#it is normal to have a worksona. this is called Being Professional and it is part of the social contract

[shinelikethunder]

the night of Severance brain rot continues

calling it now that Mark's excruciating ep1 conversation about "well of course they called it the Great War and not WWI, because WWII... hadn't... happened yet" is going to come back around as foreshadowing

probably of some form of multiple severance

would not be surprised to encounter some innie-within-an-innie Inception bullshit at some point as a plot twist, but if i had to lay down money, it'd be on disposable selves as s2's next big thing -- bring them into existence to experience your pain and discomfort for you and then "mercifully" snuff them out, because gosh, waking the same one back up over and over just to endure more pain would be cruel don'tchaknow. just make a new one next time! clean slate, we promise, we've tested it extensively! and you know, if you have super sensitive confidential tasks that even a week-old worksona would start asking awkward questions about.... lucky you, we've got a chip for that now.

idk i just feel like, unless the scenes that bring it up ARE a foreshadowing goldmine, s1 does not include enough payoff for making its lead and viewpoint character.... a former history teacher. whose other self has been cut off from any knowledge of history, personal or otherwise. the rest of the show is NOT subtle about the unavoidability of being embedded in history or the danger of not knowing it.

and since it's all but spelled out by the end of s1 that the "normal" severed workers are also guinea pigs for fucked-up little experiments about the exact boundaries of memory access, whether it's playing personalized guilt-triggering stressors at subliminal volume in the break room or staging elaborate psyops to see if people respond differently to their loved ones.... yeahhhh, gonna call it now. Mark being not only a distraught psyop-able widower unable to cope with his grief but also a history professor on the verge of professional breakdown, with whatever drives and priorities would lead someone into that profession, and a large store of background knowledge to test the limits of fuckery with semantic memory, isn't just Non-Coincidental. it's the other reason Lumon swooped in to recruit him.

[stormsbourne]

Listened to the podcast, it was pretty good minus a bit or bob. Just popping in to clarify something (cause I doubt either of us want to deal with the black sludge I'd vomit if allowed). The unprofessionalism with ■■■■ basically stems from a belief of being "real". Like their server would mock the idea that people just want her to be a faceless brand. When people really just wanted her to stop being an confrontational asshole and a blatant hypocrite at times.

yeah, this doesn’t really surprise me tbh. A lot of the stuff that happened with This Individual seems to happen because she doesn’t understand things like ... a guise of professionalism being required for the level of work she was doing. And like, I get it. You want to still have your personality shine through in your interactions and work, right? But this is hardly the first, nor will it be the last, case of someone’s lack of professionalism completely destroying their perception among fans. 

This speaks to me of being like, young and unaware of how the world works. There’s so much emphasis on not being “fake” among people on tumblr, and guys, like ... we’re all prisoners to capitalism, here. You have to put on your worksona and pretend to be a real professional to be respected, especially if you are a woman. I’m not going to go around making weed smoking jokes on my professional twitter, should I ever get published. You can’t convince me that the entire staff of Polygon doesn’t do weed, but the most they ever do about it is cautious jokeyjokes about weed in some of their boardgame videos. And even beyond professionalism, you like ... you act differently with your grandmother than you do with your friends. You act differently with your parents. The society we live in requires different performances for different contexts.

People wanting That Individual to be less confrontational, pick less fights, make less hot takes ... they don’t want her to be fake. They are just interacting with her in the context society has taught all of us: If you are running a creative project, unless it’s a very specific type of project, you’re generally expected to put on a professional manner. And she wouldn’t even have to be that professional! She could just quit calling Tavros fans chasers, or quit accusing Gamzee fans of being racist misogynists, or quit floundering for conspiracies about why people were uncomfortable with the Patreon structure. 

You don’t have to be fake!! but it would be nice if you seemed less hostile to the people who like your thing

also this entire sentiment is very funny because what most people hate about the hs brand twit is how Quirky and Relatable and I’m Not A Brand Just A Normal Folk Like You it’s trying to be