(TikTok screencap)
I have killed a bottle of tequila with my neighbor and still don’t know his name. Labels are like, just suggestions anyway man.
I don’t even know my neighbors enough to assign them labels like that. I just like keeping to myself.
I like the “quotes” sometimes, but this trend of screenshots of people looking around distracts me.
…I mean, at least look towards where the quote is gonna be.
This post is a great example of why we lost America. And what is spreading across the world right now.
Hold a goddamn yard sale and talk to your neighbors people, get to know them, PRETEND you care, at least enough so you can exchange phone numbers and watch each other’s places when you take trips or recognize each others lost dogs.
I promise, it not only gets easier, it becomes a source of pride and comfort knowing the people around you. We have spurned community because it’s more tempting to hide inside and feel miserable and lonely. Losing community was how we lost civics and representation and basic human empathy.
“whaa but my neighbors are all assholes”
I don’t care. You should still know their names.
I agree so much. Sadly it’s hard to reach out with how entire neighborhoods are designed. They’re designed like solitary domiciles that only exist because employees need a place to be stored when not in use.
Ours is designed where cars just disappear into garages and only people walking dogs and delivery drivers (or solicitors) use the front door. So everyone hides behind those stupid ring cameras.
“whaa but my neighbors are all assholes”
I’ll admit: Not all of them!
Peoples’ average temperament indeed seems set on being the “leave me alone miserable and lonely” default though.
… Or they’re psychos. I live in a particularly transient city though, people move all the time, most rent, and you barely can tell there’s completely different people next door one day.
I deleted all the details to avoid a wall of text, but we’ve lived through a couple neighborhoods where everyone knew each other, and now it’s barred windows and cameras that shout “YOU’RE BEING FILMED” when you’re 50 feet away.
I notice a common toxicity factor seems to be those “Muh property” NIMBYs that see a house as a “real estate investment” instead of a home. The ones who sic the HOA on people they’ve never met and are mad about everything. (They’re probably also on Nextdoor posting about answering their door “with Smith & Wesson.” Trolls.)
I randomly met a really cool neighbor on a bike ride though. He happened to have his garage open! Sadly we don’t text a whole ton but he’s pretty cool.
People tend to be pretty alright if you encounter them in the wild but nobody’s opening their door to say hi anymore, and I also find that we’re under so much immense pressure that just stopping for a chat feels like it eats a chunk out of a day. This is also not healthy…
I want community, and local friends and all that. But I dunno, I think everybody is just burned out and vulnerability is especially scary these days, especially with the violent polarization of our politics of late.
But I agree, people would be much less likely to vote to harm and oppress their neighbors if they knew more of them personally…
I agree with and appreciate your honest, realistic perspective.
And I maintain that we get break through the challenges of fear and propaganda designed to push people indoors and to stop organizing, to stop creating communities. It’s artificial. It goes against millions of years of evolution. People want to be connected and part of a community, but the manufactured fear is stronger right now.
In fact, this is how I’ve turned my share of conservatives towards better ways of “thinking” which is understanding that even the person who hates you and everything you stand for, on some level, really, really wants your acceptance. It doesn’t sound like it makes sense, but that’s just it… our species is loaded with contradictions, it’s why we have a reality-TV president and why we have so many people spinning out about wildly unrealistic issues or false-flag stories stoking people’s fear and anger. Because we’re not rational.
I often tell the story about how at my first job I volunteered to start taking the difficult clients’ calls for my boss, they were so happy to hand that task over they didn’t care if some monkey from the warehouse like myself was handling it.
What I did was listen to the angry client’s calls, I listened to their stories and their feelings and their frustrations, and didn’t try to fix it all, just listened and said I understand. Then they would call back and ask for me. Still angry, but now seeking the only person who will let them have emotions about it, then over time they did business only with me, and apologized for their temper earlier.
We can all do this. It’s not a jedi trick, but it does take a level of emotional intelligence we’re not developing inside on Lemmy and Reddit and Discord. We have to get out more, we have to be the bigger people we think we are. We have to get over our own hangups and fears and insecurities and lead by example. I strongly feel any of us are capable of doing this, even if it’s just once, if we all did it we would change our country.
I don’t know why you seem to think that extroversion versus introversion is the same thing as having emotional intelligence or not. I would consider myself to be a very sociable introvert and have no problem with empathic listening, but it drains my energy pool so I can only engage it for so long. People who are extroverts do not have this problem as much because interacting with other people recharges their energy pool and being alone drains it.
(I also have an additional problem that I have a very weird variant of bipolar that can cause me to get incredibly euphoric when talking to someone but then crash into a dysphoria afterward, which is extremely draining; this kind of thing is very unusual, though.)
Perhaps you should consider applying the same supposed listening and empathy skills to people on internet forums that you supposedly do to people in real life? Or would that interfere too much with your lecturing?
Speak for yourself. I am not hiding inside so I can be miserable and lonely; I just find social interactions to be energy draining, so I need a lot of time in solitude to recharge.
Me too but it didn’t stop me from actually working on that and viewing it as what it is, not an identity quirk but an obstacle towards progress for myself and my community.
It isn’t quite clear to me how burning myself out helps anyone.
“I don’t know how this helps me!” said the karate student doing pushups. “I came here to learn how to not get hurt, what good does hurting myself this way accomplish?”
“Oww! Oww! Oww! My broken arm still hurts!”
“Stop whining and keep doing those pushups, and you’ll eventually get strong enough that those bones will knit themselves!”
This is more like my son telling me his legs hurt all the time, but he just got back from running around like a maniac, and he’s about to go run around like a maniac. And I’m not even suggesting the pain isn’t real, but sometimes you gotta push through.
And to bring it back to the example at hand, developing a community is hugely important. I know all of my neighbors and we all hang out and know each other. Half the time, I don’t want to, but sometimes I just do it. Sometimes it’s not great, but sometimes it is. But when we need a hand, I have a pool of people to pick from, and I know I’m in their pool.
Dehumanizing the morons on the internet forum you frequent is bad, but dehumanizing your neighbors is really bad. The door swings both ways, community is important. Make an effort. I’m sorry it’s hard.
Make an effort. I’m sorry it’s hard.
Is this the kind of thing that you also say to the people in your neighborhood when trying to build a community, and if so, how do people usually respond to it?
I just find social interactions to be energy draining
My broken arm
How are these equitable? How is “feeling drained” the same as having a handicap or being physically broken? I don’t actually want an answer, I don’t really care, you’re not going to do my community any good if you feel forced to do something you don’t see the benefit from, but it’s worth remembering that submerging in comfort now usually has a pretty steep cost later. Whether it’s not exercising your body because it hurts, or not exercising your emotional intelligence because it’s uncomfortable or draining.
This epidemic of de-socialization is artificial, and should be pushed back on by everyone who cares about being a strong, healthy adult in a strong community. It’s very basic stuff that got us through ice-ages, mass extinctions, depressions and violent times of the past.
Funny how you go on and on about the importance of connecting with the people around you, but then when someone shows up who is different from you and talks about how they are different, you stop trying to connect and turn incredibly hostile instead.
So much for empathy.
Being friends with your neighbours is OP
Just walking next door for your next game night or drinking and chilling? Fuck yeah
The woman in the apartment nextdoor is called The Slug. She drinks like a waterfall, smokes like a chimney and screams like a cow. Looking like one doesn’t stop her from finding men to bring over and bang though.
Guy obviously having an affair, wine mom, right wing boomer #42, right wing boomer #43…
I know the names of all their dogs.
I work IT a fortune 500 company with like 60k-100k employees. Moved in last month and what do ya know, two houses down is a manager for an application I support. What’re the chances.
Gonna suck when he comes knocking or giving me evil eyes for issues I didn’t cause.
I don’t even know what my neighbours look like.
Tractor man, stupid dogs, horse people, fast truck, guy who waves, people across the way.
Yeah, I’m rural
I have yet to meet “gorilla-looking dude who yells at his step-son and his lawnmower in public” who lives across the street, or even make eye contact with him. And no, this is not some variant of racism on my part – gorilla-looking dude is white but looks much more like a gorilla than any black dude I’ve ever seen.
Jan 6er has a for sale sign up up and Carehome’s been rather quiet.
Her neighbor is going to see this and be like “oh It looks like “judgemental bitch” made a meme.”
I hope my neighbors know me as the slut across the street.
Saame
Thanks ThotDragon, to me you’re now the slut from across the fediverse. 🩵
Poggers!
Life goals.
“Sugar”
Because we were working in the garage and she came over. Dressed in tight, revealing clothing with her breasts pushed up, she asks us a few times if we want to buy any sugar. We were certain she wasn’t talking about baking, but we weren’t sure if she was a sex worker or offering booger sugar. So henceforth, she became Sugar. We’re pretty gay, but not sure if she read that. So maybe it was the latter?
Have you tried being gayer?
