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[PA Comic] Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - Primal
Posts
In my experience, clinical depression does not lend itself toward self-improvement, only self-loathing and self-harm.
As far as I know, Mike and Jerry have both expressed wanting to distance themselves from PAX even before there was any controversy. They said that PAX has outgrown them, that it is a convention for all gamers, for gaming, not "The Penny-Arcade convention for Penny-Arcade fans". They have said they want to walk through it as guests, enjoying this celebration of gaming just as any of us do.
Indeed. Jerry has described his definition of success as creating something, and then pushing it away from the dock, that they can watch it take on a life of its own.
I know it's what they have been saying, but they are still the biggest personalities of PAX. I think to actually distance themselves, they need to not go. Or at the very least, not host events. Spending all weekend as the heart of Pinny Arcade trading isn't what I'd call "distancing". I'm not saying they *need* to do this, only what I think it would take to achieve distance.
Yeah they'd also have to stop with the Acquisitions Inc live games. EFF THAT imo.
I bought a drumset with Prime once. But the real benefit for me is buying trivial crap like HDMI cables and having them show up in 2 days. Also, Amazon does not give a crap if the family you share a subscription with are related. So that $80 can easily be split amongst 4 people.
I was picked on mercilessly as a kid. When I was younger, I just took it in stride, but as I got older it started to wear on me. However, I went the total opposite direction that Mike went. Instead of becoming just as antagonistic to those who were attacking me, I simply retreated within myself. I kept to myself and rarely spoke of my own volition. That silence had the unintended side-effect of unconsciously cultivating a perception of myself among my classmates. While I continued to be made fun of, nobody ever physically bullied me, and I believe that many of my classmates believed I was a ticking time bomb, and all I needed was a little push to come to school one day armed to the teeth. It should be noted that I graduated high school 2 years before Columbine, so there wasn't even a "word" for what they thought I might become. Even the few friends I had, who knew that I was basically harmless, I would have no trouble believing that they thought the same thing, just a little.
Like Mike, I have found it hard to shake those tendencies as an adult, much to my detriment. My social skills have atrophied to almost nonexistence, I have absolutely no self-confidence, and I still have suicidal thoughts, though not nearly as often as in my youth. My point, I guess, is that no matter way you deal with bullying as a kid, whether it's to fight back or to isolate yourself or anything in-between, the outcome is pretty bad as it pertains to your personal growth as a person. I have a long way to go to get to where I want to be as a person, but even though I took a different route than Mike, it seems we're walking down the same path.
tl;dr: It's comforting in a way to know that you're not alone on the road to trying to "fix" what's broken inside yourself. I know that I'm not alone having read Mike's post, and hopefully Mike and anybody else in the same position can read my words and know they aren't alone either.
Thanks for letting me vent