Curious People Die Young

A Q&A where my curious friends ask me shit

What was your childhood like?

I would say it was quite good overall, even if not perfect. My family was (and still is) neither rich nor poor, and my father needed (and still needs) to work abroad because Romanian wages are shitty. Me and my family lived in a rented appartment in the city until I was 8, before we moved to another rented appartment for a few months before moving to a house in a local village. Overall, stuff was good.

Where do you see yourself in the next 10 years?

If all goes well, probably working as a journalist or therapist or museographer, or owning a business of some sort; either in Romania or abroad.

What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?

Either chocolate or mint.

What's your favorite waifu?

Sorry, I'm into more "tangible" girls/women.

Though admittedly I've had a bunch of fictional female characters I found attractive, I can't necessarily say I have a favorite one. Or maybe I can, but I don't wanna tell you so I can watch you boil in your own juice.

What is your type?

Hmmm. I think my "type"/preferences vary based on my mood at any given time. If I were to say something common across the girls I've been with/found attractive, I'd say I like brunette girls that have normal bodily proportions and with a sense of fashion that isn't an eyesore. For this reason I liked the emo and punk girls I was seeing in Bucharest (note that I am a minor myself at the time of writing this).

Beyond the physical aspect, I like smart girls that (ideally) don't play mind games, that are loyal and that are empathetic.

Would you build Evangelion model kits?

(Had to look that up) I enjoy building and assembling stuff. This is the main reason I like Lego. So yeah, why not?

How did you get into weirdness?

This is an interesting question because the answer is not exactly clear-cut. I think it stems from the various interests I've had from a very young age. As a little kid, I was very curious, and I was constantly asking questions. I am grateful that my parents did not supress this curiosity even when they didn't know the answers. I allegedly used to get very upset when hearing that my mom gave birth to me (because I had some strange fantasy/desire to have been born by myself). Once I saw the moon behind the clouds, and it seemed stranged to me, and such I asked why the moon looks like that. Then I came up with my own answer: "The moon is stuck between the clouds!".

When I was 5, my older brother gave me my first PC. A relatively old Windows XP machine. With the help of that computer, as well as an old prayer book in the home, I managed to learn how to read and write with little assistance (consider that most of my peers at that time learned how to read and write at the ages of 6-7). This opened a runaway process for me where I started searching stuff that seemed interesting to me. Initially I liked learning about the Solar System and geography. In the meantime I really liked this one Disney cartoon that was being broadcast in Romania at the time about some colored gummy bears or something. I remember searching up images of it and doing video montages of them. This was quite literally how I learned the basics of video editing in Windows Movie Maker at the age of 6 IIRC. I also had an interest in old Romanian fairy tales, especially those by Ion Creanga or Petre Ispirescu, though I don't exactly remember the stories clearly.

When I was 7/8/9 I found out more about the origins of the Cosmos, of the Solar System, about how stars are born, live and die, even about atoms and substances. I really liked the astronomy stuff and I think later down the line it kind of help me grasp certain concepts in Physics or Chemistry class for instance. At the same time I started having interests in video games, most notably Minecraft. I have also come to enjoy the more mysterious aspects of this stuff. The Romanian video series of "Myths and Legends" on video games ranging from FNAF to Minecraft to GTA V were really feeding into my thirst for knowledge. In my 8 year old mind, Minecraft was potentially haunted by Herobrine and UFOs. Though my love for mysterious and obscure stuff was not limited just to that. I was watching videos about real mysteries too, ones posted by Romanian trivia YouTube channels, and mysteries from popular cartoons at that time.

Multiple interests and years later, I found myself interested in psychology and sociology. I wanted to know how the human mind works, how society works from there. If you were to ask me what kick-started this, I would not know how to answer. Perhaps I have realized the absurdity of my desires. Maybe it was the absurdity of human behavior and the joke that is the Romanian institutional apparatus. Maybe it was all of this, I do not know for sure. What's certain is that I got this interest, and that I was trying to analyze elements of culture through such a framework. What culture says about us humans and our desires. Naturally, I discovered Jungian stuff about archetypes.

Some other years later, I became interested in history and politics, more specifically the history surrounding the Romanian Revolution of 1989. I think my respect for it is one of the only constants in my political mythos, regardless of the opinions I was holding at any given time. There was something deeply transgressive, ofenssive even, about it. How controversial it was and still is in Romanian society. How I felt that the absurdity of Romanian institutions finally had an explanation. I eventually found out about some disparate philosophical stuff. First it was timid: a phenomenological notion here and there. Maybe something about the hauntology of Jacques Derrida and Mark Fisher. Then I got a slightly better grasp on Lacan's psychoanalysis. Then something happened.

Watching the FNAF movie in late 2023 pushed me into my 6th (?) FNAF phase. I was left dissatisfied by the movie, and I believe it to be not necessarily a bad movie, but a mid movie at best. This one, with my interest of philosophy and psychoanalysis, was different. It helped me understand the concept of repression, which helped me better understand psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis in turn helped me understand stuff about myself. And yet I still felt like something more could be known, something more could be said that was not said. In May of 2024, I wrote a private project, like a note to myself, about the notions of perception and reality (which I don't think I will post; I don't even know if I have the file anymore). In it, I discussed the notion of the brain/mind as a machine that functions on inputs and outputs. I was looking around for cybernetics without knowing it is called cybernetics. In June of 2024 I have discovered a certain post by Neocities user Madesuki. It put into words so many things I could not. And the structure kind of surprised me too. I eventually found out about the influences of cybernetics, the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari and the accelerationist thought of CCRU, which further surprised me. Learning about all those concepts was like opening a new area of my brain I never knew existed. It was also her that inspired me to learn some HTML and CSS and make my own Neocities websites. It was also this that led to me finding out about other stuff from French philosophy, like the Situationists, Debord, Baudrillard, Lyotard etc and all their interesting concepts. And also, anime like Serial Experiments Lain, Akira or Neon Genesis Evangelion.

This is how I got into weird stuff and how I unlocked a new kind of thought process that allows me to map out and better understand certain stuff.

What is the most important idea people should explore in our current day?

Now this is an interesting question. I can't think of a particular idea that should be especially explored nowadays. There are many such ideas: God, Truth, honor, identity, existence, the mind, liberty and so on. What I think should be done nowadays is to learn how to explore new ideas, or to explore already existing ideas in new ways. To be able reach new forms of thinking, new forms of practices. To have a deeper understanding of things. It is through such creative acts that the future is born.