@Eschient and
@t-dub Wow! I get it. I totally get it. Since moving to Washington State from Birmingham, Alabama, I've finally really found myself living in a place where I feel I can be myself and everyone is ok with it. And since this move coincided with my newly disabled life, I'm really just so different than I was before, and so much better in so many ways.
But moving 2500 miles immediately after my spinal fusion surgery that I am still recovering from and learning how to live my life so much differently than before has left me with less contact with people than I would like. And I now have so much less in common with friends and acquaintances who are so far away both geographically and philosophically.
So this leaves me dependent upon some community for support, friendship, etc, and I've found it here. I've pretty much shut down my facebook account and just let my wife monitor that side of the internet for our family. I've replaced my zillion facebook friends with my instagram account. And it's not like hardly anybody even sees that: just a couple friends from here, a few artists I know, and a few very select friends. But no family or former work colleagues, and definitely not spouses of acquaintences and all their friends of friends. All those people can just look at my facebook and the once a month update I might or might not make.
So I really like to share photos of my day on instagram, and when I need to get something off my chest or put more words down, I come to some off topic forum or one of my favorite vaporizer discussions and find what I need here. My username is in my sig, but please make an effort to let me know you are a FC friend if your username is not memorable from here, because I will likely bump random followers who I cannot figure out the connection.
I'm not remotely desperate for instagram followers or facebook friends or whatever, but I do think I take interesting photos, and you probably won't see a photo of my lunch or take-out coffee order unless I have a damn good reason for it.
@EveryDayAmnesiac Thanks for creating this discussion. There are places on the internet where I just have to keep my mouth shut because people there really need to hear how completely full of bullshit they are, but I just don't have the energy for it. So yes, that inner online asshole exists inside of me, but I keep him in check for the most part.
@Eschient I pretty much follow the Wil Wheaton law as well, but can admit to occasional lashing out here and there, but I have learned that after lashing out, not to return to the discussion. It turns out that is the best way to both be a troll and to out-troll the other trolls.
Try it sometime: Go online and tell someone that they suck balls, and then explain exactly why they suck so badly. Then, simply passively observe the resulting aftermath. It's quite funny to watch someone fight with the shadow of something that isn't there anymore. It's really quite fun once you learn this one weird trick to annoying internet trolls.