thaison

I'm confused.

Let's say a journalism job description is to deliver news. Then one's private life shouldn't have anything to do with the news they deliver.

But when one sells more than just the news, but also a “personality”, then customers are rightfully entitled to complain about what they buy.

In Korean entertainment business, they have very distinctive definitions between “artist” and “idol”. Artists build their business on their talent of songwriting or singing. When these artists face personal life scandals, people can separate the art from the artist and don't care much. But when idols do simple things like smoking or having a boyfriend, it's a huge backlash from their own fandom. Because idols are selling personalities besides their singing and dancing, and they have the responsibility to keep up the illusion. No one forced them to make personality part of their business. They are free to choose which business model works best for them.

Now let's face it. Without extreme paranoia and total denial of human nature and the self, most “newsworthy” stories fall apart after 2 sentences, not to mention how they struggle to form coherent stories in the first place.

“Comedian crack down on opposition during wartime!” – Who doesn't? “Small countries with predatory neighbors decide not to be free speech absolutists!” – What else is new?

When they build those “principles” around themselves, it's not supposed to be realistic, or sustainable. It's about selling an aspiring personality. Those stories simply don't sell themselves just by the level of how divergent they are from normal life. Those stories sell when the audiences also get the sense of “this is below my morality!”.

Your audiences, whether come from naivety, or as denial as you are, therefore expect to be delivered both, interesting stories, and a respect for their dignity by association with you.

Maybe the writing business is not so lucrative without being a moral influencer. But making a decision between profit and the self is the problem of every job and not just journalism.

Feeling my life drifting aimlessly without coffee in the morning.

I haven't found any decent tea to drink.

Theoretically I don’t need to hate on substance users. They think they change by subscribing to noble ideologies of helping the world, but they rarely do. There is a pipeline where one goes from being an addict to a social justice warrior (not the academic type). Warriors in many forms, crypto anti war activists, feminist psychoanalysist, anarchist “journalists”… Need to be specific because they still benefit from their splitting but instead of the direct destruction, they go to the indirect or quiet one that is more socially acceptable even noble.

Which brings up the second point. I haven’t seen any case of borderline with “successful treatment” with psychoanalysis. At best the successful actually comes from behaviorism where they are taught skills not to be too impulsive.

It’s not that they have a defective reasoning skill, now you tell them not to do so and they become normal. Maturity comes from interaction with our families, our peers, everyday, consistently, since as a child to as an adult. When you don’t practice it as a child, you also miss out decades of maturity when you reach adulthood. Which when psychoanalysis comes to the rescue with few hours per week, you still relatively a child to most of your peers in term of psychological maturity even if all the hours well spent.

Maybe there are still people are getting better, even with slow progress. I don’t know that many people. But I doubt they are the ones rushing to the destination of virtue and justice.

That Glenn Greenwald thing reminds me of a few years ago when I used to lurk around the dating app twice a year, all the hard-core socialists I saw (the serious ones and not the campus hobbyists) were coincidentally polyamorous.

Let's just say sex is an emotional affair to me. Which, is a surprise, when I learn in my adulthood that, to the majority it's more of a gym class or an improv class. But I guess it's still better than as an emergency medical situation with inadequate school equipment.

Goodnight M. See you later.

I wouldn’t trust myself with a weapon either. But for different reasons.

Just a warning that I’m very clumsy my parents had to keep knives away from me until I was 18. I could hardly cook anything decent for myself.

I had a fat guy tell me that caring about weight was superficial. As opposed to what? Personality? Where it takes months to find out if your integrity is fake? Whereas with look, I can see final product right here right now.

I also had people tell me that I quit job on a whim meant my family was rich. But I happened to know they hung out with their friends every weekend and even weekdays after work, didn't do any personal work, and bought expensive bubble milk tea every day in the afternoon. Which, makes them fat too.

Besides avocado shake, I also like fresh coconut water, and cut fruits in a small bucket mixed with yogurt. I haven’t found any place selling this nearby so I often eat it when I go shopping in the city center.