S2 Ep1 : A Series of Short Thoughts

I'm back. We're not doing 1000 words a day again. This will be chilled out. The ratings always drop after the first season anyways. If you want to reread any of those first blogs, I've reposted them on this new site. Last time we were fundraising towards The Water Project but this time around, I'm going to leave a link in my linktree to a different cause for each post. There's no fundraising goal, but if you've the spare cash then feel free to donate. Let's get started.

After a year and a half's hiatus, Boguey Blog is back and uhhhh-er than ever. I meant to bring it back nearly a year ago but it ended up turning into an increasingly manic series of notes I'd jot in my phone simply titled, 'A collection of short thoughts: both drunk and sober' and this is that but with a touch of censoring to dial back the particularly manic qualities. Enjoy.

• Importance of accountability to online creators: legacy news agencies have laws and regulations levied against them which today's one-stop-shop creators are seemingly exempt from. We can't rely on a comment section to curb misinformation without tumbling into a pipeline that we don't see the end of. Framing an opinion as a fact is something we relegate to bottom-feeding talk shows. Today's internet personas rely on a cult of personality to bypass these criticisms.

• The Spoon Theory: I'm short on spoons.

• On male body dysmorphia - a list of things I currently hate :

-casting ripped 25 year olds to play 15 year old schoolkids ; stop I beg. The older I get the more painful it becomes to watch.

- that trend where everyone was into 'dad bods' except it was a completely normal body type.

-I don't think that destigmatising men using make up goes hand in hand with aiding male body dysmorphia.

• I feel like I'm in a really bad Hitchcock film.

• Intentions don't always equal impact. Be wary.

• My mind often functions like a broken lawnmower.

My goal is to turn it on,

rather than over indulge myself in my safety net and procrastinate life away.

I'm pulling the chord. No go. I'm yanking it, thrashing it. Nope.

I'm gently gliding the chord, like a fine lil lawnmower should be treated. No cigar.

I'm hunched over in the hot sun pulling this thing, sweating, my arm's getting sore and I'm starting to think I've pulled something in my back and

all I'm getting in return is a measly splutter from the thing. I can't afford another lawnmower and I have people coming over tomorrow that will

closely inspect the quality precision trim that I should be delivering to this grass.

As the sun sets I acquiesce with the lawnmower,

deciding to myself that I'll wait for a more opportune moment and cancel my plans for the time being.

• I both love and hate the idea of rosebuds. I will not explain further.

• I don't understand the criticism of older generations on Gen Z and Gen Alpha on using social media. At this point, it's clear that with apps like TikTok and Instagram and everything else that we've created/we're creating a generation of anxiety fuelled egomaniacs with the attention span of an onion. Our public image, even when it's presented as candid is painfully cultivated and a powder keg for self esteem issues. The trend of pretty Instagram graphics peppered with misinformation or out of context clips with a horde of misdirected moths clinging on like it's nectar. Having such a constant stream of uninterrupted external stimulation that there's no room for the self. These things by themselves aren't new, but it's just so fucking prolific . , , ,

, . , but why are users being blamed?

This isn't an accident. This is by design. Imagine you bought a car and months after buying it, news come out that the manufacturers have been misleading consumers and that it actually produces three times the regulated amount of carbon emissions. Are you going to be blamed for your carbon footprint? Obviously not. I hate iPads with all my essence but if parental neglect has been industrialised and monetised, the wave of snot and uncovered coughs will only ever increase from here on out.

• You are not late, you are not early. You are very much on time.

• On child stars: normally when people are going through a difficult time in their lives, they'd say something like, "I'm not feeling myself." They know themselves that they had an identity before this tough time and part of their struggle includes trying to return to that or atleast a version of themselves that they're more proud of. With child stars, they weren't allowed to mature enough before multiple different versions of themselves were projected onto them. When they say, "I'm not feeling myself" part of the problem is not having a true self to return to.

• As a wise man once said, "when I'm dead just throw me in the trash." - Danny DeVito, at some point.

• When in doubt, remember that my secondary school counsellor suggested smiling more and thinking more positive !!=)

• Things I don't like about TikTok / a zoomer rants about zoomers

- that phases where all the comments under celebrities' TikToks *cough doja cough* was shit like "OMG doja stoppp😭😭", "does she know she's famous", "bestie you posted one of ur drafts💀" and the subsequent phase of people mocking them and becoming as generalised and uninspired as the people they're criticising.

- I found the NPC trend quite funny at first but now it's at the point where everyone that feeds into that trend has a really harmful solipsistic mindset where they're just berating people going on with their day like normal. It gives very 2015 YouTube prank channel to me. If you're supposed to be the 'main character' then this isn't a particularly good story.

- Baby talk thirst traps. If often fetishises Japanese school kids and normalises pedos which (and I know this is a hot take) I'm not about.

- Any TikTok that starts with, "let's talk about..." or specifically, "We need to talk more about...". I feel bad for disliking this cause it's usually about an important social issues but treating contemporary issues like any other conversation starter and not offering any avenues for a potential solution or something that might alleviate the problem (i.e. donation page, petition, resource site etc) feels very pandering to me and just makes me cringe a lil bit.

-Reaaaaallly fucking hated that trend of, "Tell me you know your boyfriend won't chat on you without telling me you know your boyfriend won't cheat on you". I think anyone that seriously participated in that trend is a fucking cunt and doesn't deserve their partner. They'll take a candid video of their partner playing with Lego or just enjoying their quirky hobby and their own is there implicitly mocking them for it ? Get in the bin prick. It's boasting about an imbalanced power dynamic in your relationship without an ounce of self-irony.

- Willfully insecure people. Namely, the segment of white-hetero-boy- tiktok that are eternally horny and have not seen a blade of grass in decades that absolutely hate the sight of happiness.

- Seeing the comment, "This is a bad take hun" on an even slightly political video. EXPLAIN. Point evidence explain link. Cite something. Stop leaving things in the air. You're not obligated to explain like but why bother voicing your opinion if you don't even believe in it enough to get into an argument with strangers on the internet.

- People who get into arguments with strangers on the internet. No one is listening. People like to feel right and validated and they will scream into the void until they tire themselves out so just let them. If the baby throws their toys out of the pram, yeet that fucking pram.

- I don't actually hate this one but: Teens Christopher Columbus-ing empathy/maturity. Brother, last Christmas wasn't 'off' this year. You've just developed an awareness beyond your own experiences, it ain't that deep.

• "Money won't bring you happiness" Fuck you yes it would.

• This blog (despite all my protests about charities and the like) was made purely for my vanity.

• I use my sister Nuala as a strong barometer of my own morality. She points North.

• I am not a bottomless pit.

• I don't care much for records but if you do get me one, get me the Inside soundtrack cause that shit slaps.

• I find it difficult to talk about my experience in uni without bringing up the sunk-cost fallacy.

• There's something that sounds irresistible to me about being cast away on a deserted island for a year in very Tom Hanks way. Maybe a lil wood cabin premade for me but other than that its pretty Bear Grylls (no piss tho, strictly coconut water).

• I find power plays, ego displays and unconstrained contempt really exasperating. With that said, I rarely challenge it as I prefer to silently cringe to myself. I feel that if I were to give you the time of day and dig deeper into you, I would go away feeling hollow, and as if you sapped some measure of hope and joy out of me. I feel like this veneer about you has evolved from a lifeless cynicism that you approach life with. Base biology. Input and output. Social darwinism. Ooga booga big stick diplomacy. I would love to see you progress into a more fully developed person but it's not my responsibility to change you. Because you refuse to treat any interaction as a learning experience, being around you will remain to be a matter of emotional survival until I can move on.

• Reconciling myself with mediocrity: For clarity, I don't see myself as mediocre. I'm writing a blog, so that means I'm better than you. I've had a few setbacks in the little timeline that I've written out for myself in my mind's eye over the past year. A lot of me is determined to have a legacy - usually a good one. I feel very disorientated when the dreams I had set for myself when I was 10/15/20 years old don't correspond with who I am now. Could I have done that thing when I was 18? Probably, but I simply don't care right now. My objectives right now are so far removed from who I was then that the thought of putting time and energy into them now feels exhausting. As a result of all this double guessing and re-evaluating, I try to retrain my brain to be more excited for the person I could be in the future. Sure, I might not be terribly proud of the person who I am right now, but I've the leeway to make mistakes, to grow, and to be different and even if that's not always a conscious effort, then I think that by the morning, there's a new day of mistakes to look forward to.

• I'd unironically really love to be a dad. Not right now, I would be dogshit as a dad right now. If it's not a baby then I'll take a dog, a cat, a pigeon - anything I can pitpat on the head really.

• I think the advice, "just follow your passions" is pure keek. If you knew what they were, you'd be doing that already.

• Let go or be dragged.

• Kill Matthew Morrison.

• It's not parapraxis. Just let a man stutter in peace.

• I think it will take a while of unlearning that not everything has to follow an elitist and suffocating formula of school to uni to a career to your biannual holiday to Benidorm before I feel more comfortable in my own brain, but I am willing to wait.

• Pt.2 of things I don't like about TikTok

- How American everything is. I think I just mustn't like middle class America (😎very woke of me ano) or atleast TikTok has worsened my impression of them. In a large part, yanks will assume that everyone else on the app is American and so the way they transport their 'culture' is really cringey to me. Just seeing Americans in the wild being unabashedly American e.g. it feels oddly dystopian whenever they present their shit standards of living, from doing a pledge of allegiance, to school shooter drills, to paying a cool grand for a trip in the ambulance, to a country catered towards cars rather than people and not having contactless card payments (they don't have contactless card payments???) all to be so casually referenced in a quirky little comment section. I think yanks are just the Emperor's New Clothes of tiktok for me now.

- I actually like this one cause it's just come up on my fyp but people deep cleaning cars or second hand shoes or just quaint house renovations. All that shit get my rocks well and truly off.

- The yassification of serious topics. Watching a clip of the Heard/Depp trial along with frame jumps and it cut along to anime music feels really fucking discordant. Even if Heard or Depp are as vindictive or angelic as you think they are, treating someone's intimate details like content for a reality show screams to me that you're completely out of touch with reality. I understand to some extent that it's inevitable and you shouldn't be surprised when a dead corpse attracts flies but I still think it's scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of how we find our entertainment. I feel that girlbossifying potential victims of a domestic abuse doesn't help them or others in their situation. To me, whether it be this trial or anything else, the plague of yassification is how a group of digitally and culturally literature but emotionally stunted people approach topics that they have little to no grasp on. Often with this yassification, it comes in tandem with putting the victim or any allies on a pedestal. Later on, when they then discover that this victim or ally is in fact a real, fallible human and does something they don't agree with, the carpet is swept from under them. A fandom turns on its head and behaves like they've been betrayed. My brother in christ, you just ended up hurting your own feelings.

• Having undiagnosed ADHD would make a lot of sense and offer some perspective if nothing else.

• An extract from the first note I made in my phone captioned, 'Season 2 Episode 1: Cringe or based?' I wrote it when I was home from a night out and was full of motivation and ready to start this blog back up the next day.

In my mind this is a hard reset where I can have this great mindless catharsis.

... it's memorable to me now and it's convincing me that I'm following a vague path of self-fulfillment that I'm genuinely content with (Sober Hugh, 6 months after - eh? (Sober Hugh, 9 months after - still kinda outta pocket but aight)). In sum, if I talk to you in the next month, I'll use this blog as a counterfeit for me personality and I'm more than okay with that (Sober Hugh, 6 months after - still extremely valid (Sober Hugh, 9 months after - "")).

Back from the dead - thanks for reading again reader friend.

The charities for this week are Respect UK and Women's Aid NI. You can find the links to donate, information and resources for yourself in my linktree.