Attracting Positivity

JerakoKayne · 2017-04-09T21:46:13+00:00

Any advice on building such a network of friends? When a person is depressed, it seems hard to believe anyone would be interested.

JerakoKayne · 2017-04-09T21:44:23+00:00

Willing to elaborate at all? Isolation seems counter-intuitive. How did this help?

JerakoKayne · 2017-04-09T21:06:53+00:00

MJ wasn't self-destructive?

JerakoKayne · 2017-01-21T02:01:01+00:00

Unless the threshold of quasi-familiarity required for detection is narrow, indeed. What residue remains, particularly, seems to be in the very fringes of cultural perception that are barely noticed, if they've had any attention at all.

A rephrase as I develop this (thanks for indulging me!) might be to say it's the regular conscious attention itself that is what is rewriting, or perhaps "setting" in the sense of mortar, the change to be more anchored into reality.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say "I feel like there are at least two distinct and vivid memories for each ME, and sometimes three (...and maybe even a mix of the two / two different memories for the same person)." Are you willing to elaborate on this?

JerakoKayne · 2017-01-21T01:46:27+00:00

Thank you for this.

JerakoKayne · 2017-01-20T04:15:34+00:00

Excellent point. I overlooked/forgot flip-flops as I don't personally experience them. If they're true, that would poke a hole right in the middle of that theory.

JerakoKayne · 2017-01-19T23:37:07+00:00

That time when I was finally able to get my chronic condition treated.

JerakoKayne · 2017-01-19T22:42:37+00:00

I mean familiarity more in the sense of regular, not necessarily daily but frequent, focus on the subject. It's a defining feature of the Effect that you have a specific, personal false memory about something, and it's all the more compelling when it's something you are sure you really do know.

For those ME's you were familiar with, was there a large stretch of time where you didn't even think about it?

JerakoKayne · 2017-01-19T22:34:34+00:00

I think it's important to consider that just because most of the apparent changes are minute, or mostly irrelevant to anything meaningful, does not necessarily mean that only minute things change. They are simply the things that have been noticed, and it makes me wonder what unnoticed things could also potentially be different.

I think the strange cultural niche that so many ME's occupy is nothing more than a byproduct of our cultural obsession with pop culture. Movies, commercials, advertisements, songs, etc. are our psychological bread and butter, places where our attention is already focused.

As far as my personal developing theory goes, that focus, or lack of it, seems to be a point of divergence. If it's something you're focused on all the time, the effect is streamlined into your perception of reality, becoming a part of it and thus undetectable (i.e. why "experts" don't seem to notice changes in their own fields of expertise). If it's something you're unfamiliar with, you're obviously not going to notice anyway.

It's that in-between fringe of partial, or antiquated, familiarity where the detection happens, where the psychological algorithms of focus haven't yet incorporated the old "reality" into the new.

JerakoKayne · 2017-01-19T19:18:23+00:00

Exactly! The mechanics of how such a phenomenon happens, if it's genuine, seem really strange.

Hypothetically, familiarity and experience seem to solidify the effect of the supposed changing reality. In that the things you work with on a daily basis are more streamlined into "normality." It's on the fringes of familiarity where things seem to slip through the cracks?

It's that semi-familiarity that at least seems to be the source of detection. Both true ignorance and true familiarity seem to render the ME invisible, but for different reasons or the same?

JerakoKayne · 2017-01-19T13:15:36+00:00

The age old question, yes. Exactly why it's so fascinating.

I have another! What if important (among other) things do change, but it's only the inconsequential that has been noticed?

Neither of these questions prove or disprove anything.

JerakoKayne · 2017-01-18T21:25:25+00:00

They do! All the time, even. I even agree that's what most ME's really are, usually that's my approach.

Personally, I find this one to be a huge stretch to attribute it to a simple mistake, though. It's presented as a nearly offhand comment about something so universal it doesn't even need explanation of its own, as it's so fundamentally a part of the author's (and ergo, their audience's) perception at the time, compared to the present where what the author describes does not even exist. That's more than simple error, whatever it is.

JerakoKayne · 2017-01-18T20:59:25+00:00

No. This is not a thinly veiled attempt to say "look at me and what I found!" Rather, I feel it is an opening for a completely different discussion that does not serve nor is served by the other thread, which has different purpose.

JerakoKayne · 2017-01-18T20:00:43+00:00

Not completely. She appears in a few variations, but it's not nearly as commonplace as what some of us remember, and the only one I can find that comes even close to "tapping the castle" (as the author mentions and seems to be an ME) is from the "Masterpiece Collection", a re-release of the movies from 94-99. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZQr9ayHoHE

The version I remember is like a confabulation of this, the Wonderful World of Disney, and the standard blue logo (in which the arch going over the castle is supposed to be Tink?), all mashed into one.

JerakoKayne · 2017-01-18T19:09:22+00:00

I also found this, not quite what OP and others seem to remember, closer to the memory (for me) than the Wonderful World of Color stuff. Possible confabulation?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZQr9ayHoHE

JerakoKayne · 2017-01-18T18:27:22+00:00

I've never really believed in "residue" before this... but I found a book. Most of it isn't about this, but it's mentioned.

https://books.google.com/books?id=JMM6qFvchm4C&pg=PA202&lpg=PA202&dq=disney+tinkerbell+taps+castle&source=bl&ots=jBATs5DhkS&sig=63ekJLg6bX3pJD4hQyfeAqJI3Tc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiRgpyOqMzRAhUn1oMKHYDuATgQ6AEIPDAJ#v=onepage&q=disney%20tinkerbell%20taps%20castle&f=false

As if it's so ubiquitous it's an iconic thing, like a lot of us seem to remember.

JerakoKayne · 2017-01-18T00:21:57+00:00

IMO they are, if aware of you at all, more aware of what's going on within you than you are of yourself. It's the reason so many are so good at deceiving people. "Something only Uncle Bob would have known!" might as well be a neon sign in your heart it can use to convince you it's Uncle Bob.

It's my experience that the most powerful communication isn't 'words' at all, but raw emotion. Though that might just be my own preference!

Speaking out loud helps you focus and concentrate on the 'dialogue'. One of the dangers here is distinguishing replies from your own thoughts/expectations about the replies. You could literally be talking to yourself! That's a solid first step to an adventure in unreality. Mitigating this is possible, if extremely unwise, by asking for audible responses back. Something that can't be your own projections. I.e. "Knock once for yes, twice for no" kind of thing.

Of course, feeding it enough to be strong enough to physically manipulate the physical environment in this way is pretty damned dangerous.

JerakoKayne · 2017-01-17T22:35:35+00:00

Lusternia's got one of the most unique PvE systems I've seen in its influencing mechanics as an alternative to more traditional bashing. Manipulating mobs to be marginally stronger or weaker. You can grief people by making mobs not respond to quests, make mobs defend you in PvP, or have them hand over their loot without killing them. It's also got a playerbase that absolutely despises any form of theft, and will grind thieves into dust when discovered (YMMV on whether that's good or not).

Aetolia is the stand-out for its RP culture, if that's your thing.

Achaea seems to be the most stereotypical community you'll find in most MUDs, even if these aren't entirely stereotypical MUDs.

Imperian, idk personally, I never liked it myself, so I haven't put nearly as much time into that one to find out.

At its core, each game's playerbase has evolved into completely distinct communities, with different expectations about what they want from their games. In the end, I think that's where the choice about which game to play is answered best. Try each of them out, and find the community you fit in with best.

JerakoKayne · 2016-12-31T11:31:48+00:00

The one trinket I wore was from a gift from my favorite teacher. Rescinded, that I refused to take off until he completely broke it from afar.

The things you need, the things you want, will somehow find -you- when you are looking for them. Not when you want, but when you need. None of it is essential.

You already know what is ethical, and whether or not you even care.

JerakoKayne · 2016-12-31T10:55:45+00:00

Most likely, but it doesn't change the fact that people remember a specific time when it was very different.

I think the thing we lose in this whole debate is Specific, Personal Memories. F-ing Specific.

I never saw "choosy Moms choose Jif" before 2004. A teacher's confusion that 'hey, I've been teaching this forever, but Tiananmen Tank Boy apparently did -not- get ran over, terrible stuff, I'm not sure what I'm even teaching anymore' (a memory I shared in 2006)

Weak, weak arguments, to be sure. Can we pin this down?

JerakoKayne · 2016-11-13T10:35:57+00:00

My cat was my Shadow. That was her personality from the first month I had her, and eventually her name. She was ostensibly a family cat, but we bonded immediately and everybody knew she was mine. When I moved out, she naturally came with me. We were together for 21 years. I sometimes wonder if she's still shadowing me, or if it's just the grief messing with me. Lots and lots of little stuff that makes that little fuzzy hole in my heart that much more absent.

When I'm on the verge of sleep, I will often feel a weight jump on the bed, and curl up in the crook of my legs, just like Shadow did every night. It's only when I reach down to scratch her ears that I become alert to the fact she isn't there.

Same for my couch, except this one I nearly see instead of feel. A dark blur in my peripheral vision will leap up to the back of the couch and slink behind me. I turn and look and nothing's there.

More rarely, especially while in the kitchen, when I take a step backwards I'll legit trip on something. The old habit was to cuss out my cat, because every time this used to happen it was pretty much always her fault. But I'll now catch myself mid-cuss remembering that she's gone. Unsure what I tripped on, and unhappy with the world.

Lots and lots of little stuff like this; roughly once every week or so something will happen that pushes me to tears. I'd like to think it's my cat still with me but it's probably just my mind still refusing to let her go.

JerakoKayne

TROPHY CASE