I hate this about myself. Over the years, I have grown more and more cynical and negative about, well, everything. I’m a snotty elitist about food, music, politics, everything. I’m pretty convinced that I’m the smartest motherfucker in any given room - online, or in real life. I usually lead with a sneer, and spiral downward from there. My last two posts, in their entirety, on the SDMB, are as follows:
Re: the Insane Clown Posse thread in CS:
Re: new Pit rules:
It seems like my recent posting history has been a litany of crap like this. Seriously, what the fuck? Comments like that don’t contribute anything. They certainly don’t make anyone’s experience around here any better. Why didn’t I just skip both those threads?
I’m sarcastic and pessimistic. I’ve been trying to change, because in real life, I’m thoughtful, polite, I’m silly and playful with my wife and pets, I love my friends. But even among them, I’m starting to get a reputation for having, well, not a “short fuse”, because I’m never violent, but…I dunno. I have a cutting and negative way of expressing myself, I suppose.
I fear that I’m right on the verge of falling over a precipice, and I may eventually despair of ever seeing any person in a positive light again, and may be negative, cruel, and suspicious the rest of my life.
I hate that, but I’m not sure what to do about it.
Well, I’ll differ with Khampelf - not so much directly against Ogre, but against negative people. I hate being around constantly negative people. They excuse themselves by saying “I’m a realist.” Well good for you. I know life sucks but if all we do is talk about the negative then that’s all we’ll see. It brings people down, and overly negative people don’t seem happy to me. Fine, whatever, it’s their life, but then they try to bring me down, too. They automatically assume my optimism=naivete. On the contrary, it’s brought about by experience - I know that being angry all the time will just make me MORE ANGRY.
For the record, I’m don’t see myself as an angry or negative person. I embrace a cheerful cynicism. Life is multi-faceted, full of wonderful things, and it’s a shame the mehums can’t see that.
I don’t see Ogre’s negativity as the problem, rather that he’s forgotten how to enjoy it.
Anaamika, others can only ‘take you down’ if you let them.
Arrogance is merely well spoken self-esteem.
I’m the same way a lot of the time, and occasionally become self-aware about it. My kids help lighten me up IRL. When it comes to posting, I will sometimes force myself to wait a minute or two before submitting something and then read it again. Often times I’ll end up editing it or deleting it entirely. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being cynical or misanthropic, but literally or figuratively counting to 10 (or 20 or 30) is often enough for me to realize that whatever I’m irritated by at this particular secind isn’t really very important.
I try very, very hard to see the bright side of things, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that things suck and that people suck even more. Not always an easy task. But what really keeps me giong is appreciating the simple things in life, like just how hysterically funny farts are. A healthy appreciation of the absurd, the ridiculous, and the lowest common denominator help to keep me grounded and mostly keep my bitterness and cynicism at bay.
So stop being so fucking negative! Pull my finger!
Sounds like your just a regular guy to me. Nobody can kiss ass all day every day. The only reason you feel like you have a negative way of expressing yourself here is because all you have are words. Fuck man, they’re only words. I don’t know about you but if somebody has something to say to me in person be sure they are going to take into account my physical presence before they crack wise.
I can tell your a thoughtful guy in real life. A good guitar player will always think twice before smacking somebody in the mouth. You could fuck up your hand. Then where would you be? A pick duct taped onto your cast, that’s where.
Gore- inventor of teh intrenets
Goer- that which goes the distance
Rego- some sorta wizardry incantation
and the well known Ergo- “a board cut slingshot shaped to fit the hand.”
All good things
Maybe you're having some sort of animus confrontation, that bit about the birth of consciousness being preceded by pain. Dunno. At any rate, you've plenty of company.
I hate that. As if they have some special lock on realism. What they fail to grasp is that you create your own reality. Your attitude, be it negative or positive, becomes manifest.
Hey man, I’ve got a thread of yours from a couple of years ago bookmarked as one of my favorites. This one here. It just struck me at the time as being such a small, sensual, and determined effort to look forward to better days in the middle of cold and darkness.
I still smile when I read it. Don’t let those kinds of small pleasures get away from you.
I appreciate the thought, but as long as I’m being all emo, I might as well fess up. I’m pretty sure that my “superiority” is at least partially due to insecurity. I’m having a difficult time a the moment. I’m in a very tough PhD program in which I’ve taken a hard situation and made it many times harder for myself, because, well, that’s what I do, I guess.
I got my Master’s 10 or so years ago, and then worked for various government agencies, NGO’s, etc. A few years ago, I was working for the National Park Service, doing the Greatest Job On The Planet. I was conducting species inventories and ecological monitoring on national parks. What this meant on a practical level was that I was coming to the office every day, and doing stuff like leading university researchers 7 miles into an off-limits cave to do fish, bat, crayfish, etc. inventories. Every day. I defy you to come up with a more awesome job than that.
Anyhow, Bush and his Interior Secretary being what they were, my funding dried up. I decided to finally pursue my PhD.
So, I pulled a typical Ogre thing. I came to a school without a decent botany program, to a department in which there were no professors who do what I want to do, in order to study a field which I don’t know anything about. The thing is that this school is sitting on Ground Zero of a particular very specialized habitat type that I wanted to study. I was blithely confident that I could learn anything, and could overcome any obstacles. I’ve done this before. For my Master’s, I decided to completely switch fields (purely on the basis that it was interesting stuff), and did fine. Knocked the bottom out of it, in fact.
And hell, they accepted me, so how bad could it be?
As it turns out, pretty bad. It’s not that my PhD committee is not supportive. It’s just that I’m now facing my qualifying exams, and I’m still trying to learn the ins and outs of a field that most people study for YEARS before they attempt a doctorate in.
Long story short, I’m feeling dumb. Like a small fish in a big pond. Like I’m not, for once in my life, the smartest person around. I’m in the doldrums. Unmotivated. Lazy, even. What the hell am I doing posting this long, bitchy screed on SDMB on a work day? There’s DNA to be isolated! Primers to be designed! Gah!
Ever see that otherwise forgettable movie, Changing Lanes? There was one scene that reverberated with me. Sam Jackson’s character was confronted on the street by his AA sponsor, and essentially told that he never was addicted to alcohol in the first place, and that anger was his true drug of choice.
Now, I’m not addicted to anything (OK, I smoke, but I’m trying to quit!). But it seems that I’m drawn to negativity and to outrage. Hell, it’s a rush. It’s AWESOME to completely debunk and destroy someone’s idiotic, wrong-headed argument, while cultivating the image of an intellectually and morally superior ubermensch, casually tearing apart the foundations while swirling a glass of cognac in one perfectly manicured hand.
And people make it so damned easy. I mean, anti-evolutionists, right-wing hyper-religious types. Ignorant savages of all stripes. How can you resist telling them, in all honesty, that they’re wrong-headed douchebags? Isn’t that what the internet is FOR, fer chrissakes?
But, man, is it ever unhealthy. It cultivates all kinds of negativity and bad feelings.
In short, yes. See my above post.