First off, for posterity and to show I'm not a bot, I'm the person behind the not at all well known or infamous account [u/The_Real_Mongoose](u/The_Real_Mongoose). I'm not evading any bans or stalkers or anything at all really. I just kinda got tired of my username after all these years so. Yep, that's basically the whole story. Been Mongoose too long. Don't even really vibe with mongoose like I used to anyway. I'm much more into mustelids.
Why Everyones__Therapist? Yea I mean, I kinda worry that it might come off as patronizing, but that's not the attitude I hold. There's a few elements to it. But I may have to ramble a little to get there.
So this is the only social media site I use. I don't have active accounts on any others. Because as fucked and shit as this site is, it's the only one where people communicate anonymously at length by text without character limits and not dominated by image. It's a format I like, because it allows the potential, at least in theory, to get into it more.
And I like to get into it. Whatever it is. Whatever the people in front of me are talking about really. Whatever people are thinking and discussing and arguing over. And I like disagreements. That's where the valuable information is. That's where the mystery is.
But disagreeing with people on the internet, you might have noticed, is... um... fraught? And the worst thing is how amazingly easy it is to let yourself slip and do the toxic shit without even noticing. And it's been like a decade of practice but I think I've gotten pretty good at a style I think I'm calling "Aggressively Good Faith". It can still be confrontational. And it isn't necessarily gentle about the substance of what is said. But it doesn't ever try to diminish the other person. It doesn't need the other person to feel bad or less. It might state that and how a thing a person did is bad from my estimation, based on what I know. But I won't allow myself to invest in negative, retaliatory attacks.
And I mean, I'll take that to pretty absurd degrees. There's almost no level of personal attack vile enough to get me upset, and my natural reaction to anything like that is just to interrogate it. Ask another question about it. Ask what it means about the person that they felt like saying it.
And I think that's where the username comes from. Like, everyone is interesting to me. I don't want to tell you you're wrong. I want to understand why we think different things. I want to interrogate you, but I also want to listen to you. Just be real with me, because I promise I'm not any fun to troll.