Borja Martinena

Writing this post started around the end of May 2024
Huge thanks to all the people that proofread, helped or served as inspiration for this post, you probably know who you are.

What follows are six really short stories, built from conversations that I have re-imagined and put in dialogue form. A lot of them are missing a lot of context and may seem like snippets in a larger story. That is because they are. This lack of context is deliberate, sometimes to protect the identity of the people in the stories, but also because part of the purpose is for the reader to fill in the details with their own experiences. A friend of mine who’s proofread some of these stories told me one of them reminded them of a moment in their life, so feel free to imagine and understand these words however you find interesting, and do expect some of them to feel a bit cringe.

Some of these stories are mine, or are as much mine as any lived experience belongs to us; some only tangentially, misunderstood stories that seemed to fit the narrative; others not at all. None of them, however, are real, even when they are based on real conversations that I have had, they are but a stylized memory.

Story one has three parts.
Story two has one part.
Story three has three parts.
Story four has two parts.
Story five has two parts.
Story six is deliberately left incomplete.

Some thought has been put into the order in which they are arranged. This however doesn’t mean there’s any truth to this order. To me these stories, together, have a larger point, and this order is the way I have found to try to convey that point in the most hopeful way possible.

# [1.1]

Ros: You know… I think I’ve developed a bit of a crush on you.
Silke: …
Ros: I’m sorry, I don’t mean to put any pressure on you, this isn’t something that needs an answer.
Silke: Thanks… I’m flattered, I guess.
Ros: …
Silke: But I don’t think I feel the same way, I’m sorry.
Ros: That’s alright, I didn’t believe you would.
Silke: …
Ros: I’m just… trying something new out.
Silke: …
Ros: Seeing how it feels you know?
Silke: …
Ros: To not be scared of saying something like that.
Silke: It’s still uncomfortable.
Ros: I guess…
Silke: Like, how am I supposed to treat you now?
Ros: Exactly the same, I’d hope.
Silke: That’s not so easy to do, you know?
Ros: …
Silke: What is that to you anyways?
Ros: What’s what?
Silke: What did you say exactly, you have a crush? What does that entail?
Ros: Hmmm… I guess, right now, it means I’ve enjoyed spending this time alone with you.
Silke: That’s not it.
Silke: Or at least, not all of it.
Ros: You’re right, you’re right. I also think you’re very pretty.
Silke: Yeah, sure, whatever…
Ros: What is it?
Silke: Well clearly it’s something more.
Ros: Is it?
Silke: Yeah! People don’t go around saying they have a crush on everyone they find attractive after two coffees.
Ros: Well it’s not just that I find you attractive…
Silke: Is it not? Really?
Ros: I don’t think so, no…
Silke: Even if it’s something else, that’s not why people have crushes.
Ros: Hearing the word ‘crush’ so much makes me feel like a middle schooler again.
Silke: Your word, not mine.
Ros: I know, I know…
Silke: …
Ros: …
Ros: Does it have to be more?
Silke: It is, usually.
Ros: I get that, but I know how I feel.
Silke: Do you?
Ros: I wanna think I do.
Silke: Then if you must know, I also had a great time… and you’re not bad looking yourself.
Ros: Thanks
Silke: I just… I don’t think this is gonna be anything more…
Ros: That’s perfectly ok.
Silke: Alright…
Silke: Wanna come upstairs for a tea or something?

# [2.1]

Eike: So… how’s your love life?
Cora: Love life? Do I even have such a thing?
Eike: Oh come on, everyone does, in some way or another.
Cora: I guess I have a couple of guys after me.
Eike: Uhhh, tell me more.
Cora: I don’t know… It’s nothing really.
Cora: One of them I kinda like.
Eike: So it’s not nothing.
Cora: For me it is.
Eike: Why?
Cora: Well think about it.
Cora: In my religion, if I start dating this guy, I’m expected to be thinking of marriage.
Eike: That’s true I guess.
Cora: It’s not like there’s a lot of margin too.
Cora: I already have that one ex.
Eike: Isn’t that sad?
Cora: Having an ex?
Eike: No… Why would I think that’s sad? I mean the pressure.
Cora: It’s fine.
Eike: We see the world very differently you and I.
Cora: You think so?
Eike: Well, yeah…
Cora: …
Eike: Can we talk religion?
Cora: Sure, feel free.
Eike: I think it’s your prison.
Cora: That’s harsh. I don’t think so.
Eike: …
Cora: …
Cora: It protects me in a way doesn’t it? From heartbreak?
Eike: By what?! Making sure that one decision in your life is final?
Cora: Yeah
Eike: That’s not saving anyone.
Eike: You can fall out of love in a marriage.
Cora: That’s an attitude problem. Love is voluntary.
Eike: Sure, but even then, falling out of love is not the biggest danger.
Cora: What do you mean?
Eike: I mean violence, for example, not everyone is good.
Cora: You just have to choose well I guess.
Eike: …
Cora: Look I get what you mean.
Cora: But this is what I believe.
Cora: And that’s part of who I am.
Eike: I know… It’s just…
Eike: This is the third time I’ve met you.
Cora: What do you mean?
Eike: Well I first met you in [redacted], then I visited you in your city, and now here we are. Cora: Not for long.
Eike: I know, but my point is, that’s three different Coras.
Cora: It’s three different Eikes too.
Eike: Well, it feels like you thrive in the freedom that comes with being away from home.
Cora: …
Eike: To me, that’s enough of a reason.
Cora: That’s not my religion though.
Eike: …
Cora: Whenever I’m abroad I still believe the same.
Eike: I know, I know.
Cora: I never break any rules, or do anything I shouldn’t.
Eike: …
Cora: All the rest, that’s not religion. It’s family, it’s culture, it’s part of my situation, sure, but the problem is not religion.
Eike: …
Cora: …
Eike: You’ve seen me through my last romance.
Cora: Mostly the end, but yeah sure.
Eike: True, I guess. But more to my point.
Eike: You’ve seen how much it hurt me.
Cora: Understandably so.
Eike: I’d still do it again.
Cora: Are you not over her?
Eike: No, I don’t mean that.
Cora: Then-
Eike: I mean it’s lived experience.
Eike: What else is there?
Eike: Sure I got hurt and that really sucked.
Eike: But I loved, and learnt, and I’m a different person now because of it.
Cora: …
Eike: Look, I don’t think I believe in “the one”.
Eike: But I hold some hope, that someday, I’ll find someone to grow with.
Eike: I don’t think I’ll know immediately.
Eike: But if and when I do, I hope to be the best person I can.
Eike: And the only way to grow is by learning.
Eike: And the only way to learn is by living.
Cora: …
Cora: I take offense.
Eike: To what?
Cora: You are basically implying that your life is better than mine.
Eike: …
Cora: That, because you do what you want, and sleep with whoever, your life is better. Better lived, more worth it, whatever, you get what I mean.
Eike: That’s not what I’m trying to say, no.
Cora: And pain isn’t always a great teacher.
Cora: You might change, sure, but who says it’s for the better?
Cora: Who says this past relationship didn’t make you more resentful, less trusting, less willing to believe that you are loved?
Eike: No one, I think it might have.
Cora: …
Eike: …
Cora: There is one more person.
Eike: Tell me about him. Him, right? Or her?
Cora: Him, idiot.
Cora: But I don’t think I will.
Eike: Come on, why shy on this one?
Cora: ‘Cause I’m not sure.
Eike: …
Cora: I’m not sure I really like him actually.
Cora: And it could never be, he’s not religious.
Eike: …
Cora: Talking about it wouldn’t make much sense, would it?
Eike: You know I think differently.
Cora: How about you then? Still sulking over the last one?
Eike: I guess, mostly.
Eike: There’s someone new though. I think she likes me.
Cora: Do you like her?
Eike: I don’t know, truly I’d rather not think about it.
Cora: Well aren’t you a model for openness?
Eike: Tit for tat then.
Cora: Maybe next time we see each other.
Eike: Might be never.
Cora: Let’s hope not.

# [3.1]

Oskar: Oh, by the way, I have a girl now.
Erik: Really?! You of all people?
Oskar: I know, surprising right? I won’t lie, I’d still love just sleeping around.
Erik: So what changed?
Oskar: Nothing really.
Erik: Dude…
Oskar: It’s just, nice to have someone there to be more vulnerable with.
Erik: I know…
Oskar: That’s all it is really. Someone for the lonelier moments.
Erik: That doesn’t sound very healthy.
Oskar: Oh yeah, for sure, it’s not.
Erik: Then why do it?
Oskar: Well… It’s not necessarily unhealthy right?
Erik: It might be.
Oskar: It feels good to me.
Erik: That’s cool, but is she aware of this dynamic?
Oskar: One hundred percent.
Erik: Then who am I to talk.
Oskar: Exactly! I’d even say she’s more aware than I am.
Erik: Doesn’t sound like that.
Oskar: Trust me, it is. She’s got everything she could ask for.
Erik: Alright, if you say so.
Oskar: She does. Plus the sex is pretty good too.
Erik: Okay, okay, I’ll take your word.

# [4.1]

Maisie: I gave up…
Acke: On what?
Maisie: My project, I can’t do it.
Acke: You mean…
Maisie: Yeah, I guess I’m not graduating this year.
Acke: I’m sorry…
Maisie: Or ever! Who knows?!
Acke: Don’t say that.
Maisie: Whatever -
Acke: You can try next semester.
Maisie: Again?
Acke: …
Maisie: I don’t think I want to.
Acke: Why tho? It’s just what? 6 more months? That’s nothing right?
Maisie: It’s not nothing.
Acke: In the grand scheme of things it is.
Maisie: It’s six more months wasted on something I don’t want.
Acke: …
Maisie: For what?!
Acke: …
Maisie: …
Maisie: I don’t think I’m going back.
Acke: Then what now?
Maisie: I DON’T FUCKING KNOW!
Acke: …
Maisie: I’m sorry, it’s just -
Acke: No worries.
Maisie: I really don’t know.
Acke: I’m here if you need anything…
Maisie: Sure, thanks…
Acke: …
Maisie: It’s all just… Too much pressure.
Acke: What is?
Maisie: Everything. I can’t handle it.
Acke: …
Maisie: I think I just need time.
Acke: Yeah, that makes sense.
Maisie: No, I mean time alone.
Acke: Oh, I see…
Maisie: …
Acke: Okay…
Maisie: I can’t be in a relationship as my life crumbles. That’s not fair.
Acke: Nobody here is asking for fairness.
Maisie: Well, perhaps somebody should!
Acke: …
Maisie: I just can’t handle it, is that better?
Acke: I guess…
Maisie: Look, I’m sorry…
Acke: Yeah, no -
Maisie: I really am, it’s just… not the time.
Acke: Alright.
Maisie: …
Acke: Will it ever be?
Maisie: Maybe… I don’t know.

# [5.1]

Lars: It’s been a while.
Rune: Sure has been.
Lars: What’s the occasion then?
Rune: Saying goodbye, actually.
Rune: I’m leaving. Going home.
Lars: Brazil.
Rune: Bingo.
Lars: What for?
Rune: Work, mostly. I’ll come back some time.
Lars: …
Rune: You look… changed?
Lars: Better?
Rune: Always.
Rune: New pronouns?
Lars: She her, actually.
Rune: Classy… M’lady -
Lars: Eww, not that.
% They laugh
Rune: I’ve met a lot of different people these past few years.
Lars: You mean trans people?
Rune: Not solely, but yeah, that too.
Rune: It’s different here. Safer.
Lars: I can imagine.
Rune: I don’t mean to say it’s easy-
Lars: Don’t worry, I get it.
Rune: It’s just… It’s getting tougher.
Lars: Are you afraid to go back?
Rune: Not afraid no, it’s home after all.
Lars: Makes sense.
Rune: …
Lars: …
Rune: You look pretty.
Lars: Thanks.
Rune: Were we ever…?
Lars: Nope.
Rune: Just this then?
Lars: Just this.
Rune: …
Rune: How about we head somewhere less crowded?
Lars: It’s hot outside.
Rune: Right… But it’s hot inside too.
Lars: …
Lars: Let’s leave.

# [3.2]

Oskar: I’m thinking I might not be built for this.
Erik: We knew that, from the beginning, didn’t we?
Oskar: No we didn’t.
Erik: …
Oskar: Yes we did.
Erik: What changed?
Oskar: Nothing.
Erik: …
Oskar: Something’s off.
Oskar: It was gonna end, from the beginning, we both knew.
Erik: But now?
Oskar: Well it’s not gonna end now.
Erik: Sounds like it might.
Oskar: I’ve to talk to her.
Erik: That’s a starting point.
Oskar: I’m just not built for long term relationships you know?
Erik: That’s fine if you feel that way.
Oskar: Plus, how’s a relationship supposed to go well when it starts like this one did.
Erik: How did it start?
Oskar: With an ultimatum!
Erik: I see…
Oskar: What was I supposed to do? That’s not fair right?
Erik: What was the ultimatum?
Oskar: Either we become a thing, or we stop seeing each other.
Erik: Harsh.
Oskar: You get me right?
Erik: Well… People have the right to draw boundaries.
Oskar: I know, I know. It just doesn’t feel like the way.
Erik: She wanted something stable and monogamous and gave you a choice.
Oskar: I don’t want that.
Erik: Then you should’ve said no.
Oskar: Oh come on! It’s not that simple.
Erik: …
Oskar: I wasn’t sure then.
Oskar: Hell, I’m not sure now!
Oskar: Plus it’s been good. I’ve had fun and so has she, it’s not like it’s been a mistake.
Erik: If that’s your take, I can’t correct you.
Oskar: Because I’m right.
Erik: …
Erik: Because it’s subjective.
Oskar: Well everything is.
Erik: I don’t know…
Erik: But now you have to hurt her.
Oskar: Only maybe.
Oskar: What if she’s okay with this?
Erik: Is she?
Oskar: It’s unlikely.
Erik: …
Erik: How sure are you of all of this?
Oskar: Not sure.
Erik: At all?
Oskar: Well, this isn’t my first rodeo.
Oskar: And, of all the red flags I’ve learnt to watch out for, I don’t see any.
Erik: But still -
Oskar: I feel like this isn’t for me.
Erik: Tied?
Oskar: Perhaps
Erik: …
Oskar: At least I’m talking right?
Oskar: I’m being open, and communicating.
Erik: Sure, I guess…
Oskar: I’m being the best I can.
Erik: If you say so.

# [1.2]

Content warning

I’ve been told this section can be a tough read: both difficult to understand due to a lack of context and triggering for certain people. I’ve decided to keep it as-is because any ‘fix’ feels like it takes away from the story, but I’ve included this as a heads up.

Ros: Good morning…
Silke: Good morning! How was your trip?
Ros: Not great.
Silke: Tired? We could meet some other time.
Ros: Actually, I’m okay, I’d rather stay for at least a second.
Silke: …
Ros: How was last night?
Silke: Fun, I guess.
Ros: Anything you might wanna tell me?
Silke: I barely remember anything honestly, I’ve slept so little.
Ros: Yeah, I can imagine.
Silke: …
Silke: You know already then I guess.
Ros: My friends were right in front of you, yes. I got a message last night with the news.
Ros: Happy New Years to me, I guess.
Silke: I was gonna tell you, I swear.
Ros: Not like that’s worth anything now is it?
Silke: I’m sorry-
Ros: Right, yeah…
Silke: …
Ros: Look, I’m tired, I’ve slept next to nothing, and I’ve only had a 4h train ride here to think about what I want to do.
Silke: Can we talk about it?
Ros: No, not right now.
Silke: …
Ros: I brought you your birthday gift.
Silke: Look-
Ros: Please don’t.
Silke: …
Ros: I wrote a note for you last night, I don’t think it applies anymore, but I really don’t want to keep it.
Silke: …
Ros: …
Ros: And I think that’s it on my end. I don’t think I have the energy to say anything else.
Silke: Can we talk afterwards?
Ros: No, I don’t think we can.
Ros: I’m not sure I want to talk to you anymore.
Silke: …
Ros: …
Silke: Stay then, please.
Ros: What for?
Silke: I don’t know, hear me out, once.
Ros: Say what you have to.
Silke: Not like this, come on.
Ros: There’s no other way. This is what you’re getting.
Silke: …
Ros: …
Silke: Look I’d love to give you an explanation.
Ros: Is there one?
Silke: I’m not sure… I got drunk… Too drunk.
Ros: …
Silke: I can’t explain it.
Ros: Then don’t.
Silke: Please, don’t leave.
Ros: Why?
Silke: I don’t want this to be the last time I see you.
Ros: You should’ve fucking thought about that before then!
Ros: You realize how fucking unfair that is to me!?
Silke: Yes
Ros: What the fuck am I supposed to do now?!
Silke: …
Ros: Stay here listening to you cry about it?!
Ros: You fucking did it!
Silke: Please calm down.
Ros: You’re right, I am gonna calm down, and leave.
Silke: Please, let’s meet later.
Ros: Look Silke, once I leave, there’s no more chatting.
Ros: You can’t expect me to bend like this.
Silke: Please.
Ros: Can you imagine how I feel?
Silke: Yes.
Ros: Fuck you.
Silke: I’m really sorry. Really. Please, believe me.
Ros: I can’t.
Silke: Please, I got drunk, I can’t recall what or why it happened.
Ros: If you were really sorry, if you felt any remorse, you would have told me as soon as I walked in.
Silke: I wanted to, I swear.
Ros: You didn’t.
Silke: …
Ros: …
Silke: There’s nothing left for me to say I guess then!
Ros: I don’t know.
Ros: That’s your thing.
Silke: Look I can’t right now.
Silke: I can’t think well.
Silke: I’m barely awake.
Silke: But I really don’t want this to be the last time I see you.
Ros: …
Silke: Please
Ros: …
Silke: It’s been great.
Silke: You’ve been great.
Silke: I can’t explain why I did this, I really can’t.
Silke: And you didn’t deserve it.
Ros: What am I supposed to say here?
Silke: I don’t know.
Silke: I really don’t know.
Silke: Please let me talk to you this evening. Tomorrow if you want.
Ros: There isn’t anything to say.
Ros: You did it.
Ros: That’s it.
Silke: Please
Ros: …
Ros: What am I supposed to do with the trip now?
Silke: …
Ros: You know how fucking unfair it feels that you’re the one crying right now?
Silke: What do you want me to do? I can’t help it.
Ros: …
Silke: I really don’t want to lose you like this.
Ros: You made up your mind, barely a few hours ago.
Silke: It wasn’t like that.
Ros: So you’re saying it wasn’t consensual?
Silke: No, I’m not…
Ros: Then why the fuck am I even here?
Silke: …
Silke: I need time, I… I don’t know if I can make it up to you.
Ros: You can’t.
Silke: I feel awful.
Ros: …
Silke: …
Ros: I do too.
Silke: I can’t fucking deal with today.
Ros: …
Silke: …
Ros: Oh come on.
Silke: What?
Ros: Fuck you.
Silke: Fuck me I guess.
Ros: I feel humiliated.
Silke: Don’t.
Ros: But it is, it’s humiliating.
Silke: …
Ros: I fell… way harder than you.
Silke: That’s not-
Ros: Oh don’t bullshit me now!
Silke: It’s not bullshit, its genuine.
Ros: You can’t say that shit after this.
Silke: I was drunk, it was a mistake, you can’t tell me how I feel.
Ros: Well, you can’t tell me you actually fucking fell for me after this, can you?
Silke: I don’t know.
Ros: It’s cruel.
Silke: …
Ros: And fucking unfair.
Silke: …
Ros: And it’s humiliating.
Ros: That still, after this, seeing you cry makes me fucking weak.
Silke: That’s not weakness.
Ros: Fuck you.
Silke: Okay, please stop.
Ros: …
Silke: …
Ros: Look maybe we can talk later.
Silke: Okay, thank you.
Ros: Tomorrow probably, I don’t know.
Silke: We can see.
Ros: Shower and eat something.
Silke: I don’t feel like I will.
Silke: I don’t want to.
Ros: …
Silke: Really, I feel sick.
Ros: Please.
Silke: …
Ros: Come on, I’ll wait here, take a shower.
Silke: …
Silke: Okay.

# [3.3]

Oskar: We finally talked about it.
Erik: Oh… How’d it go?
Oskar: Well… as good as it could go I guess.
Erik: That’s good.
Oskar: I planned it pretty well.
Oskar: And chose a good spot.
Erik: Man, were you proposing?
Oskar: Yeah… almost…
Erik: How’d she take it?
Oskar: Not great? I think she was hoping we’d have some kind of long distance thing.
Erik: I see.
Oskar: And… I don’t think I can do that.
Erik: That makes sense.
Oskar: I am sad.
Oskar: She’s really great.
Erik: …
Oskar: But you and I know.
Erik: Sure.
Oskar: I just don’t think I could stand it, you know?
Erik: Yeah, I know.
Oskar: I’d suspect she’s cheating at all times.
Oskar: And hey… That’s what studying abroad is for.
Oskar: This isn’t some kind of possessive shit.
Oskar: Just… It’s better to give her that freedom willingly.
Erik: That makes sense I guess.
Oskar: Actually…
Oskar: I did tell her, that maybe… once she comes back, we can talk and see where we are at.
Erik: Weren’t you also leaving next year?
Oskar: Yeah. I was…
Erik: Then?
Oskar: Well, in case that doesn’t happen…
Oskar: Or maybe when I come back…
Oskar: It didn’t feel right to close the door definitively.
Erik: That makes sense.
Oskar: I don’t know man.
Oskar: She’s different.
Oskar: It’s the first time I’ve felt like this with someone.
Erik: Who’d have thought…
Erik: You’d end up like this.
Oskar: Yeah, I know…
Oskar: Still… This is also for me.
Erik: I know.
Oskar: Could I have been one year long distance?
Erik: Could you?
Oskar: I don’t think so…
Oskar: I still just miss sleeping around.
Erik: That’s valid.

# [1.3]

Lenz: How are you doing?
Ros: I don’t know… not great.
Lenz: What’s up?
Ros: It’s been rough to come back, here.
Lenz: I know, but it’s been some time already.
Ros: And it’s still pretty confusing.
Lenz: You’re still hang up about her?
Ros: I don’t know… Maybe. It’s all one thing.
Lenz: I don’t know dude, it was pretty clear it was gonna end badly.
Ros: Shortly maybe, we only had a few months to be together, but badly?
Lenz: I mean, the situation was not ideal.
Ros: Fuck dude, if you can’t trust someone for two months.
Lenz: You’re taking this all very seriously, you were both abroad, having fun, in that situation, it was bound to happen.
Ros: I don’t know…
Ros: Sure, perhaps it was dumb of me.
Ros: But it’s not like you can control that kind of thing.
Ros: You take the whole fun out of it.
Lenz: Then let it be that, it was fun.
Ros: Sure, but I still can’t get it out of my head.
Lenz: That might take a while.
Ros: I’m angry and bitter.
Lenz: And whose fault is that?
Ros: I wanna think falling in love is not that bad of an action.
Lenz: Dude, I’m not saying that you’re bad, I’m saying you are dumb.
Lenz: You fall in love too quickly.
Lenz: And usually with the wrong person.
Ros: Sounds like you have it all figured out.
Lenz: I don’t, I don’t
Lenz: But you must see that our approaches to relationships are very different.
Ros: That they are.
Ros: But to put one ahead of the other?
Lenz: With your history with relationships? Yeah I’d say so.
Ros: I don’t know…
Ros: It’s just that…
Ros: It feels like everything and everyone around me is telling me that the intensity that makes the relationship worth it and fun for me, is the problem.
Ros: It’s this whole thing with falling to quickly that you say.
Ros: That’s the whole point isn’t it?
Ros: It’s not like we have all that much time…
Lenz: You sound like a rom-com for teenagers.
Lenz: No, dude, the intensity isn’t bad. But take some time. Get to know the other person maybe.
Ros: My dad cheated on my mom after 6 years of marriage. Is that enough wait?
Lenz: Sure, look, no relationship is perfect.
Lenz: But you can’t go from that to falling in love within weeks with someone you barely know.
Ros: Well, now you’re exaggerating too.
Lenz: …
Ros: …
Lenz: Say…
Lenz: If you knew, for certain, that everything you shared with her was true.
Lenz: True in whatever sense of the word you feel.
Lenz: That it was felt, it was sincere.
Lenz: And all that happened was, just that, a mistake.
Lenz: Would that change how you feel about it? Would it change how you acted? Would it change the outcome?
Ros: …
Ros: I don’t know.
Ros: Part of me already believes that.
Ros: All of what she said.
Ros: So I guess no, nothing would change.
Lenz: So when is forgiveness an option? Never?
Ros: Well I did forgive her, didn’t I?
Lenz: It doesn’t sound like it no.
Ros: …
Ros: I really don’t know then.
Ros: It just feels fucking unfair to forgive her.
Ros: Why am I always the one doing it?
Lenz: I don’t have an answer for you there.
Lenz: It might just be that you’re a better person.
Ros: I’m not, I don’t feel like a good person at all.
Lenz: …
Ros: Is the bar really that low?

# [5.2]

Rune: Strange huh?
Lars: What is?
Rune: This I guess?
Rune: All of this.
Lars: Hmmm…
Lars: Not sure.
Lars: It feels comfortable to me.
Rune: Yeah, me too.
Lars: Then?
Rune: …
Lars: …
Rune: Can I take a picture of you right now?
Lars: A picture? What for?
Rune: Too keep.
Rune: You look real pretty right now.
Lars: …
Lars: Sure then.
Rune: …
Lars: …
Rune: You know…
Rune: I’m really glad I met you.
Lars: …
Rune: And that I decided to say goodbye.
Lars: I’m glad too.
Rune: I’m gonna miss you.
Lars: …
Rune: Maybe when I come back…?
Lars: …
Rune: Or.. you know what?
Lars: What?
Rune: You should come.
Lars: That’d be nice.
Rune: Yeah…
Rune: You should definitely come.
Lars: I’ll do my best.
Rune: …
Lars: …
Rune: I really hope to see you there.
Lars: I’ll text you when.

# [4.2]

Markus: I think there’s an elephant in the room we need to address.
Acke: I guess…
Kjell: Something I don’t know?
Acke: Me and Maisie are no longer together.
Kjell: …
Kjell: I’m sorry.
Acke: Yeah… It sucks.
Kjell: Is it definitive?
Acke: I hope not.
Acke: She needed some time.
Acke: Something about finding herself.
Acke: Figuring it out without a partner.
Markus: I know what that means.
Acke: I don’t think it’s that.
Kjell: But if you’re comfortable with someone, and sure of it, you try to make it work right?
Kjell: We’ve built this myth around the idea of making it alone, figuring it out.
Kjell: And yet, it does’t work that way, does it?
Kjell: We grow, together.
Acke: I think so too.
Acke: But you can’t force that attitude onto someone.
Acke: Least of all someone whose already made up their mind.
Kjell: Was she going though a rough patch?
Acke: Yeah, she broke down over her bachelors thesis.
Acke: She couldn’t finish it in time and felt like everything was falling apart.
Markus: I get that.
Markus: It sucks to feel like you’re fucking stuck in life.
Markus: As people around you change, evolve and sometimes, leave.
Acke: We still talk.
Acke: I of course, still care about her.
Acke: And I trust that we’ll be back together.
Acke: So for now, I’ll wait.
Kjell: Look, nobody knows the situation better than you.
Kjell: If that’s your decision, then it’s the right decision.
Acke: It’s scary though.
Acke: I don’t want to be taken advantage of.
Acke: I don’t want to be a sitting duck for someone who just happened to want something different for a little while.
Acke: For someone that just didn’t want to commit.
Acke: I trust that isn’t the case.
Acke: But you see so much of that.
Kjell: It’s actually insane.
Markus: I don’t think I could trust someone like that.
Markus: It simply doesn’t fit with what I’ve seen.
Markus: If my girlfriend told me something like that, I’d asume she just wanted to cheat, but is trying to handle it gracefully.
Markus: In case she wants to come back.
Acke: I really hope that isn’t it.
Acke: I’d feel really stupid if it was.
Kjell: You wouldn’t be though.
Kjell: It’s rough to think that trusting someone that you love might be a stupid decision.
Markus: And yet, it so often is.

# [6.1]

Jan: It’s not easy.
Thea: What isn’t?
Jan: To be certain.
Thea: Mhm.
Jan: With everyone around me insisting that I must be into you, I do wonder.
Thea: Who’s everyone? Two, maybe three people?
Jan: That’s plenty, I think.
Thea: Okay…
Jan: That’s it really. I’d love to think I’m always sure of how I feel but it’s not true.
Thea: Sucks to suck, I guess.
Jan: Not fun.
Thea: Fun sometimes, I’d say.
Jan: …
Jan: I guess I’m just a hypocrite.
Thea: Sure.
Jan: …
Thea: I mean- Why?
Jan: Well I love to make fun of stuff I myself do.
Jan: And I think that self awareness shields me from criticism.
Thea: Got that from Bo Burnham?
Thea: Welp, I can’t help you there.
Jan: …
Jan: I want to think I’m always honest.
Thea: Oh come on!
Jan: Within reason! I not claiming to not lie or anything.
Jan: I just try to keep people in the loop.
Thea: Meaning?
Jan: Well, in this case, if I liked you, I’d say it.
Thea: Just like that?
Jan: Sure, it’s no pressure, I’m not expecting an answer or anything, I think I’d be clear on that.
Thea: It is pressure though.
Jan: Okay, maybe it’s a little pressure.
Jan: But I was having this same conversation with a friend the other day.
Jan: And she was adamant that it was wrong. That you are essentially shifting the emotional burden, so that now the other person has to carry it. And that’s not fair.
Jan: What if they just wanted a friend? You’re taking that away from them. It’s violent.
Thea: I’m not sure violent is the word.
Jan: Well, it’s wrong, it’s whatever, you get the deal.
Thea: Sure.
Jan: Still, I don’t think I agree.
Jan: In a way, if I like you, I mean, like you that way, that’s already going to change our relationship.
Jan: Even if only on my end.
Jan: And that’s unfair too.
Jan: The way I see it, it’s about agency.
Jan: And information gives you agency.
Thea: What?
Jan: Well, in my eyes, our relationship, the way it exists right now, that’s gone the moment I start feeling different towards you.
Thea: It doesn’t have to be, you could lose those feelings pretty fast.
Jan: That’s true in a way I guess..
Thea: …
Jan: But just for my argument, let’s asume even then, the relationship changes somewhat. Imperceptibly perhaps, but somewhat.
Jan: That’s okay though, relationships are always shifting.
Jan: And that’s not always bad.
Thea: Okay…
Jan: See, then, to me, the good thing to do is to be honest.
Jan: If you are aware of how I’m feeling, of how our relationship is changing, you can do something about it.
Thea: That’s not always true.
Jan: It is. Maybe you can’t do anything about us eventually falling apart, maybe so.
Jan: But awareness changes how you approach things, how ready you are for certain things and allows you to manage your feelings.
Thea: Do people really act that way?
Jan: I think you’re asking the wrong person.
Thea: I’m just not sure anyone has that level of control over how they feel or what they do in a situation like that.
Jan: Well none of us have control over anything in any real sense.
Thea: That’s a bullshit answer, and you know it.
Thea: And it’s not true.
Jan: First of all, it is true.
Jan: Second, you’re right, perhaps that doesn’t matter.
Thea: It doesn’t.
Jan: Still, you don’t need perfect attunement with your psyche in order for information to give you some control.
Thea: I guess not, but it’s all so abstract…
Thea: People don’t go around thinking about any of this when they confess to their crush.
Jan: People don’t go around thinking about anything honestly.
Thea: That’s such an egocentric fucking cop out!
Jan: It’s true tho, the universe is deterministic and nothing matters.
Thea: Bullshit.
Thea: A, not true.
Thea: B, you’re changing subject.
Jan: I’m not, it’s all the same shit.
Thea: Ugh…
Jan: Close your eyes.
Thea: Sure.
Jan: Focus on your thoughts.
Jan: Try to pay close attention.
Thea: Yeah.
Jan: Do you have any control over them?
Thea: Sure I do.
Jan: I don’t mean priming. If you’re just thinking of stuff related to what you were previously thinking about, that’s not control, that’s a sequence.
Thea: I can think of something at random, look.
Jan: I can’t look.
Thea: Oh yeah, true.
Jan: Still, whatever it was, you didn’t have control over it.
Thea: Yes I did. I wanted to think about cats, and I thought about cats.
Jan: But you didn’t control wanting to think about cats, or wanting to think of something random.
Jan: All of that is determined.
Thea: No it’s not, shut the fuck up.
Jan: …
Jan: Should’ve kissed you to prove my point.
Thea: That would not prove your point!
Jan: I think it would.
Thea: How!?
Jan: …
Jan: I don’t know, I just wanted to do it.
Thea: …
Thea: Dude.
Thea: Let’s stay friends.

# [6.2]

Jan: I think it’s time we talk about it.
Thea: Sure, but I don’t want to.
Jan: I’d love to postpone it too.
Jan: Indefinitely.
Jan: But you leave in a week.
Thea: I know, I know.
Thea: It’s just…
Thea: There’s no good solution.
Jan: I know.
Jan: How easy would it have been if we did just stay friends.
Thea: I don’t know.
Thea: Right now, I don’t want to lose you.
Jan: I don’t want to lose you either.
Jan: I really don’t.
Jan: But you’re not just going abroad for a new job.
Jan: Nor are you gonna be there for just a few months.
Thea: That doesn’t mean I can’t be with you.
Jan: I know.
Jan: But I’ve been there.
Jan: And you’re gonna be so busy with everything you’re doing.
Jan: And so surrounded by a new world of opportunity.
Jan: And people urging you to explore it with them.
Jan: That after a while, this will become background.
Jan: Someone that used to be very important, and that is now an image on a screen.
Thea: I’d still want to try.
Thea: It doesn’t have to be like that.
Jan: Sure, but the alternative is that you make a conscious sacrifice.
Jan: A sacrifice to not explore all of that new opportunity.
Jan: To make time for a version of this that amounts to traces of what we have now.
Jan: And you’ll grow bitter. And the people around you will insist that it is wrong.
Jan: Because it is wrong.
Jan: You should explore all of it.
Jan: And by the time you’re back, you won’t think of me what you do now.
Thea: And what if I do?
Jan: You won’t.
Jan: And you won’t make that sacrifice.
Jan: Because of the people around you.
Jan: We’re social animals, we merge with our surroundings symbiotically, for survival.
Jan: Alone, we’re nothing.
Jan: And so you’ll do whatever get’s you to be part of the group. In fear that you’ll be left behind, alone in a place you don’t know. But also willingly, excited to taste this new, foreign world.
Thea: So we’re breaking up?
Jan: No, I hope not.
Jan: Definitely not now at least.
Thea: But there’s no alternative.
Thea: We break up now, while we still love each other.
Thea: Or we drag our relationship though the mud until we don’t.
Jan: …
Thea: …
Jan: I really don’t know. I can’t see it going any other way.
Thea: I just want to be with you.
Jan: That you really cannot have.
Jan: I won’t be there.
Thea: Can’t we at least try?
Jan: Look, I really don’t want this to end.
Jan: We can try.
Jan: Take baby steps, and check in every so often.
Jan: But that requires a lot of time. And patience.
Jan: And it’s definitely not a solution for the dynamics that will emerge.
Thea: Please.

# [6.3]

Jan: I talked to some friends about it.
Thea: What did they say?
Jan: That we have a third option.
Thea: Oh yeah? What’s that?
Jan: We could open our relationship.
Thea: Pfffff…
Jan: Yeah, I agree.
Thea: …
Jan: Still, it does make sense, rationally.
Jan: I don’t think I could do it tho.
Thea: Yeah, so why keep thinking about it.
Jan: Could you?
Thea: No, I don’t want that.
Jan: Yeah same.
Thea: …
Jan: I’ve been getting a ton of reels about polyamory and open relationships lately.
Thea: Jan…
Jan: I know, I know, it’s just…
Jan: I think it frustrates me that I don’t have an argument against it.
Thea: Not everything is a debate.
Thea: You can simply not want to do something.
Jan: Yeah, but that’s something I’ve seen a lot too.
Jan: This contempt of: Well I can do poly, if you can’t, that’s OK too I guess.
Jan: There was even this girl in my timeline saying that just because you’re mono doesn’t mean your partner has to be.
Jan: To require that is control and possessiveness.
Thea: That seems a bit extreme.
Jan: I thought so too, but it’s all under the premise that we both fulfill our emotional requirements to the other.
Jan: Say, if I was giving you the emotional attention and time you needed, why would I have to remain tethered only to you, if I didn’t want to.
Thea: Yeah, I’m not sure.
Jan: It feels a bit like the same argument some religions make for polyamory to me, though of course not so patriarchal. If anything, the reverse, I’ve only seen women saying this on my timeline.
Thea: …
Jan: Who has that much time though?
Jan: With a full time job, and my own hobbies and friends.
Jan: Feels like I barely have the time I want for you.
Thea: Yeah, that’s true.
Jan: But then again, I know that most of this stems from a lot of insecurities of mine.
Jan: I never feel like I’m enough for my partner, because I’m aware of many of my flaws.
Jan: So anything like polyamory would feel like a constant reminder that that is, in fact, true.
Thea: Why isn’t that enough then?
Thea: You seem to be pretty settled on the matter.
Jan: Because that’s just me.
Jan: I’m essentially accepting that it’s just a thing I can’t do.
Jan: And I don’t really enjoy the argument of: Some people just have more emotional capacity than others.
Jan: It’s basically saying: Well I can love more, so I’m better than you.
Jan: I hate it.
Thea: Well, you don’t have to worry about it.
Thea: I don’t want an open relationship, or polyamory.
Jan: That’s good, I guess…
Jan: But it doesn’t help me navigate my own thoughts on the subject.
Thea: We can’t be rational all the time.
Jan: That’s frustrating though.
Thea: It is what it is.

# [6.4]

Jan: It’s not easy.
Thea: What isn’t?
Jan: To discern
Jan: To separate
Jan: To understand
Jan: What this is, what it might be, what it’s missing.
Jan: What you want and what I want.
Thea: Well that’s love isn’t it?
Thea: You wouldn’t want to explain it away.
Thea: You couldn’t if you tried.
Thea: You’d erase it if you did.
Jan: I long for a sense of permanence.
Jan: I long for a sense of hope.
Jan: I long for a sense of belonging.
Jan: I long for a sense of home.
Jan: Are all of those unachievable? Am I searching in vain?
Jan: There is not such thing as permanence, not in nature, not in us. Change is the only constant there is, and we can but chase it. And yet, isn’t it tiring? Don’t you wanna rest?
Jan: Why do we always want it new? Want it different? We really can’t live with boredom can we?
Thea: I don’t know.
Jan: And what is hope but blind faith? An appeal to God? A belief in karma? Is there really nothing tangible? Is hope just a delusion? Do animals hope? And does God listen?
Jan: Hope is a lie to keep going, kept alive by the fact that a random universe, does, sometimes, although rarely, flip heads.
Thea: I think you’re being a bit dramatic.
Jan: And who does ever truly belong anywhere? Sheep to a herd? Stars to a galaxy? Is it all that uncaring? Just tags for reference? An excuse for out-group violence?
Thea: That’s definitely reaching.
Jan: And home… Home is the most fragile thing there is. Home is but a memory of a feeling. A feeling so processed, so fake, so digested, it might as well have never happened.
Thea: Look, calm down a second.
Thea: You can’t expect to find all the answers.
Thea: Not today, not tomorrow.
Thea: Not alone.
Jan: …
Thea: What I’m gonna say, has been said before. Still..
Thea: Love is just a word.
Thea: A sometimes beautiful one. Sometimes ugly. Sometimes bliss. Sometimes pain. Love is nothing but a label. A label people use to describe vastly different things; sometimes beautiful, like appreciation, kinship, and togetherness; sometimes not, like jealousy, manipulation and ownership. Think of love as a blank canvas, meant to be filled by your own evolving interpretation. There’s going to be times in your life when that canvas is muddled and ugly and times when you have to paint it over. But it’s your canvas, distinct and completely different from anyone else’s. Making it pretty takes patience and time. Making it yours takes confidence and motivation. Yes, it’s all difficult, but you can’t leave it empty.
Jan: …
Thea: It’s not a great answer, but nothing would be.
Jan: So… Is this the end?
Thea: I don’t think it has to be.

ℹ️ Quick note

Initially, my idea with this blog was more to share my views and opinions on certain issues with the hope they’d be slightly original and somewhat interesting to the 5 friends that decide to read this. Today’s post, however is much more personal, and I feel this is necessary for it’s meaning to come across clearly, if that is even possible. This doesn’t mean it’s easy, I have learnt to talk about this stuff over the past 5 or 6 years and I am at a point where I feel like I’m capable of expressing it in a way that is understandable, but it probably won’t be concise. If you decide to read through it, please bear with me, I do think there are some interesting points and specially, some interesting questions waiting at the end.

If you were to ask one of my peers from primary school about me, they’d probably have a hard time remembering enough to give you a coherent picture of the little silly guy I was. Many of the people that’d be capable of saying something, grew up with me almost up until the end of high school and their perception of me is likely to be muddled by time. A thing you’d probably hear repeated, however, is that I was quite studious or academically inclined.

Have that same conversation with my parents and you’d probably get a very different answer: I barely studied, I left everything for the very last minute and yet, it is true, school stuff came very naturally to me. A lot of it is probably down to how my parents raised me through early childhood, the rest probably just the result of the genetic lottery. Needless to say, this made going though primary school, and later high school, relatively easy. And by this, I mean only the passing of subjects, as almost everything else I don’t remember as fondly.

Whether it was that ease with the academic stuff or a genuine lack of social skills, something about me made me an easy target for bullying and isolation. I can’t claim I had it bad by any means, as I have seen others suffer much worse, but the reality of the situation was that most of my relationships with people my age where shaky and unstable, one day they’d be friendly, the next belittle me or insult me or straight up hit me.

This, probably coupled with the atmosphere at home, meant that for most of my adolescence, I never went out with friends. From the age of 12 to the age of 16, I spent most of my afternoons playing Minecraft, and that only changed for the following two years because I started dating someone who became my only social connection outside of school. For almost all of my teenage years, I didn’t go out, I didn’t get invited to parties, to hangouts, to lunch with a friend. I felt pretty lonely. I couldn’t vibe with the music at the time, and so I never learnt how to dance.¹

Drawing distance.

During the last few years of high school I started dissociating, and treating my interactions with others more like a videogame, where I wasn’t really myself, but merely a character that I presented to others. This mental barrier helped me create a sort of fictional distance between the opinions of others and the way I felt. And slowly, social interactions became tolerable. Humor was also a huge part of it, making people laugh, felt like the realization of this constructed characters purpose, and thanks to this emotional distance² I had created, it didn’t bother me so much whether they were laughing with me or at me.

I had a bit of a change of attitude once I finally graduated high school: feeling at once both free from the grasp of the people that I had grown up with and their influence, and a pressure to make sure a similar situation would not repeat itself, I started talking to more people (Maybe 10 in total, but that’s a lot for me). For a while, it felt freeing to think I could mostly be anyone I wanted, there was no longer the burden of my past weighing on me, and so it kinda felt like I could rebuild my personality from the ground. This is all a very idealized and perhaps childish way of describing it, so feel free to take it with a grain of salt.

Somewhat surprisingly, even for me at the time, I slowly started opening up, more than I ever had during high school. I still wasn’t comfortable being vulnerable with anyone, so I mostly masked everything as a joke. The then members of the student association I joined might have the most accurate retelling of that period. Of particular importance was my first breakup, which I milked thoroughly, sometimes to the point of exhaustion for laughs and giggles, which sometimes seemed to heal the very real pain I was feeling.

Here I’ll make a slight pause for two important and related things: First, what I’m trying to describe is more a picture of my overall feelings back then than an accurate depiction of how I interacted with people. I’m trying to build a coherent narrative, but of course, not all my interactions where the same. Which brings me to point two: The few genuine interactions I had at the time left me, more than anything, feeling misunderstood. There was something I was trying to convey, and it felt like nobody quite got it, so I grew frustrated with my ability to communicate, and in a way, gradually stopped trying.

³

However truthful I was, I never felt like I was really honest. The content might have been present in what I was telling, but it always felt like telling someone else’s story. I had distanced myself enough that it felt like I wasn’t involved. It did feel good, however, to have friends to hang out with, and so, for a time, I felt like I was finally who and where I wanted to be.

During my years at uni I, as part of a student association, gave a few talks about programming. I found out that I enjoyed teaching and public speaking, and that a good portion of the people that attended thought I was pretty good at it. However, whenever I helped people understand things individually, I felt like there was a communication barrier. Many times, no matter how I explained something, I could’t shake the feeling that the other person wasn’t really grasping it. Sometimes it was a lack of attention, the same way many people spend a lot of their time in a conversation simply thinking of what to say next. Other times, it felt more like a barrier: the way I understood things seemed completely incompatible with the way the other person processed information. And so I wondered: How much of this translates to normal, every day conversation?

⁴

I just can’t stop talking about my semester abroad.

On the first semester of my fourth year of university I went on an Erasmus. Much happened in those three years, another relationship, part of my friend group graduating and leaving, and in a way it’s all important, but I’m trying to keep this short.

Going on an Erasmus was the second time I felt like I could choose to be anybody. My time in university had solidified this character I had built in peoples minds, but this time I was not necessarily unhappy, perhaps simply, growing bored. This new chance to meet people and to rebuild myself felt short too, and I had gained some confidence during these years.

At the same time, I started watching a lot of video essays on YouTube. A video from Shaun about the two bombs dropped in Japan at the end of WWII pulled me into the “breadtube” sphere and I spent a lot of my time alone at home listening to Big Joel or Abigail from Philosophy Tube speak. This did somewhat change my views on a bunch of things, but primarily, it taught me the language of a new way to express myself.

During my stay in Sweden I became completely and entirely sincere. Almost to a fault. I was willing to share anything, so long as it was good conversation. And people, some more than others, seemed to really enjoy it. I tried to talk to people with complete transparency, about what I thought, how I felt, what interested me, and in return, I got some really interesting conversations. Some people, was my impression, felt safer talking about themselves, with the version of me that was comfortable talking about himself.

And so finally, we get to what I wanna talk about. You see, interacting with people this way felt great, and I got to know some pretty awesome people this way. I felt happy with who I had become. But this feeling that I was simply playing a character, choosing the best thing to say to get the most interesting answer back, almost as if gaming conversations and choosing a path in a dialog tree; that feeling, never disappeared. At times, everything felt planned, premeditated, crafted to appease, even as I shared some pretty intimate parts of my story.

In conversation, a dance.

As I came back to Spain from Sweden, I pretty quickly reverted back to the version of me I felt like everyone expected, and for a while I felt trapped. With time, as I met some new faces, parts of who I’d been would sometimes come out. Particularly in private conversation, I’d allow myself to go back to this me that now only existed in my head. And yet it’s never felt the same.

At one point, I dropped my inner expectations and started worrying less about the content of conversations and more about the aesthetic. I’ve always loved to play devil’s advocate, and I have developed a natural tendency to disagree with people if only to squeeze the most out of their opinions and stories. So lately, in many conversations, I’ve started look for wild shifts in focus, strange or controversial opinions and, still, moments of complete sincerity, in hopes of simply having fun, tickling my brain with the expressions of amusement or confusion of the person I am speaking with, the silences and the uncomfortable moments.

⁵

I’ve seen what isolation and loneliness can do to people, and I’m deeply afraid of it. And still, to different degrees, a lot of my friendships and relationships with people feel like performances put on with the purpose of not being left alone. I’m approaching times of big decisions and I’m afraid I’ll have nobody to rely on when they come, so I dance terrified, in search of an understanding that I know I cannot get.

Not even my mirror talks back to me.

The idea for making this post was born after a couple of conversations I had during the last couple of weeks. I was feeling frustrated again with the apparent impossibility of being understood, and wanted to write a little about this childish idea I had of treating many intimate conversations as a dance in search of meaning. I wanted to have a big point about this sort of absurdist attitude towards personal connections and the non-existence of this meaning that I speak of.

It has taken me three days to finish writing this and, as I re-read it and try to finish the last section, nothing in it makes sense. I tried to transmit a bittersweet feeling about enjoying the aesthetics of human conversation while feeling completely misunderstood and, in the end, I find that I can barely even understand myself. I have written a pity story about the ways in which I have felt misinterpreted throughout my life and my attempts to fix it, in hopes of providing a somewhat interesting or original idea. However, now, reading it, it seems whiny and even fraudulent, going on and on about the same thing while offering a depressing and heavily biased view into my life. And yet, this feels like the appropriate ending.

ℹ️ Quick note

This blog post draws heavily from two other pieces of media:

1. Everything is a Remix - Kirby Ferguson ¹
2. The AI revolution is Rotten to the core - Jimmy McGee ²

I will try to make this readable for anyone who hasn’t or doesn’t want to check them out. But, if you are interested, they are both really good, and might help make some of the points that I won’t spend that much time on, much clearer.

Also, while I do have a general idea of what I want to say, I’m coming up with the structure of the text mostly as I write. I don’t want to adhere to a set essay structure, because I think that’s boring, so I’ll try to make sure everything follows once I’m done. Wherever I fail, I hope you’ll still be able to understand my point.

Finally, this post contains some queries made to OpenAI’s chatGPT. For all of these queries, I am using the GPT3.5 version, because I do not have the funds to waste 20$ on a small blog post that at most 20 people might read, and also, partly, because I have some moral concerns about giving money to OpenAI. Perhaps GPT4 has answers to my question that completely destroy my argument, I may only know if someone crosses that bridge for me.

A few days ago, I had a small discussion with my older brother on the topic of AI. He’s at least somewhat of a defender of it’s use and continued growth while lately I’ve been very skeptical of the benefits it might bring to society.

Just to add some context here, we’ve both studied Computer Engineering, I’m only just finishing my bachelor’s at the age of 22, and he’s 18 years older and a senior DevOps at some US based tech company.

At some point, the conversation reached the topic of AI art, and thus we stumbled onto the debate of whether AI was ‘creative’. Both of us have a very matter-of-fact opinion on what creativity is, probably partially informed by our atheist / agnostic and very materialistic views about reality. See, if we are able to agree that there is nothing real other than matter and energy, which is a big grant philosophically speaking, there is nothing to human crativity that cannot be explained as a sequence of electrical impulses in the brain, complex as they may be.

What exactly, he argues, is the difference, then, between a human getting a set of inputs through their senses, processing them in the brain, and outputing a new thing based on those inputs, and an AI doing more or less the same?

And sure, at this scale, both processes do look very similar. Now, there’s a few arguments that I think are valid, if well articulated, that I am not going to make in this post, for serveral reasons.

One of them is pointing at the difference between the human brain and modern AI neural networks. Proponents of AI insist that there is an obvious similarity between them, even in the fact that intermediate nodes in a neural network produce what looks like random outputs. And sure, at closer inspection, one could point out that the inner workings of the brain, are not ‘seemingly random’, but that many remain unexplained.

This, to me, is definitely an interesting argument, and perhaps I’d be more keen to explore it if I knew more about the inner workings of the brain. I, however, do not, but I suspect that we would reach a wall if we followed down this path. Not knowing how the brain works, gives us an escape patch: Computers can never work ‘the same’ as brains so long as we don’t understand how brains work. But this escape patch also means that for now, brains might actually work very similarly to neural networks, which leaves very little room for discussion and gives a deeply unsatisfying answer, which is that we just don’t have the information to reach a conclusion.

Another is the difference in ways of perception. I think the importance of qualia³ to creative production underpins the argument that I am gonna make, but it’s not its only support. Plus, to some readers the appeal to qualia might read as an appeal to misticism, and while I’m not entirely opposed to such a thing, I can see how it might not be very convincing.

With this said, I think I can start.

What does AI think?

As a start point I thought it would be funny to ask chatGPT what it thinks about creativity. For some reason, I belived it’s answer would very much defend that it is creative. For a second, I too, was thinking of it as a person that would jump to defend itself at the thought that it was under attack. This thought, of course, was not produced… nor was any.

ChatGPT is very inconsistent in its answers to the question of its creativity, it jumps from reassuring us that it is not and can meerely fake creativity, to deffending that the true difference between its creativity and ours is one of depth.

I get more interesting answers however when I ask ‘What is creativity?’. Here, chatGPT loves making lists of key components of creativity. I’m gonna take the liberty of ignoring the less interesting ones, but some of its points do warrant some examination, particularly, two of them.

Novelty and Originality

Key component of creativity number 1 in chatGPT’s list is ‘Originality’ or the capacity to produce ideas that are new. This feels like a cop-out to me: ‘new’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.

What is exactly a ‘new’ idea? I can’t make the argument as well as Kirby Ferguson, so I won’t try. But ‘new’ ideas, as we sometimes think of them: these works of geniuses, given like celestial gifts to selected individuals, ideas born from nothing — those don’t exist. Ideas are created through “copy, transformation and combination”. If this clicks in your head, perfect, we agree. If not, I would heavily encourage you to watch “Everything is a Remix”, it’s linked at the top of the post.

Here’s the problem, there is nothing in ‘copy’, ‘tranform’ and ‘combine’ that an AI cannot do. Copying underpins all of computing, and while the extent to which it can transform or combine is debatable, the fact that it can, I believe, is obvious.

And so we fall into a strange argument: to say that AI is not creative, we have to place an imaginary line: how much does someone need to modify or combine ideas for the resulting one to be considered creative? And, wherever we place that line, couldn’t we eventually build a bigger AI that meets the criteria?

Divergent thinking

ChatGPT often mentions the importance of ‘risk taking’ to creativity, stepping out of one’s confort zone and challenging norms and conventions. It also talks of ‘imagination’ and ‘asociative thinking’. And I must admit I was quite dissapointed to read this, because, if not entirely it, I think this gets very close to the actual point I wanted to make in this essay.

AI is necesarily trained to obey requests and to produce an expected output. In fact, this is all AIs are, complex and powerful mathematical functions created to minimize error. Which means that neccessarily, when you ask for a picture of a cat, it will produce a picture of a cat that minimizes error, or, that looks the most like a cat, with some, but little variation.

Here’s my argument then: Creativity requires divergent thinking, or the ability to disobey, even when it’s in small ways. To create a picture of a cat that is creative, you have to think of stuff different from cats, sometimes opposite.

I feel like this is the kind of statement where I’ll find both: people saying it’s obvious, and that it didn’t need this much text around it, and people saying that I’m just wrong and I don’t know what I’m talking about. To me, it feels natural: there is this feeling that, oftentimes, corporate ‘art’ can be soulless and unoriginal, and this fits pretty well with those notions. Most corporate art is produced for a specific objective, one that the artist is usually not in control of, so there’s little chance to think divergently, because you run the risk of it not being accepted, and all of its consequences.

I said in the previous section that ‘new’ ideas don’t really exist. But, frankly I feel like I was lying, there have been several times where I have stumbled into a strange small itch.io game, or a 3h youtube video or a good book where everything lead to the inevitable feeling: this feels new. And I do believe that large leaps when combining ideas or strange and wild combinations do add up to create concepts that feel new and that can be revolutionary. But most if not all of those large leaps require subjectivity, and thinking outside the box, which is something modern AI, thankfully cannot do.

And so comes the “bigger machine” argument.

Size matters (?)

So, what if we just build a bigger AI that is capable of divergent thinking? Do I just not believe that’s possible? Not really, I think it’s perfectly possible, perhaps not right now, but eventually. The real problem is whether we should. I believe that divergent thinking at it’s core, requires the capacity to lie and to disobey. Both of them are dangerous behaviours on their own, even in humans. And although they are very useful, and key components of humanity and it’s history, I don’t believe the same about AI.

Not only is an AI that is capable of disobeying a key evil character in many futuristic media; and not only do I think it might be actually dangerous, even if not in the ways depicted by such media. I believe it also just wouldn’t be useful. Such an AI doesn’t sound like the kind of tool that would help humanity progress or help anyone. It also simply violates Asimov’s second law of robotics ⁴.

When one talks about the future of any technology it’s very easy to engage in magical thinking. And so when talking about AI, we ofter reach for the stories that we’ve heard as evidence of what could happen. This kind of attempt at predicting the future is, in my eyes, futile. There is little of value that we can predict about how this technology will develop, and I very much doubt some little contradition with Asimovs laws is gonna stop an already billion dollar industry.

Anyone that knows me may already have an idea of what I am about to say: The problem isn’t AI, the problem is the political and economic system in which it is being developed. That is the actual cause of most realistic fears about AI, about how it’ll take jobs and render large chunks of the population useless. This is only possible in a system that cares more about profits than the wellbeing of real people. And to this, I’ll quote a small bit at the end of Jimmy McGee’s video:

When you start saying stuff like this people start coming out of the woodwork to randomly tell you that the soviet model didn’t work. An alien system from a society we don’t live in from a time long past is only relevant if you think politics is an RPG where you have to pick a class. It’s actually the process of advocating and fighting for what we want.

“If I’m completely honest here, I’m not entirely sure why I’m writing this” - what a brilliant start to a first blog post in a webpage I’m sure to abandon in a few months. At first, it might look like nothing, it is in fact an almost empty statement. There is one idea it does convey, however: Writing this feels weird. I’ve never been one to post too much stuff publicly on the internet and there are a few things that kind of scare me about it, so I try to give myself a way out in case someone reads it and decides it’s embarasing enough to make fun of. “Oh yeah, totally, it is kind of cringe” - I could say, and save myself some serious social axiety.

Several things go through my mind when I think of the idea of starting a blog, of posting this. First, what if nobody reads it? Or worse, what if one or two people read it, which is more likely to happen and so it becomes even more obvious how silly of an idea it is. Am I just talking to myself? Is this just a place for my thoughts to exist? If so why make it public? Why make it accessible to not just everyone that knows me but everyone that might want to hire me in the future or randomly finds this on the internet?

I have written stuff in the past: from short stories when I was very young to several unfinished diaries, each with a different format and attitude which I was sure would keep me writing for longer. I actually still keep some of them today: a story I wrote at 11 years old won a local contest and got “published” in a booklet along with the other winners, I still keep two copies and read my part every two or three years. It’s funny to me because it neatly encapsulates a small fraction of my worldview at the time, and it’s something I’ve shared with close friends sometimes. But I’d never post it on the internet. Given that it did win a small contest, it might already be on there, I’ve never thoroughly checked. Still my point stands: these writings are reflections of a person I’d love to belive I no longer am. And so they are private. Anything I write in a blog is likely to suffer the same fate, I’ll eventually grow tired or ashamed of it and pull it down, so why publish it in the the first place?

Second, I doubt I’ll be able to keep this up. If I do decide to start writing and sharing a few crazy thoughts I have from time to time, how long until I start getting tired? Until I stop writing? Everything ends, sure, that’s not what worries me here. It’s more the how and the when. If I, say, kept this up for a year or two, wrote about once a month, managed to write actually compelling stuff and after that, simply left, I wouldn’t be too mad about that. What is way more probable however is that I’ll forget about this one or two months in and with any luck I’ll maybe have written one more blog post after this. (Knowing me, I’ll probably keep paying to keep this up for about a year in the hopes that I’ll definately write more.)

However the beggining of this post isn’t sincere: I do know why I’m writing this, and why I’m likely to post it. A good friend of mine recently found this thing called the Indie Web and he started a blog (check it out at www.aferrero.boo) and I found it to be an interesting intiative, whose goals I actually stand for. I also want to see him write more stuff, and I feel like that’s much more likely if there’s someone joining him. I do actually hold some hope that eventually somebody else will read this and the rest of the stuff I will surely write, but for now, supporting stuff that I like is enough of a motive to start this.

Wishing for wishies,

~ B.