No Stupid Questions

If this text doesn't get replicated on the internet forever, it's a failure of a meme.

The main thesis here is good, but that's a mischaracterization of what people consider "failed" writers.

Someone who wrote one novel and had it published is not considered a failed writer, no matter if they then stop writing immediately. "Failed writer" is pretty much reserved for people who tried writing and couldn't get anyone interested enough in it to publish it.

I'm not sure what labels would be applied to someone who exclusively pursued self-publishing, but that's not really the common way.

If you close a business without going bankrupt, that is not failure.

Very interesting sentiments, very agreeable, but if this were one of my patients I would be quick to redirect the conversation away from "society is wrong" into "You're realizing that you believe this is your path". Generalizations like that do us no good. If it's about YOU, then make it about YOU. If someone is dismissing YOU based on this stuff, talk about how that person's words affect YOU.

I bet $100 that this person recently had a conversation with someone where this kind of language was used. Or, maybe more likely, they saw some random irrelevant bullshit on the internet from a stranger and extrapolated messages about an entire culture from it. The culture is YOU TOO, buddy!

Curated tumblr, microblog memes, Lemmy being wholesome, 196, lots of places it could fit and be appreciated.

This is oddly worded and has some strange conceptions.

If you open a coffee shop and can't handle the stress and can't manage to afford to operate it... then you have failed. If you open a coffee shop and run it well for a few years and decide to sell your functioning business or largely step down from active management with new leadership... then you successfully ran a coffeeshop and did not fail at it.

If you marry someone and divorce them, and its anything but a mutually agreed, low to no drama, no fault divorce, then yes the relationship and marriage failed.

Now the book/author example is worded much more sensibly. If you write books for a few years, and can support yourself from this or hell even if you really enjoyed it, and then you move onto something else, I don't think anyone would consider you a failed author. You did the thing, got some works published, excellent, you are a successful author!

A friendship that doesn't last... in most cases, is kind of objectively less of a friendship than one that lasts for a long time. It can still have been a real friendship, but it obviously was not important enough for one or both people to continue it if they ... did not continue it.

People going through hobbies as phases is linguistically literally correct, as many people do this. I do agree though that phrasing this derogatorily as if there is somehow anything wrong with changing hobbies overtime is somehow bad or indicates anything negative, unless youre doing that extremely overenthusiastically and/or fiscally or physically dangerously.

Fandoms do ebb and flow. They rise and fall in popularity and enthusiasm. I again do not really see how this is somehow indicative of a culture that prizes only permanent things.

Perhaps by now its obvious I am autistic but... it doesnt make any sense to praise or criticize a fandom by its popularity alone. Praise or criticize it by the kind of community it fosters, the in jokes, the style, the lasting marka its made on other things, the quality or appeal of its content.

I mean I agree with the ending of this, that temporary things can still have been good, but... yeah a good bit of this person's examples seem to me to be not well thought out.

When you’re marrying someone you’re usually not like “lets try this and see where it goes” (that’s called dating), you’re more like “till death do us part” so yes, divorce is failure more often than not. Ending a relationship, not so much

Yeah, with that logic, life is no good because it ends.

I think this is looking at it backwards. I think we shouldn't view failure as a bad thing. Failure is learning. It's part of growing. You fail at something, you've learned something (well, hopefully). Often you learn more by failing than by succeeding.

Like coaching my kid's soccer team today: I want them to fail sometimes. I have a player doing well with his right foot and scores a couple of goals, I switch him to the other side and tell him to use his left foot "But I'm not good at it!" good. "I'm not good at goalie." Excellent, here's the goalie jersey and go get in there. That's the point, I'm trying to make them better soccer players. If we just played into their strengths all the time, it would limit how much of a better player they can become.

At work, as a programmer, I try something out. It doesn't work out because there was some unforeseen condition that causes my initial pattern to fail? No big deal, just redo the pattern from scratch (if, of course, there is the time for that) or rethink the pattern. And I've seen how often that solves some other problem, or makes another thing more efficient, or makes future development more easy.

So who cares if your coffee shop failed, or you're a "failed writer" (I've never heard that before), if we don't treat failure as a bad thing, then people will be more likely to accept that and learn from it.

It fits very well for [email protected] so I cross posted it there

I just created [email protected] in case you wanna just post the text instead of picture, because I'm perhaps irrationally annoyed by pictures of text.

Disregarding the question but commenting on the material, I don't think this is generally true. In labeling something as forever upfront (e.g., marriage, which generally includes a "forever clause"), it's only natural though.

Contrast marriage with a "summer fling"

the expectation is a duration of at most one summer. Not really considered a failure (which is kinda the plot of Grease, dated though that may be...)

There was a great restaurant near me (Michelin star), and it closed a while back

the owner was upfront that he just had a kid and wanted to spend more time together. I don't think anyone views that as a failure. A loss for the community, definitely, but not a failure.

The best way to get out of a business is generally to sell it though, so someone else keeps running it. Although shutting down a business for personal reasons isn't generally considered a failure.

As for being an author, you only need one book to be a commercial success in order to be a "successful" author.

Success or failure depends on the goal. Perhaps outside observers can see something as a failure or success, but that doesn't matter since you set the goals. As for which Lemmy community to post this to, I dunno.

I can think of two fairly active potential homes for that content: Showerthoughts, which is for random trains of thought that you think others might relate to. Lemmy Be Wholesome is for content that you feel elevates people's moods, is supportive, shares good vibes and so on.

Really depends on what your goals were to begin with. Most people don't open a business or get married expecting for them to end. In that regard, they are failures.

Normally I'd expect to see this stuff on [email protected]