Since summer is coming all too soon to !texas I got to work on a project I been needin to do recently: fixing my window unit

A little backstory. I live in a trailer. pulled this circa 2003 ish unit, from another trailer. it sat since the end of 2010

it was 2021 I pulled it out.

when you're a country boy, you make do. why go buy a new window unit when the old trailer's got some sitting around?

actually, I pulled 2 sister units of the same vintage and manufacture at the time. one had a bad refrigeration circuit, probably the compressor rotted out on the bottom and leaked the gas

a parts unit

it sat in its new home beside the driveway patiently until it would be needed

lo and behold, just 2 yeears later, its time came

the working unit had served me well for 21 and 22 but the bearings on the fan were shot from sitting 10 years without moving, partially exposed to the weather.

it was pretty loud.

and since you need AC at least 8 months out of the year in this glorious state , it was working pretty hard.

I had alreaty scrounged the capacitor from the parts unit bc it was going, and every six months or so I had to oil the bearings or they'd start to seize.

and it was getting worse. as 'winter' finally rolled around last year and I only needed the thing some days I could spare time to try and fix it. the seizing was terminal at this point and she would suffer no more

this wasn't my first time putting together a frankenstein unit. I had done basically the same thing before with 2 other sister units from another building. these were from 1998/1999, the good old days , older than me

they also sat since 2010

well one had no refrigeration and the other had a seized motor right from the get go. so I took the good from each and made one working unit

back to the newer unit... I pulled the fan assembly from the driveway machine and put it in. one uuge problem. It was so fricking loud

I couldn't even sleep with it on. these bearings were worse than the old ones, but at least they were still spinnign. there was still some heat to get through before november brought peace so I powered through

but it got worse. the plastic condenser fan, having sat outside, dissembled in the driveway, had been exposed to a bunch of UV I guess and had turned to more or less cardboard. (I could just peel pieces of it apart when I took it out)

the fan blades were breaking and making it go out of balance.

So by the end of the cooling season this thing was an ear bleeding and earthshaking monstrosity in my windowsill.

something had to be done... but its december now there's no need for AC I'll fix it later

that time was (is) now. ferbruary is coming to a close and with it will go the beutiful cold I've been enjoying. ( can't wait to find home)

I took the seized fan unit that was just waiting for some kind of final solution. I tore that motor open

there they were...

2 easy to replace 608s

got a 10 pack online for $7

pulled the mfs and pressed the new ones on

spin the thing

silence

so I threw her back together and into the window.

turned it on and there's only the sound of the air (and compressor) now

now you might have read this (probably not ) and wondered, what's that title about?

well its about what happened last night when I got the thing in the window and turned it on.

the satisfaction of a job well done washed over me as I sat down at the old puter to browse rdrams.

and then thought popped into my head. the pernicious idea. only for a moment, but made me stop right in my tracks: "why didn't I take pictures of everything to make an effortpost?"

and then I was sick

I realised this was the thought of a social media user. this is not me. no.

so no I DIDN'T take pictures. No you DON'T get to see

I'm going to enjoy my life with my own dmn eyes and I'm not going to become a 'gram zombie posting my every meal.

everytime I see a picture of a modern concert or venue where every. single. person. there is more concerned about filming the thing than actually being there, I want to vom.

it's disgusting and I feel ashamed for even the brief moment of remorse I felt about not filming this mundane task for the viewership of what, like 23 r-slurs online.

still felt the need to make the text post albiet

I should be making marseys like I came here to do but instead I've been gooning to stable diffusion building workflows and exploring advanced generative ai systems all weekend. at least I went outside and fixed a AC

Duncan 26, San Antonio TX

$57'303 total debt

$880 minimum monthly payments, 41% of his current income

At least $400 interest accruing each month ignoring student loans and stuff in collections

First truly mentally ill person on the show, he weirds me out a little but I might be just paranoid. I don't trust people who cry on camera. I've timestamped some of the oddness, not in chronological order

Self-rated 3/10 financially

Has been watching Caleb for "a couple months" hasn't started budgeting

• cries from stress of his situation? Tries to explain his failures in past attempts to budget timestamp

Diagnosed with "Bipolar II Disorder" plus some backstory, only recently got meds

• timestamp

Career:

• Delivery for Tiff's Treats and somtimes on-duty manager on weekends, does Grubhub/Doordash on the side

• "I got deactivated from Grubhub for some reason" timestamp

• Drives company car so his gas payments aren't bad

• Currently making $23 an hour and $18 as the stand-in manager

• hours cut, losing insurance in July (sales down year after year)

• nervous laughter here timestamp

• financially struggling

• only 6 stores in his district

Personal Life:

• Lost his last credt for film grad because Covid and classes/grades fell apart afterwards near beginning of covid?

• timestamp

• Was taking classes last semester? timestamp

• Not this semester though so Student Loans are active now

• Sudden jump from verge of tears to recitation of the canned youtube comment line about finance needing to be taught in high school timestamp

• "I think that's a big detriment to the American education system, nobody gets taught finances, ever"

• Wants to go back to school for a business degree but can't because of his current situation

Savings/Expenses:

• Nothing in retirement

• USAA checking

• Monthly balance $225 -> 281

• Spent money on Uber Eats, overly self-deprecating statement to dodge timestamp

• Same dodge trips to coffee shop/donuts/general eating out timestamp

• Shared checking with him and his girlfriend

• Pays to do gig work? Not sure if I understood that right

• $766 last month just on fast food/eating out (36% of income)

• Swipe savings

• $7 -> $161.85

• $224 car insurance payment since he got into an accident uninsured

Debt:

• Says he has a terrible credit score (551)

• Was at 630 3 months ago

• Found a credit repair company he's been thinking of reaching out to

• Student loans (paying interest only) Variable Interest Rates

• $13'316 14% interest

• 10% interest

• 10% interest

• Car Max Loan

• $16'584 remaining, 421 minimum monthly payment (he's got another 400 past due with a 21 late fee)

• 10.45 interest rate

• "All three of the credit cards I emailed you are in collections" timestamp

• USAA credit card

• Some old Visa

• Coles Card

• Owes $63.23 on "Afterpay"

• Also on Paypal, Affirm and Klarna "I made a series of really really bad decisions"

  • Affirm is 1k

• "And it's just this stupid stupid anxiety of not knowing what I'm gonna have left" timestamp

• Personal Loan

• took it out a year ago because he was "freaking out about money" at the time

• 1'400 balance

• Personal Loan

• $986 "one of those finance app where you pay a certain amount and you get the rest of the loan back"

• Not paying this one?

• Owes Grandpa $4'500

• "terrible situation"

• First car he bought died, grandpa co-signed for a new car

  • got t-boned and did not have insurance

• Has had 2 cars get totaled while on job?

• $10 monthly payments, it's informal

---

Introduction

In 1991, a group of 13 individuals bought a small piece of land in the middle of the desolate and dry desert of South Africa. This group had dreams and hopes of creating a prospering town for its people. However since its establishment, the town has been in an endless cycle of controversy with journoids all across the globe and the South African goverment sneeding that the town is an abomination that shouldn't exist. That town is Oriana.

---

Knowledge is Power

We must educate and familiarize ourselves with these terms:

• Afrikaan - Colonizing Mayos who originated from germany, france, or the Netherlands

• Boer - Means farmer but is used interchangeably with Afrikaan since most of them were farmers

• Volkstaat - A proposed view to establish an all-white Afrikaner homeland within the borders of South Africa, most commonly proposed as a fully independent Boer/Afrikaner nation. The concept excludes Afrikaans-speaking coloureds and South Africans of English ancestry, yet is sometimes misunderstood to include them.

---

The Birth of a Nation Town

Shortly after the end of Apartheid in South Africa in the early 90's, The goverment of South Africa attempted to move forward in bringing all the diverse amd vibrant communities together in pursuit of a functional multicultural society.

Afrikaans realizing that they'll lose their majority rule and would have a harder time passing legislation, decided the best way to show umbrage with the new rules was to seperate and create an ethnically monogamous country of their own kind within South Africa. Unfournately for those Afrikaans they had virtually no chance in their conquest for land against the SA military and general population.

An example image of the Volkstaat the Afrikaan dreamed of creating:

SHOW MORE

But those subversive Afrikaans noticed a loop hole in the document (and later the constitution) "Accord on Afrikaner self-determination" that they could exploit to their advantage. Specifically the following amendment dealing with minority groups:

The Constitution may give expression to any particular form of self-determination provided there is substantial proven support within the community concerned for such a form of self-determination.

There's an excessive amount of legal jargon that we're gonna skip over because its boring . The key take away is that this allowed for Orania to legally create its own pseudo-Apartheid community. That's exactly what the Mayos Afrikaans of Orania did.

---

Afrikaan Utopia

The original purpose of Orania was to form a self reliant society that was built from only the labor of purebred Afrikaans living in their town. Well technically, the original purpose of Orania was to expand in population and create a majority of Afrikaans in the northwestern cape within 15 years after the establishment of Orania. But, this plan was dropped due to Orania population not being able to breed enough and never reaching a population count of more than 3,000 individuals. It never even began for infertile mayos

However, that isn't to say that the community was a total failure. In 1991, the town was formed by 13 individuals and in [current year] has reached a decent population size of 2,377. The town has made significant progress in growing its economy, especially due to the fact the town is located in the middle of nowhere in a desert.

Their main agriculture export is also pecans

Oriana has also created its own currency (but no one outside of the town recognizes it):

Alongside their own currency, they also have their own president and flag:

Flag is a bit weird looking, but what do you expect from mayos

Additionally, every house in Orania is built with solar power. This is one of their steps to becoming self-reliant and eco friendly:

Article Link

So instead of being regular facist chuds they're eco-facist chuds

Orania is expectionally selective in choosing which residents can move and live there. Generally several requirements have to be met to be granted permission to move there. These include:

• Passing several criminal background checks

• Having Afrikaan ancestry

• Passing an Afrikaan culture test

• Interviews with the Orania council members

The requirements ensures that the majority of the town is full of mayos. The diabolical plan was beyond successful. As of 2021 the current makeup of Orania is 97% Afrikaans (Yikes ). Weirdly enough this has led to Orania having such a low crime rate that the town doesn't even have a police station. .

The town itself is very small with the total land of it being only 3.5 square miles. Orania currently has plans to reach a population of 10,000 and undergo urbanization in an effort to spread the cultural ideals of the Afrikaan "people".

---

Born from Sneed

Since it's inception, Orania has been constantly scrutinized and sneeded at for having too much mayonnaise in its town. I'm not even exaggerating either. Every year mutiple sneed articles are written about this literally who town across the world from j*urnoids that dont even live there.

Here's a new york times article from 1994 talking about it. The article also contains this hilarious passage:

Mr. Vaughn, 33, said he moved here [Orania] from Los Angeles after being arrested for child abuse in the beating of his 5-year-old son. "Ach, you can't even give your child a hiding there," he said of the land he left behind. He came to Orania two years ago because he admired the "Calvinist values" and racial outlook, and was warmly welcomed with his wife, Brenda, and five children. A few neighbors objected when they learned Brenda Vaughn is three-sixteenths Cherokee, but, said Mr. Vaughn, "I threatened to beat a few people up and it died down."

History truly is beautiful

Here are some relevant modern takes sneeding about Orania:

As expected, sneed about this town has been growing every year as the world is forced learning to embrace diversity (Our greatest strength!).

The South African goverment has sneeded at Orania every year and wants the town to be shutdown permanently and to accept South Africa's rainbow nationalism policy. But the town people just ignore the SA government since they have never taken action once against the town since its creation 21 years ago

Panyaza Lesufi is a parliment member that despises Orania so much that he's called for the abolition of the city full of "mindless racists". Weirdly enough, the majority of the Orania population don't even consider themselves white but rather Afrikaan.

Let's head to the some current year drama of this irrelevant town

---

Twitter Drama

Recently there was post on this site that revolved around a fragile mayo strangling a black boy for swimming in a mayos only pool. This conflict sparked discourse about racism within South Africa, and of course people began discussing Orania:

Orania must be banned, we cannot have a white only town in South Africa, not acceptable. If white people want to live on their own, they must go to Europe, not in Africa.

Based. Everyone should stay in whatever country their born and never be allowed to move or immigrate

Imagine going to live far away in the desert, just to be left alone, only to still be pathologically obsessed over by people who can't even find you on a map if they were given 1000 guesses.

This guy is unironically right. For all the news coverage and sneed that Orania gets for being on stolen land, they occupy only 3.5 square miles. But they live rent free in the minds of the South African population.

It’s private land, surely they can do what they like on private land? They are not disturbing anyone, living peacefully in their own space and retaining their culture. Why such chest pains over a tiny little place that has no bearing on your life at all?

Bullshit, we have many different races and cultures in this country, and no one stops a particular race from practicing their culture in our multiracial society. These Afrikaners in Orania are racist, we must stop them

Every race should be able to practice their culture except the ones I dont like!

We must go build our houses there and turn it into a city

"If they won't accept willingly, than we'll make them accept us with force"

What Our Grandfather's Failed To Do During Apartheid, We Need To Start Reminding White People They Are European And South Africa Belongs To Black South Africans We Will Not Shrink Ourselves To Accommodate Them The Soil Is Ours We Can No Longer Entertain European Rejects.

Europe has loads of black people now, who ran away from their leaders and they live there in peace. Are you saying they must also come back ?

You don't see us over there harassing white people because of their skin color you don't see us forcefully taking land from the poor causing division because we are not sick in the head like you mfs to think we deserve it all and other humans don't matter now argue about that

Lmao at European rejects

South Africans need to understand that so long as govt endorsed separatists towns like Orania exists, we will Never root out racism. Government has rubber stamped white supremacy We made racists feel comfortable in our own land. The fault is ours and those we voted for.

We cannot have whites showing they can run an efficient village without government funding . Makes us look bad

Volkstaat is an account of an Orania citizen. They post constant updates about the town and the different projects the townspeople are working on. Great place to find drama since people are always sneeding in the comments

There seems to be a misconception that Orania is some magical utopia where everything functions automatically. No. We work hard to keep it going and continue to build our city. It is very demanding to live here. We pay for it all and do all the work.

That's our land you must return it or pay rent for that piece of land

The Afrikaners actually did purchase the land from the South African goverment before they established their chud-town. It also led to the displacement of about 500 African individuals who lived there. However, I feel that the goverment is more to blame for this but who knows?

Oranians install a water meter. All labour is done with our own hands. We have worked very hard to get to this point. So much more to do but we are proud of our BIG little town.

Enjoy your little town while it last foreigners

What did he mean by this?

Making new roads in Orania. Our humble town is a massive construction site. A home for the Afrikaner.

Develop my guy... tell us when you are done then we invade our land

So you cannot develop where you staying? harrasing a small town who just want do better themselves? you call yourself a man of God?

Racism has no place in this world

Anyway, you say you want to take the land? Just to give you perspective, looking up into Africa, many own land, but still VERY POOR. Land does not make you rich. Creating value does.

Oh that's what he meant

---

Reddit Drama

Some dramatic reddit threads on Orania:

Reddit Thread Link

So they segregated, themselves?

Yeah and given how they are treated by their peers, I can’t really blame them.

Won’t someone please think it the racists!!!” How is this back bush shit upvoted??

well considering apartheid south africa and these communities actively defending it…they deserve everything they get lol 🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♀️

Most of these people weren't even born when it was abolished tough?

your point is? You think there isnt a knock on effect of past events in modern society?

If we want to move forward as a society we must hold grudge and hate from years ago and never let people forget what their ancestors did (This but unironically)

As a white South African speaking on behalf of most other whites in this country, we don't approve of these communities. Every country has its bad apples, and it's sad that others have to feel guilty for their nonsense, but hey, it is what it is.

Why? Shouldn’t people be allowed to decide who can be in their community?

Thats called discrimination buddy

---

Final Thoughts

So far the fate of Orania and its Afrikaan individuals reamins unknown. The hate for the town grows every year from South African citizens and the government but it looks like it's going to go nowhere in the next couple of years based on past trends.

If you do have time, you should definitely check out the history page on wikipedia or other sites. There's a lot I couldn't include that was somewhat interesting given the long history of the town.

Either way I hope you enjoyed this lengthy read, no better way to end the year with one final effortpost for 2022. Have a wonderful new years friends!

---

Some background

When they're not busy designing pride flags the folx at Microsoft spend their time coding shitty software. Among these is the new Windows Terminal.

Casey Muratori is a programmer who, despite never releasing anything, clearly considers himself to be some kind of genius.

With that out of the way, here's the drama:

ACT 1: THE ISSUE

Frustrated with the slowness of Windows Terminal when printing colors, Casey submits a github issue. He even develops a benchmark application to accurately measure the speed.

After a bit of back and forth Casey starts to becomes frustrated:

Am I missing something? Why is all this stuff with "runs of characters" happening at all? Why would you ever need to separate the background from the foreground for performance reasons? It really seems like most of the code in the parser/renderer part of the terminal is unnecessary and just slows things down. What this code needs to do is extremely simple and it seems like it has been massively overcomplicated.

He receives this legendary response:

I believe what you’re doing is describing something that might be considered an entire doctoral research project in performant terminal emulation as “extremely simple” somewhat combatively. I am not aware of the body of work around performant GPU terminal emulation

Casey gets angry:

When we're at the stage when something that can be implemented in a weekend is described as "a doctoral research project", and then I am accused of "impugning the reader" for describing something as simple that is extremely simple, we're done. Consider the bug report closed.

After which a different Microsoft employee goes in on him:

You were overly confident in your opinion, but I hope [what I linked] helps you understand that it's actually really darn hard.

Basically the whole team agrees that what is being asked of them is extremely difficult. While Casey is insistent that it's trivially simple.

So who is right? A team of senior engineers in a trillion dollar company or a reclusive game dev?

ACT 2: A WEEKEND PROJECT

Casey tweets the following:

I take back literally everything I said about Microsoft taking an interest in fixing their terminal.https://t.co/K9ojvy1liX

— Casey Muratori (@cmuratori) June 17, 2021

And, over the following weekend, he implements from scratch a terminal that works in the way he proposed. It's ~100x faster than Windows Terminal:

(video timestamped to the part with the pretty colors, although the rest is fun too)

Twitter thread with some juicy questions from the audiance

Then this happens:

Afterward, the same dev [lhecker] also used a fake name to hang out on our groomercord and talk about Windows Terminal without telling anyone who he was. I figured it out and confronted them, and they failed to see anything wrong with that behavior. It's a really special team they have there.

— Casey Muratori (@cmuratori) May 6, 2022

ACT 3: MICROSOFT BENDS THE KNEE

Over the following months, there is an embarrassed silence from the Microsoft team. Eventually they release a blogpost basically admitting they were wrong, but don't mention Casey by name. Note that the person making the post is the one who snuck into Casey's groomercord.

Casey tweets:

When I tell the Windows Terminal team something is simple, I am "misguided", being "somewhat combative" and am "impugning the reader". But a year later when they call the exact same thing "trivial", that is just, you know, them writing a blog post:https://t.co/AXrgZjvUPT pic.twitter.com/UTDrD9s0o6

— Casey Muratori (@cmuratori) May 6, 2022

And finally one of them makes a post on Hacker News seething about the whole thing. Quotes:

We get it, Microsoft sucks, we should all be fired, rah rah rah.

-

Casey, I'm sorry. We made a mistake. I made a mistake! We didn't know what we didn't know, and thought we were clever enough to pass for it.

-

I just don't know what else he's asking for here. Credit? Us to die screaming? The blog post is matter-of-fact, and Casey is right: however, he said himself that it was trivial to do this. Is it not acceptable that we use the same language?

Truly a new low for Microsoft.

---

Want more nerd drama? See the previous post in this series.

Academia represents both the best and worst in our species. It is through academic institutions have helped humans share knowledge, helping us to build on our already massive body of giants. It's a cliche statement but Isaac Newton was correct when he wrote “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” I've personally experienced this phenomenon, and with great gratitude, I thank past writers for the concepts and ideas that now inform my own writing. I may not be a literary giant in any sense of the word, but the work I produce for my personal enjoyment is a culmination of all I have learned from my predecessors.

On the darker side of things, academia is a highly bureaucratic system often molded by politics over knowledge. This type of environment tends to attract some of the worst kinds of people in society - intelligent but malicious. They crave the prestige of being part of the intellectual club - perhaps even adding the coveted Dr. to their name - and climbing the power structures.

Academia is far from the only place that functions in this manner, and I'm sure you can think of other workplaces that inevitably end up what millennials would call “toxic”. Many factors lead to this situation, and today I'd like to discuss just one element - mean girls.

To be clear from the outset, this isn't a post that aims to attack women or criticize their existence in the workplace. I believe that any country that doesn't allow women in the workforce instantly halves their intellectual capacity. I am focusing on one kind of woman in the workplace and the effects they tend to have.

With that being said, I do apologize if I come across as misogynistic at any point. If you feel that I am being sexist, please comment.

---

What is meanness?

Anyone has the capacity to be mean. We've all been mean at some point, some of us have done it today.

At this point, I should make something clear. Meanness, as we use them, refers to intentionally enacted cruelty. It requires a malicious mind, which we all have. So here's an example to show what I am attempting to illustrate. A soldier kills their enemy with a headshot. That's violent, but it's not mean. The soldier then walks up to their victim and spits in their face. Now we're dealing with meanness. The intent is cruelty for cruelty's sake.

An important aspect of cruelty is that the one acting cruelly expects to receive nothing except the knowledge that their target is in pain or suffering, either physically or psychologically. Another example. A group of soldiers gain access to the dressing rooms of their opponents. They take all the clothing and equipment to gain an edge in the war. That's not mean, that's warfare. They also collectively poop in the middle of the room. Now that is mean. They gain nothing but the knowledge that their opponents will be humiliated when they find a steaming shit. Cruelty for its own sake.

Taking things a little further, when we talk about meanness in the modern day, we almost are never referring to heinous acts. A mother abusing their child is mean, but we'd seldom call it that. We'd use a “stronger” word like heinous. If the mother pranks the child by waking them up with ice water, that's what we'd call mean.

---

What do mean girls do?

First, we'd need to outline what a mean girl is. These are women who have advanced into adulthood and continued high school behavior but with the benefit of experience and finesse. They're not going to trip you on the corridor, call you a b-word, or tell you to your face that you're not invited to their party. No, it's a different monster altogether.

When the mean girl acts, it's often so well-crafted that you can never truly call it out. Genuine cases of “microaggressions”. They're lawful evil, never breaking the rules as they break your soul. Oftentimes, it'll be years later and you'll still be hurt by what a mean girl said

because the statement itself was innocuous but obviously deeply insulting

. It's a trick women are particularly good at pulling off, and I'll give examples a little later.

We need to talk about two species of mean girls - the equal and the senior.

---

The senior mean girl

When I mention the senior mean girl, I'm referring to a woman who is a higher rank than you in the institution. It doesn't have to be too much. She's just the project manager, for example. It gets worse, of course. The senior mean girl can be your boss, full-time supervisor, teacher, or department manager.

Carole Stephens states:

Mean girl behavior can be used to demonstrate the power a senior female attorney has over a novice female attorney. When treatment is flagrant, brazen, and unashamed, itcan be expressed in sexual harassment, physical abuse, biased hiring practices, or exposing women to a hostile, male-dominated workplace.

https://www.proquest.com/openview/f72a25218726baada8d740f118be4ff1/1

I've experienced such a mean girl. They weren't delusional about who they were and what they were doing. They explicitly told me “I like fighting”. I promise you they feel 0 guilt about what they do and in some cases they see themselves as morally justified. During my time in university, I got a glimpse of the environment. Holy shit, they literally make each other cry with their words, and scheme against each other for the same Chad. It's mind-blowing. My current workplace has like 2 women total and it's so based, none of this nonsense happens. Just goals to reach and shitposting on Slack. Women are incapable of constructing such a workplace. A majority female workplace will eventually involve someone making someone else cry.

Mean girls use the following strategies:

• Putting you in impossible situations

You are verbally given Section A of a task to complete. When you're done, you're scolded for not doing Section B as well. There are many other ways this can happen. The point is that you're made to seem completely incompetent for your inability to complete a task you were never fully instructed to do.

• Hanging their power over you

It's never explicitly stated of course. They'll never say “I'm the boss, you do what I say.” The threats are much more subtle. It'll be something like “if you keep doing that, we won't be colleagues anymore.” She is straight up telling you “do what I say or you're fired.” The consequence is that you know feel like you're walking on eggshells at work, terrified that you might piss her off. Of course, this behavior isn't exclusive to women, but it's definitely part of the mean girl arsenal.

• Displays of power

This can be as simple as standing over you as you work. You can't say anything about it because she's not doing anything wrong. But when you're sitting and someone is standing and looking down on you, it's obvious they want you to intimately know the power difference between the two of you.

Sometimes it's little verbal comments meant to make you feel small or stupid. For example, a meeting tomorrow begins at 8am. Mean girl: “And that means 8am, Sneedman. Alright?.” Nothing explicitly bad was said, but it was still an act of minimizing someone by suggesting they're so flawed they need special instructions to function.

• Public shaming and humiliation

This is perhaps the most powerful tool in their arsenal. A mean girl with power over you will never call you into their office for a private discussion if they have a problem. Instead, they'll wait for a meeting where all the staff is there, then you will be chastised.

They have to wait for a public crowd to start a full explanation of every frickup you've had at work. If they have enough power, it can be an astonishing thing to witness. When I was in university, I witnessed a woman with power completely eviscerate someone during a meeting, going full-on personal, to a room full of silence.

One of the biggest benefits of being the senior mean girl is that nobody can do anything about it. Nothing at all. If a senior mean girl snaps at you at work until you're trembling, then that's that. Nobody's going to help you nor will she face consequences.

There are so many ways to be absolutely vicious while still remaining perfectly within bureaucratic limits. They are the masters of putting up a finger to your face but never truly touching you. The senior mean girl can verbally attack you in a room full of people and nobody will help you for two important reasons:

1. They are afraid of becoming the next target

2. They don't want to lose their job or jeopardize their career

That's why co-workers will stay silent when they see bullying in the workplace. The bully controls their paychecks! You know what's going on is wrong but you also gotta eat.

---

The shaming game

Senior mean girls in power in academia will often play this game, and be sure that it is a game. It begins like this: You wait for a public event, somewhere liberals of your ilk will be convening. If it is a regular conference where academics give presentations followed by a crowd asking questions, you raise your hand, you point to your target, and you claim that they are a racist. Your reasoning doesn't have to be too strong. You can point to a single sentence taken out of context in a book they wrote a decade earlier. You can accuse them of saying something racist in the very presentation they were giving that day, whether or not the speaker intended to be racist.

The target is now caught in a Kafka trap. If they deny the claim, they seem more racist. If they admit it, they are now labeled a racist and may be shunned by the academic community. What happens next? Well, during my time in my department, some cried, some did actually fight back, sticking to their principles, but most were simply dejected, remained silent, and offered no rebuttal.

Mean girls are bullies in the truest sense. A bully isn't someone who attacks someone of the same power level. That's just a fight. A bully is someone who enacts cruelty on someone incapable of fighting back.

The consequence? You go to work walking on eggshells, afraid you might trigger the senior mean girl who genuinely has the ability to frick up your life on a whim. Never get yourself in this position. Always have an escape route, money saved, and don't tolerate mean girls in power for too long.

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The equal mean girl

Most of the time, you'll be dealing with the equal mean girl. She works in the same office as you, maybe even the same job. On the surface, nothing is differentiating the two of you as professionals, but the mean girl will make sure you feel much smaller than them.

Her plan of attack is almost always shunning. The mean girl will never tell you to frick off. It's more subtle than that. You just don't get invited to events, then the mean girl makes it clear that you missed out by describing the event while you're in earshot. The pain of being shunned is the aim. She wants to upset you.

Shunning can also take the form of convincing you that nobody would want to work with you. It's not that you're arbitrarily being shunned - it's happened because you're deathly flawed in some way - you're too fat, not smart enough, you're a liar, and in some cases “you're a racist!”.

In addition to shunning, you also get gossip which is an insanely effective way to frick up someone's life whether you're male or female. I'm being serious, if you don't like someone and you can't fight them, spread rumors effectively instead.

The best rumors have an inkling of truth in them: “Sneedman visits the pig farm.” They then get twisted: “Sneedman fricks pigs, here is a picture of him going to the pig farm.” As many men wiser than myself have stated: when women want to hurt you, they go for reputational damage.

They may take a genuine flaw of yours - maybe you do lie sometimes. This flaw will then be magnified and spread to everyone to ensure that nobody even talks to you anymore. You're no longer a person who told a lie - you're a pathological liar, and nobody should speak to you ever because nothing you say is true. Viola! Now you have no reputation and you're shunned.

Lastly, mean girls are linguistic geniuses. They know how to say the perfect things with plausible deniability yet still clearly being harsh. I'll give you an example. Once a woman asked me why I'm vegetarian. I explained that I had read some books that changed my mind. Her response “Oh, so you just read those books.” There's nothing obviously objectional about that, but it's an obvious insult. Through this strategy, you are stuck with the pain of being insulted but with the inability to insult back without looking like the instigator.

Carole Stephens states it best:

Mean girl incivility encourages women to engage in unkind exchanges while remaining affable and approachable. The more socially adept a woman is, the better she is at engaging in mean girl incivility in a discrete way.

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Conclusion

These tactics are psychologically damaging. Many don't recover from these experiences of being a target of mean girls at work. A lot of the research is geared toward mean girls doing it to each other, but rest assured mean girls can also frick up men.

With legs full of scars I have permanently darned myself to inceldom. Even if a woman did like my personality, she would still have to deal with the mess I've made of myself. The worst part is that I know it's not over. The darkness will return and I will crawl back to the razorblade as I always have.

I am forced to accept that I'll never experience intimacy and love with a woman despite craving it. In addition to being 5 foot 1, I am also covered in self-harm scars.

What does a hug feel like? I don't think I've experienced one this year. Also, have you ever dealt with a mean girl? I'd like to hear the stories.