 tbh but atleast i'm not scared.

I had a great birthday tho!!! well okay i had to go to work at 3 on my birthday >:[ but I had Sunday off so we did birthday shit then and today while we could. I wanted to go to this badass hotdog place we have called Flippers Tavern, but they were closed on Sunday :[ so we went where my twin sister wanted to go, Copper Caboose. It's a pretty generic burger steak type place but they have shitty American Arcade Cabinets to mess around with so I never mind going there. "No No No, this isn't Flappy Bird silly, this is
Afterwards I hung out with my family for the rest of the day :3 I busted out my Switch for the first time in god knows how long to play Stardew Valley with my twin sister while we hung out with everyone.

I got a ps4 for Christmas in 2016 and Stardew was the first game that REALLY grabbed me by the balls. I vividly remember being dizzy with excitment once, telling my Mom and Grandma that I'd played eighty hours of Stardew Valley. "that's not something to be proud of..." said Grandma, humorously but clearly honestly. For once, I didn't care what she thought of me.
It was a lot of fun to revisit the game after all these years, especially since my sister is super autistic about it atm and knows way more about it than I ever did! Guess which ones me lol


Today we got to go to Flippers Tavern and yall HOLY FUCKING JUMPIN JESUS these were the GREATEST hotdogs I've ever eaten in my life oeidrufygbncvmkb iuygtfrdesdcftvyucfidoekdjfnvb

I was paying for the food so I splurged and got myself two dogs! The waitress warned me "they're big dogs..." I replied "I'm a big boy".

The Super Sonic

Roasted garlic sausage, bacon jam, whipped cream cheese, sriracha, griddled onions, and fresh jalepeno...$12

I got this one cuz i thought id like it (i did)

The Sourpuss

Griddled sauerkraut, pickle spear, crushed salt & vinegar chips, and queso franco...$10

i got this one cuz i hadn't had anything like it before

Motherfucking Wow!
Back when I was young enough to be able to pick one food as my #1 favorite, it was hotdogs. And it's a damn shame that they've become synonymous with processed slop nowadays, because you can create some mindblowing dogs if you've got the right ingridients and a big enough mouth gape. I also got to try what my sister got, Flippers take on the classic chilidog!

The Damned Dog

House beef chili, cheddar, diced onion, jalapeno crisps...$10

This one tasted absolutley grand, honestly a lot better than the sourpuss even tho it was still pretty good.
My mom got this badass looking vegan jackfruit sandwich

Vegan Jackfruit Tinga Torta

Chipotle braised jackfruit and onion, street corn salad, avacado, cilantro...$10

and she liked it but honestly i though it tasted disgusting in an oddly specific way... So at the fair here we have this barn where you can see a bunch of animals doing animal type shit right? This sandwich... tastes the way that barn smells... is the best way I can describe it. Not a fan.
All in all this place was an absolute BLAST! A Damned Dog for ten bucks? I'll be taking plenty of people here in the future I'll tell you that much!

Only one more year until I can (legally)drink! Me and my family have very addictive personalities and my Dad was your textbook alcoholic bum. Despite this, I am super excited to be able to go to the bar! I feel like there's just not much for a young wippersnapper like me to do in this place. But if theres one thing we all have in common, it's that we love escaping our problems through substance use. You can feel however you want about alcohol and drugs, but you gotta admit, they bring people together in a way that isn't often seen in modern America. I think being able to connect with new people over drinks is going to be great for my social life, maybe not for my liver though...

Twenty years is a long time but I feel like the person I am inside my brain hasn't existed for very long at all. its four in the morning. I should wrap this up. Good night sleep tight don't let the bed bugs bite!

8.12.24

Monday

It's always been varying degrees of difficult for me to try a new game, but now that I've found two games I genuinly love with all my heart along with hobbies and interests OUTSIDE video games, it feels damn near impossible. I'm glad I tried Risk of Rain 2 back in late 2019, just played this game for the first time in who knows how many months and just kinda slipped right back into it. Acrid is still best boy and the most fun to play imo. Only lasted like 15 minutes but had a great time lol.

I always think about trying a new game but I can never quite conquer my rigid autistic rituals. Funny fact, I was actually in the process of redownloading Minecraft when I saw a video about neocities on my youtube feed... and here we are. I planned to join a Minecraft server but still haven't. Shoulda had my FBT set up my now but I still don't. Have'nt even gotten started on Children of Time like I wanted to. (I'm actually considering rereading House of Leaves)
But atleast I've gotten some good work done on this site. Been working on my Internet Crusader review, decided to actually start filling this sight with something to read other than my autistic rambling about how my life's been.

shitty.

its been shitty.

but I don't want this site to have, like, a trauma dump section or anything so I'll try to keep the NOT fun mental illness to a minimum. The funny mental illness, on the other hand, has a home here.

On the brighter side, I discovered a new manga I really like through Neocities! You may have seen this site called Read Nekojiru around. I did, and i've fallen in love with it's morbid humor, unhinged nature, nihilistic worldview and a general lack of that signature Japanese peer pressure that holds so many artists back. Mangaka Nekojiru beutifully illustrates her dark thoughts and traumatic childhood through the dreamlike and often bloody misadventures of two little cat-children.

While part of me wishes this manga had a bigger audience in the west, I can't imagine mainstream exposure ending well... I can definitly see the provocative nature of Nekojiru's art upsetting people who let themselves get offended by shit online that has nothing to do with them, escpecially taking into consideration the, uh, the River God chapter.
If you know you know.
but yeah, if you like dark humor and cats, I definitley recommend Nekojiru! Oh and Cat Soup is ABSOLUTLEY FUCKING INCREDIBLE. I am SO going to write a review on it someday but I'll have to watch it again and also read some more of the manga to get context.

Rest In Piece Chiyomi Hashiguchi
1967-1998

8.7.24
Day off well spent

Wednesday

Spent my day off today locked the fuck in building this site. I think the top left corner looks great! I do wonder if the song requests section will wind up being worth it tho, I've seen some pretty popular websites with pretty... not active comment sections. I wonder why people don't comment more? I guess I'll find out.
in other news i like my vr friends :-] I have a lot of things to set up in this menu. I'll have to decide what I want to draw the most attention to. I want it to be simple but not boring, dense but not overwhelming... I want to really make it my own. as cliche as that may sound.
I'm gonna test out my full body tracking on vrc with Needle :3 Hopefully it works fine but I won't be surprised at all if it doesn't.

8.6.24
Books are based and so is neocities

Tuesday

1:40am
I've had my full body tracking shit for like four days and I still haven't finished setting it all up. I just been so focused on this website and others. I also got some new books today! One was a recomendation from my friend, Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. From what I read on the back, a bunch of people in space stumble upon a planet that seems just right for humans, damn near made FOR humans. It winds up being too good to be true tho, cuz another species wants it too. There's a lot of commentary that could be made about human nature, and i'm intrigued to see how the cast treats the planet knowing what happened to earth. Plus, i recently finished the Three Body Problem trilogy (or as it's Officially known, Remembrance of Earths Past trilogy) so I'm excited to have another sci-fi space epic to compare it to.

The other book I got is one Internet Crusader by George Wylesol. I actually found out about this book on neocities! regret to say that i forgor where... this is a graphic novel about a boy who has to use the mystical power of the golden era internet to stop a satanic doomsday cult from doin doomsday cult shit! only read the first seven pages so far and i love georges hand drawn internet style! There's a ton of potential for a story told through screenshots of someones computer screen, and I really hope he takes advantage of its unique storytelling approach instead of just having it be a gimmick that gets old like 30 pages in.

8.4.24
This edible ain't shi-

Sunday

Well today was a real doozy.
I remembered that I still had some edible gummies from some months back and i decided I might as well eat them while they're still edible since I had today off anyway. Edibles usually take a while to kick in for me so I made the silly mistake of eating them first thing in the morning. Bro, that shit kicked in IMMEDIATLEY. I was hoping to at least mess with my full body tracking for a little but I was fighing for my fuckin LIFE tryna make myself some eggs.
Luckily i wasn't completley retarded for long. After an hour or two i was functional enough to mess with this place some more. Still figuring out what I want its basic layout to be. Added a comment section, some buttons, and a pretty new background :-D I also cleaned my room for the first time in, like, a month?? If you're reading this CLEAN YOUR ROOM STINKY!!!! and drink some water while your at it.