You never need to think much about your health (except for a few episodes such as come to us all, when it forced itself on you, which you dealt with). You eat what you want when you want to, sleep as you feel like it, go to the gym, go on long bicycle rides, hold an interesting job, never had a BMI above 20, don’t do colds, never binge-watched anything, and for the first time visited a personal trainer yesterday because of a serious ambition to do a one-day 200 mile bike ride next year in 16 hours instead of the 20 you predict from past form. Looks like your next 60 Sundays are booked up putting the miles in. You do all these things because you want to, with no “oughts” or “shoulds”.
I find the supposedly impersonal “you” rather irritating. Someone said of The Last Psychiatrist that he is best read by ignoring every sentence that uses it, which is rather a lot of them, and that was my reaction to the first (and last) post by him that I read. Curtis Yarvin had a recent post where he seemed to be channeling TLP, and I had the same response.
It comes across to me as cadging a cosy complicity in the nihilism (which is what is usually is) that is being peddled. It’s overbearing. The writer is claiming to know me, whom he has never heard of, better than I know myself. He is drawing a map by looking only at the inside of his own forehead, and as is well known around here, this does not work.
There is another way. The impersonal “I”. Instead of thrusting on others what they must be like, I can say, this is how it is for me, inviting others to see whether it is that way for them. Instead of saying that “you” do this or that, I can say, this is what I do.
ETA: I also find it useful to try doing without the impersonal 3rd person. Recasting the two sentences beginning “The writer is claiming...”: If I say “you” this and “you” that, I am claiming to know you, each one of you personally, but of whom I know almost nothing, better than you know yourselves. I would be drawing a map by looking only at the inside of my own forehead, and as is well known around here, this does not work.
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.
Incidentally, I appreciate that you provided the story at the beginning. If the intention was to make me empathize with being irritated at that writing style, it very much succeeded :p.
You never need to think much about your health (except for a few episodes such as come to us all, when it forced itself on you, which you dealt with). You eat what you want when you want to, sleep as you feel like it, go to the gym, go on long bicycle rides, hold an interesting job, never had a BMI above 20, don’t do colds, never binge-watched anything, and for the first time visited a personal trainer yesterday because of a serious ambition to do a one-day 200 mile bike ride next year in 16 hours instead of the 20 you predict from past form. Looks like your next 60 Sundays are booked up putting the miles in. You do all these things because you want to, with no “oughts” or “shoulds”.
I find the supposedly impersonal “you” rather irritating. Someone said of The Last Psychiatrist that he is best read by ignoring every sentence that uses it, which is rather a lot of them, and that was my reaction to the first (and last) post by him that I read. Curtis Yarvin had a recent post where he seemed to be channeling TLP, and I had the same response.
It comes across to me as cadging a cosy complicity in the nihilism (which is what is usually is) that is being peddled. It’s overbearing. The writer is claiming to know me, whom he has never heard of, better than I know myself. He is drawing a map by looking only at the inside of his own forehead, and as is well known around here, this does not work.
There is another way. The impersonal “I”. Instead of thrusting on others what they must be like, I can say, this is how it is for me, inviting others to see whether it is that way for them. Instead of saying that “you” do this or that, I can say, this is what I do.
ETA: I also find it useful to try doing without the impersonal 3rd person. Recasting the two sentences beginning “The writer is claiming...”: If I say “you” this and “you” that, I am claiming to know you, each one of you personally, but of whom I know almost nothing, better than you know yourselves. I would be drawing a map by looking only at the inside of my own forehead, and as is well known around here, this does not work.
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.
Incidentally, I appreciate that you provided the story at the beginning. If the intention was to make me empathize with being irritated at that writing style, it very much succeeded :p.