It is very likely a case of the area I specifically live in, but I’ve just about had it after waking up to a message earlier today that I’m letting live rent-free in my head.
I admittedly go off on tangents and sometimes write a fuck ton if there is a means to do so (e.g., a Discord server). Most people I interact with on non-political levels, such as childhood friends I’ve maintained, do one of two things: they read it and respond, or they don’t and let it fly. I’ve made peace with that, to the extent I even made a separate channel on our shared Discord server just for me to rant on shit that’s not appropriate to other channels, and everyone is cool with that. I have no problem making friends everywhere I go and maintaining them.
But every (and I shit you not every) political circle I get involved in locally does not entertain this. It almost seems like it irks them if I try to start up a discussion or get involved in one. Due to the nature of our getting together, it’s political. Duh. Political discussions can run long, in time and content. It’s actually kind of wild to me how a political circle verbally and rudely refuses to read more than a paragraph if they have total freedom to ignore it, or even just refuses to engage any of it at all most of the time past aphorisms or thought-terminating clichés. What is the point of having a group if you aren’t going to discuss and build community in the off-hours?
I think that is my point, and I’ve seen all (and I kid you not all) of the local groups fail prior because of this inability to build a community at core. It can individually be a fault of platform (not everyone uses one but joined it thinking they might start), time, stress/mental health, introversion, etc., and all of those are understandable, but seeing it happen on repeat seems to me to be more a symptom of something local. I’m the only person keeping some of these groups alive, until I’m not such as when I feel there’s nothing left of beneficence to myself. COVID seemingly worsened it, reducing the lifespan on these groups from months to weeks and the frequency of their creation from several a year to one or less annually.
Trust me, I’ve self-reflected on this. I saw therapists nearly my entire childhood due to Tourette syndrome, and so visiting them in adulthood was simple and something I’ve done often. It helped me come to terms with many quirks about who I am versus how others are, and I found ways to deal with it. What I cannot do is come to terms with how disappointed I am that people will talk about how politically left they are, then just share memes and talk in short sentence fragments about intense subjects when they do talk at all. There’s a one-off person here and there that breaks the mold, and they all go on with their life because they’re great people…which means moving away lol.
Does anyone else have this problem? How do you solve it in person, if at all? I do have plans to leave the area in the next 1-3 years due to a variety of factors not related to this, but I really hate the idea of limiting my in-depth political interactions to online in the meantime.
EDIT: Let me elaborate as well that I have sought feedback from loved ones alongside self-reflection and therapy in the past. Folks who could be intimately involved in the situation or at least aware of who I am on an interpersonal level. The conclusion arrived at tends to be of finger-pointing at others. That’s well and all, but it doesn’t provide me an opportunity to change anything in myself that may be a blocker nor does it help for community building. I view every failure to interact positively as a failure on my own part.
I hear the frustration in your writing. I feel for you. At some level, I believe I have had some similar experiences in my life, but of course I cannot be sure of that.
Without enough information about exactly how things are going down in your interactions, I want to try to give you some generic coaching that might help.
Most people, like you, are looking for connectedness. They want to connect with people. I think you can relate to that. Long solo verbal expressions are not conducive to connecting. If I write something that’s not directed at you, and it’s long, and it’s passionate, and it’s just sent into a public square (like a discord), or it’s directed at the person standing in front of me but doesn’t incorporate them into the talking points, there’s no connections there.
Empathy for people desiring to connect help a lot.
But also, it helps to acknowledge that there are different verbal expression categories and they are appropriate for different things.
For example, you seem to find great value in writing passionately about deep topics and examining their details thoroughly. This sort of thing is best suited for writing essays, articles, OpEds, educational material, propaganda, lectures, presentations, lunch and learns, etc. It’s not great for interpersonal connection.
So your frustration might come from using the wrong tool for the job. Maybe you want to connect with people - in that case, your writing goals need to be totally different. Maybe you want to deeply explore a topic in writing - in this case, doing it as an unrequested bid for engagement is the wrong vehicle.
You mention looking for usable feedback from people around you. Maybe they don’t fully grasp the nature of your problem. My recommendation we be not to merely look for how to change but rather how to grow. Add more modalities to your repertoire. Add richness to how you write, write different types of things for different goals, adopt more goals instead of settling for less.
I hope this helps.
Good luck.
Thank you for the thoughtful response.
I suppose I’ve just been using Discord differently than most. I’ve traditionally been involved in more serious servers and prior social media usage focused on this kind of discussion. I had no issue finding takers and I’ve been wondering why it feels different now.
When there is a lack of seeding for discussion created by others, I do feel a need to rush in and plant those seeds myself. Sometimes I seek opinion from others on something. In a rare occasion, if a space seems to suit it, I may provide updates on something. All of this doesn’t seem compatible with this space, and I might just be blaming the leftists in the space because of prior expectations. Is this fair? Maybe not. I can make judgements all I want, but it doesn’t change the space.
I still want to find an outlet however, and as I said in another comment, that might just be creating a discussion group with a more specific purpose. I hate doing that typically, because I hate splintering where we could just divide within a prior circle, but I’m getting the idea that won’t be possible here.
Thank you for the chance to reflect a little more.