wankgate | 251: back in my day wank meant something

251: back in my day wank meant something

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i hate how transactional friendships can be on dw. i cant even count how many times people acted like my best friend until i stopped rping with them. then im suddenly not important anymore and even if we were talking every day they usually stop right then and there and give short, uninterested replies when i try to talk to them.

maybe i just suck and am only fun when i tag though, idk. but it still sucks to put months or even years into a relationship that only lasts as long as i can give them tags. i feel like ive wasted so much time trying to befriend people who see me as a fun dispenser only

as a general rule, do not count someone here as a friend unless you both regularly talk to each other about non-fandom things

if you bitch about your life and they listen and they bitch about theirs and you listen, you're friends

if you're just talking every day about dean fucking goku that's done as soon as they quit playing dean

but what if you talk every day about your life and other things but that stops too once youre done rping with them?

ngl this is hard to imagine and hasn't happened to me personally, if i get to the point where i know someone's irl name and situation and vice versa and i'm asking them if they got their sink fixed or whatever, we just stay friends. i have friends on discord whom i haven't rped with for years but we still talk

its happened to me a few times, so im starting to think its probably my fault its happened

do you talk about negative experiences a lot? it's been proven, it's not just a truism, that venting your anxieties too often can and will make other people view you negatively and drive friendships into the ground

+1

this is it. way too many people in dwrp are relentlessly negative and carry on and on and on about their mental problems and physical health and how they're too broke to do anything and all of their struggles forever. it's a problem on many parts of the internet that no one has a sense of privacy anymore, but it's especially bad here. no one needs to know that you had a bad bowel movement or that your mom yelled at you again.

+1

can't tell you how many people i've had to friend dump for this very reason. no one wants to be friends with an energy vampire who never does anything besides complain, it drags down everyone around them and makes them miserable too.

yeah, i still have people added on plurk that i haven't rped with in more than 10 years but we're still friends because we talk about non-rp stuff these days. i've even had the chance to meet up with a whole bunch of them irl at cons and the like.

i'm probably that person you're describing

i just tend to have trouble keeping in touch with people if we're not doing an activity together. personally, i'm like this with irl friends, too -- i'll go long periods without talking to them very much, and then we'll sign up for rec volleyball together and just pick up where we left off.

idk i think framing it as a "fun dispenser" scenario is unkind to both yourself and to the other person. situational friendships are pretty common, especially in hobby spaces. i would guess that they were just having fun with you in the hobby you share, not maliciously pretending to be a fake friend so they could get those sweet sweet tags.

It’s also common for neurodivergent people to be unable to focus their social energy enough to keep up with large amounts of friends. it doesn't mean you’re viewed as less, just the current point in time means their energy is focused more immediately elsewhere.

I have friends I run with that i generally only see often during warm months, and they’re still my friends even if we go months without talking.

this is it for me

if we're not doing an activity together i forget you exist, sorry. same irl too.

+1

I'm just bad at coming up with things to talk about

ive only done this intentionally once, and it was because the more i got to know the other rper, the more i realized they were a rather unpleasant person lmao

their writing was okay, but eventually it just wasn't the worth dealing with their negativity and vague conservatism on a daily basis, but you can't just tell someone you want to go back to being acquaintances without the risk of losing the friendship entirely. i didn't hate them or anything, they were just better in small doses

so i stopped rping with them in the hopes they'd start clinging to someone new instead when they found new rp partners. now we just chat when something relevant to our shared fandom comes up, and it's much better

it kinda sounds like "sometimes you just suck" when i put it that way lmao but i think it's more just, you need to realize you may not actually have anything in common beyond rp with these friends, so even if you did talk about other things some of the time, if 95% of your conversations were about rp, then you're going to lose 95% of the reason to talk to each other

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251: back in my day wank meant something

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ayrt

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ayrt

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+1

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