SOURCE - https://brightwanderer.tumblr.com/post/681806049845608448
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I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.
Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.
The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.
| just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.
Isn’t this more about things falling apart when the person wanted to continue doing it? If I want to run a shop but it doesn’t work financially, then my plan has failed.
Yes, that. And also the point of marriage is to be forever. Like that’s the idea of it to begin with.
I’m not sure what you’re asking here…
Yeah, the OOP is a serious cope. They are basically saying “nothing is ever a failure in the world of unicorn sprinkles, weeeeee!” They are invalidating people’s negative emotions about failure by trying to reframe it - but this is the behavior of narcissists who never want to admit they have failed at anything.
It’s okay to fail. It sucks. It hurts. It happens. That’s life. Accept it, learn from it, and move on.
It’s a failure if it’s your experience and you think you failed. You don’t get to say others failed if they feel otherwise about their own experience.
You have no idea what narcissism means even if you’re using it in the colloquial form with is almost meaningless at this point. A narcissist wouldn’t put the question up for debate.
You pretending you get to decide how others should feel about anything is fucking ridiculous.
If someone says “I really wanted to keep my bakery open but the books didn’t balance” it’s a failed business. If someone says “I had a goal to get a book published but I could never get it accepted” they’re a failed writer.
Yes, they could have just gotten bored or stressed or retired or life happened, but that’s not the same thing. When someone set out to do something with their best effort but couldn’t, they failed.
Failing to do something isn’t shameful and it doesn’t devalue you. It doesn’t even mean you’ll never be able to do it (go start a new business, write another book, have a happy second marriage). You’re only a failure if you let yourself be one, nobody can tell you to feel anything.
OOPs post isn’t healthy because it validates the fear of failure with mental gymnastics. Sometimes you fail and you just gotta work through it, you can’t put your all into something and shrug it off at the same time.
Yeah, I think you’re right here: it’s all about intent. If someone starts a business, it does well, but then they end it because they want to do something else, is not a failure. If they wanted the business to keep going, but people weren’t buying enough of their product to keep the doors open, that’s a failure.
You could do the same with any of the examples. It’s not a failure if the people are happy to stop or it lasted as long as could reasonably be expected, but if it ends before the people wanted it to, that’s a failure. The rocket that lifts its payload to orbit, then shuts off and falls back to earth is a success. But no one says “Well, the rocket ran great halfway to the planned orbit, so even though it and the payload fell back to earth, it was successful.”
If they end up starting again the same business, then I guess it could be seen that way. But if they just decide to move on without feeling like it was wasted time and try new things, “how long it lasted” shouldn’t be the only metric of whether it was a success
I feel like with the business example, you could sell it and move on. No matter what happens to the business afterwards, you are fine.
That said I’d agree it depends on the circumstances. Want to keep going but can’t because <reason> = failed. Could keep going but decide not to, not failed.
Yeah, most of his examples really don’t work. As long as you make more money than you put in, any business is successful, and if you terminate it without going bankrupt or accruing debt, it’s not failed, it’s just closed. Same for a writer, you write a couple of books, they sell enough to cover the costs, then stop because you don’t care anymore, nobody’s gonna call you failed.
Like Fat Mike, I too define success as “not working.”
Basically yeah, scrolling culture is all about what you’ve done today.
Many people live a successful life until they fail and die.
Sounds like it was written by someone with shitty parents.
In what way?
Reminds me of last week when everyone was talking about how Bluesky is worthless because it’s just going to go the way of Twitter. And I’m like, Twitter was a good thing for like 15 years.
If Bluesky follows that same pattern, great.
And I’m like, Twitter was a good thing for like 15 years.
See, I was going to say that Twitter was a bad thing for 15 years.
But then it was just stupid, it wasn’t a Nazi bar like today.
Peter Thiel, the Adelsons, the Mercers, and the rest of the Trump crowd were sponsoring reactionary fascist content on the site long before Elon bought it.
Twitter was equal opportunity - willing to take money from all the highest bidders to promote any kind of commercialized content - prior to the buyout. But plenty of that content was fascist af.
I feel an adjacent thing about Lemmy — The conversations I most value are ones I used to have on Reddit, but dwindled over the years, as Reddit discourse degraded. Something that’s notable is that, on Reddit, the last bastions of meaningful discussion were the little niche subs, indicating that quality of discussion may be inversely correlated with the size of a community.
The federated nature of Lemmy makes it far more resistant to Reddit’s fate, but I still feel a sense of inevitability that there is a timer on how long this can last. (Speaking as an aging punk), it reminds me of what happened to Punk: it went mainstream, and thus less punk. Some people have the instinct of gatekeeping a thing to preserve it, but everything needs fresh blood, and some of the people who discover punk via the mainstream are have a heart as punk as anyone I’ve met — we can’t exclude the masses of “normies” without excluding these people too. In the end, I see that punk is probably dead, but the “true punk spirit” is alive and well, having moved into spaces that were less visible to the mainstream. Similarly, I expect that I’ll always be able to find online clusters of cool nerds to have meaningful conversations with, because even if Lemmy dies a slow death, they will find (or build) a new space.
Ultimately, the inevitable temporariness of Lemmy (and other platforms like Bluesky) is quite a beautiful thing for me, because it forces me to be more mindful of the moment I’m in, and how, despite the world being shit in many ways, here is something that I am really glad I get to be a part of
Amazing, thank you for your comment
That’s beautiful.
Leave it to the Internet to be the best (and worst) of all.
I’m at best a poser punk but the diy ethos always rung true. That said one of my favourite places online is a local old school punk forum. It’s niche enough that with its own problems there’s still a community.
In my experience that’s kind of what an online community needs to be. Not exclusive, but niche enough. I too used to be on Reddit, got there when the great Digg migration happened. Those days it was small enough to have have a community on some subreddits. Gradually it got the point that when I’d read the article or had a reasonable thought about the question there were 11000 replies and anything worthwhile was already said.
These days Lemmy feels kinda similar to the old Reddit. Maybe things stay the same or maybe they change and there’ll be another place I log on.
All that said, what OP posted is profound. What you posted is too.
I’m at best a poser punk but the diy ethos always rung true. That said one of my favourite places online is a local old school punk forum. It’s niche enough that with its own problems there’s still a community.
Eh. I don’t think it’s actually as easy to be a “poser” as old purity obsession tropes (I admittedly was a bit skewed that way when younger). What is it isn’t “punk” is purely subjective. Basically, requiring willful appropriation of subcultural signs and aesthetics for profit without any desire to engage or contemplate the community or philosophies (Good Charlotte, looking at you). To me, it’s about love and anarchism (the no gods, no kings, no masters mindset of equality) not having a mohawk, a pair of Docs, and chucking molotovs at riot cops (to be fair, it takes all kinds).
In the end, I see that punk is probably dead, but the “true punk spirit” is alive and well, having moved into spaces that were less visible to the mainstream.
Punk in the form that existed in the early 80s hardcore scene died around 84 (before I was even born). It came back in other, different forms, in different places over the decades. I’d argue that punk really isn’t the first incarnation of the “true punk spirit”, just the one that we associate with the anarchic and rebellious, possibly in part due to the concerted effort to demonize it in mainstream media in the 80s and 90s (couldn’t have any of that peace and love shit being seen positively, especially with greater acceptance of direct action).
The federated nature of Lemmy makes it far more resistant to Reddit’s fate, but I still feel a sense of inevitability that there is a timer on how long this can last
Hell, the drama right now about the devs running out of funds and people refusing to donate because of their association with .ml might accelerate lemmy’s demise before it can even get big.
One of the reasons reactionary content tends to endure and progressive content fails (in Western countries, anyway) stems from the far-right having deeper pockets and a far more pliant creative base.
You don’t see Tucker Carlson or Candice Owens ever really going away, because they’ve got these sugar daddies that always pony up. The fucking Adelsons will keep shoveling naked antisemites money, just so long as they toe the economic orthodoxy.
Meanwhile, Lemmy admins associating with Lemmy developers is unforgivable, because the OG developers won’t let you say “I hope someone murders Xi Jinping with a rusty spoon” on their bespoke instance without getting banned.
I feel like the concern with Bluesky is that Bluesky could enshitify much faster than Twitter, in part because market conditions push for a faster path to profitablity.
Yeah, I won’t claim Twitter was great, but it was widely considered too good (to its users) to be profitable. That was possible during that early investor optimism when the internet was still new, but I also don’t see that happening now anymore.
A social media platform needs to decouple from the typical company structure and democratize its improvement, otherwise investors will necessarily make it as bad as they can without immediately losing all users.
Twitter was never a good thing, AND I was never a Twitter user so i can actually say that.
like it actually did permanent damage to our culture
I don’t like the pattern of having to pay a search cost, then finally getting everything set up, and then they gradually enshittify until the process repeats. I’d rather just have stable infrastructure, like email.
Some things I think we want to aim at for our entire lives, and those things are good in and of themselves even if we don’t achieve them.
I think getting good nutrition, staying in a healthy state/sustaining or increasing our health span so we aren’t sick, exercising so we can still get out of bed every day, seeking novelty and variety in the things we do, exploring new places, learning about the world around us and ourselves, sharing all of these things meaningfully with others on a similar journey, and even defending things that mean a lot to us are some examples of this.
The idea that these experiences must last eternally was something Nietzsche talked about this in his works. He rejected Plato’s notion of the Forms as well as many religions’ concepts of a life after death - this “other world”. To Nietzsche, the good life in this world is defined by how far life can stray from its best moments, and that working through hardships and recognizing that they aren’t permanent gives us the power of freedom.
Good times must be accompanied by bad or even mediocre times. Good times lasting forever are no different than bad or mediocre times lasting forever. So yeah, writing that book or making that friendship/relationship can be a good thing. And if those things aren’t perfect, we have more reason than enough to make them better. Whether that’s work shopping the book until it gets better or starting over with fresh new ideas. Whether that’s meeting new people and developing those friendships over time, or leaving them for new friendships when other people don’t want to reciprocate. I like to think of so many people wishing for good times to last forever are lazy and just don’t want to put in the effort to change, which in my view is the whole point.
Such a good way to put it. And I have focused on something similar for myself. Literally everything is temporary.
I tend to be a planner, a saver, the person who never uses consumable items in games, and the person who will avoid using an item they like so that it will last longer.
It’s helped me allow myself to enjoy today more, and spend more of my time doing things I want to be doing.
Forever is a very long time
Idk, being sad about and grappling with the impermanent nature of things is kinda a fundamental part of being human.
Maybe it’s not fundamental and it’s just a phase that doesn’t last forever :P
Pity
Reminds me of the line in Willy Wonka “The suspense is terrible! I hope it’ll last.”
When I was young I used to like sculpting in modeling clay. After I had made whatever it was and shown it to my friends, I’d smush it up and make something else. I had a constant stream of people trying to get me to change my medium so that stuff could be made permanent, but I didn’t like the feel and I was fine with the pieces being temporary.
There are a lot of things like that. People make ice sculptures or do performance art. People enjoy an experience, sometimes as simple as a sunset. Yes, some of those people will try to capture the moment, say with a photograph, but lots of people are okay with the ephemeral.
This is exactly why I love baking.
It’s temporary, it’s an experience, it leaves space for me to try new things without “waste” or clutter, and it feeds the people I love.
More permanent media leaves me stressed about perfectionism, and I don’t enjoy the process as much.
Reusing modeling clay is a lovely idea.
Saying “I love you” with food is a wonderful thing. My mom did that and I for sure learned that from her. I think the transient aspect of it is great too.
It’s funny, one of the people who really wanted me to find a way to make my sculptures permanent was my high school art teacher, who I stayed friends with for a long time after graduating. Who left that school the year I graduated and went on to be a pretty well known imagineer at Disney. Not looking after he started there, he hit me up and said I have to buy some sculpy, which they used at Disney a lot. Turns out it feels just like modeling clay but you can bake it in the oven and it ends up like a hard plastic. So ironically, I still have a few pieces I made from back in the day.
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This.
I would rather have things to end and turn into good memories, rather than having it turn to shit.
Don’t be afraid to enter the water knowing that you are not going to swim forever.
I think the fear isn’t simply exiting the pool, its drowning.
The “coffee shop” analogy breaks down when you look at the before - assuming debt, developing skills, building business relationships - and after - owing more than you earn, filling for bankruptcy, hemorrhaging staff, going back to being a wage earner rather than an owner-operator.
Same with marriage. You get older and slower and tireder, you have this shared history that doesn’t exist between anyone else, you have shared assets that can’t easily be divided up, you have a shared family.
These aren’t just whims, they’re economic events and deeply psychological ones, too. Bad ones. They are describing a material decline in your quality of life.
Yeah, the fixation on nostalgia and fandoms is bad for us as a society. No, you shouldn’t feel leashed to your hobbies… or your job or your relationships. But there’s also feelings of stability and reliability and security that comes with an enduring institution in your life. Knowing you can substitute experience for raw energy and you don’t have to relearn a trade or another person or rules to a new game from scratch has value. It pays dividends.
You don’t want to get into the water and find out you need to relearn how to swim. Especially when you’ve so far from shore.
Very good perspective and this is actually similar to some of the ideas of Buddhism. Everything in this life is temporary, enjoy it while it lasts.
We also don’t need to see failure as a wholly bad thing. If your hypothetical business closes down because you couldn’t afford to keep it open, it DID fail, but if it ended up making your mental health better to not have all that stress, then it lead to a good thing.
Maybe I’m too realist and literal.
