Petrarchive – Your betterment

Always a curious moment when extroverts post on da net. Would love for someone to include me in some drama sometime...

I tend to get overexcited about things, mostly books and games, to the extent that it becomes difficult to concentrate on the here-and-now. However, the excitement is fleeting, before I realize, its object shifted so I have hard time finishing what I had been excited for in the first place. As a result of that, the previously blissful and evergreen feeling of excitement has been tainted for me, it is hard for me to give in and be in it as I never know how long I get to be in it/how quickly its object changes to smth. else. It has been effecting on and off for many years now. I am slowly making progress by tempering my excitement and pushing through projects before I start a new one + I also intermittently shelter myself from the online sphere in order to reduce the number of things I can get excited about...

Abandoning myself, I do a lot of meditation and outdoor work to counter it but for my study I have to be on the computer. I get into the endless scroll, youtube videos, all manner of things I do not care for but hit some numb buzz. Theres a certain point I lose myself in it and then I becomes overwhelmed to getting back to my computer responsibilities that I continue getting deeper, become helpless. I also hate asking for help and don't help myself. I think that is the abandon, when I don't help myself. I live a fulfilling life, but this has been my bane for years and has taken so much of my life away. Like a lot of you here having unfettered internet access since 10 years old didn't help for internet addiction. In therapy for the first time in life and it's helping me to name it and get more extensive systems. Doing what needs doing as well, no short cutting myself, cheating myself in ways that don't exist like giving up the clothes halfway of hanging them by dumping on a table to dry instead of hanging them all up as an example

>>6254
That's the thing: most of the time, it's me including myself in someone else’s drama. Like a sibling getting into trouble (again), and suddenly, there are teams, commentary, and offense, and defense, etc.
In the end, this tendency attracts people who enjoy an audience and gladly put on a show. It's a vicious circle.
So now I'm learning how not to pick up any flags lying around, and that not anyone is part of "my team," and that I don't need to be on anyone's team.
(I'm grateful I never fell into celebrity drama. I suspect this is the same thing: filling the void with heightened emotions wherever they come from.)
>>6255
Ah! I never solved that one. Now that I am older (let's say, the second half of my life), I see it a good thing, because most of these "flashes in the pan" come back regularly, and it actually builds up. I'm now finishing stuff I started +20 years ago, and I see now that it is a blessing to have so much curiosity: I know what I could to do during the next few decades.
>>6256
I finally managed to cut reddit and 4chan a year ago, after many tries. It's worth the effort to keep trying.

There are these sensations and perceptions and stuff sometimes but it turns out that clump is not me and my mind was primordially pure the whole time.

>>6258
Manichaeism reborn

>>6258
This

I scroll too much. I don't do enough productive things for my mind and spirit. I drink, I smoke, I dabble in most things pleasurable. I am emotionally immature. It feels like my emotional and my intellectual minds are constantly in conflict. I don't do much to fix these things.

I'm planning on killing myself.

>>6313
Camus didn't convince you not to?

>>6270
you seem to take as axiomatic that asceticism would be more mature. why?

>>6319
I don't know what >>6270 meant, but the answer to your question seems obvious to me (and now I am curious why it isn't to you): the mind needs training, and training takes time. You can recognize a good idea faster than you can apply it because you have to deal with your emotional turmoil, which takes years to understand. Asceticism is an effective way to train yourself in that matter, in order to align your will with your actions (which can be one definition of maturity).

>>6319
I don't think I need asceticism, I just need a break.

Too impressionable. I'll assume the worst of someone I have a negative impression of, vice versa with extreme gullibility.

>>6446
I'm mostly on the "very gullible" side of the axis (always assuming the best of everyone, to a fault), and I found it is actually that bad of a trait. I don't notice when people are assholes (only months/years later), and sometimes, assholes realize they can behave better, since I don't blame them, and they change.

I wish to create more than I consume.

>>6584

A worthy pursuit.
What do you like to create?
What do you like to consume?

>>6600
I like to create writings, but I want to expand into other artistic endeavors. Drawing interests me, as I've been interested in it before, just never committed to really learning it. Sometimes, I wish to branch out into something like woodworking, something very different and tangible, but I know almost nothing about it.

I consume drugs of all kinds and media of many forms. This thought (of creating more than consuming), however, struck me when I realized I did so much sitting and watching this weekend. I felt like a pig in front of a trough. I'd like to snap out of it.

I get shameful when I realize I spend more time talking or dreaming about doing something than actually doing it. It helps get into action. It is also a good way to distinguish actual desires from vanity wishes.
I am happy I've learned that lesson.

>>6621
How do you turn that shame into action?

>>6642
I try to avoid shame, generally. If I don't (if I maintain a situation that makes me shameful), then I probably enjoy that shame, and I try to find out why, because it's probably for the wrong reasons. Sometimes it's anger turned inwards, sometimes it's just bad decisions and somehow enjoying feeling bad.
Otherwise, I just go back to what I want to do, as what makes me shameful is often what takes me away from my goal.

Wife is pregnant and keep asking me "do you think it's going to be a boy or a girl?" Bitch how am I supposed to know it's a 50/50 atp

>>6653
>it's a 50/50 atp
Apparently not: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adu7402

>>6607
Cool. I've been having similar thoughts recently. I spent some time trying to take drawing seriously as a hobby, and felt I was making good progress, but I'm taking a break for now. Funny you mention woodworking, that's exactly the one I was thinking about picking up. Hard not to get spread too thin, find the balance between experimentation/freedom of play and building competence/mastery etc. I tend towards over-consumption of non-fictional 'edutainment' media, especially YouTube. It's a very seductive blend of easy to digest with enough information density to keep your attention, but not as in-depth as a book and less practical than learning something hands on.

Good luck.

Tomorrow I turn twenty-four.

Any advice, anons? New Year's resolutions never really work for me, but maybe I can do a birthday turnaround.

Where do I go to talk to the over 30s, no wonder this place is so dull if it's filled with zoomers

>>6692
Exactly how I felt about the sub the past few years. I think we have to form actual social networks. Like through blogging or something, but at this point it's probably significantly easier to do in real life. Very few millennials with a brain are going to want to tolerate the shit that internet communities have become.

>>6692
>>6700
Try the real world

Actually though >>6692, what is the substance of your complaint? What is the dullness you see, and what would you rather have more of? Are you putting in what you want out? Or do you just like kvetching for the fun of it?

And >>6700 the realization that real life is more interesting than the online is not particularly novel.

>>6703
First, who gives a shit about novelty? Consider how ancient "there is nothing new under the sun" is kiddo. Also, a transition has been made. Once upon a time the Internet was indeed way more awesome than meatspace. It was a (new) world of wonders, connection, and possibility, and the ease to reach them was actually greater in the tiny fraction accessible to AOL keywords than it is to today's dozen big sites/apps controlling 99% of algorithmic content. The observation was not that real life is more interesting, but rather that it is still as boring as ever and the Internet has degraded below it.

Words aren't going to tell you what you're missing. You had to be there.

I'M KINDA FAT

>>6704
>It was a (new) world of wonders, connection, and possibility, and the ease to reach them was actually greater in the tiny fraction accessible to AOL keywords than it is to today's dozen big sites/apps controlling 99% of algorithmic content.
I agree with you, but a teenager currently waiting to be old enough to allowed on the Internet will still approach and see it as we used to in the 90s. What I mean by that is: it depends on who is looking at it and how it is looked at, because it's still possible to form communities, to find mindblowing stuff and to reinvent the world. It is just different.

>>6703
>Actually though >>6692, what is the substance of your complaint?

That they have nothing to contribute; see the proliferation of threads with one sentence that ask for opinions on what to think about this or that. As the other commentator noted, this is step-by-step what happened to r/redscarepod, so it was even more obvious to see this recent turn on /pt/.

>what would you rather have more of?

People who have something substantial to say, whether that comes from life experience (thus the age delimitation) or through brainpower and curiosity (a 25-year old is more than capable of contributing to an interesting conversation, in theory, but this current batch is a no-go).

>Are you putting in what you want out?

Yes, 8 out of the 100 posts on the catalog page are mine, and I have at least one if not multiple comments (many of them longform) in nearly each thread. I used to post much more but took my foot off the gas a month or so back because I felt I was choking everyone else out with my chatter.

>Or do you just like kvetching for the fun of it?

No, I have better things to do with my time than to kvetch for its own sake. I kvetch here because this place did have a spark of hope in the past but was completely shot down when it came upwind of the Kiwifarms and 4chan crowd, who introduced not only their idiotic racial slurs, obsession with trans issues, argument-nulling gotchas, but drove other higher-minded users away as soon as they saw where this place was heading. Those that remain like me and >>6700 are likely turbo-internetautists who still want to poast like the good ol days and therefore cling onto /pt/ to fill that need.

>And >>6700 the realization that real life is more interesting than the online is not particularly novel.

I don't mindlessly worship "the old internet" like many millennials do, as I find the current internet much broader and deeper for the taking. No pseudo-saccharine memories of the family computer and 90s dialup internet can best having terabytes of music and books, having the ability to stream it anywhere on earth, and so on. So, midwit non-techies are the ultimate losers here as they are neither social media natives like under 30s, nor are they technologically capable enough to act as true aristocrats of the digital age - masters of their technology, and not slaves to it.

>>6709
What do you think is the best way we can encourage proper discussion on this forum?
I would like it very much if it went back to the way RedScarePod was, before that went downhill. Even now, you occasionally get some good discussions on RSP though.

>>6710
I think a small but unfortunately necessary component of a truly excellent forum is lightning in a bottle. It never lasts forever though, which a lot of people don't understand, and they build a hagiography around the forum itself.

An underrated aspect of forum moderation is having people constantly reinforce the norms and direction of the forum itself. I believe that petrarchan might be a little directionless in concept. The admin wants this place to be a literary-themed board, but that doesn't seem to be coming through to newcomers. Compare that with, say, 4chan, where the topic of the boards are unmistakable as they are displayed at the top of the screen each refresh. At the same time, petrarchan may very well develop a unique niche board culture over time, but again, that takes dedicated guidance from the admin, mods, and/or power users. At the moment, there is very much the feeling of "errata junk drawer" which is not conductive to the sort of quality the admin is probably looking for.

r/redscarepod happened because of being at the right place at the right time, at the end of the day. But it lasted like it did because the users always had a sense of trying to push themselves to be better, to always hold themselves and others to a higher standard, even if that wasn't always met. Thus came the don't-ask-don't-tell rule towards, for example, video games; it didn't need to be bludgeoned over the head of users in a hard-coded rule way like it is now, because it was understood at a more discreet and personal level, a sign of higher-intelligence users.

>>6711
>I find the current internet much broader and deeper for the taking. No pseudo-saccharine memories of the family computer and 90s dialup internet can best having terabytes of music and books, having the ability to stream it anywhere on earth, and so on.
I don't. Quantity has a quality of its own and that goes for small quantities too. The Library of Babel (literally: https://libraryofbabel.info/) is no use to me; Wikipedia is fantastic. If you think I just need more technical skills to sift through the shit, maybe that will help, but it won't outpace the millions of technically employed people actively enshittifying things. Two decades ago my strong google-fu was a technical skill, a decade after that their engineers had degraded it so much by catering to the average person that I might as well have never bothered, and I stopped using it entirely in the late twenty-teens. The absolute worst though is the context collapse. This site has a better chance of holding a culture than something trying to engage every subject, but ultimately it's got the same the whole web now has with its users' attentions fractured in a million pieces: it is an internet bus stop, not an internet community.

>The admin wants this place to be a literary-themed board, but that doesn't seem to be coming through to newcomers.
It is obviously literary themed by the name of the site here, but self-defeating in that you need to be literary to understand the reference.

>I think a small but unfortunately necessary component of a truly excellent forum is lightning in a bottle. It never lasts forever though, which a lot of people don't understand, and they build a hagiography around the forum itself.
https://xkcd.com/1305/

I don't actually read. I buy books because they seem nice at the bookshop but then when I get home to read them I realise that they're actually pretty boring. That and when I do read I just can't focus on the book even if I eliminate every distraction. Some books are interesting but too slowly paced to be interesting enough to read fully. It's mostly non-fiction that has that problem.

>>6713
>. Two decades ago my strong google-fu was a technical skill, a decade after that their engineers had degraded it so much by catering to the average person that I might as well have never bothered

No, I meant LITERALLY OWNING this information, not searching it online. You missed my point entirely and are thus the exact person I'm talking about.

>>6716
>having the ability to stream
Streaming isn't owning. Are you talking about pirating at scale to have a large media library? Say what you mean.

>>6719
Oh, how you spat out that epithet, "pirating", as if I am seeding the latest capeshit. Answer me, dear, how many things have you grabbed from Anna's Archive this year alone? Project Gutenberg?

Yes, my machine is running an Icecast server within my network; it is in fact a literal TCP stream since you're so hung up on that word. The books and papers aren't streamed, I use syncing directories for those.

While I was liberal with my description of normies as "midwits" in the previous reply, I will be more candid now and say this was rather easy to set up and light on the purse as well - if even this retarded NEET could do it, so can you!

>>6720
>if even this retarded NEET could do it, so can you!
But why would I? I know the benefits you speak of. The internet has allowed for the catalog of old media not quite possible with physical limitations. It also allows for the easy creation and archiving thereafter of media. This is to speak nothing of the communication side of things, as most of my favorite pieces of literature I was introduced to solely through the internet. So what, though? Who is to say I would not have been just as well without the digital archives and the guidance of internet forums? I probably would have found words to be in love with just fine through all my local bookstores. What do terabytes of books and music matter? Why does the higher fidelity and speed of access seem necessary? What about this catalog and your set up works for your betterment?

>>6727
My...betterment..? Ah right, the thread topic. My bad for going on a tangent unrelated to the OP.

Your reply smears of cope though, and is so reductive I'm not even going to bother picking it apart.

>>6720
Lol I wasn't using it pejoratively. I identify as a pirate politically and cut my teeth on Gnucleus.