7 Ways You Can Accidentally Become A Social Outcast

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Re: 7 Ways You Can Accidentally Become A Social Outcast

Postby JamishT » Sat Feb 06, 2016 1:12 am

Tesseracts wrote:
gisambards wrote:
Tesseracts wrote:I think this issue may be being confused by focusing on Wong. I think there's a difference between "Wong is overreacting" and "anyone who feels bad about high school should realize it's not a big deal."


I was focusing on Wong in my last post. I recognise that high school is a big deal - I only left its British equivalent last year, and I know how traumatic being one of the outcasts can be. But the thing is, as Wong in fact points out, all this high school stuff is arbitrary. When someone feels like an outcast at high school, it is very different to if they feel like an outcast in later life - there's a whole different set of rules and circumstance. And it's this arbitrariness that is why you can't be actively bitter about it - it was all meaningless, even though it felt so important at the time.

It's not meaningless. All of those people you went to high school with grew up and they still exist. People are still judging you for the exact same reasons, but they're more quiet about it because they're adults. Some of them find great success in life because sometimes society rewards jerks. All those people who told you it doesn't matter, it's just high school, also still exist and they're still around to tell you your life doesn't matter. The people in high school are exactly the same as the people everywhere else and they're still here to exploit you in college, in the workplace, in relationships, or anything


That's really sad. I believe people actally change a lot after high school, as a result of life experience like college, jobs, living on their own, and other milestones in life. When I went to my 5 year this past fall, I wasn't expecting much change in my classmates, but I was wrong. Sure, some hadn't changed a bit, but most had mellowed out/matured to become decent human beings. I don't know, maybe I'm just being overly optimistic, but I think most people change a lot after high school.
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Re: 7 Ways You Can Accidentally Become A Social Outcast

Postby Tesseracts » Sat Feb 06, 2016 1:36 am

Kivutar wrote:I don't have any bitterness about a few stupid adolescents, most of whom had horrible home lives, treating me badly many years ago. I do have bitterness about how it affected the way my family treats me after all this time.

I feel the same way, and a lot of people I know who have been through this also feel this way. I've never been that bitter about the kids who treated me poorly, but I'm really bitter about the teachers and adults who allowed it, encouraged it, or bullied me themselves. They are the ones who created an environment which made me feel like I'm defective. They are the ones who on paper would say bullying is not tolerated, but in practice would ignore it when it happened and completely dismiss any complaints I had. My parents didn't think I deserved to be treated like this and they didn't enjoy seeing me come home crying every day, but they were limited in what they could do about it.
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Re: 7 Ways You Can Accidentally Become A Social Outcast

Postby gisambards » Sat Feb 06, 2016 1:38 am

Crimson847 wrote:The first is that Wong's reasons for being bitter are "trivial". We have little idea what is driving Wong's dysfunction, particularly in the present but even in the past. He told one story, and you're assuming that's all there is to it because it's all you've heard so far. When dealing with psychological issues, jumping to such broad conclusions so quickly and on the basis of so little is devastatingly counterproductive.


Personally, I think if someone middle-aged is still this hung-up on not having been popular in high school, then it's either trivial, or it's a real problem that they should be trying to deal with. This article did not give the impression he was making any effort to deal with his problems, but rather that he was trying to rationalise them.

Crimson847 wrote:Second, you're assuming that your vaguely similar experience in one aspect of your life allows you to "understand" his feelings and his life. The reality is that having one thing in common with someone doesn't mean you "understand" their experience any more than knowing one of Newton's Laws means you have a deep understanding of physics. Your genes were different, your classmates were different, your social environment was different, your parents were different, and even your specific experience of being unpopular in high school was almost certainly very different in the specifics. Your experience was not his, so the fact that you reacted one way does not mean he will or should react the same way.


So no-one should ever offer anyone else advice?

Crimson847 wrote:Third, you're assuming that Wong has succeeded in life and no longer has reason to feel bitter and insecure in the present purely on the basis that his career has been pretty successful. This is the same attitude my dad has always had (family, friends, deeper meaning etc. aren't important in life, making lots of money is the only thing that matters), and he's one of the most thoroughly miserable people I know. I'm surprised I even have to say this, but career isn't everything in life, so assuming someone's life is just fine because their career is going well is bull pucky.


Wong is successful not just in a career, but in a creative field. Writing is the kind of thing people can devote their lives to, and get nowhere. Wong is at a point of success I would give almost anything to reach, so I have little sympathy when he says his life was ruined by something loads of people - myself included - had to go through.
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Re: 7 Ways You Can Accidentally Become A Social Outcast

Postby Tesseracts » Sat Feb 06, 2016 1:56 am

It's fine to offer advice, it's fine to think someone should get over something, but in saying that of course you run the risk of coming across like you lack sympathy or understanding for their plight. You might actually lack understanding, you might not, I don't know, I can't read minds and I can assume things incorrectly.

Wong is successful not just in a career, but in a creative field. Writing is the kind of thing people can devote their lives to, and get nowhere. Wong is at a point of success I would give almost anything to reach, so I have little sympathy when he says his life was ruined by something loads of people - myself included - had to go through.


First of all I don't think his success is that incredible, but that may because I know a number of moderately successful creative people and it just doesn't seem that extraordinary to me. I mean, he's probably not rich or anything, and it's not like published authors are exempt from being miserable human beings.

Whether you have sympathy for Wong in particular is one thing, but this logic makes it sound like everybody who went through the common experience of being bullied shouldn't have sympathy. Maybe that's not what you meant, I don't know, but it seems kind of like you're saying because it's common it's not bad.

I've often heard this argument used to justify not doing anything about bullying. People talk about it like it's a rite of passage.

I don't think it's good logic to say lots of people had to go through it, so it must not be that bad. The same event can influence some people more than others. It's like when old people say "I ate lead as a kid, and I turned out fine, everyone today is a wimp." Or when someone defends corporal punishment of children by claiming it happened to them and they turned out okay. Some people turn out fine from things, others turn out deeply wounded, that's just how it works.

Life isn't fair, there is no cosmic force of fairness making it so that if enough people experience the same problem, it becomes less damaging for all of them.
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Re: 7 Ways You Can Accidentally Become A Social Outcast

Postby Tesseracts » Sat Feb 06, 2016 1:59 am

Also, I should mention: saying someone doesn't deserve sympathy because he's successful seems like it's a form of bitterness in itself.
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Re: 7 Ways You Can Accidentally Become A Social Outcast

Postby gisambards » Sat Feb 06, 2016 2:22 am

Maybe I am bitter, but it annoys me that a man who has taken great steps toward achieving what I want in life (I mean, he's written a New York Times bestseller - most writers aren't going to manage that) seems to be so obsessed with something in his past that I and a lot of others went through too. I don't think the fact it's common makes it less bad, but personally the fact it's common does make it harder for me to be sympathetic toward someone who acts as if it only happened to them, particularly when it happened to them a long time ago - after all, loads of kids are still going through it right now.
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Re: 7 Ways You Can Accidentally Become A Social Outcast

Postby Crimson847 » Sat Feb 06, 2016 3:12 am

This is exactly why I think psychology should be a required subject in high school and university.

gisambards wrote:Personally, I think if someone middle-aged is still this hung-up on not having been popular in high school, then it's either trivial, or it's a real problem that they should be trying to deal with. This article did not give the impression he was making any effort to deal with his problems, but rather that he was trying to rationalise them.


You're still making the assumption that his high school experience is the sole cause of his problems, both now and then. You have no way of knowing this, and indeed this very article contains a big glaring hint that there's more to the story--namely, the oblique reference to his father's alcoholism and possible abusive/neglectful behavior.

This was yet another brick wall for me, the equivalent of some kid sneaking in a live rat to eat and everybody drooling over their first chance to take a bite. I didn't grow up thinking of beer as that stuff in the commercials that makes everyone laugh and play volleyball on tropical beaches with hot babes. I thought of it as that stuff that made my dad really sleepy and/or enraged. This was the poison that was slowly killing him and the reason bill collectors were threatening to take our house. Drink it? I wanted to burn down the liquor store.


Think of it as a brief glimpse of the rest of the iceberg, still waiting below the surface.

So no-one should ever offer anyone else advice?


No one should assume that they understand what someone else's life is like in its entirety. There's always more to the story, especially if the only things you know about a person are their public persona and that they were unpopular in high school. Assuming that you understand someone's personal problems well enough to give good advice on the basis of so little evidence is, again, like assuming that you're qualified to teach a university physics class because you know Newton's First Law. Much more information is needed.

Wong is successful not just in a career, but in a creative field. Writing is the kind of thing people can devote their lives to, and get nowhere. Wong is at a point of success I would give almost anything to reach, so I have little sympathy when he says his life was ruined by something loads of people - myself included - had to go through.


You're still assuming that what you went through is the same as what he went through. Also, none of this addresses the point that career success is not the only or even most important requirement for a happy life. I'd be happy to be as well-off financially as my dad, for instance, but I wouldn't want to live his life for any amount of money. The man has no friends to speak of, he abandoned his children, his late wife hated him, and since she died the only women he's been able to keep around for long have been shameless gold diggers. Is that a happy life, crying into piles of money every night? He may have career success, but he's still miserable, even after getting the thing he thought would solve all his problems. Does that seem like an enviable situation to you?

Wong may not have any of these problems...or he may have even worse ones. We don't know. Point is, just because someone is materially successful doesn't mean their life as a whole is a bed of roses. People need more than that to be happy.
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Re: 7 Ways You Can Accidentally Become A Social Outcast

Postby gisambards » Sat Feb 06, 2016 10:56 am

I've never said Wong's life is perfect. All I'm saying is, if high school is such a big hang-up for him, that's either a serious psychological problem, or just something he needs to move on from. He wrote the article as if it's perfectly normal for him to still be upset that he simply wasn't popular in high school.
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Re: 7 Ways You Can Accidentally Become A Social Outcast

Postby thatindianguy » Sat Feb 06, 2016 1:39 pm

Tesseracts wrote:I might enjoy these articles if they were marketed as individual life experience and not universal truths for all of humanity.



Really most of Wong's articles (okay many not most) would work just fine if he acknowledged that they're a subjective look at life. But instead they're always presented as some 100% true cracked the code revelation.
Odd stance for someone who likes to talk about how we need to have more empathy in life.
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Re: 7 Ways You Can Accidentally Become A Social Outcast

Postby Knicholas » Sat Feb 06, 2016 10:01 pm

gisambards wrote:I've never said Wong's life is perfect. All I'm saying is, if high school is such a big hang-up for him, that's either a serious psychological problem, or just something he needs to move on from. He wrote the article as if it's perfectly normal for him to still be upset that he simply wasn't popular in high school.


That or it is aimed at someone still in High School. I kind of wish I could tell 14 to 18 year old me that it does not matter that much.
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Re: 7 Ways You Can Accidentally Become A Social Outcast

Postby gisambards » Sat Feb 06, 2016 10:26 pm

Knicholas wrote:
gisambards wrote:I've never said Wong's life is perfect. All I'm saying is, if high school is such a big hang-up for him, that's either a serious psychological problem, or just something he needs to move on from. He wrote the article as if it's perfectly normal for him to still be upset that he simply wasn't popular in high school.


That or it is aimed at someone still in High School. I kind of wish I could tell 14 to 18 year old me that it does not matter that much.


Well, if I'd read Wong's article last year, when I was an unpopular kid at secondary school, I'd probably just be disheartened. Because it's pretty clear Wong thinks it really matters, and has affected the rest of his life.
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Re: 7 Ways You Can Accidentally Become A Social Outcast

Postby Crimson847 » Sun Feb 07, 2016 12:28 am

gisambards wrote:I've never said Wong's life is perfect. All I'm saying is, if high school is such a big hang-up for him, that's either a serious psychological problem, or just something he needs to move on from. He wrote the article as if it's perfectly normal for him to still be upset that he simply wasn't popular in high school.


Which part are you referring to? He makes his intentions with the article pretty clear up front:

You know that phase you go through -- the one where you want to just murder everybody, all of the time?

Well, it came to my attention recently that not everyone goes through that phase, so let's talk about it. I'm not saying I ever actually made plans to shoot up my high school, I'm just saying I used to soothe myself to sleep at night fantasizing about it as a teenager, the way I sometimes imagine myself having to break up a naked catfight between Karen Gillan and Isla Fisher in Idris Elba's hot tub. So this goes out both to those who've been to that dark place (or, you know, are still there) and those who struggle to understand them.

I've tried to go back and retrace those steps, decades later, to map out how I got to that social/emotional zone I now think of as the Shit Pit and how I left it behind to become the perfectly serene and well-adjusted person I am today. Tell me if any of this sounds familiar:


In other words, he's trying to recreate the situation as he saw it at the time, helpless rage included. Whether he was successful at his goal or not, his intention with the article seems pretty clear.
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"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
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Re: 7 Ways You Can Accidentally Become A Social Outcast

Postby gisambards » Sun Feb 07, 2016 12:40 am

Crimson847 wrote:In other words, he's trying to recreate the situation as he saw it at the time, helpless rage included. Whether he was successful at his goal or not, his intention with the article seems pretty clear.


But the article itself gives the impression that he is actually still very bitter about the whole thing, and is still thinking now like he was then - for example, his attitude toward the popular girls.
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Re: 7 Ways You Can Accidentally Become A Social Outcast

Postby Tesseracts » Sun Feb 07, 2016 12:51 am

When I was in school I used to tell myself school doesn't matter, because that's what everyone seemed to believe. I was wrong, it does matter. A lot. Because I was so miserable at school, I had to repeat 11th grade, I was forced to go to both a special needs high school and a special needs college. If I wasn't treated so poorly in school I wouldn't have had to do either of these things. I have failed out of colleges and wasted a lot of money. I'm almost 28 and I'm still a complete failure, I can't do anything without giving up on it and I have a lot of trouble socializing. So if I could tell my younger self something I think I'd like to tell them school does matter, my life matters, and I don't deserve to be miserable. If I had grown up thinking I have a lot place in the world I probably wouldn't be such a wreck right now. It's taken me so many years of my life to even begin to make progress in overcoming the attitudes which were planted in my brain as an adolescent.

That's nice that you think none of that should matter, but it does. It's had an impact on my life and no amount of wishing it didn't will make that go away. It matters when you experience things which make you see yourself as somebody unlikable, hideous, and without value.
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Re: 7 Ways You Can Accidentally Become A Social Outcast

Postby CultofZoidberg » Sun Feb 07, 2016 3:06 am

Tesseracts wrote:Oh wow. It looks like David Wong wrote another deeply disturbing article which will keep me awake at night wondering if there's any goodness in this world. I can't wait.
Be honest:

Cruelty is attractive. As long as it's not aimed at you, of course.

It's true in our friends, sexual partners, and idols. You think Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock is at his sexiest when he's delivering withering insults to everyone around him -- that's when you most want to bang him or be him. It's the same with Tony Stark and the same with Dr. House. All of our heroes don't just win; they also make everyone else look foolish in the process, including their allies. It's attractive because, deep down, you want to be that one person who's not in their line of fire and to have that cruel strength on your side, working for you.


im-projecting.jpg


So, yes, when rumors started flying that some guys in our class were having sex, I didn't miss the fact that all three of them were bullies -- rough types who smoked, who matured earlier, and got chest hair sooner. They tortured kids in the locker room and extorted lunch money, and they got rewarded with sex. I'm not mad at the girls, not now -- they were 14, what did they know? They only knew that those guys were "cool," the way today we think of Walter White or Star Lord as cool. Renegades. Rebels. Badasses. The fact that they don't obey the rules must mean they're strong and brave.

I just saw them as lumbering meatheads, eyes full of dumb animal meanness. So, yeah, seeing them get rewarded made me angry -- at them, at the girls, and at the system.


I'm not going to sugar coat this, this is a bunch of sexist bullshit. The fact that he's a grown ass man and still thinks girls are "rewarding" jerks with sex means he's blind. This shit makes me seriously angry, how can Cracked spout all this psuedo-feminist bullshit and then seriously write this?

Suppose it was really the "bullies" only who were getting laid (this is a big thing to suppose, but we will suppose it for now). Couldn't there be any other explanation for this other than the girls are "rewarding" them for being bullies? Like, maybe they were the ones confident enough to ask a girl out? Maybe the girls who date bullies are themselves jerks and bad people? Is that possible, or are only men allowed to be "bullies?"

And who the fuck is he to say sex is a reward that women give to men? What kind of bullshit is this? Do men ever reward behavior with sex, or is sex only a prize you get from women?

Oh yeah, and is it possible that this "nice guy" David Wong who constantly thinks of school shootings, might not actually be as "nice" as he thinks he is? Yeah, that's certainly possible.

Confession: If I were 17 again and my first exposure to feminism was a bunch of conventionally attractive girls on Tumblr snarking about how I was a monster because I felt "entitled" to female attention, I would have redpilled so hard it'd have crashed the Matrix.


Based on describing sex as a reward from women, I'm not convinced he feels less entitled now. He's probably less frustrated because he gets laid now, but that doesn't mean his internal attitudes have changed.

Look, I was bullied a lot and I was really tormented by the school experience. I hated the entire thing and I wanted it all to literally explode many times. Yet I still see people as human beings and I'm not furious they don't all want to fuck me, because what kind of fucking stupid attitude is that? This is some Elliot Rodger level edgelord bullshit.

I get that I'm privileged in other ways; I genuinely don't know what it's like to have a severe mental illness


Okay David Wong... this isn't a joke or a put down. You are mentally ill, and you obviously are not going through treatment for it. I'm not saying that to be nice either, it's just a fact.

I don't fault anyone for being tormented, or angry, or dysfunctional. I'm really dysfunctional and an emotional wreck, I know it sucks. However, I do fault people for, I don't know, blaming everyone other than themselves for their problems. Which honestly seems to be what this entire article is doing. It just seems weird that someone who seems incapable of taking responsibility for his own life is constantly creating these advice articles which are widely shared all over social media about how to live life correctly.
12687993_938283342920522_8949445618738419337_n.jpg


that...pretty much says it all. I feel like Pargin is compensating for some type of horrible guilt, and these articles are just virtue signaling. I actually get when someone like Amanda mannen does it. As i found out this month, she used to work in a women's shelter which will kind of fuck up one's perspective. So I have to give her a pass when she cites dodgy statistical or anecdotal evidence. But everyone else at Cracked?

Problems.
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