I remember some NPR story about some little "Autistic" girl who was obsessed with the new My Little Pony, had "Encyclopedic And More" knowledge of it, and she was also very lonely because she was an Obnoxious Geek --

-- and of course the real story was "she made a good friend."

The thing about the friend was that the friend was not an Obnoxious Geek, but the friend would listen to the little girl's infodumping without condescension.

Typical "complementarity without symmetry."

Importantly, the little girl's dad was like "MY DAUGHTER'S NOT SAD ANYMORE!"

It was basically a story about friendship and mental health.

Of course we all relate, we've all been mercilessly atomized by Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, if not Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Ma, who cares, FUCK YOU, THIS IS ABOUT ME, YOU'RE GOING TO LISTEN TO ME INFODUMP ABOUT *ME!*

Obviously, I scream into the Twitter abyss because I have no better options.

I do talk to a lot of you. I value what interactions we have.

But I've more to say than I could say without annoying or overwhelming someone.

That was especially true when I was writing last winter.

Whenever you ask "Why is someone doing that?" then an answer is always "Because it's the best thing they think that they can do at the time, based on the information that they have -- assuming that they're conscious and in control."

That's "RATIONALITY" in Economics. That's it.

If you don't want to go with "RATIONALITY," then you've got your fucking work cut out for you, dissecting ALL the underlying rules of human behavior, human psychology.

Good fucking luck. The current "authority crisis" most definitely extends to "psychology." It's Not All Truth.

My "friendship conundrum" here isn't really about "what I'm doing" so much as "when/why I started doing it, and preferring it to moping over my lack of The Friend."

I used to be more of an Obnoxious Geek about more concrete things. Bicycles, but other stuff also.

Now I'm what?

I am obnoxious and idiosyncratic, and look at me dumping right now, but it's not the same as when I'd infodump AT my first real girlfriend REGARDING something specific that I'd learned at the bicycle shop.

I started getting better at storytelling to infodump more effectively.

Whatever I'm an Obnoxious Geek about, it's not as simple as My Little Pony or bicycles.

If I were to jump into your DMs right now and say "HOLY SHIT, I LEARNED SOMETHING AMAZING TODAY, I GOTTA BREAK IT DOWN FOR YOU--"

it would be about what, exactly? Not Rainbow Dash's bicycle.

I still do little bursts of Obnoxious Geek, like when I was ranting at my Twitter friend about Neon Genesis Evangelion.

But it's not like it used to be. I could've foregone that particular rant.

Maybe I'm just better at stitching things together myself? Look at me going now.

If you had to ask me what I consistently strive to write about, and think about, and discuss, I might reply --

-- uh, "symbols and what they mean to people."

That's as generic as it gets. It's basically discussing "what Being Fucking Human is." So I'll discuss... everything.

Not just anything, but everything. Or you might say "anything in sight," since I can't keep track of everything at once, even though I can write the symbol that is: "everything."

It's all fair. Though I'm not PARTICULARLY esoteric. I'm "undergrad college class" esoteric at best.

I think that, at some point, I developed the foregone conclusion that I cannot easily tell a story about "what exactly is on my mind."

Pretty arrogant. I'm not that smart. But it's really because I don't obsess over SPECIFIC things LIKE I USED TO, like "Rainbow Dash's bicycle."