#but the excerpts seemed pretty reasonable? sensible people i respect like them? the written content was always the kind of thing that seems

[unopenablebox]

unfortunately those Cutting and Deep h3ather havril3sky ask polly "here's why you're lonely/here's the empathy failure holding you back" excerpts everyone loves to post

are just permanently recontextualized for me by her series of op-eds about how everyone in her family is an incomprehensible one-dimensional pod beast with completely unlovable preferences for things like "starbucks drinks" and "conversations about their lives", which she tolerates, with enormous difficulty, only through a sense of duty and a bunch of rationalizations about how actually it makes her sexier and cooler that she's willing to endure it

#like. i don't actually know enough about the typical content of one of her Actually You're Failing To Do This Empathetic Basic Mental Action #And That's Why You Have No Friends In Your Thirties and/or Are Constantly Beating Yourself Up For Things columns #because i'm a little generically allergic to that kind of thing #but the excerpts seemed pretty reasonable? sensible people i respect like them? the written content was always the kind of thing that seems #like something a reasonable person might form as a generalized observation based on their social experiences? #but uh. she DOES have an op ed about how listening to her husband tell her about the walk he went on is an experience she only gets through #by imagining that tolerating it makes her beautiful and feminine by contrast to his grizzled broken-down Man Nature #so i. feel like that should have some ramifications for her likely ability to do social modeling and give actually good advice #box opener