Welcome to the Protestant Work Ethic where if you are not working for 16 hours a day you are a Sinner that will Burn In Hell. Unless of course you are rich in which case you are Blessed by God and can go to Heaven without lifting a finger.
heard a story on a podcast that some Christian missionaries showed these rural Cambodian farmers how to double their crop yields. the missionaries came back a year later and were surprised the Cambodians had grown basically the same amount of crops but the farmers were like “yeah this is great, we got everything we need for the year and only had to do half as much work”
and if that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about the current North American work environment I don’t know what will
I make a point of always buying the DUMBEST thing on wedding registries, not the thing I expect them to use the most, not the most expensive, not the coolest, the thing that I know they put on as a joke because they thought no one in their right mind would get it.
Cause I’ve always figured that the dumb shit is the one thing that deep down they really want, it’s that thing that really tickles the childish part of their brain and makes them smile. Sure, I could buy them a new kitchen set and it’ll probably be used gladly, but it’s not going to be remembered fondly or talked about later.
But the couples classes on balloon art that I paid for? Those get brought up practically every other gathering. The RC submersible drone? She posted videos she made using it for almost a year afterwards. I once bought someone a life size carnival popcorn maker for their wedding, and you know what? To this day almost a decade later it’s the only gift that they still have and is displayed in their house.
The best gift isn’t always the one matters the most in the moment or makes the most sense, but can have the most impact emotionally in the long term.
I think the most humiliating object in the world is the Fleshlight sleeve warmer
Its only purpose is to slide into your fleshlight and get it to body temp. It’s $30. I want to get every single man who owns one of these into one room and make them do long-form improv
My deepest darkest fantasy is that I collapse on the street and I am rushed to the hospital. They perform a bunch of tests and find out I am severely deficient in some kind of vitamin. Then I start taking the vitamin and I become the happiest cleverest person alive because all my problems were caused by this one deficiency
I really think everyone needs to truly internalize this:
Fictional characters are objects.
They are not people. You cannot “objectify” them, because they have no personhood to be deprived of. They have no humanity to be erased. You cannot “disrespect” them, because they are not real.
I know this has good intentions, so I will just add the “how you treat them, even as objects of fiction, can speak about your own character, be careful out there”
Your addition is actually completely antithetical to my message. It is literally the opposite of what I am conveying.
Stop telling people to encourage the cop inside their head.
How you treat fictional characters, given they are entirely objects of fiction, does NOT necessarily speak to your own character, and you do not need to be “careful”.
It is not dangerous to imagine dark things happening to fictional characters. It does not mean you are secretly a bad person. It does not mean you unconsciously want to hurt people in real life. It is not a “slippery slope” to doing bad things to people in real life. You cannot damage your brain or turn yourself into a bad person by consuming “dark” fanfic.
I can write tentacle noncon of my favorite character all day long and be a fierce anti-sexual assault advocate in real life because what I do in my head is not the same thing as what I do in real life.
