This morning one of my compeers messaged me with a gripe about a person who decided to take it upon themselves to be the arbiter of their worthiness.

This is an understatement. But I'm going to entertain the situation because I like to touch myself am a masochist.

I wasn't particularly concerned with someones arbitrary opinion on value based on their selected pool of pretend animal fuck arts (no judgment, just perspective on the amygdala hijack something so niche will apparently cause.) But, and always a but... Because it is /never/ reasonable to go into an establishment and tell the customers they are getting a bad deal and then, like any self-important child, wonder why they were escorted out once the trousers went down, they were criticized and blocked. Say what you want about the worthiness/quality of a piece, fine, opinions are personal and valid. However, once an imaginary audience is coopted to simultaneously say they are too stupid to decide for themselves what they want to spend money on, and also to self-award authority on what /other/ people should reason their money is for AND ALSO making character assumptions about said person—their culpability as self-involved ie egotistical ie an asshole has just been confirmed. Period. EOM.

Usually this would be the end of it, it's beneath me to spend much more thought on something with little real life value. Queue deciding that this pretty minimal encounter deserved two journals, and it's obvious this person has a point to make, and that point is that they are (more) important and the situation isn't over until someone validates them. Queue the suspicion of what drives my alcoholism: unchecked narcissism. Clearly suffering from a narcissistic injury, they mask their journals as some kind of public service. Not surprisingly, their journals have a vindictive streak of people they've been wronged by, IE criticized for their passive aggressive subversive behavior. I get it, it's the internet, blah blah blah minimal recourse for shit behavior and everyone seeks their hug box. Measured responses that were criticisms of the behavior was met with blocking, ironically because in their own words:

"Let's just say that people blocking anyone that disagrees with them so they can get the last ignorant word in personally offends me, and leave it at that."

It doesn't take much, does it? Queue accusations of being a creep and a stalker. Pragmatically, who else was supposed to see the journal if not your asspatters and, on the flipside, the people that support the aforementioned artist? The internet is full of narcissists. Sometimes it's from someone 19 years old and it's normal narcissism dealt with by healthy sublimation, like masturbation or alcoholism, and sometimes it's from a 30 year old that can't contain their narcissistic injuries and want to punish, pretending at sublimation via self aggrandizing journals with sterile advice: "THE BIG YELLOW ONE IS THE SUN!" Brilliant, Watson. #Helping. The extreme of this drive to punish ends up being honor killings. Do I think this guy will kill someone? Probably not, but they were obviously fostered to the age of 30 to reason it is worth the effort on the internet in an extreme niche with all of 15 people willing to help masturbate them.

"But thus I counsel you, my
friends: Mistrust all in whom
the impulse to punish is
powerful. They are people of
a low sort and stock; the
hangman and the bloodhound
look out of their faces. Mistrust
all who talk much of their justice!
Verily, their souls lack more than
honey. And when they call
themselves the good and the just,
do not forget that they would be
pharisees, if only they had
-power."
~ Nietzsche, 1892/1966, Thus
Spoke Zarathustra"