straddling the outskirts of a lot of different social circles for my whole life, feeling like an outsider who has to prove themself, has really helped me to understand the sheer stupidity behind cliquishness and the need for social inclusion that pushes us to accept this. and

this isn't just something with implications for how we socialize, it's inherently political. political organizations are cliques, and oftentimes shitty people are able to wield power largely because everyone wants to feel like they belong. twitter is just an accelerated form of

all of this, especially when we consider that if anything can meaningfully be called "cancellation," it's transmitted and enforced through a need for inclusion, because if everyone who you want to like you is calling x out then maybe you should call x out too, or at least not

come to x's defense despite the fact that you know and can feel deep down that x is being called out for bullshit reasons, or at least ones that don't merit such a strong response.

now, as not just a perpetual outsider, but also someone who is not neurotypical and has

significant struggles with understanding social rules, putting them into practice, and not coming off "weird" or annoying, this whole dynamic terrifies the fuck out of me. it doesn't help that my mind fills in ambiguity in communication with the worst case, that someone hates me,

nor does it help that i experience being socially rejected as a nearly physical pain. social interaction in general is terrifying because of this, but all of the problems are cranked up to ridiculous levels with twitter culture and, dare i say it, "cancel culture," because people

aren't allowed to make mistakes, they must be annihilated. i feel like i'm playing a board game and trying to reverse-engineer the rules by looking at everyone else who got an instruction booklet to look through, and if i mess up it's game over. everything also tends to get

mashed into a mega-discourse, so there's an ongoing tacit "collective opinion" that has to be adhered to, and something that's just kinda iffy is made definitively unacceptable and reason enough for jumping down someone's throat.

obviously the point i'm trying to make here is

that this stuff is orders of magnitude worse for anyone more on the neurodivergent end of things, and i'm fucking sick of it. i wish i had a bit more in the way of definitive statements to make, but i at least want to open this discussion up

i'm not arguing that we should just be fine with everyone going around yelling slurs constantly, but what's happening now isn't good either