fitting in

Whenever I have down time at work so I browse around the usual suspects even though I don’t ever post anything other than this website. My favorite forums would probably be any programming forum, even if it’s a game-of-fiddles that you play until old age and make more complicated music as though that’d substitute anything for a life. Still, one could — for a change — talk of an objective answer-and-question. Someone has a question, you can give an answer, and there’s no opinions.

Of course every programming forum has its own undercurrent on what is to be believed. Some of it is easy to jive with, such as: if you’re going to critique, why don’t you make something better? when it comes to libraries to choose from.

Sometimes the eyes glaze over though, if you have the misfortune to realize that, well, those who post frequently enough on the forum probably aren’t the ones you want to learn from, since they’re posting on the forum more than existing.

Some could say this be true for many sources of information: and you can’t help but feel extremely stupid doing a google search for some recommendations and coming across a random comment with absolutely no qualifications save for the fact they decided to make an account and post in the very topic.

I was following the “bookbug” neocities account and there was a suggestion about making a discord. I wrote and deleted a comment three times of a suggestion to create bookbug.org with its own forum and software and gave up — not because of the absurdity of the suggestion, but because of the realization that there’s a deep paranoia and uncomfortableness involving oneself with anything beyond objective interactions. Bookclubs are anything but, and the amount of suffering one would have to endure to express is too much.

Zooming out writ large, I can’t say there’s ever been much pleasure in fitting in or interacting or even having conversations. The most enjoyable interactions I personally have are ones where we’re solving problems, or we’re going to solve problems, or we reflect upon the problems solved and the experiences of solving problems. I mean, I think people follow stories because they want to see how the themes resolve.

Sometimes the problem solving veers into uncharted territory and you feel the hands wrapping around the neck; other times one wonders why you would ever talk about solving problems when you could just work in silence.

Addictions are a funny case: they don’t get you by the good feelings, but by the torture to ensue and so one begs for a break by doing more of it.