I met up with my ex last week. When she broke up with me, it really broke my brain. But I was able to say to her “having a typically attractive* girlfriend opened doors for me with the beautiful middle class people I was always trying to fit in with, and when you left me those doors slammed shut.” It was nice to just voice it out after all these years and put all the weird recrimination behind.
I sorta wonder what the younger comrades feel. I grew up before the internet, in the 80s when we actually believed that everyone was going to be middle class. Back when I was a kid, every TV show and movie was about trying to get into the cool people group. Life from school to through uni through the early naughts felt like everyone was angling to get in the in-group.
I spent my 20s and 30s repeating the same cycle: meet a group of people, feel accepted, try really hard to be part of the group, then get burned from said normie group for various reasons. The older I got the harder I tried. Like guys, I GOTTA make this group work because I’m running out of time.
Now those same people are boring as fuck to me. I can barely maintain the emotional labour to listen to them. If you’re not marxist/anarchist, activist, vegan, and/or mask wearing, I can’t honestly force myself to talk to you. It does help that most of the normies outed themselves as sociopaths during COVID times. Most people who know me IRL probably think I’m cold. I make a real effort for the actual proles I meet tho.
I suspect you younger comrades probably figured it out much earlier than I did. But if you’re still searching, I hope this helps you out.
*Sorry I know that “typically attractive” can be problematic and arbitrary. In this story, I’m referring to the irrational standard enforced by the mainstream culture and media.
I regularly talk to some people who have stupid beliefs and interests in shit like Joe Rogan and terrible MRA and religious beliefs. But they’re also some of the few people who are authentic and who I can be authentic and have conversations about the strangest, esoteric shit from history, religion, and politics
They’re still not my friends though. Acquittances, sure. The only reason why I don’t make them feel bad for their beliefs is because I likely still need their assistance until we inevitably part ways.
Elsewhere, I’ve completely cut off people who I thought were friends who weren’t communist or any of those things in the list - some even conservative or military vets - but after they joined the military industrial complex and government security, they seized being any friend of mine. At most I’ll send a text here and there, maybe get some dinner once or twice a year. But they will never be my friend as long as they contribute to these evils, not even out of necessity, but because it pays a lot.
I don’t debate these people because my words don’t mean anything compared to their experiences with religion and the holy paycheck. Maybe the weirdo libertarians in the beginning of the post, but there isn’t a single soul out there who just quits their job because a buddy said their employer is genocidal. And I’m saying that as someone who planned on joining the MIC/security state in my teens and early college. Had I been a bit smarter to graduate early and form more connections to get an MIC/state security job, or dumb enough to join the military, I would be no different than these people, and I would likely see nothing wrong with this world as long as i make money.
Some things are simply too fundamental for me to just “agree to disagree.”