on a road trip where every passenger in the car is on twitter at the same time

bruh i want alcohol

this is going to be somewhat of a long rant, but there are things i’ve really started noticing in sf people might dislike me for saying this everyone here is playing 4d social chess while pretending theyre just hanging out. its literally a big drag queen race where everyones virtue signaling for the privilege of human connection. u have to signal youre working on something important but also act like youre too busy to care if people show up. its exhausting the ghosting thing is real but its not acc being busy its about maintaining infinite optionality people want to believe everythings happening and they have all these options so they commit to nothing. you get like 4-5 real connections out of 50 interactions and even those feel tenuous. i keep asking people to meet up and get ghosted by people ive known for over a year idk if theyre busy or if theyve just been pretending to like me for so long that its easier to ghost than admit it the advice people give is literally sociopathic "create exclusivity barriers" "be specific about events so people feel fomo" "create social hierarchy as cost of entry" like man. people are running some twisted social experiment on each other i dont know how to lie to people. when i say im working on something cool it feels cringe because im not supposed to care about showing off but thats literally the only currency here. i usually don’t talk about my work or research, i do it for fun, i do it for myself, not for social benefits. you package yourself as a list of achievements and interesting attributes just to get someone to grab coffee the fake authenticity thing is what kills me. a lot of people try to perform being real while being deeply fake and it creates this uncanny valley of human interaction where nothing feels solid. i fell in love with this city but its deeply hurting me because i dont know if these connections are real or if im just another node in someones carefully optimized social graph and yeah sure i could play the game create my little exclusive events with artificial scarcity post about my RL environment builds or research or other shit and signal high agency but fuck that. i just want to exist with people without everything being a performance . i just want friends the paranoia is setting in hard to be honest are people using me? do they actually like me or am i just convenient? why does everyone feel so fake when theyre trying so hard to seem real maybe thats the whole thing sf has optimized authenticity into another kpi to track and now ppl are all stuck in this recursive loop of performing realness while knowing everyones performing which makes everything feel hollow i love this city and hate it. the energy is real but the connections arent. everyone’s building the future but nobody knows how to just be present idk maybe ppl were right that you have to accept the language of the place but that feels like giving up the last bit of realness i have left

thanks to everyone for your support, we've been able to acquire some grocery money thanks to your donations friends have been telling me i should drop the facade more often and be more honest on this account, so... if i have to be honest i.. haven't been doing well. i keep telling myself things can't get worse but they seem to keep getting worse. i've been struggling with self harm and i've been really close to suicide, honestly the closest i've ever been in my life. it feels like my life is ruined and that nothing will ever get better. i feel so lonely and i have been desperately trying to reach out for help but most of the friends i thought would be there for me ended up disappearing when i needed them most. every single passing day it feels like my thoughts are getting less coherent. i've been having several panic attacks every day, almost went to the ER because i keep having some sort of functional seizures because of panic induced dopamine and adrenaline bumps and crashes. time has stopped making sense, hours go by so fast and it feels like sometimes i just blink and skip through several days. it's hard to do anything. i haven't left the place i'm staying at in days and i haven't really been able to eat a proper meal in days. i've spent the past few weeks working on a paper that i think will be really interesting, so there's that, at least i honestly feel like these might be the last few months for me, i don't see a way out of this. i'm looking forward to getting reunited with the person i love but that's all i have to hold onto really. i'm still available and looking for a job or contractor opportunities, so please don't hesitate to reach out

i hate posting about this, but a few weeks ago, me and my wife got out of an abusive relationship which led to us losing stable housing and our jobs. we have a little bit of runway, but really need some financial help to keep going. we've been looking for jobs but nothing is promising so far. if you've enjoyed the research that i publish for free on the internet, now's the time. any donation would be greatly appreciated and would go towards food, housing, and research. boosting this post and connecting us with potential employers would also go a long way. you can donate over ko-fi.com/celeste2 if you'd like to donate with crypto, please contact my wife @computerphile thank you very much for your support,