Apologies if the writing style came off this way. It somehow felt right for this post, but I wouldn’t normally use it. (Here’s another post of mine written in a hopefully less irritating manner.)
I definitely did not mean to be psycho-analyzing, however, which I’d hope would be apparent from my many bizarre examples. It was meant more to be reminiscent of choosing a character profile in an RPG or doing a weird but obviously nonsensical online personality test and reading the result, maybe? But that’s rationalisation, when the honest answer is “it felt right when I wrote it”.
While writing this post I had the vague notion that I’d been unconsciously imitating some of Scott Alexander’s fiction, but then I checked a bunch of it, and his stories basically weren’t written in second person. So I don’t actually know how I came up with it. (EDIT: I’ve been informed that this one actually is in second person.)
I don’t think this post could’ve worked in third person, because it would’ve required adding more detail to the characters than I could’ve come up with and would’ve furthermore made the stories longer, but I like your suggestion of using first person.
Had your comment not been here, I was going to wager that it was the source of the style. I read it under the assumption that you explicitly intended to imitate those.
Apologies if the writing style came off this way. It somehow felt right for this post, but I wouldn’t normally use it. (Here’s another post of mine written in a hopefully less irritating manner.)
I definitely did not mean to be psycho-analyzing, however, which I’d hope would be apparent from my many bizarre examples. It was meant more to be reminiscent of choosing a character profile in an RPG or doing a weird but obviously nonsensical online personality test and reading the result, maybe? But that’s rationalisation, when the honest answer is “it felt right when I wrote it”.
While writing this post I had the vague notion that I’d been unconsciously imitating some of Scott Alexander’s fiction, but then I checked a bunch of it, and his stories basically weren’t written in second person. So I don’t actually know how I came up with it. (EDIT: I’ve been informed that this one actually is in second person.)
I don’t think this post could’ve worked in third person, because it would’ve required adding more detail to the characters than I could’ve come up with and would’ve furthermore made the stories longer, but I like your suggestion of using first person.
FWIW I too can find that style offputting, but in this case I got something closer to your intended vibe. To me the OP seems playful rather than smug.
Addendum: On further reflection, I think the writing style might come from Choose Your Own Adventure books.
Had your comment not been here, I was going to wager that it was the source of the style. I read it under the assumption that you explicitly intended to imitate those.