Two nights ago, I was at a birth­day par­ty. In it, some­one (name pre­served be­cause you don't know the guy) said some­thing like "sym­bols are use­ful to ral­ly peo­ple for a fight­".

I an­swered "if I ev­er need to ral­ly peo­ple to a fight, I would make sure to choose some un­cool sym­bol (maybe a naked mole rat, ram­pan­t), so I at least know they are there be­cause they un­der­stand the is­sue, and not be­cause of cool mar­ket­ing". Which is prob­a­bly a pret­ty stupid thing to say, but:

1. I was on my 3rd fer­­net

2. I was trolling the oth­­er guy

3. Fer­­net troll is drunk

4. I kin­­da be­lieve it

It's stupid be­cause on­ly ac­cept­ing the help of true be­liev­ers and not ac­tive­ly try­ing to make peo­ple be­lieve are good ways to en­sure you have a very mo­ti­vat­ed tiny mi­nor­i­ty on your side (Lin­ux Year of The Desk­top anal­o­gy ges here).

But I kin­da be­lieve it any­way, be­cause be­ing ug­ly and loved is warmer than be­ing pret­ty and loved, be­cause be­ing dif­fi­cult and ap­pre­ci­at­ed is more valu­able than be­ing ac­ces­si­ble and liked. But that on­ly works if you are tru­ly dif­fi­cult, and not in­ten­tion­al­ly so, that's just be­ing a poseur. And tru­ly ug­ly, not Char­l­ize-Theron-on-­fat-­make­up ug­ly.

So, to what point is any of us hon­est­ly an­noy­ing? That, friend­s, is the is­sue here. And if I ev­er have to lead oth­ers in­to some­thing, I hope I do it as my­self, and they come be­cause of a rea­son that is theirs and not mine.

I am not here to con­vince peo­ple. I am here to know peo­ple.