enjoy being dead
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Aug 3, 2021
Edit: as I was typing this it somehow became the topic of conversation. I do think much of Digi's happiness is based in delusional positivity and going to collapse, but also I think they genuinely do feel relieved to have shaken off several years of accumulated bullshit. They are working very hard to replace it with a new pile of bullshit, but at the moment it's relatively close to reality (Digi believes themself to be and actually is a struggling rapper) and at least has a few anchors (crowd reactions and IRL feedback).
Hard to believe, but Digi has been doing relatively well lately. Mooching off of parents and being a mediocre rap performer isn't exactly laudable, but compared to what I would have expected even a month or two earlier, it's really not that bad. If you ignored the aspects which are connected to their career as a pony/anime YouTuber, he's just another 30yo washout with unrealistic expectations. It's unfortunate, but not really Lolcow behavior.
I used to be a fan of Digi's, and when they started going off the rails, the most frustrating part of it was how self-contradictory their explanations were, where they were driven by artistic integrity and hedonism and rational self-interest. This hit a low point in the Oki interview when Digi was lucky to go 30 seconds without invalidating what he had just said, which even Oki got annoyed with here and there.
Even if you assume Digi does want all of those things and simply cannot accept trade-offs, they've also made bizarre decisions which either make tiny gains for one goal while destroying the others (selling classic merch for pennies on the dollar) or literally only hurt them (privating the videos weeks early). Yes, Digi lacks common sense, but they've kept this going for too long to be that stupid.
I eventually decided that if you ignore what Digi says and look at their decisions, those explicit goals are there, but the real one is more personal. If you assume that Digi's primary motivation is to hide from the emotional consequences of the life they have lived, I can't think of a single decision they've made in the last six months (if not longer) which doesn't fit that explanation.
I can't know, but I have a feeling May was a bigger part of this than Digi lets on. Those two spent years going through the motions of a committed relationship, and when she left him for Ralph, it would have recontextualized all the time they spent together, with Digi seeing that what he had thought of as luck (finding someone who accepted him) was really him being too shit with social cues to realize he was being used (May not contributing more to their lifestyle was such a colossal red flag).
Adding in debt, the fragility of online friendships, and the problems with his YouTube/Patreon career creates a situation where Digi would have been confronted with how fucked they would be once the luck ran out. His money and special treatment could disappear overnight, but the clips from TDS would be around forever, leaving Digi in a financial/social hole so deep that even a functional adult might take decades to recover, let alone a stunted manchild who barely has the skills to be a YouTuber.
While it might have been more gradual and less dramatic than that, I think Digi got a glimpse of raw, un-narrated reality, and everything since then has been a frantic attempt to stuff that genie back into the bottle. By letting Riley basically run their existence, Digi created an unspoken agreement that he can rape the "digibro" legacy in exchange for maintaining a fantasy life where they are an up-and-coming rap crew who are always on the cusp of a big break; and by being an unrepentant asshole to anyone who doesn't unconditionally validate their personal narrative (or who challenges their behavior in general) they purged all social contacts who might shatter their illusions (like others have said, Ben being 100% pro trans was a big problem for Digi's bullshit).
I feel like them running back to their mother is just a more literal version of what they've been doing for nearly a year now, and in a way it's satisfying. I doubt this is actually rock bottom (I'm sure they could make it worse) but the degree to which this thread has slowed down shows that they've at least leveled off, and it does seem like they've settled into a new phase of life. I don't believe for a second they are doing the work it would take to become a legit rapper, but they are doing better than expected.
That Digi merely reverted to adolescence rather than ending up dead or in prison is not a great accomplishment, but it's probably closer to his actual level of development than the larping of the May saga; and even if hip hop is a delusional get-rich-quick scheme, being a low-level performer is going to going to give Digi way more life experience than watching anime, as well as less material for crafting mental illnesses. Confronting his mistakes and growing as a person would have been the actual right decision, but Digi at least managed to torch his life (which was legitimately disgusting) in way that left him with a support structure and occasions to go out into the real world.
We'll see how long this holds up, but it feels like we've hit the point where Digi got everything they wanted (minus the RV). Everything they were going to lose is already gone, and after Saint gets bored they will have about as tranquil an internet presence as they ever will. All they problems they are ignoring are waiting in the wings, but day-to-day they can just smoke weed, get makeovers, and rap. In a weird way I'm almost happy for him.
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