how to like things? you just do.

warning. intense language. continue reading at your own discretion.

Get on the subreddit. Join our Discord server. Read our documentation. Haven't you gone through our all of our pins? Search our channels for information that you cannot find anywhere else. Read blog posts from 10 years ago. Find advice written by "xX_beegpaw_Xx" on how to make a pudding. Look at the pinned comment for further reading. Click through replies of comments. Sift through reviews and sort them by most recent. Invest emotionally and financially. Crash out about the money and time you spent on it. Cry. Spend hours finding new things to like about the thing. Hyperfixate over it. Breathe it. Live it. To like things is to be open to not just consume it, but to be consumed by it.

There seems to be some sort of belief floating around in certain spaces of the internet that liking something must be done in such specific ways. That if you, someone in a hobby or a passion or a creative venture, intend to be /real/ about it you must do so in an X Y Z frame or formula. Despite virtual and intangible spaces being limitless, supposedly a void for us to be endless in a creativity, there is this want for the walls, want for the stupid boxes that attempt to cage us in real life. That need to conform, that crave to be part of the in-group. The safety, the security, the fucking passive behavior of it all. It's passive to me, as instead of taking your own stand in your passion in joy in something, you (the general you, not you the reader - but hey, if the shoe fits...) crave for a belonging that isn't true to you, a belonging that isn't yours but is rather the belonging society and others have made you to believe is yours. Reject it.

Break a rule. Don't use the golden ratio. Find a different formula. Try a new routine. Do stuff repeatedly, over and over and over and over and over and over. Find what works, find what doesn't. Think about how you feel - is this fun? Do I feel good doing this thing? Is there a purpose that I can define for myself here? Question yourself. Never stop.

There will always be fear present. A voice in the back, it may ask, "am I allowed to like this?" or "what if I am not liking this properly?" to which I say - ask. Talk. Find others. And if you refuse to do so, then create your own process, your own system, your own definition. Cross-reference materials. Learn. Ask the questions to those who have archived information from the past. Fear is the unknown, and knowing is our tool, our weapon, our passage forward.

Rules without context are lame. Expectations without respect and mutual understanding are lame. If anyone tells you not to do this or only do that without a thought to explain to you why, what the fuck kind of hobby or activity are you getting into? It's lame when things are just expected of you for no other reason than "it is what it is." Fuck, make it matter to me! Make it matter for you! If it doesn't matter, what the FUCK are we doing here?

If you aren't told the understandings of why doing X Y Z thing matters-

-that's not a hobby, that's not a worthwhile activity...

...just a place pretending to have something.

If you like something, don't fucking pretend. At the very least, don't fucking lie to yourself about it. If you can't scream it in the void, scream it in your mind. Make the stuff you enjoy a part of your truth, an admission for yourself. When the world rips us apart - as it has for every living being... eventually we all do turn to dust - will our existences only be filled with dead air? With the wasted hours, minutes, seconds that live heavy in our souls when we let time pass? If others cannot know the truth of my soul, the truth of my expression, the truth of my being, then at the very least I would like the air that I return to be of weight. I want all of us to join the stars as a heavy gas, the memories of who we were and what we did imprinted somehow out there.

How To Like Things: you just do. Liking things is the stance that you take, a proclamation of "this is a part of me! this is something that resonates with my being! hear me!!!!"

I am me! I like this! I like that! Why? I just do!