Boundaries. Set them and stick to them. Might even get to the point where certain things are taboo topics. This is what I want, thank you for the advice but I'll live my life my way.
He just has to learn he can't change someone unless they want to change. The best that can be done is setting boundaries and living for you.
But then all I can do if give my opinion based on what you've said. I could be totally off base, but as a basic rule it never hurts to set boundaries about goals. You're living your life the way you want.

I love working nights too. Less stressful.
I've compromised by having a job where I get up very early so technically I am up half the night. I also go to bed very early so I'm asleep half the day. It's working so far. And I still get to see sunrise.

bravo1102 wrote:
Boundaries. Set them and stick to them. Might even get to the point where certain things are taboo topics. This is what I want, thank you for the advice but I'll live my life my way.
He just has to learn he can't change someone unless they want to change. The best that can be done is setting boundaries and living for you.
But then all I can do if give my opinion based on what you've said. I could be totally off base, but as a basic rule it never hurts to set boundaries about goals. You're living your life the way you want.

I love working nights too. Less stressful.
I've compromised by having a job where I get up very early so technically I am up half the night. I also go to bed very early so I'm asleep half the day. It's working so far. And I still get to see sunrise.

Yeah, it's very difficult to set boundaries with someone who thinks him being able to frequently criticise me should be a respected form of free expression in a friendship or similar relationship. Of course lots of people already cut contact with him because of his intrusive, overly critical approaches, but I'm not exactly a popular person either, so who am I to cast a stone. In any case, you're right, being assertive about boundaries is very much needed. And yeah, night shifts aren't known to be very healthy, but my 11 years of work experience got me used to them and I definitely enjoy having a job that allows me some free time to write or watch something on the side, day shifts would give me absolutely none of that which would result in me using my free time at home to bury myself into creative work even more than I already do.

I would like to resort to my age old mantra that I just remembered yesterday:

“It doesn't matter if what you're experiencing is good or bad, real or unreal. What matters is if it keeps you going or not.”

I too am struggling with some inner turmoil. Feeling like I should reach out for some brand new IRL social interaction, but fearing that I might have burned too many bridges of my past social life and become too acustomed to rejecting others in favour of solitude. I still have two friends that I see IRl.

One who's currently in a mental ward because his scizofrenia is acting out again (poor guy😔). And another who I mostly communicate via cellphone now and then and selldom see because we are both too busy with our own stuff, me and my creative works and he and his bussiness entrepaneurship. I like those two guys because they don't steal energy from me like other people tend to do. There's hardly anything intrusive about them at all, which I really like. Plus we've hanged out ever since we were kids basically, so there's that too I guess.

Lately I've been trying to become a fan of a bunch of things, because I look at other people on YT who are always passionate fans of something and I thought I would like to be too. But I don't know. I may like the stuff I've acquired - casually engaging with it, perhaps make some new friendships through it if possible - but I'm not sure if I'm capable of having any lasting, intense passion for anything but my creative works.

I feel like I'm one of those creators who are just intrinsically narcissistic about their stuff saying “My stuff is better then Star Wars, or whatever else, because I MADE IT DAMMIT!” And perhaps I just ought to embrace that. Perhaps we all ought to. It sure is a lot better motivator then “everything I make SUUUUCK!”

Maybe putting a bit of ego into your things isn't a bad thing. You know, just use it as a powerful motivator and that's it.

Speaking of YT. I think I'm starting to instinctivelly move away from that platform, after having this weird af hangup where I kept searching for “self-genuine” channels to keep reorganizing my profile with subscriptions and lists trying to make it into this perfect setup. And I was just struck by how more infantilizing, and more cringy and more disturbing the search results got. Until I was just like “I don't know If I like being on Youtube anymore”.

Still gonna keep my profile there and probably still gonna come back to it now and then, the same way I still have a FB profile that I rarely ever visit. Just another popular site/distraction for me to leave stagnant and still twitching in the dirt:P

Andreas_Helixfinger wrote:
I would like to resort to my age old mantra that I just remembered yesterday:

“It doesn't matter if what you're experiencing is good or bad, real or unreal. What matters is if it keeps you going or not.”

I too am struggling with some inner turmoil. Feeling like I should reach out for some brand new IRL social interaction, but fearing that I might have burned too many bridges of my past social life and become too acustomed to rejecting others in favour of solitude. I still have two friends that I see IRl.

One who's currently in a mental ward because his scizofrenia is acting out again (poor guy😔). And another who I mostly communicate via cellphone now and then and selldom see because we are both too busy with our own stuff, me and my creative works and he and his bussiness entrepaneurship. I like those two guys because they don't steal energy from me like other people tend to do. There's hardly anything intrusive about them at all, which I really like. Plus we've hanged out ever since we were kids basically, so there's that too I guess.

Lately I've been trying to become a fan of a bunch of things, because I look at other people on YT who are always passionate fans of something and I thought I would like to be too. But I don't know. I may like the stuff I've acquired - casually engaging with it, perhaps make some new friendships through it if possible - but I'm not sure if I'm capable of having any lasting, intense passion for anything but my creative works.

I feel like I'm one of those creators who are just intrinsically narcissistic about their stuff saying “My stuff is better then Star Wars, or whatever else, because I MADE IT DAMMIT!” And perhaps I just ought to embrace that. Perhaps we all ought to. It sure is a lot better motivator then “everything I make SUUUUCK!”

Maybe putting a bit of ego into your things isn't a bad thing. You know, just use it as a powerful motivator and that's it.

I think that's very understandable. Lately I've noticed that when people ask me about me, I don't really know what to say, not much is happening to me and even if something does, I don't think it's that interesting. But when they ask about my characters, my eyes glow up and I get in this strange headspace where I'm excited to share. It's not that the stuff we write is objectively better than Star Wars or anything, who cares, right? It's that we put our thoughts and feelings into these stories with so much care, so to us any sincere conversation about it feels like we have a lot more to offer than people in our lives and in the chatrooms normally realize. Who cares it it'll never make it to the big screen if even for a moment you believe it could.

InkyMoondrop wrote:

I think that's very understandable. Lately I've noticed that when people ask me about me, I don't really know what to say, not much is happening to me and even if something does, I don't think it's that interesting. But when they ask about my characters, my eyes glow up and I get in this strange headspace where I'm excited to share. It's not that the stuff we write is objectively better than Star Wars or anything, who cares, right? It's that we put our thoughts and feelings into these stories with so much care, so to us any sincere conversation about it feels like we have a lot more to offer than people in our lives and in the chatrooms normally realize. Who cares it it'll never make it to the big screen if even for a moment you believe it could.

To that I say “I totally relate” and “That's the spirit I'm talking about”👍

InkyMoondrop wrote:
Keep getting put down by a “friend” of mine. He's obviously one of the few people who still want to talk to me and meet sometimes IRL and that's not something I can say about the 95% of other people I've met throughout the decades, but it's so incredibly frustrating. Basically he mocks my ambitions to write this, saying it probably wouldn't be much of a loss if I couldn't finish my comic (never read it himself), he compares me to drug addicts for spending my free time with creative work, says I'm narrow-minded if I'd rather discuss my own original material with people than filmmakers' achievements generally (not that it has to be one or the other, it's just one makes me happy and excited while the other is a very non-personal conversational subject) and grabs every chance to try and make me feel like I'm ruining my life with this, all while he says he does it out of caring.

As a human being who appreciates solitude and self-reflection to generate solutions to these types of issues—-I even climbed the Great Wall in order to better understand and make sense of interpersonal relationship struggles at a workplace I no longer worked—-it is an ongoing life lesson to figure out what words of advice we let into our heads and which ones we are willing to cast aside.

Here are the best takeaways I have picked up over the years:

Issue #1—-Someone is getting too comfortable telling you about the way you should live on this planet and enjoy life.

Best Response: “Please, go on, tell me more about myself.”

(Most of the time, people can see problems so clearly in others, but are blind to the ones in their own life. To that, I say, “Turn the mirror on yourself.”)

==

Issue #2—-Identify the Radiators and the Drainers

—-Some human beings radiate positivity and every moment is spent with that person feels encouraging and fun. There are a lot of genuine smiles and real laughter.

—-Drainers are like the garbage disposal of social interaction. No matter what is said or done, there is always way to turn a good thing rotten and sometimes they spew garbage back in your face.

Every minute spent with a drainer is a minute that could have been spent with a radiator.


==

Above all, there is a book called “The Rabbit Listened” by Cori Doerrfeld where the main takeaway is this: When we fall into stumbling blocks, a lot of people want to give the right advice or tell us how we should feel. However, sometimes, all we need is a quiet companion who is there to listen, without judgement.

Thanks for the pearls of wisdom. :) There are a lot of approaches that could work and I feel like you have some valid takes on these issues (although I'm pretty sure most people would see me as a drainer if we're dualistic about it). :D I think I'll check the book out, a new perspective never hurts, so again: thanks. I'm not planning any serious self-reforms for this year, but I figured keeping an open mind could help, I've been reading about my enneagram personality type, completed a ~ half an hour online test about my tritype and watched some material about the results, it was really spot-on about my behaviour and how I relate to certain things, my fears, etc… It's obviously descriptive and not prescriptive, but I feel like understanding how the things I'm going through are not unique to me is already a good start. I'm too gonna leave here a nice trick I've read about, mainly about the inner voices that are putting you down, abusing you, etc (in case you have low self-esteem) making them sound funny and cartoonish in your head instantly neutralizes them. Sort of like your very own Riddikulus spell.

I know it's simplistic but my advice is that it's time to make new friends, widen that friendship pool :)
I don't know if I have any friends that appreciate the totality of my diverse interests, I have friends that appreciate small, limited sides of me. If they cirtisise me for something I largely ignore it. Harder to do with a GF but then that's another story XD

I would say that you should limit your interaction with that friend towards things you have in common and just leave out the other stuff. It might hurt a bit but it makes things easier.

Lastly there's really not that much difference between “irl” friends and online. I've met many of my online friends in person and become even better friends, many of my friends I made in person I hardly ever speak to anymore, and still others I spend more time online with than in person anyway.

Sorry for just parachuting in at the end there with this.

——————————

Wowsers I really HATE the use of rainbow colours in stoner designs for raves, crystal selling, cannabis ads etc. I bloody F**ing HATE it! Aesthetically it is sulfuric acid poured into my eyes. Their designs are the very epitome of extreme ugliness and revulsion for me.

I hate it so, so, so very much- not in an intellectual way, in that it's based on not liking something associated with it, the music, the culture or anything like that. It's not even based on colour theory or design principals. It just gets me in an instinctual way, like the smell of vomit or a dead creature, I just have automatic revulsion for those hideously ugly designs.

Ozoneocean wrote:

Wowsers I really HATE the use of rainbow colours in stoner designs for raves, crystal selling, cannabis ads etc. I bloody F**ing HATE it! Aesthetically it is sulfuric acid poured into my eyes. Their designs are the very epitome of extreme ugliness and revulsion for me.

I hate it so, so, so very much- not in an intellectual way, in that it's based on not liking something associated with it, the music, the culture or anything like that. It's not even based on colour theory or design principals. It just gets me in an instinctual way, like the smell of vomit or a dead creature, I just have automatic revulsion for those hideously ugly designs.

So it's kind of like me falling out with Youtube recently then. It wasn't the corporate side of it or anything on a morale or intellectual level that made me want to radically reduce my consumption of the plattform, it was on a purely visceral, instinctual level. I'm just kind of creeped out by YT searches now. Like I made this one search on a pulpy horror movie from the 1960's titled “The Bloody Pit of Horror” that I've watched on YT, just to see if there were any alternative channels of old horror films, and what do I see scrolling down the thumbnails?

A video with a picture of a woman who looks like she's being buried alive titled “Top ten images of a person's last moment before they die”. I'm like–WHAT–DA–F**K–IS THIS CRAZY SHIT!? WHY!? Why are you showing me search results like this now Youtube!? I'm genuinely freaked out by this! I don't care if this is some internet joke or not! It's not funny! It's disturbing and f**d up! I don't know if I wanna do any random seaches on that plattform anymore because I'm so freaked out by this disturbing stuff that keeps popping up. And it really feels like I probably won't from now on.

Jeesus!

Yes, that algorithm is pretty toxic. I throws all sort of crap at you if you watch the wrong thing. :(

————————–

I'm almost finished Pinky TA 8 and I've written the full outline for Piny TA9. Now I just have to script all the pages. I'm really looking forward to it! I love writing ^_^

Unfortunately, YouTube's algorithms have been rigged that way ever since Google bought them out in 2009, the problem is they just continue make them worse. Those top 5/10/whatever videos and Talking Heads have virtually taken over the platform.

That algorithm has led to the Flat Earth movement and their being hauled in front of Congress.

Now flerfs complain about the algorithm hiding their ridiculous content and putting debunkers first in the queue.

Some of us love this kind of content and I like my debunking of pseudoscience leavened with some total flim-flam.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Unfortunately, YouTube's algorithms have been rigged that way ever since Google bought them out in 2009, the problem is they just continue make them worse. Those top 5/10/whatever videos and Talking Heads have virtually taken over the platform.

Google bought Youtube in 2006. They have owned it since near the beginning.

Okay, I didn't know that. I just know I started on YouTube at the tail-end of 2007, but it wasn't until 2009 when Google really began to make their ownership known, because that was their tyranny began . . . any remember those Beta Channels and how much the community hated them? Looking back on it now, the Beta Channels were small potatoes compared to these streamlined “YouTube One” channels we've had for the past several years. At least the Beta Channels could still be customized with your own personal color schemes, background images, and the like.

That was actually one of the reasons why I was a MySpace holdout before I finally, reluctantly migrated to Facebook: I loved how MySpace let us completely customize our profiles, as opposed to how everybody's Facebook profiles all look the same, except for profile and cover pictures.

Yeah. I might still stick to like fun animal vids, book readings, music and let's plays, and that one Duck Avenger motion comic I actually voice acted in one time. But I'm probably not gonna search for anything new anymore on YT.

I saw the whole run of Soap and just finished all the episodes of Joe 90. Looks like the vintage TV channels will be putting up episodes of Fantasy Island next.
There's also lots of content reading and analyzing sacred texts.
And Professor Dave Explains has a whole series on math. Maybe it's time I tackled my greatest weakness.
YT remains a great tool for education and personal development. Actually learn stuff. Sadly the days of new entertainment is mostly gone so I'll just have to actually learn how little I really know.

My big faves are:

The Chieftain - excellent tank channel. He's a lieutenant colonel in the US army. He was in Iraq, and he stared off in the Irish army. He has a lot of useful knowledge and it informs him when he talks history…
Though he says himself that neither serving in the army, his rank or his studies give him absolute authority on the subject, especially speculative, opinion based stuff and you should always take it with a grain of salt. SO he has a lot of humility.

Forgotten Weapons - Ian McColum is super knowledgeable about all different types of historical guns. He takes trips around the world to visit museums, private collection and auction houses to see the guns in person. He also has a mechanical engineering background so he understand guns from a very basic level rather than a nut who just likes to shoot.

Scholagladiatoria - Matt Eastern a swordsman and HEMA practitioner of 20 years plus experience who is also an antique dealer and has collected many antique swords. He's great to listen to about swords because he owns many real examples and goes and sees them in museums, unlike many how talk about swords but only use replicas and never see or own the real ones or look at primary sources.

and others like Red Eye Reviews, The Tank Museum, Battleship New Jersey museum channel…

The Chieftain is great. My favorite is when he does the “bugger the tank is on fire” in his reviews of tank interiors.
He's responded to a bunch of my brother's comments. (My older brother is a retired Army tank platoon sergeant)

But honestly I can't watch YouTube videos about tanks. I like watching about stuff to expand my horizons not reinforce what I already have studied.

So something like History with Cy who has a dynasty by dynasty history of Ancient Egypt?

Gutsick Gibbon speaking on radiometric dating and why YEC is so much nonsense? The debunking is only a little bit as she goes into the science in detail.

AronRa has started doing detailed videos on various clades. Just finished snakes and now he started on arthropoda with the Trilobites.

And old black and white movies. I work one overnight a week. Eight solid hours of YouTube because I can't pirate movies anymore. This week saw the pilot episode for Fantasy Island. Forgotten how much I liked that show.

FANTASY ISLAND seemed to be the dumping grounds for certain TV actors whose once-successful careers were no more. THE LOVE BOAT to a lesser extent. I mean, just about all of the guest stars on those shows were actors who were no longer in their prime, but, once upon a time, were the among the lead castmembers of popular shows that had since ended their runs.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
FANTASY ISLAND seemed to be the dumping grounds for certain TV actors whose once-successful careers were no more. THE LOVE BOAT to a lesser extent. I mean, just about all of the guest stars on those shows were actors who were no longer in their prime, but, once upon a time, were the among the lead castmembers of popular shows that had since ended their runs.

Lead cast members? Some were stars from Hollywood of the 1930-50s. Olivia DeHaviland, Gene Kelly, Van Johnson all sailed on the Love Boat. Reason why my mother never missed it. Me, I would watch the Million Dollar Movie until 10pm and come down for Fantasy Island.

I read that producers would be told by the network to provide someone from current shows for Love Boat and Fantasy Island season to season. Spelling had that kind of pull at the network.

Ugh. I am so fucking sick of Climate Change, I truly am. Honest to God, I cannot even remember the last time we had a normal winter season that was actually cold and, well, winterlike throughout the entirety of the months of December, January, and February without any springlike interruptions. Even today, in the middle of January, in the middle of winter, it's nearly 70F (21C) degrees today; the constant shift in temperatures is not doing my skin/neurological conditions any favors either: my “red lobster face” (as a friend of mine so eloquently calls it) has been flaring up like crazy, and I can't stand it.

I just want to be able to enjoy a full winter season the way Mother Nature intended without any interruptions from earlier and earlier springs (come to think of it, a fall season that's actually brisk and crisp throughout the full season from September to November without any prolonged summers would be nice as well).

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Okay, I didn't know that. I just know I started on YouTube at the tail-end of 2007, but it wasn't until 2009 when Google really began to make their ownership known, because that was their tyranny began . . . any remember those Beta Channels and how much the community hated them? Looking back on it now, the Beta Channels were small potatoes compared to these streamlined “YouTube One” channels we've had for the past several years. At least the Beta Channels could still be customized with your own personal color schemes, background images, and the like.

That was actually one of the reasons why I was a MySpace holdout before I finally, reluctantly migrated to Facebook: I loved how MySpace let us completely customize our profiles, as opposed to how everybody's Facebook profiles all look the same, except for profile and cover pictures.

Here's another fun fact: before Google bought Youtube, they had a competing video platform. It was called Google Video, and it sucked. After Google bought Youtube, they kept Google Video around for a short while before eventually merging most (if not all) of its content to Youtube. Eventually, the Google Video URL would just redirect to Youtube, and that was when it was officially dead.

It's pretty obvious why Google bought Youtube: Youtube had a large built-in audience after only a year of being online. Google's own platform wasn't doing shit. It was a hostile takeover.

Oh! And remember when Google wanted their own Facebook/Twitter, so they forced everyone to sync their YouTube channels to a “Google+” account in order to content commenting on videos and channels, or send DMs (yeah, remember when you could DM channel owners on YouTube? Me neither!) Even one of YouTube's original co-founders came out of the woodwork to protest this forced synchronization!

Luckily, that didn't last long . . . but in this day and age of streaming services calling themselves “Such-and-such+,” doesn't “Google+” sound like a Google streaming service?

But I can date myself even older than YouTube: once upon a time, there was a website called My V TV, which was basically a precursor to what YouTube was originally intended for, in that it was where student and aspiring filmmakers could share their work online to gain exposure - some of it was live action, some of it was primitive CGI or other forms of animation, but nevertheless, it was all original work from budding filmmakers. My middle school Video Production class always had this site bookmarked on our work computers so we could see what other students like us were capable of doing in this kind of field.

Ha! I was an earl adopter of Google + and by some accident I got marked as a notable person. I was friended by heaps of important people constantly, and so when Youtube merge with G+ I was autocratically verified as a blue check-mark, VIP or whatever they do at youtube. Basically I had official status.
It was the strangest thing.

But then I lost it because there was this stupid fad of changing your name so it was represented with a weird font via unicode characters, as soon as I did that I lost my official status. :(

I've verified my YouTube channel years ago, but they never did give me the verification badge (checkmark). Know why? What they neglect to tell you until after you verify your channel is that you have to have an insane number of subscribers to be considered important/significant enough for the checkmark . . . so now I know, despite my channel being verified, I'll never get a checkmark, because it's taken me 15 years just to reach 400 subscribers.

It's been nearly two years since I've tried verifying my Instagram account, I followed all of their steps - including sending them a copy of my Photo ID to confirm I'm me, but I've never heard back from them either way . . . and I don't understand . . . even people who are even barely famous have blue checkmarks on their profiles.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
I've verified my YouTube channel years ago, but they never did give me the verification badge (checkmark).

Yeah, I had one! With very few subscribers hahaha!
Every time I posted a comment people would be asking me how I got it and complaining about my low subscribers and saying I didn't deserve it. Ah, I miss that XD


————

Oh my Gawd! I actually finished another page of Pinky TA! It will update on Saturday. I'm so happy.
Now should I start working on the next and final page of the chapter or do something else?
I really want to do some sewing.

I wanted to post this in the discussion about DD's birthday but I guess image tags are not allowed





Lol

Ha! I was spared that because I paid for Platinum. It was so cheap and the added bonuses were worth it XD

The Pond-cultural Revolution. You were either with the party, or you were omelette.

Ironscarf wrote:
The Pond-cultural Revolution. You were either with the party, or you were omelette.

Hahah, sort of! XD
And remember this was pre-Platinum Comics days. It was just a weird co-incidence that Volte chose to call his upgrade package “Platinum”.

It was worth getting it cos you got a little icon next to your comic name, no worries about deletion if you didn't update for a month, you got some form of notification for when you got faved I think, and also extra “cookies” that you could gift out to readers who had good comments- which they in turn could gamble for “duck-bills” so they could buy stuff in the store, like a Platinum subscription, Manga Studio, a copy of the Drunk Duck Anthology and a lot of other things people had donated.

Maybe that sort of thing would be worth re-introducing when we do some re-coding? A subscription that just gives you extra features that help with community engagement…

Dylan Squires was a smart cookie back in the day when he set up DD.