Horror

“for me, one of the most interesting parts of being part of pastagang is noticing everyone else’s reactions to it. i feel like I’m observing something that’s unusual enough to be interesting.

and people’s experiences seems to be very varied. and it’s interesting comparing them all.

i mean, i think I’ve always been interested in ideas that toe a delicate path between causing outrage and causing inspiration. there’s power in an idea that causes enough initial shock that onlookers can’t help but keep looking: for a moment longer, then another one, then another. and the longer they look, the more some people seem to get either angered, or drawn in, or both.

it really surprised me how viscerally some people reacted (and continue to react) to normalise sharing scrappy fiddles, for example. it really hits a nerve / sore spot for some people. i assume it’s because it scares people or something. or they think the mantra makes things worse.

likewise, many of pastagang’s current ideas seem to bother certain people. for example, the automatic attribution that pastagang gets has caused a non-zero number of people to quit. and many people are averse to the tendency to let code die willy nilly, and many people oppose the fact that everyone is in charge and anyone can decide anything about pastagang: often not believing / agreeingthat that’s true in the first place.

there truly is a certain discomfort in many of these ideas. i feel this discomfort too. i find them scary, in the same way that i found “normalise sharing scrappy fiddles” scary at first. but for me, that’s the whole point. there’s no point in saying a mantra if it doesn’t challenge me in any way. the purpose of a mantra is to push me towards something i want to be pushed towards. if i was already comfortable with it, there would be no need to repeat it to myself so many times. it’s self-talk. it’s something i need to here— i mean hear.

the truth is scary. lies are not. if a mantra scares me, it’s because i perceive some truth in it, or at the very least, there’s some possibility for it to become true / for it to grow into truth. that’s what horror is: it’s when you know what’s going to happen and you dread it. you can deny it all you want, but you can see it coming, and you want to look away but you can’t help it: you can’t stop looking and looking and staring down your fate. and you know— no this is deeply personal to me. you can’t tell me that this is all uhh

i don’t think that it’s fair to say that this isn’t deeply individually personal or you’re any different from the rest of us because you—

you don’t know me or anyone else here and you don’t know what these symbols or symbolisms or whatever have yous mean to anyone but you don’t need to because there’s something that we do share and it’s uhh and i just— just don’t you get it? it’s about control!”, said Lil Guy, before leaning back in his chair and taking a deep breath.

Crow gently lowered their clipboard and peered upwards towards the ghost in front of them. Staring down their patient, they spoke gently.

“Let code die”, they said.

“Thank you Crow. I think I needed to hear that.”

“The choppy speech towards the end makes me hesitant to give my two cents because it evokes the imagery of being relentlessly misunderstood or talked-over, and maybe it kind of needs space to breathe. I don’t know. More than one way to read into all of it.”

“…what?”

“Sorry, just thinking aloud I suppose.”

“do it”

“Do what? Give you my two cents?”

“do it”

“Even though you’ve expressed such sensitivity to criticism that you’re hallucinating half of an argument? Why?”

“DO IT”

Crow pauses. It’s a long pause. A cautious pause.

“You and the rest of pastagang as a whole are full of interesting ideas, Lil Guy, but I must confess that I don’t agree with or even necessarily understand all of them. Can the truth can be scary or uncomfortable? Yes, but it doesn’t always have to be. If anything, I’d argue there’s a lot of pain in the world caused by people believing in lies, whether by cognitive dissonance or by hapless ignorance. However, for the most part I don’t think there’s much of a correlation like you suggest. It simply depends on the idea.

You know, it might be because I became involved with pastagang later than you, or we’re just in different social circles, but I’ve never actually seen a single person react negatively to the scrappy fiddles thing. Everyone I’ve encountered loves it, myself included. I thought that might have been worth the mention.”

and then they jammed