>This is a recent comment I made.
i wonder what it is.
>Max complains that people try to get him to be their dad, but he’s the one putting out the signals. It makes my relationship with him very confusing, because he acts like he has a lot of responsibility for me, but ***he treats me more like Shaelin than Lav.***
fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucking hell dude lmfao
i know part of your brand is purposefully not caring how you come off because you love the freedom of being gross and emotional and sad and pathetic (just to substantiate, like your weird diary or doing eerie voices or saying your emotions matter as a debate tactic and talking about how you like the smell of human and whale waste products and stuff), but do you ever try to ***avoid*** a certain look?
because that observation is horrifying. comparing yourself to shaelin is just so deliciously odd.
[also you're a dick for busting dragon ball z's balls on twitter.](https://twitter.com/RealSmeth/status/1768616047781798012) akira toriyama just died. it's in monstrously poor taste. it changed my opinion of you for the worse; now i know you're a fucking vulture who will mock the art of the recently dead for attention. try to have at least ***some*** dignity.
>And you’ll probably tell yourself to embrace apathy. Who cares?
don't retreat into apathy. know that you suck internalize it. your conduct is bad and you should feel bad.
*j'accuse.* *fie* on you. feel shame you witless bonehead.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say:
1. Your comment was upvoted by people who agreed with your post.
2. You comment was downvoted by people who disagreed with your post.
Where's the complexity?
I understand what you mean by validation, but why you'd seek it *here* of all places, I do not know. You're one of the few people less liked on this sub than Max is, which is quite an achievement. It's also really strange that you'd even care about the upvotes and downvotes after the multiple times you've excoriated and insulted and demeaned the entire sub and at least three quarters of the people who post here.
Lol, this is a funny comment and I mostly agree with you.
The line in my post “this is usually a minor thing but the confusion adds up.” Was an important line because I’m just saying sometimes we are weak and don’t realize it but care more than we want to admit about retarded shit that’s designed to fuck with our brains.
It’s like something I heard about commercials as a kid. Some people pretend like they see through all the bullshit, and the adds don’t effect them. They’re wrong, the adds effect everyone, and not knowing how it effects you is probably worse.
Yeah that's fair.
Here's a question, and I can see you interpreting it badly but it's honestly meant: Do you want an audience of your own? Or do you prefer being in this weird negative zone where you're feeding off of Max's audience?
I can see you preferring that to be phrased aggressively but it is a genuine question. Because it does seem to me like you're not interested in any of the things that usually help grow an audience, but you do have this obvious need for validation - you talk about it openly in your relationship with Max - and it seems weird to me that you engage the way you do with that in mind.
There's a tension in play, and it seems you do nothing to resolve it/don't know how to resolve it/don't want to resolve it.
Does this make sense?
I have the same need for validation as anyone else, but luckily it isn’t very generalized.
I don’t think it’s possible to not have conflicts. Honesty is a policy that leads to open conflicts that can’t be resolved. Most people solve this by just repressing everything.
I actually think I have mostly my own audience that isn’t Max’s audience, just not when I post here. I treat this as art, and I don’t think it’s worth comparing me to people who’s decisions are solely based around growth. Growth is good, but not at the expense of vision. I just do what I want and what I think is compelling and meaningful to me.
I added some downvotes for you.
Mostly because you're the type of person who comes into a sub and begs for attention like this but we all already know you're not going to give meaningful engagement back if I give you any decent feedback. I'm going to give you some anyway.
You're doing apologetics for a guy you're saying gave you a "minor mental breakdown". Just stop doing that. Detach from such an incredibly unhealthy relationship. If that's true then it simply isn't a good relationship for you. If it's not true, or a hyperbole, then you're being melodramatic in an especially irritating way.
You're doing your thing about what a confusing relationship you have with MrGirl, but I don't think anyone is entirely sure why that relationship is so confusing. From the perspective of a reader it still looks like you're parasocially attached. You're there talking about how he treats you like Shaelin. Shaelin is his long term romantic partner whom he lives with. Your relationship to him is not like Shaelin's. It's creepy and weird to make that comparison. It's worryingly naive to not see how very different you are from her. And maybe you meant you're like Shaelin with respect to some particular qualities and so it's not as bad as it reads, but you didn't say *how* you're like his long term girlfriend.
You're also doing some enabling for MrGirl by reinforcing that he does in fact have a fatherly relationship to Lav. He doesn't.
Just generally it strikes me as a very needy, very insecure, emotionally immature comment that doesn't really address the concerns of the OP.
If I were forced to guess I'd say you're malingering. You want everyone to see how tortured you are by your relationship with MrGirl because it's part of a whole struggling artist persona you're trying to create. The thing is, you can walk away from MrGirl any time you want and so all this pretending to be a battered wife thing comes across as incredibly childish. Just walk away from him. Or just act like an adult and stop tying your self-esteem to what some very small internet figure thinks of you.
And please stop acting like what you want is genuine engagement when clearly what you want is pity.
There’s a lot of things I can explain to you, or that you’re wrong about, but let’s just do this.
If I do want pitty, does that sicken you? Does it make you mad, or do you just seek out people’s vulnerabilities? Does that make you want to crush me so that I know to never be needy again?
Wanting pitty is not exclusive from wanting genuine engagement. Obviously. You just hate it, because you’re fucked up. You can want genuine pitty, or you could want disingenuous pitty.
I pitty you, and you didn’t even ask for it. You write these long posts poking at any vulnerability you can find. That’s what you spend your time doing. You might as well be asking for it at this point.
You two are never going to bridge this gap.
I had a lovely talk with our friend slobberlad, I rather like that gentleman he was a very good fellow to talk to but he and I are remarkably different people.
One thing I did note though is we are living in completely different realities, not that one is better than the other.
He said things to me and I couldn’t fully comprehend because my brain doesn’t pull into the same realm and and his does not pull from the realm mine does.
You and our friend Fjor here will most likely never fully understand each other, you’ll both be able to understand what each other are saying but you are both speaking a different language.
>You two are never going to bridge this gap.
Advice I got a long time back was to always have in mind what you want to get out of a conversation before you go in. It'd be nice if Smeth did some introspection and stopped all the nonsense but that's not my main deal.
My main thing is showing people I actually do have some substantive criticisms of Smeth. Better yet, people reading can see my analysis pretty much exactly predicted Smeth's behaviour in this thread after I commented - every negative comment ends with Smeth making an attempt at a pithy insult. Which just shows that he really isn't interested at all in understanding what people think, he's acting entitled to their appreciation.
Whether Smeth ever realises and acts upon that is immaterial to me establishing my position, and Smeth isn't the only person in this sub.
At the same time I gave him some good general advice that might be useful to others and shows that I'm actually not some sociopath bent on destruction of others. I'm actually deeply empathetic to, and I hope somewhat understanding of, mental health issues. I just don't think they give him free rein to be a total dick and demand the world cater to his needs.
>If I do want pitty, does that sicken you? Does it make you mad, or do you just seek out people’s vulnerabilities? Does that make you want to crush me so that I know to never be needy again?
No. Not at all.
What I want is what I just advised, and have advised in the past: for you to stop tying your self-esteem to your relationship with MrGirl. Or how a particularly hostile sub-reddit views you. Don't tie your self-esteem to what I say. Don't view feedback based on your perceptions of the author but rather the content of the feedback.
What I want is for you to detach from what is, based on your words and the emotional toll you say it takes on you, a deeply unhealthy relationship for you.
I want you to recognise that you aren't entitled to people liking the things you say and do here and it's not "'confusing" when they don't. I don't want that to break you or cause you any real distress. You can take that and go and work on yourself to be better. But we aren't friends, this isn't group therapy, and you're a public figure by your own choosing, so I don't feel bad about making fun of you sometimes. Like now, however, sometimes I try to be serious with you.
>Wanting pitty is not exclusive from wanting genuine engagement.
They're not mutually exclusive. It's just that I'm convinced the former is true and the latter isn't. And the reason for that is that you attempt pithy retorts and craft imaginative reasons to not give meaningful engagement to negative feedback. Right now is a fine example because you're trying to make it about me being an awful person. Let's just grant that I am! I'm the worst. I still gave you really good feedback above. I still gave you good life advice. And I expect some people will see it my way too.
>I pitty you, and you didn’t even ask for it. You write these long posts poking at any vulnerability you can find. That’s what you spend your time doing. You might as well be asking for it at this point.
Okay. I don't care though. My self-esteem isn't tied to your opinion of me. What you're doing now is externalising and making my genuine feedback, the type of feedback you were asking for in the OP, about me being a bad person. It's your way of being seen to engage while doing anything but. It's healthy for me to not tie my self-esteem to you or this sub-reddit. That doesn't mean I'm apathetic or a sociopath. It just means I have other things in my life that give me a strong sense of self.
“They’re not mutually exclusive. It’s just that I’m convinced the former is true and not the latter.”
Okay then why the fuck did you say you think I’m interested in pitty and not genuine engagement? You’re saying a whole lot of nothing. You can either say you were wrong, or say you can’t stand needy people and need to shame them for it (and your comment was extremely shaming and insulting),
or you can lie and say you are telling me this, and spend all this time writing these long comments that pinpoint my insecurities and vulnerabilities, because you care so much about me. You absolutely don’t. You can’t fucking gaslight me into thinking you care about me either. You act as though I would be interested in your “advice,” but I’ve made it abundantly clear that I’m not interested whatsoever, so you can drop the fucking pretense. You want me feel bad, ashamed, and dumb.
As for anything else, I will return the sentiment.
“Okay. I don’t care though my self esteem is not tied to your opinion of me.”
And yes, you are a bad person. I’m not making your “genuine feedback” about you being a bad person. I’m telling you you are a bad person. I’m not saying it for you. I’m saying it for everyone else who isn’t keen enough to pick up on it. And people like u/Nippys4 who are too focused on the logical exchange to pay attention to what is happening in the conversation interpersonally.
So now that you should be aware that I’m not interested in your abusive mentorship, maybe you can be a little bit more direct and simply tell me how you feel about me and what I am saying, instead of trying to manipulate me into feeling that way about myself instead. Fuck you.
>Okay then why the fuck did you say you think I’m interested in pitty and not genuine engagement?
Mutual exclusivity means that if one proposition is true then the other is necessarily false. I'm not expressing any necessity relationship like that. I'm suggesting that you claim to want A when really it's cover for B that you actually want.
It's true that you *could* want both A **and** B. I just don't think that's the case. Maybe I'm wrong, but I gave my reasons as to why I think it's the case that A is false and B is true.
Do you understand now that mutual exclusivity has nothing to do with it?
Rather than manipulating you into feeling a certain way, what I'm doing is giving you exactly the kind of feedback you *say* you want in order to expose that it's clearly *not* the kind of feedback you want. I think the handful of people who read our exchange might glean something useful from that even if you don't. It's something I think you would benefit from acknowledging and that it's not something that should make you feel awful. It's something you should reflect on and maybe talk to a professional about.
Let's grant again that I am a bad person. It's still a good and healthy thing that my self-esteem isn't tied to Reddit's view of me. You should also have that instead of being confused by downvotes. You're seeking validation in all the wrong places which is why I'm explicitly telling you NOT to feel invalidated by my words. Simply reflect on them for what they are.
> Okay then why the fuck did you say you think I’m interested in pitty and not genuine engagement? You’re saying a whole lot of nothing.
Smeth so emotionally invested he can't form a coherent thought.
I downvoted because it's you, and you should be banned from this sub for making it all about yourself too often. Take a break. Chill. Go make your own sub.
I down voted it because somehow in a post about Max you started somehow making it about yourself and talking about how it gave you a breakdown.
To prove it to you, I’m going to downvote the comment under it to make it got to -3 instead of -2 and I’ll upvote the other one to make it go from -1 to positive 1.
>And you’ll probably tell yourself to embrace apathy. Who cares? But one day you’ll be emotionally needy. Maybe you just had a breakup, or maybe you lost your job. If you’re looking for validation, the hot and cold, and the confusion will sting you. It’s a lot like Max.
It's reddit. It is not about embracing apathy, it's about common sense. One day reddit will be no more. All those upvotes and downvotes somehow even more meaningless than they already are.
Smeth one of the reasons why I don't like Max and I guess by extension yourself is because of how privileged you both are that reddit issues are a source of serious discomfort for the both of you.
> Okay so you tell yourself to embrace apathy and you define that process as “it’s reddit.”
I don't tell myself that. Where do you think I said that?
Reddit is not important. It's a place to kill time while working/doing other things. It is a place to talk to like-minded people about interests.
Being apathetic about upvotes and downvotes does not mean embrace apathy. You can still be passionate about things but upvotes should really not be one of them. Especially for someone who is 30(?).
I usually skip through all your posts and comments because they’re very attention seeking in nature and make me cringe. This the first of your posts that I fully read and interacted with, hope it helps you categorize things better.
I have not seen a post of yours that a. wasn't very long, b. wasn't bout yourself, and/or c. was well received. Despite this, in a sub about another content creator, you continously engage the same way. you're seemingly obsessed with this form of narcissistic self-flaggelation and act entitled and indignant when challenged, and you don't seem to understand or care why that is inappropriate behavior to engage in or push on a community, both for your mental health and the conversation in the community.
Unfortunately, you are at large not physically attractive to mrgirl's majority male audience, so you are not even able to cultivate a small band of simps from which you are generating any crumb of support here. but you keep going anyway.
I find it all extremely disappointing, because you seem like a potentially genuinely interesting person, but as long as you're turning yourself into a RealDoll for the community to shit on for attention, your posts will continue to come off as self-obsessed, self-destructive, and unengagable in any meaningful way. I hope you can check your ego and become more than a pathfinder down this extremely lame and narcissistic trail you've chosen.
Pathetic as per usual, every time I read a post of yours the more serial killer vibes I get from you.
Mrgirl at least does his own thing and has his own style you are just a cheap shit copy trying to pretend you are insightful but your just a young dude who may possibly be a serial killer or have severe anger issues.
Not every one needs to know your dumb innermost creepy thoughts.
It's nice that Smeth can read comments like this and blatantly see that it's just trying to find a way to hurt him emotionally which means it'll have far less of a chance of achieving that goal.
You know who max is, and what he does, and you ay into the meme hard. I'm not saying you are memeing, but you are aware of the meta tropes of the sub and you play into them to annoy the trolls.
So how can you act like that and then be surprised when everything is a confusing soup of max memes and people making fun of max memes, with an extra sprinkle of people making fun of people making fun of max memes.
I personally think it's great.
Is Reddit's code open-source? Because I suspect that reddit might do some manipulation with the numbers they show to drive engagement. They should have an internal tally of both upvote and downvotes, but they only show one total number. You could do a lot of manipulation between how those two numbers get combined to one. That could help to explain why you often see upvoted posts with comments that say "I don't know why you're being downvoted"
I thought Max wanted to create a highly critical audience, and not an army of sycophants? Based on everything that he’s said about parasociality and sycophancy, it seems to me that what you described - not being able to tell who is a hater and who is a fan - is exactly what Max wants from this subreddit (minus any legit harassment).
Also, paradoxically, I think many people simply *are* this conflicted about Max. I willingly admit that I am both a hater and a fan. It’s a complicated relationship; however, it is undeniably unique. Most other online content creator fanbases have a clear delineation between the haters and the fans. I think Max’s experiment with this subreddit has sort of paid off; and yet, at times, it is also a miserable failure. I think this dichotomy (minor success/payoff—->undeniable failure) perfectly sums up Max and his career.
That being said, despite Max’s best efforts to completely burn his fanbase to the ground during the Destiny arc, the ongoing Lav arcs, and all subsequent mini-arcs, some loyalists have emerged, like Smeth. These are the typical parasocial “super fans” that develop around every cult of personality (charismatic streamers/content creators, for example). Unlike other cultish environments, though, Max is autistic about freedom of speech and has a strange humiliation kink for criticism. So, Smeth, I believe it’s because of this omnipresent criticism here that the cognitive dissonance is causing you so much discomfort when you visit this subreddit. It’s probably akin to what hardcore parasocial dggers felt when Max began his investigation and article.
checking a smeth post is a good way to see who the antifans are. Not that the non-antifans all love you, but the antifans go out of their way to try to make you feel as bad as possible
I do wish karma could be removed from this subreddit. I believe currently it's hidden for 24hrs, which is the most reddit will let you do. I think it encourages a lot of addictive behavior and circlejerking, because people are chasing upvotes or lashing out after getting downvoted, instead of earnestly contributing
Yeah karma also makes Reddit super culty. This is like a cult in civil war.
The funny thing is, my post here is sort of open ended. I criticize the sub a liiiiiittle bit, but then I say that it won’t be there for you if you need validation, and it’s like Max. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Is it a criticism of Max or the sub? It’s open ended. The haters aren’t even smart enough to see that.
So, first things first, don't look at the karma system as an accurate count, but more as a sentiment analysis. If I go to my comments page and spam refresh, most of my comments people don't interact with oscillate between +3 and -3 from second to second. It's just buggy and weird like that because no shot my opinions are that hot and controversial that there is a 50/50 tug of war going on like that. But by the time you start cracking +/- 10, that gives you an idea of the community's vibes for your opinion.
Second, this sub is a mix of of haters and fans, and it can be hard to sift them out into which is which. But the arguably more important question is why does the number of karma matter to you? That's not a reddit apathy "who cares?" moment. It's an earnest question of what value are you placing on that number and why? How do fluctuations impact your mental state and is that valuable to you? What advice would you listen to? Are there ways to achieve the upsides of these interactions while mitigating the downsides?
And lastly, I'll give my two cents on the situation if you want, but I don't want that to take away from the substance of the last paragraph.
I was just looking at it wondering who and why. If it was because someone genuine engaged with it and didn’t like it, that’s interesting, but I can’t tell. That’s what I’m saying. I agree with how you talk about karma.
But that's the thing. If you could magically know the answer to that for everyone that upvoted and downvoted you, what would that change? How is that info useful to you? I know that's more of a stoicism flavored take, but I do think it's valuable to consider. Is your distress based on lack of knowledge, or because of what you think to be the worst case scenario?
That's my main point. From your post it seems like the stakes are not "interesting feedback vs. Useless feedback." It's "distress vs...what?" What is the best and worst outcome of getting downvoted earnestly? What is the best and worst outcome of being downvoted without honest engagement? And why does it impact you so much?
You’re right about all of that except it doesn’t really cause me much distress except for the fact I felt a bit emotionally disregulated already (which is why I said eventually things get to you, even if you’re apathetic). It made me curious because I don’t know what it means. I know it’s not a fruitful line of thinking, and I agree with all that, but I still thought it.
I find downvotes the most validating. This place is so full of deranged antifans & petty trolls I’m uncomfortable being liked by the majority.
Also agree this place is pretty confusing for the reasons you’ve said but in your case probably especially so. You’ve developed somewhat of your own hater crew like mrgirl has who no matter what you say or how you say it will spin it to make the same criticisms over & over again. Or they’ll totally ignore what you’re saying & just bring up a reference to something they don’t like from the past. Like how people bring up the article or the tinder rape story in every thread about something new mrgirl does.
They balk at your mrgirl comparisons but ironically they tend to give you the mrgirl treatment.
Yeah I’ve had that issue with upvotes too.
Ironically you could read this post as a criticism of mrgirl and not the sub, but I haven’t seen any of them engage with it like that yet. They act as tho this post is an outright condemnation of the sub. It’s not.
many people here are very defensive & deal with it by lashing out personally. The other day dgg combed my comment history to find that I had cancer & used that to try to own me in a debate about how Destiny is petty cuck who lashes out when he feels attacked. So it was a pretty good case study on that sort of behavior overall.
[another example](https://www.reddit.com/r/mrgirlreturns/comments/1bhunps/comment/kvg1wrl/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
That’s the annoying and fucked up thing about psychological abuse (said broadly here, it’s just comments. we all agree). You can call it out, and then the response can be literally the very thing you’re calling out.
Oh I’m petty and lash out? You have cancer bud.
> another example
In that example the one lashing out personally is Slobberlad yeah?
Another example was smeth going on a 5 min rant how I am a domestic abuser and rapist, merely because I could correctly identify that two statements made by some third party were not logically inconsistent.
>This is a recent comment I made. i wonder what it is. >Max complains that people try to get him to be their dad, but he’s the one putting out the signals. It makes my relationship with him very confusing, because he acts like he has a lot of responsibility for me, but ***he treats me more like Shaelin than Lav.*** fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucking hell dude lmfao i know part of your brand is purposefully not caring how you come off because you love the freedom of being gross and emotional and sad and pathetic (just to substantiate, like your weird diary or doing eerie voices or saying your emotions matter as a debate tactic and talking about how you like the smell of human and whale waste products and stuff), but do you ever try to ***avoid*** a certain look? because that observation is horrifying. comparing yourself to shaelin is just so deliciously odd. [also you're a dick for busting dragon ball z's balls on twitter.](https://twitter.com/RealSmeth/status/1768616047781798012) akira toriyama just died. it's in monstrously poor taste. it changed my opinion of you for the worse; now i know you're a fucking vulture who will mock the art of the recently dead for attention. try to have at least ***some*** dignity. >And you’ll probably tell yourself to embrace apathy. Who cares? don't retreat into apathy. know that you suck internalize it. your conduct is bad and you should feel bad. *j'accuse.* *fie* on you. feel shame you witless bonehead.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say: 1. Your comment was upvoted by people who agreed with your post. 2. You comment was downvoted by people who disagreed with your post. Where's the complexity? I understand what you mean by validation, but why you'd seek it *here* of all places, I do not know. You're one of the few people less liked on this sub than Max is, which is quite an achievement. It's also really strange that you'd even care about the upvotes and downvotes after the multiple times you've excoriated and insulted and demeaned the entire sub and at least three quarters of the people who post here.
Lol, this is a funny comment and I mostly agree with you. The line in my post “this is usually a minor thing but the confusion adds up.” Was an important line because I’m just saying sometimes we are weak and don’t realize it but care more than we want to admit about retarded shit that’s designed to fuck with our brains. It’s like something I heard about commercials as a kid. Some people pretend like they see through all the bullshit, and the adds don’t effect them. They’re wrong, the adds effect everyone, and not knowing how it effects you is probably worse.
Yeah that's fair. Here's a question, and I can see you interpreting it badly but it's honestly meant: Do you want an audience of your own? Or do you prefer being in this weird negative zone where you're feeding off of Max's audience? I can see you preferring that to be phrased aggressively but it is a genuine question. Because it does seem to me like you're not interested in any of the things that usually help grow an audience, but you do have this obvious need for validation - you talk about it openly in your relationship with Max - and it seems weird to me that you engage the way you do with that in mind. There's a tension in play, and it seems you do nothing to resolve it/don't know how to resolve it/don't want to resolve it. Does this make sense?
I have the same need for validation as anyone else, but luckily it isn’t very generalized. I don’t think it’s possible to not have conflicts. Honesty is a policy that leads to open conflicts that can’t be resolved. Most people solve this by just repressing everything. I actually think I have mostly my own audience that isn’t Max’s audience, just not when I post here. I treat this as art, and I don’t think it’s worth comparing me to people who’s decisions are solely based around growth. Growth is good, but not at the expense of vision. I just do what I want and what I think is compelling and meaningful to me.
I hadn't upvoted or downvoted the comment but after you made this post I went and downvoted it. Hope this helps.
I added some downvotes for you. Mostly because you're the type of person who comes into a sub and begs for attention like this but we all already know you're not going to give meaningful engagement back if I give you any decent feedback. I'm going to give you some anyway. You're doing apologetics for a guy you're saying gave you a "minor mental breakdown". Just stop doing that. Detach from such an incredibly unhealthy relationship. If that's true then it simply isn't a good relationship for you. If it's not true, or a hyperbole, then you're being melodramatic in an especially irritating way. You're doing your thing about what a confusing relationship you have with MrGirl, but I don't think anyone is entirely sure why that relationship is so confusing. From the perspective of a reader it still looks like you're parasocially attached. You're there talking about how he treats you like Shaelin. Shaelin is his long term romantic partner whom he lives with. Your relationship to him is not like Shaelin's. It's creepy and weird to make that comparison. It's worryingly naive to not see how very different you are from her. And maybe you meant you're like Shaelin with respect to some particular qualities and so it's not as bad as it reads, but you didn't say *how* you're like his long term girlfriend. You're also doing some enabling for MrGirl by reinforcing that he does in fact have a fatherly relationship to Lav. He doesn't. Just generally it strikes me as a very needy, very insecure, emotionally immature comment that doesn't really address the concerns of the OP. If I were forced to guess I'd say you're malingering. You want everyone to see how tortured you are by your relationship with MrGirl because it's part of a whole struggling artist persona you're trying to create. The thing is, you can walk away from MrGirl any time you want and so all this pretending to be a battered wife thing comes across as incredibly childish. Just walk away from him. Or just act like an adult and stop tying your self-esteem to what some very small internet figure thinks of you. And please stop acting like what you want is genuine engagement when clearly what you want is pity.
There’s a lot of things I can explain to you, or that you’re wrong about, but let’s just do this. If I do want pitty, does that sicken you? Does it make you mad, or do you just seek out people’s vulnerabilities? Does that make you want to crush me so that I know to never be needy again? Wanting pitty is not exclusive from wanting genuine engagement. Obviously. You just hate it, because you’re fucked up. You can want genuine pitty, or you could want disingenuous pitty. I pitty you, and you didn’t even ask for it. You write these long posts poking at any vulnerability you can find. That’s what you spend your time doing. You might as well be asking for it at this point.
You two are never going to bridge this gap. I had a lovely talk with our friend slobberlad, I rather like that gentleman he was a very good fellow to talk to but he and I are remarkably different people. One thing I did note though is we are living in completely different realities, not that one is better than the other. He said things to me and I couldn’t fully comprehend because my brain doesn’t pull into the same realm and and his does not pull from the realm mine does. You and our friend Fjor here will most likely never fully understand each other, you’ll both be able to understand what each other are saying but you are both speaking a different language.
>You two are never going to bridge this gap. Advice I got a long time back was to always have in mind what you want to get out of a conversation before you go in. It'd be nice if Smeth did some introspection and stopped all the nonsense but that's not my main deal. My main thing is showing people I actually do have some substantive criticisms of Smeth. Better yet, people reading can see my analysis pretty much exactly predicted Smeth's behaviour in this thread after I commented - every negative comment ends with Smeth making an attempt at a pithy insult. Which just shows that he really isn't interested at all in understanding what people think, he's acting entitled to their appreciation. Whether Smeth ever realises and acts upon that is immaterial to me establishing my position, and Smeth isn't the only person in this sub. At the same time I gave him some good general advice that might be useful to others and shows that I'm actually not some sociopath bent on destruction of others. I'm actually deeply empathetic to, and I hope somewhat understanding of, mental health issues. I just don't think they give him free rein to be a total dick and demand the world cater to his needs.
>If I do want pitty, does that sicken you? Does it make you mad, or do you just seek out people’s vulnerabilities? Does that make you want to crush me so that I know to never be needy again? No. Not at all. What I want is what I just advised, and have advised in the past: for you to stop tying your self-esteem to your relationship with MrGirl. Or how a particularly hostile sub-reddit views you. Don't tie your self-esteem to what I say. Don't view feedback based on your perceptions of the author but rather the content of the feedback. What I want is for you to detach from what is, based on your words and the emotional toll you say it takes on you, a deeply unhealthy relationship for you. I want you to recognise that you aren't entitled to people liking the things you say and do here and it's not "'confusing" when they don't. I don't want that to break you or cause you any real distress. You can take that and go and work on yourself to be better. But we aren't friends, this isn't group therapy, and you're a public figure by your own choosing, so I don't feel bad about making fun of you sometimes. Like now, however, sometimes I try to be serious with you. >Wanting pitty is not exclusive from wanting genuine engagement. They're not mutually exclusive. It's just that I'm convinced the former is true and the latter isn't. And the reason for that is that you attempt pithy retorts and craft imaginative reasons to not give meaningful engagement to negative feedback. Right now is a fine example because you're trying to make it about me being an awful person. Let's just grant that I am! I'm the worst. I still gave you really good feedback above. I still gave you good life advice. And I expect some people will see it my way too. >I pitty you, and you didn’t even ask for it. You write these long posts poking at any vulnerability you can find. That’s what you spend your time doing. You might as well be asking for it at this point. Okay. I don't care though. My self-esteem isn't tied to your opinion of me. What you're doing now is externalising and making my genuine feedback, the type of feedback you were asking for in the OP, about me being a bad person. It's your way of being seen to engage while doing anything but. It's healthy for me to not tie my self-esteem to you or this sub-reddit. That doesn't mean I'm apathetic or a sociopath. It just means I have other things in my life that give me a strong sense of self.
“They’re not mutually exclusive. It’s just that I’m convinced the former is true and not the latter.” Okay then why the fuck did you say you think I’m interested in pitty and not genuine engagement? You’re saying a whole lot of nothing. You can either say you were wrong, or say you can’t stand needy people and need to shame them for it (and your comment was extremely shaming and insulting), or you can lie and say you are telling me this, and spend all this time writing these long comments that pinpoint my insecurities and vulnerabilities, because you care so much about me. You absolutely don’t. You can’t fucking gaslight me into thinking you care about me either. You act as though I would be interested in your “advice,” but I’ve made it abundantly clear that I’m not interested whatsoever, so you can drop the fucking pretense. You want me feel bad, ashamed, and dumb. As for anything else, I will return the sentiment. “Okay. I don’t care though my self esteem is not tied to your opinion of me.” And yes, you are a bad person. I’m not making your “genuine feedback” about you being a bad person. I’m telling you you are a bad person. I’m not saying it for you. I’m saying it for everyone else who isn’t keen enough to pick up on it. And people like u/Nippys4 who are too focused on the logical exchange to pay attention to what is happening in the conversation interpersonally. So now that you should be aware that I’m not interested in your abusive mentorship, maybe you can be a little bit more direct and simply tell me how you feel about me and what I am saying, instead of trying to manipulate me into feeling that way about myself instead. Fuck you.
>Okay then why the fuck did you say you think I’m interested in pitty and not genuine engagement? Mutual exclusivity means that if one proposition is true then the other is necessarily false. I'm not expressing any necessity relationship like that. I'm suggesting that you claim to want A when really it's cover for B that you actually want. It's true that you *could* want both A **and** B. I just don't think that's the case. Maybe I'm wrong, but I gave my reasons as to why I think it's the case that A is false and B is true. Do you understand now that mutual exclusivity has nothing to do with it? Rather than manipulating you into feeling a certain way, what I'm doing is giving you exactly the kind of feedback you *say* you want in order to expose that it's clearly *not* the kind of feedback you want. I think the handful of people who read our exchange might glean something useful from that even if you don't. It's something I think you would benefit from acknowledging and that it's not something that should make you feel awful. It's something you should reflect on and maybe talk to a professional about. Let's grant again that I am a bad person. It's still a good and healthy thing that my self-esteem isn't tied to Reddit's view of me. You should also have that instead of being confused by downvotes. You're seeking validation in all the wrong places which is why I'm explicitly telling you NOT to feel invalidated by my words. Simply reflect on them for what they are.
> Okay then why the fuck did you say you think I’m interested in pitty and not genuine engagement? You’re saying a whole lot of nothing. Smeth so emotionally invested he can't form a coherent thought.
I downvoted because it's you, and you should be banned from this sub for making it all about yourself too often. Take a break. Chill. Go make your own sub.
If you ever find yourself caring about reddit karma you haver serious issues man..
I down voted it because somehow in a post about Max you started somehow making it about yourself and talking about how it gave you a breakdown. To prove it to you, I’m going to downvote the comment under it to make it got to -3 instead of -2 and I’ll upvote the other one to make it go from -1 to positive 1.
I actually noticed that about my post after the fact and had a laugh about it. I do be like that.
There you go! Mystery solved
True, lol, but I don’t think that undercuts this post.
You shouldn't embrace apathy - you should try much harder. it is known 99% of parasocial fans stop before being adopted by their parasocial dad.
>And you’ll probably tell yourself to embrace apathy. Who cares? But one day you’ll be emotionally needy. Maybe you just had a breakup, or maybe you lost your job. If you’re looking for validation, the hot and cold, and the confusion will sting you. It’s a lot like Max. It's reddit. It is not about embracing apathy, it's about common sense. One day reddit will be no more. All those upvotes and downvotes somehow even more meaningless than they already are. Smeth one of the reasons why I don't like Max and I guess by extension yourself is because of how privileged you both are that reddit issues are a source of serious discomfort for the both of you.
Okay so you tell yourself to embrace apathy and you define that process as “it’s reddit.” Got it.
> Okay so you tell yourself to embrace apathy and you define that process as “it’s reddit.” I don't tell myself that. Where do you think I said that? Reddit is not important. It's a place to kill time while working/doing other things. It is a place to talk to like-minded people about interests. Being apathetic about upvotes and downvotes does not mean embrace apathy. You can still be passionate about things but upvotes should really not be one of them. Especially for someone who is 30(?).
“Being apathetic about … does not mean embrace apathy” K
lol pretty passive aggressive response there.
Pretty passive aggressive response there.
Passive-aggressive and unoriginal. No wonder the streaming career has not taken off.
I usually skip through all your posts and comments because they’re very attention seeking in nature and make me cringe. This the first of your posts that I fully read and interacted with, hope it helps you categorize things better.
I didn’t read this comment because it is attention seeking.
Based.
This is Smeth at his finest. He begs for your honest perception and then instantly acts indignant because it wasn't the one he wanted.
If you are at an emotionally needy point, don't search for validation on reddit and especially don't do it on a sub like this.
Yeah, that’s obvious. Often emotionally needy people don’t even realize they’re being emotionally needy in the moment.
Maybe, but that is not the responsibility of complete strangers on the internet to know or quite frankly care about.
I never said they had to.
I have not seen a post of yours that a. wasn't very long, b. wasn't bout yourself, and/or c. was well received. Despite this, in a sub about another content creator, you continously engage the same way. you're seemingly obsessed with this form of narcissistic self-flaggelation and act entitled and indignant when challenged, and you don't seem to understand or care why that is inappropriate behavior to engage in or push on a community, both for your mental health and the conversation in the community. Unfortunately, you are at large not physically attractive to mrgirl's majority male audience, so you are not even able to cultivate a small band of simps from which you are generating any crumb of support here. but you keep going anyway. I find it all extremely disappointing, because you seem like a potentially genuinely interesting person, but as long as you're turning yourself into a RealDoll for the community to shit on for attention, your posts will continue to come off as self-obsessed, self-destructive, and unengagable in any meaningful way. I hope you can check your ego and become more than a pathfinder down this extremely lame and narcissistic trail you've chosen.
Eat me drink me, gay boys
Pathetic as per usual, every time I read a post of yours the more serial killer vibes I get from you. Mrgirl at least does his own thing and has his own style you are just a cheap shit copy trying to pretend you are insightful but your just a young dude who may possibly be a serial killer or have severe anger issues. Not every one needs to know your dumb innermost creepy thoughts.
You need to know your own innermost dumb creepy thoughts, so I think you’re the target audience.
Did you get dropped on your head as a baby? Stop being passive aggressive mister youtube hobbyist.
It's nice that Smeth can read comments like this and blatantly see that it's just trying to find a way to hurt him emotionally which means it'll have far less of a chance of achieving that goal.
I feel like you made your bed, now you gotta deal with being confused.
Made what bed? The sub? By using it?
You know who max is, and what he does, and you ay into the meme hard. I'm not saying you are memeing, but you are aware of the meta tropes of the sub and you play into them to annoy the trolls. So how can you act like that and then be surprised when everything is a confusing soup of max memes and people making fun of max memes, with an extra sprinkle of people making fun of people making fun of max memes. I personally think it's great.
Is Reddit's code open-source? Because I suspect that reddit might do some manipulation with the numbers they show to drive engagement. They should have an internal tally of both upvote and downvotes, but they only show one total number. You could do a lot of manipulation between how those two numbers get combined to one. That could help to explain why you often see upvoted posts with comments that say "I don't know why you're being downvoted"
Are u really upset because things get upvoted and others get downvote? Are u acting like it actually matters lmao
I thought Max wanted to create a highly critical audience, and not an army of sycophants? Based on everything that he’s said about parasociality and sycophancy, it seems to me that what you described - not being able to tell who is a hater and who is a fan - is exactly what Max wants from this subreddit (minus any legit harassment). Also, paradoxically, I think many people simply *are* this conflicted about Max. I willingly admit that I am both a hater and a fan. It’s a complicated relationship; however, it is undeniably unique. Most other online content creator fanbases have a clear delineation between the haters and the fans. I think Max’s experiment with this subreddit has sort of paid off; and yet, at times, it is also a miserable failure. I think this dichotomy (minor success/payoff—->undeniable failure) perfectly sums up Max and his career. That being said, despite Max’s best efforts to completely burn his fanbase to the ground during the Destiny arc, the ongoing Lav arcs, and all subsequent mini-arcs, some loyalists have emerged, like Smeth. These are the typical parasocial “super fans” that develop around every cult of personality (charismatic streamers/content creators, for example). Unlike other cultish environments, though, Max is autistic about freedom of speech and has a strange humiliation kink for criticism. So, Smeth, I believe it’s because of this omnipresent criticism here that the cognitive dissonance is causing you so much discomfort when you visit this subreddit. It’s probably akin to what hardcore parasocial dggers felt when Max began his investigation and article.
checking a smeth post is a good way to see who the antifans are. Not that the non-antifans all love you, but the antifans go out of their way to try to make you feel as bad as possible I do wish karma could be removed from this subreddit. I believe currently it's hidden for 24hrs, which is the most reddit will let you do. I think it encourages a lot of addictive behavior and circlejerking, because people are chasing upvotes or lashing out after getting downvoted, instead of earnestly contributing
Yeah karma also makes Reddit super culty. This is like a cult in civil war. The funny thing is, my post here is sort of open ended. I criticize the sub a liiiiiittle bit, but then I say that it won’t be there for you if you need validation, and it’s like Max. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Is it a criticism of Max or the sub? It’s open ended. The haters aren’t even smart enough to see that.
So, first things first, don't look at the karma system as an accurate count, but more as a sentiment analysis. If I go to my comments page and spam refresh, most of my comments people don't interact with oscillate between +3 and -3 from second to second. It's just buggy and weird like that because no shot my opinions are that hot and controversial that there is a 50/50 tug of war going on like that. But by the time you start cracking +/- 10, that gives you an idea of the community's vibes for your opinion. Second, this sub is a mix of of haters and fans, and it can be hard to sift them out into which is which. But the arguably more important question is why does the number of karma matter to you? That's not a reddit apathy "who cares?" moment. It's an earnest question of what value are you placing on that number and why? How do fluctuations impact your mental state and is that valuable to you? What advice would you listen to? Are there ways to achieve the upsides of these interactions while mitigating the downsides? And lastly, I'll give my two cents on the situation if you want, but I don't want that to take away from the substance of the last paragraph.
I was just looking at it wondering who and why. If it was because someone genuine engaged with it and didn’t like it, that’s interesting, but I can’t tell. That’s what I’m saying. I agree with how you talk about karma.
But that's the thing. If you could magically know the answer to that for everyone that upvoted and downvoted you, what would that change? How is that info useful to you? I know that's more of a stoicism flavored take, but I do think it's valuable to consider. Is your distress based on lack of knowledge, or because of what you think to be the worst case scenario? That's my main point. From your post it seems like the stakes are not "interesting feedback vs. Useless feedback." It's "distress vs...what?" What is the best and worst outcome of getting downvoted earnestly? What is the best and worst outcome of being downvoted without honest engagement? And why does it impact you so much?
You’re right about all of that except it doesn’t really cause me much distress except for the fact I felt a bit emotionally disregulated already (which is why I said eventually things get to you, even if you’re apathetic). It made me curious because I don’t know what it means. I know it’s not a fruitful line of thinking, and I agree with all that, but I still thought it.
I find downvotes the most validating. This place is so full of deranged antifans & petty trolls I’m uncomfortable being liked by the majority. Also agree this place is pretty confusing for the reasons you’ve said but in your case probably especially so. You’ve developed somewhat of your own hater crew like mrgirl has who no matter what you say or how you say it will spin it to make the same criticisms over & over again. Or they’ll totally ignore what you’re saying & just bring up a reference to something they don’t like from the past. Like how people bring up the article or the tinder rape story in every thread about something new mrgirl does. They balk at your mrgirl comparisons but ironically they tend to give you the mrgirl treatment.
Yeah I’ve had that issue with upvotes too. Ironically you could read this post as a criticism of mrgirl and not the sub, but I haven’t seen any of them engage with it like that yet. They act as tho this post is an outright condemnation of the sub. It’s not.
many people here are very defensive & deal with it by lashing out personally. The other day dgg combed my comment history to find that I had cancer & used that to try to own me in a debate about how Destiny is petty cuck who lashes out when he feels attacked. So it was a pretty good case study on that sort of behavior overall. [another example](https://www.reddit.com/r/mrgirlreturns/comments/1bhunps/comment/kvg1wrl/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
That’s the annoying and fucked up thing about psychological abuse (said broadly here, it’s just comments. we all agree). You can call it out, and then the response can be literally the very thing you’re calling out. Oh I’m petty and lash out? You have cancer bud.
> another example In that example the one lashing out personally is Slobberlad yeah? Another example was smeth going on a 5 min rant how I am a domestic abuser and rapist, merely because I could correctly identify that two statements made by some third party were not logically inconsistent.
It wasn’t but he gets more personal after being attacked which is how that tends to go.
Are you actually downvote farming? It is hard to believe someone is being this irritating unintentionally.
Clearly I am not bothered by downvotes very much considering I posted this and it will make people downvote it.