this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
787 points (99.1% liked)

Greentext

5686 readers
755 users here now

This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.

Be warned:

If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
all 33 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] tanisnikana@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Let’s go, Akutagawa!

[–] booly@sh.itjust.works 31 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.

[–] InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

Lamo that's what I was thinking

[–] exploitedamerican@lemm.ee 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Would be funnier if the last entry was an ellipses or “fml” and the third entry said “Ernest Hemingway” instead of “he” lmao

[–] benignintervention@lemmy.world 66 points 5 days ago (2 children)

I had that experience with David Foster Wallace and his commencement address. The first half was exciting intellectually and by the last half I realized it was a cry for help

[–] Wav_function@lemmy.world 19 points 5 days ago (2 children)

How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone.

:(

[–] Sylence@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 days ago

For me it was a combination of gaining true self-acceptance, recognising that there was the possibility of personal joy and fulfillment despite humanity being irredeemably lost, and starting to work toward long term goals.

Everyone's experience will be different, but by focusing on myself I found that I became someone who was never alone because I found a rich group of people who shared similar interests and cared about me. If you're feeling stuck in your own head I would genuinely recommend seeking professional help and think about trying Psilocybin as the mental shifts can be more profound than you might imagine. At least they were for me.

With another ten years of hindsight, it's pretty apparent

[–] massive_bereavement@fedia.io 14 points 5 days ago

As far as I know he did his best to find an alternative to the antidepressants that he couldn't take any longer due to allergies and tried different therapies with no avail.

This seems to me it was a condition less linked to environmental stress-inducing factors and more of an internal condition.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 28 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I'm fortunate that the author with my pessimism is Pratchett. Humans, a bunch of terrible little assholes that I love and treasure

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 12 points 4 days ago

Idk I wouldn't call Sir Pratchett as much a pessimist as I would an absurdist.

GNU Sir Terry Pratchett

acknowledging complexity is not in itself pessimism. it often makes uncut pessimism very difficult.

[–] CaJoasca_Baloon@lemm.ee 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Yeah like as a writer (hobbyist) I would say that a lot of writing (me, creative fiction) is just based on IRL experiences and modifying them to fit your world, even some characters are reflections of the writer that wrote them, whether intentional or not.

So I'm not exactly completely caught off guard but you know, I don't expect any name I come across to be already dead especially if they're not known.

[–] Doctor_Satan@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

[insert all my favorite musicians and Anthony Bourdain]

[–] emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 4 days ago

Music also. Cant begin to count all the great songs that have really resonated with me and then find out the artist overdosed or blew their brains out.

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

So there is this guy Christopher Johnson McCandless, AKA "Alexander Supertramp" and he wanted to survive amongst nature and spent like his entire life prepping to be able to do it. He was inspired by a bunch of authors who wrote about survivalism and the frontier. Him and Carl McCunn were both well read and educated.

They both stepped into the Canadian Wilderness, at different times and different places, and both died alone with their journals, no one to call to for help in their time of need. McCandless was a 67 lbs fresh corpse when they found him, he ate some "alpine nut" purple flower legumes with antimetabolites and started to feel too weak to forage. McCunn shot himself, simple as.

Mental Illness apparently expresses itself in very strange ways for some people. Avoid isolationism if you want to live.

[–] DesolateMood@lemm.ee 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Is McCandless the one from the book Into the Wild? Iirc he had a pretty sweet scholarship lined up, but fucked off without telling anyone so he could "live off the land" in Alaska

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

And importantly DIDN'T BRING A MAP.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

Oh yeah, wasn't he also like only a km or two from a settlement or something like that?

[–] Meltdown@lemmy.world 13 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I too have read David Foster Wallace/Ernest Hemingway/Virginia Woolf

[–] fossphi@lemm.ee 17 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Anybody got any recommendations for more stuff like that? Something like this which I read quite recently was No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. It's a bit less philosophical than most other books like this (stuff like The Stranger by Camus) but still a very gripping book.

I never thought I'd be asking for book suggestions on a greentext community, but why the hell not

[–] hector@sh.itjust.works 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse was eye-opening and I remember reading as a profound experience. I know this sounds ridiculous but this book was the feeling you get when someone on a forum has the exact problem as you and explore it in depth.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Herman Hesse is drastically underrated in general IMO. so many great books. I enjoyed Siddharta and Glasperlenspiel (both in german).

[–] hector@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 days ago

I'm having trouble understanding Siddhartha but still having a good time reading it ;).

I'm not super privy to this new paradigm of spirituality he goes in depth into !

[–] Sooooooooooooomebody@lemmus.org 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I, too, have read Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher

[–] dumpsterac1d@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

Immediately thought of this

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

> read a book
> author already dead

why do I even bother?

[–] LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Because a book is the prime method of conveying ideas way after you're dead?

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 days ago
[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

Same but physics and the author was Ludwig Von Boltzmann.

[–] Matriks404@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago

Enjoy the life. The rest is optional.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 4 days ago

If the book was successful, the author probably has more money than the anon. It's looking bleak, anon.