Lately I've been reflecting on this account despite being barely active on it and also being preoccupied with my own life. Or maybe because of those things. Also I was prompted to write this because last month, someone actually recognized me in the forums after what, five or six years? They still thought I had the same worldview that I did back then. I've already mentioned that I don't anymore, but I might as well do it formally.

Some of this is personal but I don't care right now, I had to get it out somewhere, even if it's just a lot of disorganized rambling. And this decade-old account has already seen me at my cringiest anyway, so fuck it.

So... I used to post a lot of edgy conservative (not an oxymoron when your family was a diehard red enclave in a diehard blue area) content on here and, in hindsight, the reasons for that were exactly what you'd think; the original reason why I had that worldview in the first place was because most of my family does. They were also the suffocating hardcore born-again "anything secular is banned" type of Christians. This site was my first real exposure with any other worldview, and as a teenager it was the first time anyone ever challenged mine directly.

I remember seeing a cartoon once about the evolution-creationism debate where an evolutionist says something like "here's the evidence, what conclusion can we draw from it?" and the creationist says "here's the conclusion, what evidence can we find to support it?" I admit this now, that's exactly what my thought process was like at the time, and I didn't understand what was wrong with it until 2015 or so.

There's a lot more context in terms of what my upbringing was like, when I look back today at the way I was raised and some of the things that were said and done to me, a lot of it was actually very screwed up and it affected my personality and worldview more than I thought it did, even though it was mixed with superficially good things. I recognize that now. But I won't even try to justify some of the things I said or did here when I was a kid. They were really shitty and hurtful and I don't know why I ever thought it was okay to take my anger out in that way. I really regret what I did with this account and I wish I had found a more mature way to deal with things. I know it sounds like I'm making excuses for myself, but if that was the case, I wouldn't be typing this. Excuses are when people think they somehow deserve a free pass for their own poor conduct instead of just owning it. The fact is, I failed to handle my problems in an appropriate way, and that's on me.

I want nothing to do with conservatism or Christianity and I regret ever associating with either. Basing an identity around what you fear and living under a paranoid "me versus anyone who isn't like me" outlook doesn't build character or enrich your existence in any long-term way, and I wish that I'd known that sooner. I gained absolutely nothing from the worldview I was raised in, and I hate that I was ever born into such an oppressive, lonely, neurotic, inbred echo chamber of a culture. To be honest, I think some deep part of me always hated religion even when I was religious, I just couldn't admit it to myself. I never felt "free in Christ" or felt proud to be religious. It felt like a long drudging chore list that othered me from the rest of humanity. And it felt like having a gun to my head every second of every day until the nagging cultural isolation, dysfunctional home life, and my overall mental state got bad enough that Hell didn't even fucking faze me anymore. I felt like I was being screwed out of a normal life for no reason. For as long as I was a Christian, I wished I had never been told about it in the first place and I still struggle with the feeling that I was born in the wrong place at the wrong time to the wrong people.

Another thing, I grew up believing that the Christian worldview was unquestionably correct and that a lot of things were "wrong", but I didn't understand why they were wrong even after somebody gave me some unsatisfactory non-answer like "because God doesn't like it", so I thought there was something wrong with me. I bought it, but at the same time I didn't. I don't know if that makes any sense.

I've made progress in fixing a lot of the information gaps and learning things that I should've learned as a teenager, even though it doesn't really feel the same when you're already a full-grown adult. Even if it was too late to completely "redeem" from my background, I'd still rather amount to nothing in the common secular real world than be anything in the sterile plastic Christian conservative world.

So it goes without saying that I'm not like that anymore. Honestly, I'd take the "liberal utopia" any day over what currently exists. I think I'd be happier in some progressive anarchist community. I don't always understand or agree with every leftist sjw hot take, and some of their vitriol against privileged groups is not conducive to anything except maybe war (maybe they're going for the chaotic good solution), but I can respect the validity of whatever feelings and grief are behind them. Same with the type of conservatives who ultimately just want to be left alone.

And I'm sick of living in a competitive laissez-faire culture where I constantly have to fight for everything and everyone treats life like a competitive sandbox game, and any "handouts" or regulations would spoil that game for them. It's fucked up, it's antiquated, it's corny, it's stupid, it's contrived, and I would like to see it replaced with something better than just pandering to materialistic cutthroat fuckheads at the expense of everyone else. At this point in human history, if you want to go have a dog-eat-dog experience and crush the competition and feel like a winner, do it in a video game or something. Leave real people's lives alone.

The priorities of these people are fucking mind-boggling. They complain and riot over a simple mask instead of the fact that so many people are financially ruined or die because they can't afford healthcare. As paranoid as they are about the government fucking them over, they seem totally fine when corporations do it, or when it's done to anyone except them. Sometimes I wish this culture would collapse under it's own selfishness disguised as "rugged individualism" and put itself out of its own misery.

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Like I said at the start, someone actually recognized me after several years, which I didn't previously expect anyone to. I've already wanted to get this out of me for a while so that I can feel like I've moved past it (I feel like this website account has immortalized that part of my past) and I guess that one little thing finally sparked it. And I have the worst social intuition in the entire freakin' cosmos. So I don't know how this is going to come off to anyone who bothered to read it. Also fuck proper sentence structure and pacing, I'm not trying to be fancy.

If this gets ignored, it doesn't matter since this journal was mostly for catharsis anyway. Though I don't know how I'll actually feel after I post this.

On the off chance that people I've argued or feuded with in the past will see this and get smug about "making excuses for myself", or "damage control", or try to shove old shit in my face as if there's any reason for that. In either case... well... whatever. It's not like I'm trying to salvage anything. This isn't even an apology so much as it's just me letting go of shit. It did start off as one but some kinds of people aren't worth trying to apologize to, since you're always going to be "the villain" no matter what.

Maybe people who liked my old shit will be disappointed, and I don't really know what else to tell them except I would encourage them to never stop reflecting on their own thought process, no matter how confident and validated they feel in it. Never slump into the mindset that you're above having to consider the perspectives of other people you don't always relate to. You might be surprised.

So uh... yeah.

Most of my stuff is going in storage, a few things will stay up. I might pop in every now and then just to shoot the shit, but for the most part this account has seen it's heyday and I don't identify with it anymore... like at all. I really do love creating things despite the hiatus I've taken from sharing it, and I'm slowly trying to get back in the habit of doing that again. But it would be under some different handle.

I'm going to edit and add to this sporadically because fuck it.

P.S., fuck Eclipse. This site is now unusable to me anyway, nothing makes any fucking sense whatsoever. I can't figure out how anything works now and basically everyone else hates it too, but no they had to change everything just for the sake of change. Who the fuck's idea was this? God fucking damn

By the way... if you're a liberal and you've always wondered what goes through conservatives' heads in response to social change, this is fairly comparable. Social change is like annoying software updates that pop up for no apparent reason and don't serve any obvious purpose. And you keep getting pissed and clicking "Ignore". But eventually your device will stop being compatible with anything.