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Wouldn’t amber just scroll past? I could be wrong.
Yo where the fuck is Ana and how am I first this late?!?
Truth. Ana, hope you’re well! We miss you!
Congrats on your first. Also, I halted for a moment when I thought Joyce was gonna call Booster a psychopath. 😀
And yeah, I expect Amber would’ve unfollowed or even unsubscribed already.
Is unfollowing or unsubscribing a thing with Facebook memories? I always just scroll past, but I haven’t experienced it as the emotional dilemma Joyce is having.
You can disable memories. I did it about as soon as they appeared.
Oddly this may work out. Amber can show her how to get back to the post whenever she wants.
You can also block out certain dates so they don’t show up ever.
She doesn’t want to block out the date. She wants to keep the memory without people knowing she’s doing so and posting it is the only way she knows of keeping it.
I barely get any of those, probably because I barely post.
Is she looking at one of the “do you want to post this” memories that pop up in your timeline? I don’t think anyone else will see them unless you tap “share”. Is the stress over whether to share it or not? If she just wants to see it, worrying it will disappear if she scrolls by, why not take a screenshot?
Now we have to wait and find out what the memory is. My guess is it’s something to do with the “end of the ‘before times'”, like a family gathering or the last big thing she did with Becky’s family before Bonnie died.
I love a smash cut, especially when it dunks on somebody.
It could dunk on you, me, or anyone eh?
Smash cuts run on Dunkin’
Smash Cut had a couple big hits in the late 90s, but I think everyone mostly remembers them now because of Shrek.
I wonder if it’s the six flags trip
Could be the anniversary of Bonnie’s death
Congratulations on 1 year anniversary since “Bonnie’s Death”!
[Like/Share]
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I am Nothing liked that.
Or something having to do with Hank and Carol’s now-dissolved marriage.
Fuck Carol that ho has no chill
“My daughter was just kidnapped and two people died, but she’s back now, so I’m gonna kidnap her again.”
Man, I know it’s Religion, Indiana, but I wanna know just how fast the judge gave Hank full custody.
Would the judge grant anyone custody? Arent all their kids adults
Yeah, Joyce is 18 iirc.
She’s 23, but don’t let Ruth know.
This may be the best comment in the history of comments. Because fuck Carol, she has no chill, and in the most harmful ways possible.
It could be their anniversary?
Facebook shows me a memory in perpetuity (sometimes not even on the right day!) until I delete that specific memory unless there’s a new Facebook memory mechanic that I haven’t seen yet.
It is a good indicator of how little I use facebook that, while I am familiar with the term “memory” I can only barely follow any of what Joyce says here.
Hey, Rose, I wanted to thank you for your advice earlier this year. It really helped us a lot.
Also, if you see this same post on It’s Walky!, I’m not trying to harass you; I think it got eaten over there, but I’m not sure.
Facebook will sometimes throw one of your old posts up in your timeline, with a prompt to share it as a new post if you want. Basically it says “hey, ‘member this? Wanna show your friends?” Even online, reruns are inescapable!
It usually chooses to bring up something bittersweet when you’re feeling melancholy, which I think is proof they’re building a malevolent AI.
+1 Internets.
Unless you were serious.
You’re right, maybe the AI is becoming misanthropic on its own.
Good catch!
It found its way onto the Internet. What do you expect?
I mean Amber is probably not the person to talk too but I feel like Booster just gave out really bad advice here.
I wonder if Booster was being sarcastic after being rebuffed like that.
Booster is (probably) canonically bad at this.
to be fair, they didn’t collect $2 for it
Booster needs Lucy Van Pelt’s “Psychological Help 5¢” booth. (At least they’re usually not treating the psychological distress they themselves cause; that was a good racket she had going against good ol’ Charlie Brown.)
Amber might actually be a great person to talk to about it. There aren’t that many children of divorced parents in this friend group; the other two are Joe and Sarah and she’s hiding from them both.
And Amber can explain how Facebook works. Because frankly it’s easy to 1) share to only yourself or 2) just remember the correct day to search for memories on.
This.
screen-shot.
I find it interesting you think Amber would do that considering she both doesn’t like Joyce, and is kind of a jerk especially coming back from the time skip. Plus Booster didn’t say “Go talk to Amber” they said “go find the person yo know would be the worst at this ask them and do the opposite” which is horrible advice to give anyone. Assuming Amber actually humors Joyce and gives her the correct advice on using Facebook is Joyce going to do the opposite and screw it up? What about Amber’s opinions on divorce which are a bit ambiguous? I have to believe Booster was being sarcastic and didn’t actually expect Joyce to follow through on this or I’ve lost a bit of respect for them.
I don’t feel Booster deserves the respect some people give them. I believe they deserve understanding, whenever it is we get around to knowing enough about them to understand why they are such a jerk and give out advice like this. However, judging from their expression and the way they’ve pretentiously given out advice before I think Booster really thinks this is advice that will help Joyce.
Booster is a jerk because Mike pulled the ultimate troll and now there’s a vacancy in that niche.
Amber has been much more reclusive (even for her), and her emotional defenses are up, but I’m forgetting how she’s a jerk or that she doesn’t like Joyce. Is there anything she’s done to indicate dislike of Joyce, or to be mean to anyone?
There’s a whole history between Amber and Joyce. Amber hasn’t liked Joyce since she had started dating Ethan her best friend and boy Amber had loved in high school and spent a lot of time supporting when he came out as gay. Or I guess more accurately found out Joyce knew he was gay and was dating him anyway as some sort of soft straight conversion therapy type thing?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/thunder/
Putting it lightly early Joyce was some pretty heavy yikes. But also Joyce is actually an Amazi-girl villian. Maybe even her most powerful foe. The Whiteboard Dingdong Bandit! Also AG is slightly responsible for Joyce’s attempted rapist and also genuine rapist Scarface Ryan getting away at that first party.
I think they’ve water under the bridged most of this but they are not friends. They’re people who are connected through numerous intense traumatic events but I don’t know what the word for that is. They never hangout and barely talk and I think if either were given the choice they’d spend time with other people which is proven by them always spending time with other people.
Also this is more my opinion, but yeah Amber is kind of a jerk. She has anger and rage issues, has snapped at multiple people, ect. The list goes on but Amber specifically is not great and even she’s acknowledged that. The idea being AG is her better half and as of right now I have no idea how to classify how much of that is actually Amber or Amazi-girl since they’ve more prominently separated.
Well written up! Thank you. I don’t come to the same conclusion that Amber is a jerk, but I understand that perspective much better. I had plum forgot about Joyce and Ethan, so that helps make sense of there being discomfort between Joyce and Amber. It may be worth including that Amber shanked the dick, so from Joyce’s perspective there may be some subversive gratitude, possibly enough to blind Joyce to Amber’s perception of their relationship.
I think we’re also forgetting things like Amber helping Joyce clean whiteboards (post Ethan) and Amber taking the guy who drugged Joyce for purposes of rape off the street. Amber is antisocial, but she doesn’t hate Joyce.
I don’t think either of them see it the way you do.
Both Amazi-Girl and Joyce sort of bonded after the Whiteboard Dingdong Bandit thing, resolving the Ethan and some of the Ryan issues. Joyce was even more grateful after Ryan got shanked.
At least on Joyce’s part, all is forgiven. She even tried to drag Amber into her campus family after Faz’s visit.
I think on Amber’s part there isn’t really anything against Joyce, she’s just much more introverted and withdrawn and Joyce is a lot to deal with. Plus, she thinks she’s a monster who doesn’t deserve friends.
Note that AG being her better half is a symptom of her mental illness. The two of them push all their bad behavior onto Amber and anything good they do to AG, but that’s not reality. You can’t take them at their word there. They’re much more alike then they’d admit and some of the worst stuff they’ve done was as AG (stalking Sal?), while Amber has had some of the better moments.
That’s why I don’t really know how to classify it. Was that Amazi-girl or Amber? It’s still confusing especially since neither are really aware where the line between them is.
But either way I believe there is a difference between two people not having animosity between them and actually being friends. I don’t think either of them really seek each others company or enjoy time spent around each other much. The one thing they have in common is a mutual respect for creating and consuming erotic literature.
So to me in the scenario presented here what incentive does Amber really have to help Joyce? Especially with her even more introverted post time skip attitude. In fact Joyce is only here because she thinks Amber would be a bad confidant which further cements to me that despite Joyce’s obvious gratitude toward Amber/AG she still holds a bit of negativity toward her.
Like would Amber appreciate if Joyce told she was only here because she feels like her advice would be garbage?
Yeah, I don’t think they’re really friends. Just that their history isn’t bad.
Smash Cuts are when Snake doesn’t get into Smash For after Brawl, but then comes back for Ultimate.
Of course her community views psychotherapy as “the work of the devil”.
It is likely that psychiatry is also out of the question.
That’s what you get when your founding father sexualizes infants.
Which founding father? The ones of America, the con artist who sold a “seeder stone”, or the same “father” that threatened child cannibalism as punishment?
Who did these things? I am interested to read about these doings.
The con artist who sold that stone was the
infamous Joseph Smith, the founder of the LDS Church (“Mormons”).The (fictional) father who threatened child cannabilism was none other than the
psychopathicmagical king Elohim Yahweh, the one known in Christianity and Judaism as “God”.I always, without fail, read “LDS Church” as “LSD Church,” and it always takes me a moment to work out that we are not, in fact, discussing a church that is big on LSD.
Well, the Native American Church is actually legally allowed to use Mescaline, if that counts.
Doing too much LDS can be just as bad. Just ask Spock.
IIRC it was actually Kirk who uttered that malapropism while trying to explain Spock’s behaviour.
Now I’m wondering if it was some sort of stealth dig at Mormons.
Second one’s that guy who
made up out of whole clothdiscovered the direct-from-God founding tenets of Mormonism, right?I don’t know what the context here is and I am not sure I want to know
My guess is plasticwrap was referring to Freud
Correct.
Oh come on! Freud is not the emperor of psychotherapists!
But regardless on how most psychologists discredit his ideas, I guess fundamentalists HAVE to preserve themselves in the formaldehyde of faith to keep existing.
Infallibility is really hazardous that way, and eventually self-defeating.
He’s the founding father of psychotherapy in that he was so wrong that so many people disproving his theories led to many of our modern understanding
That’s like saying Lamark was the founder of evolutionary biology. And you know how ridiculous THAT sounds.
Well, you know . . . epigenetics is a thing, so he was only half wrong.
Basically everything he wrote about that’s even sort of accurate, he’s building off of someone else’s groundwork, and even then the parts where he’s adding new aspects tend to be on a completely different track that is subsequently ignored.
One thing I’ve heard (heck, it might have been here?) was that some of it was trying to come up with bizarre yet “acceptable” alternatives to the unspeakable reality, which was that a lot of husbands were absolute shits to their wives.
I’ve seen that one floating around on Tumblr, but even that doesn’t explain him taking the concept of the Uncanny (Jentsch: *Discusses the sort of horror of Things That Are Ambiguously Alive And Ambiguously Human, like living dolls, an example he cited specifically*) and going ‘Actually the REALLY uncanny thing in Hoffman’s Der Sandmann is going blind, and also it’s about sex again.’ Jentsch’s reads pretty closely to Mori’s essay on the Uncanny Valley, decades later (hence why translators gave it that name, Mori hadn’t read it.) Freud brings in his theories of symbolic castration again.
Tragically my university’s psychology program still teaches Freud very straightforward, without mentioning it’s all basically been discredited except defense mechanisms. One of my professors even gave a real life example of Freud’s phallic stage involving her young son which was. Very uncomfortable to listen to
… Hoooooooo boy.
Freud and Blanchard are what made me realize the alternative medicine crowd might just have a point. The alternative medicine people may have bad research methods and no understanding of half the words coming out of their faces, but at least they can sometimes show evidence of having looked into what they say. Meanwhile the former 2 keep being cited, even in the DSM, and their work is entirely made up abd propped up by pedigree despite having been debunked repeatedly.
Freud and Blanchard being cited in the DSM is only about giving due historical credit, spite them being wrong about so many things. I mean, even historical blood-thirsty emperors on one occasion expressed worthwhile philosophical ideas that are also quoted by the psychology community (such as those of emperor Sun Tsu). The author is incidental. The idea ALWAYS stand or falls on its own merits.
By the way, DO NOT take anything the “alternative medicine” community says without at least a whole wheelbarrow’s worth of salt.
All rigorous fields, including psychology, have their garbage. Rigorous psychology, due to being relatively new and a few other factors, had a lot more garbage than other fields, but at least academia has carefully designed systems in place so that fields can effectively manage their own garbage.
There’s absolutely nothing like that for Big Placebo, or anything else on the internet really, to manage the garbage. In fact, there are systems in place that in fact encourage deliberate garbage to get the most clicks and ad revenue, or sell the most snake oil.
Just stay wary. And remember that you cannot believe everything you hear.
Based on what we saw at the floor meeting, Booster is sometimes insightful but doesn’t respect boundaries or the word “no” and enjoys making people uncomfortable. Joyce is absolutely right to not let him get started on this one.
ah shit, them
I hate Booster, but not enough to intentionally misuse pronouns.
Hopefully her stigmas against psychotherapy will dissolve via more work in biology class. Expedited results if she works more with Joe.
I’m really hoping the comic at some point acknowledges, as it often did with Mike, that Booster is kind of a jerk and clearly has similar boundary issues.
My hope as well. They’ll get a starring role in a storyline eventually, I’m sure, but with a big ensemble cast and a lot of things still settling out from before the timeskip even some of the returning main characters haven’t gotten much focus yet.
Also, while they did get carried away in the floor meeting, they’re also showing some regard for boundaries here, asking if Joyce wants to talk about it and when she says no, offering alternative advice. They have some understanding of boundaries and they can improve as that goes on. I get being annoyed about it in the mean time though, god knows I was aggravated waiting for Joyce to start learning that lesson.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who reads it that way. They seem like a sensitive and caring person who just got carried away that one time. I don’t think it puts them on the same level as Mike.
I honestly don’t understand people who put them on that level. I love Mike but he did pretty awful things and i don’t understand how booster is being considered the same as that
Booster is Mike.
So is Jennifer.
Hard to believe I know, but it’s a really good set of disguises and keeps Mike busy.
You kid, but just now before even reading your comment I’m starting to form a real theory that Booster IS Mike, transitioned and not wanting anyone to know (or maybe some or all of the cast DO know and are just being extremely polite and accepting of it). It kinda seems to hold water TBH.
I get that it’s their establishing character moment right now, and we haven’t seen a ton of them since, but seriously the determination to read them in the worst possible light since then regardless of what they’re doing in said strip is just. Incredibly irritating. And even more irritating given how people still bend over backwards to make excuses for Mike even after his final strips were him realizing he was justifying actions towards his friends he recognized were horrible with the same logic as Amber’s abusive monster of a father.
I think we continue to dislike them because until that opening scene is acknowledged as a problematic way to behave, every additional interaction with Booster that frames them as intelligent and measured and respecting boundaries implies that the author sees Booster as someone who respects boundaries, and that we are supposed to see them the same.
Basically, the longer that one scene where they behaved super out of line and unpleasantly goes unexamined, and the longer it is implied that Booster is meant to be read as a good, boundaries-respecting character, the more it feels like we’re supposed to see that initial scene as actually totally okay.
This is why people are only going to get more frustrated with booster as time goes on and that flaw continues to be on examined. You’re right that it isn’t really fair, but it exists in a context of us trying to work out what David Willis wants us to interpret.
I mainly compare Booster to Mike so that people know that I’m not some kind of Mike apologist, by the way. Booster was transparently introduced as a sort of, for lack of a better phrasing, more woke* version of Mike (hence the identical hairstyle and such), and you can actually see booster here occupying a very Mike-like role, saying very similar things to what Mike would say, just in a less toxic and abusive way – even the expressions are superficially similar.
*As in, less of a toxic dudebro, I’m not referring to their not being a cis white dude here.
Well for one thing this strip is clearly showing Joyce DID NOT appreciate their psychoanalyzing her at the hall meeting, and saying so. We’ve seen Booster make comments that were not as far out of line but still uninvited, meaning it is a recurring trait (with Danny and Joe.) We’ve seen them be wrong (with Walky.) And we have yet to see them with friends. Seriously, looking back at the tags, the only time they’ve entered a scene with someone else is when Walky and then Joyce did introductions, they’ve been pretty consistently shown alone before they pop into a scene. I’m suspecting by now that might be intentional, and that Booster is going to realize that this is keeping them from making closer friends because people don’t like it.
Given how longrunning some storylines are (‘Joyce learns to respect boundaries,’ for instance, took a decade, and the AmbG-Sal plotline was at times excruciating to watch,) if I am right, that’s likely gonna be a while. But I don’t think we’re meant to read the hall meeting as a total win – no one walked away from that happy, and they escalated a meeting that could have fizzled out. Their read on Walky about Mike likely made Walky feel even WORSE, given the clear hints his emotions about Mike’s death are complicated. The only moments they haven’t actively put their foot in their mouth with the psychoanalyzing are with Sarah (‘you don’t have to make up reasons you’re forced to be happy,’ which is a REALLY mild thing to say after Sarah claimed she was in fact magically forced,) and Danny and Joe being a relatively neutral scene all told. Even still, I don’t think they’re going to be friends any time soon. And now we see that Joyce doesn’t trust them. I really think this is meant to be seen as a character flaw.
My feeling was always that the whole “boundaries issues” affair was more a peer pressure issue when they get thrown under a self-driven bus middle of a crowd while being a crowd-pleaser. My feeling can be wrong anyway.
I hope so too.
Interesting. Also, I feel like Booster’s finding their niche more and more.
*plays Pet Shop Boys’ “What Have I Done To Deserve This?” as some other student’s ringtone in the hallway behind Joyce*
So I think this is around the halfway point for this chapter; and to be honest I thought there would be more roller derby.
Maybe Amber is about to take Joyce to the rink.
Or take her to the matt(ress)? Yotomoe?
I think it’s like the dragon balls. You have to do the proper ritual to summon him.
@Demoted Oblivious, No seriously, I’m pooped. Got any ideas?
Smoke signals? Waiting patiently to see if they notice? Just hang out and move along if Yoto doesn’t get inspired by or acknowledge to comment? /shrugs/. i managed to drug myself to sleep at a comparatively decent hour last night. Take anything i say with a grain of salt.
Love Ambers face. “What now?” vibes
I love Booster and I wish they were in every strip.
Booster is an asshole.
And?
We should make one of those Booster Appreciation Threads every time they come on-screen tbh. I’ll start one next time.
I love those threads. <3
Aw, glad you guys liked them. I didn’t do one yesterday since people were being decent re: Booster but i think I’ll do another today of someone hasn’t already
Yay! I’m also willing to do them.
I’d rather see less of them since they’re a jerk who needs to learn to not psychoanalyze random people without their permission.
They did that one time.
When that sequence made up one-third of their given dialogue up to that point (and given their extremely limited panel-time since then, it still makes up close to one-fifth of it nine out-of-comic months later…a time period which corresponds to less than four days ago in-comic, not very long ago at all), it does tend to leave an impression. Do I think it should be held against Booster forever? Maybe not, but I’d still like to see something come of that whole business – I’ll take more Booster if it means they become less of an unintentional Mike-substitute in the process.
You…you think Booster is an unintentional Mike substitute?
Well I certainly don’t think Booster is deliberately trying to emulate Mike’s behavior. So in-universe yes, they’re an unintentional Mike substitute. 😛
What a bizarre theory.
They seem as good a substitute for Mike as vegan cheese is a substitute for cheese.
They should probably just go back to pointing out the hidden aesthetic and wonder behind seemingly mundane things, like dusty Nintendo consoles.
Booster asked if Joyce wanted to talk about it today. That’s some progress!
Fuck yeah, Booster appreciation
I kind of wonder if something happened with Joyce’s parents on facebook but I’m kind of skeptical either of her parents even use facebook. I know facebook kind of has the reputation of “your mom’s social media” but the Browns/whatever Carol’s maiden name is now I guess don’t really seem big social media types in general. Maybe to keep in touch with church community functions?
Likewise I thought Facebook was millennial-aged and older.
Like maybe I could see Carol sharing some far right, Qanon, Trump 2024, it wasn’t an insurrection because, ect, hypercringe, but I also feel she’d believe social media was a gateway to the sin of the lgbtq lifestyle so I’m really having trouble figuring this one out.
Are the pop-up video ads new? I had to sit through three of them just to get the strip read from beginning to end. Am on phone. Just started noticing this in the last.. week? I mean literally I’m having trouble even finishing this comment because the ad keeps coming up and blocking it.
Sorry, didn’t mean to post under your thread.
It’s fine. A lot of people have been complaining about that on mobile. I’ve experienced it too and not just on this site. Not sure how to fix it either.
If you’re on iOS, the little letters button on the far left side of the textbox where you type in addresses will bring some options including ‘request desktop site,’ which has got things under control for me. (I believe Android offers a similar function but don’t know if it’s in the same spot.) You’ll have to do it every time you bring up the site if you visit multiple times a day, but it does seem to stop the massive popups.
Thank you!
What browser and OS? I’m using Firefox on Android, and I’m not seeing any pop-ups.
Chrome on Android.
No, intrusive ads pop ups sometimes. If you report them to Hiveworks, they’ll take them down.
Thank you!
My assumption is older millennials (who are rapidly approaching 40) and older, so honestly Hank and Carol are the exact right age as later boomers/early Gen Xers. More surprised Joyce and Becky use it since most of their friends will be from the old congregation, and that’s… fraught. (Given Carol’s supposed to be someone who was radicalized by the sort of Fox News/Jerry Falwell says Teletubbies are leading your kids to sin grifter pipeline, I can fully buy her being a Facebook conspiracy theorist, especially as the sliding timescale comes for us all.)
Could also be something from her old church – their homeschool group, or some kind of trip. Becky appearing to recognize it (that bolding on ‘today’) might mean she got the same memory, and is likewise conflicted.
Most likely Joyce posted a family photo a few years ago on this day. Facebook Memories are always stuff that *you* posted.
Yeah, I’m also assuming it’s something like a family photo from before her parents decided to divorce. In any case, it has to be something Joyce posted.
My grandma uses Facebook to spy on her own family and then yell at them later. Then she’ll go to others and say “friend me on FaceBook, I never go on there”.
I’d just copy-paste those memories – pictures and all – onto a Word document. Well, maybe two documents to separate the good from the bad.
Guesses what this is the anniversary of — ?
(Something Joyce doesn’t want to share/acknowledge, but also doesn’t want to lose.)
Guessing either it’s Hank and Carol’s wedding anniversary (or rather, the anniversary of one of their anniversaries), or Ross and Bonnie’s, or it’s either Bonnie’s or Jordan’s birthday.
Welp, Joyce’s gonna die.
Most likely cause of death?
Butt’s disease. Willis has a brand to maintain.
“Everything dies, baby that’s a fact“
“I feel like I’m going to die, Bart.”
“We’re all gonna die, Lise.”
“I mean soon!”
“So did I…”
I think Booster is under the assumption psychoanalyzing people is how you make friends
It’s VERY likely. Booster seems to be lonely, more than a loner by choice. Being an artsy/intellectual combo means its easy to come off as pretentious (even to the comments’ section); and being queer couldn’t have helped matters when it came to learning social skills. They’ve even told (to Danny and Joe, if I remember right?) that they Do The Thing because they want to be liked.
It would be nice to know these things are true and that Booster is just not another asshole, like Mike. I agree, it is very likely that psychoanalyzing is a defense or social-coping mechanism but they are still an asshole while doing it. I’m sure context will come in time but I still dislike Booster for being an asshole.
Yes, but if Mike were a character which could exist in the more reality-grounded setting of DoA, instead of much simpler strips, I think it’s fair to say that the way he went out heavily implied that his assholery was also a coping mechanism. Him taking pleasure in it doesn’t necessarily mean the pleasure is the reason for the habit; he was *supremely* incapable of vulnerability, and obsessively defensive to the point of not making it obvious that his friends were his friends so that nobody could ever think to hurt them just to get at him.
Mike was legitimately awful all the time, but subtextually, you can regularly see the guy often had good intentions buried somewhere in his bad behavior, or at least that was what Willis was attempting to show.
It’s possible I’m reading too much of my own life experience into Booster but I think it’s less “isolated” and more “no social skills whatsoever.”
Booster loves their field of study, and so once they get going they can’t really stop talking about it. Think back to the initial dorm meeting where Booster annoys the hell out of everyone in the room, but only after Ruth drags a psychoanalysis out of them, whereupon they get rolling on everyone until eventually Booster gets shouted back down.
Booster thinks psychology is cool, and they think figuring people out like a puzzle is cool, so they rush it out with all the gusto a first year college student can muster and bullrushes into inappropriate commentary on Rachel, Roz, and Joyce not to be malicious, but because they think figuring people out like that is really cool and interesting until someone has a bad reaction to something Booster can’t really figure as capable of provoking a bad reaction.
Or at least, that’s my read on them.
I suspect we’ll see something not dissimilar to that once Booster’s arc gets rolling. They’re clearly being set up to be an actual character with interests outside psychology, but they don’t seem to get that other people don’t want to be figured out like a puzzle – and tellingly, we haven’t seen them with any friends from last semester yet, either, which seems prime for them realizing that hey, people don’t like this.
Booster seems to not understand that a lot of people don’t like to be psychoanalyzed without permission. Kinda hoping they learn that soon, because so far I don’t think they’re making a lot of friends with the way they act right now, and I find their behavior obnoxious and pretentious a lot of the time.
It’s truly remarkable how many smart, perceptive first year psych students manage to be stupid in exactly the same way, year after year.
I wonder if anyone’s ever done a study…
Eeeeyup. You get the ones who try to psychoanalyze themselves, the ones who try and assess everyone else, and the ones who are both. In surprising quantities.
My take is that Booster is VERY proud of their ability to discern other’s feelings, and they get carried away sometimes. I think they’re otherwise a good person and want to make friends.
Basically all they did here was ask “you okay?”, “You wanna talk about it” and when told no, just gave some advice to talk to someone else
They’re not really doing any analysis here
Well.
By the parameters Booster set.
Her choice isn’t exactly wrong.
“…crap, I’m in a smash cut gag, aren’t I?”
Hey, Joyce, Set the privacy on the post to “only me” and post it.
Why would you post something only you can see?
So you can find it again easier, or so that your parents don’t see you’re attending bdsm workshops (if you’re me) or rehab for recovering fundies (if you’re joyce)
Okay, and now I’m imagining a bdsm workshop for recovering fundies. What can I say, my mind sometimes goes to very odd places.
Fanfic, or it didn’t happen.
From a security/privacy standpoint, I would strongly recommend people not to trust facebook to keep those separate. That’s separarate account, possibly separate device level stuff, depending on the degree of personal harm you perceive coming from being outed to the wrong group.
(“Uhg. You still talk and share with your parents? So lame!”, 😉
Or just quit using social media. Become a digital phantom! It’ll be so cool! And healthier for you!
Im actually surprised Joyce/had/ facebook a year ago. Woulda thought it’d be a classic gateway to heck
It’s not a gateway. It’s a REAL hell, or one of the closest things you’ll get in this universe. It’s basically a denigrating drug that’s constantly learning how to increase our habit.
Their church probably organizes through Facebook.
I’m surprised Joyce has Facebook. Kids these days have long since moved on.
Their church has a MySpace page designed by the former youth pastor.
maybe just take a screenshot?
I’m not on Facebook, but can’t Joyce just take a screenshot and save it to her photos?
There’s some stuff that doesn’t let you take screenshots, for some reason. As a fellow non-Facebook, my guess is that it might not allow that.
Okay, I was guessing by your lower comment that you weren’t on Facebook, but it’s also hard to know when/the extent to which you’re serious, so that’s helpful.
Anyway, I’ve never had an issue with screenshoting Facebook like I have with, say, Netflix.
You could tell me anything about Facebook’s features and I’d have to believe you.
I’ve never had an issue screenshotting Facebook, but I don’t do it on a phone. I have no idea how to do a screenshot on a mobile device.
Usually I just hold both the power button and volume-down button for a second or two.
Thank you!!
I’m sure this is serving the plot in someway but the easiest way out of the “scroll past?” dilemma is a screenshot, which all phones (and PCs) with Facebook can do.
Facebook can probe your memories in this setting? And then erase them or something if you scroll past some kind of popup? And somehow scrolling past also shares it with people on your friends list? I don’t really get what Joyce is saying or talking about, here.
If she scrolls past, it never comes back again. The only way she can think of saving it is sharing it, but she doesn’t want people to know she saw this today.
I haven’t used Facebook since it stopped loading notifications on my browser years ago (and have not missed it enough to find a workaround, since Facebook,) so thanks for summing her conflict up succinctly!
To elaborate a bit further, Memories are a feature where it sometimes shares things you posted on this day X years ago. Sometimes that’s just a wacky, uncomplicated picture of you and some college friends at a walkathon or something! And sometimes it’s the picture you posted last year of your beloved family member to mark their passing. Or the six-year-old birthday picture of you and your ex who had a bad split, or you at the wedding of friends who are currently divorcing. Or just ‘hey, this was ten years ago! Isn’t time relentless?’
As those examples all suggest, the algorithm is perhaps not the best at reading the room.
Yeah, this is still what it does. I tend to just scroll past those memories because they’re rarely something I’d want to share again.
I think a facebook “Memory” is when it randomly shows you an old post. On its anniversary, I believe.
Funnily enough, Amber might know to give her the same advice I’d give her: Share it with an “Only you” privacy setting.
… I want to be upset on Amber’s behalf, but honestly, fair.
Re: Psychological soothsayer, while I feel confident Joyce’s church had issues with psychology, I think that particular dig’s more about how Booster was eerily on-base at the initial hall meeting (‘isn’t it funny how everyone else’s is right but mine is totally wrong?’,) and Joyce isn’t ready for another round. (She also wasn’t present for one of the times Booster was clearly, critically wrong – reading Walky’s feelings about Mike as uncomplicated sadness, not a mess that likely also includes some relief and then guilt about the relief – and isn’t as close to some of the people who they seemed to oversimplify, so what stuck with her was probably the narrative-guided ‘you’re worried your atheism was always there.’ Or at least, that’s likely what she read it as. Joyce has no shame about telling Ross he’s wrong, but she’s terrified of accepting that she might not believe in God anymore, much less that she never had faith so much as fear. Which isn’t me reading into things, the Rich Mullins dream has her questioning if she EVER actually felt God and her hangups about certain things – say, sexuality – are clearly rooted in a fear of being found out and punished.)
How do people believe they can “feel God” anyway?
What if we described color to a color-blind person the same way people described “God”; with books on color that fundamentally contradict each other?
One book says there’s only one color that constantly changes, and another says there are three that stay constant, and another says that there are only two that seek to eliminate each other, and so on and so on.
If you were colorblind and this was the way people described color to you, would you believe that they were experiencing something real?
But that is not the way people describe “feeling God” to others.
People describe it as a story: they weren’t sure, they felt God, they became sure. And you could read the lack of confidence before and the presence of confidence after. In observing this, it is entirely reasonable to conclude that “feeling God” was a real event.
Sure, it can also be adequately described as “changing your mind”, but that would mean taking responsibility for your choices, and most people would love a reason to not have to do that.
It’s not an accident that Joyce’s disbelief sharpened precisely when she was “prayed over”. The entire point of that ritual is to simulate God’s presence physically, to force you to feel God through the people literally laying hands on you. And what did Joyce feel in that moment? Not reassurance, but belittlement.
Buddy, I don’t fucking know. I had a break with organized religion when I was twelve when I realized I DIDN’T actually believe in God so much as I feared divine retribution, and wisely decided that was not a good basis to formally join a religion under, and also that I seemed to have an anxiety issue that makes Christianity actively unhealthy for me. My mom had a crisis of faith in college and ultimately DID decide she got something out of prayer specifically, even if she has issues with the church she grew up in and their current stance on queerness.
I just assume it’s like gender. Highly personal, not everyone has it, even people in the same cultural group have very different experiences, and it is generally considered a dick move to tell someone they are wrong about their relationship to it. (Sadly, much less so for gender than for religion.) Can be used as a weapon against people. Most people could benefit from taking a long think about their relationship to it, even if they ultimately decide the thing they started with does in fact fit them.
Well, this is why science is good at describing color, even for someone blind |DD Belief is trickier because it’s a feeling, and one that comes with accepting an entire character (or cast of characters) in the package.
For “Feeling God” at its broadest and less judgemental, you could go with “ascribing personhood to the universe, motivations to its mechanisms, and the certainty it’s listening to you”. Becky lawyered and cherry-picked her way through the concept until it was one she’d be up to worship, but while Joyce is learning to let go of dogma… She’s still the kind of person who CANNOT with a salad because everything is touching everything else in the bowl. You can bet that now she’s chucked the whole god into the trash she’s wondering if she ever Believed (experienced the feeling) or was just “convinced” (with the mind and not her heart, or maybe like in a psychological pregnancy).
@Jamie, of course the feeling is real. But that really isn’t proof of the existence of any gods. I mean, we get all kinds of physical sensations when we think about various significant individuals in our lives — including humans, animals and even fictional characters — from dull nausea to
heart-pounding outrage, to sleepy peace to dizzy euphoria. Would we argue that these individuals are exerting some metaphysical force on us to produce these sensations? Of course not. It’s the thought that gives rise to the sensation, not any supernatural being.
@WanderingLynx, the process of genuinely believing that the universe has awareness definitely can’t stand up to genuine scrutiny, and a notion that stands on such shake grounds can only sustain itself through exploitation of cognitive dissonance. It’s not as much feeling something that other’s can’t feel as much as it is just a process of defining pixies. Believers take subjectively rewarding, punishing, improbable and inexplicable life events and attribute them with divine significance; those events in turn are then taken as evidence of god(s). It’s a system perfectly designed to reinforce unjustified beliefs.
And to what ends? People like Joyce have experienced tremendous misplaced guilt and anxiety because they have never “felt God” like others allegedly did.
I can’t in good faith argue that all belief in the supernatural is inherently harmful. The symbolic is so important to the development of higher thought there’s literally no culture without a societal system of separating the sacred from the profane, and held rituals for life landmarks. This, coupled with the fact that we’ve always been curious apes but without all the science to back it up, also meant making things up to explain why the sun rose and rivers ran. We stand in the shoulders of giants, truly, and even with the rise of atheism as a movement, we do birthday parties. Why?
Plus the concept of god that made atheists of us is one that comes from Judeochristian culture. What would’ve happened with something kinder, like Buddhism? We can’t know but these are instances when the question matters more than the answer.
I do agree that the universe having awareness can’t stand to genuine scrutiny. Once again, at most it can be said we lack the data to prove the point (which, again: I don’t think the point is correct). And yeah, I feel nothing but sympathy for poor Joyce, who’s doing her best to reprogram herself, but is in a ton of distress over the religious trauma inflicted on her. Fundies are the most toxic people – I recently quit a job on my third day because the chef was one.
Amidst all the horrible opinions and stories I either endured directly or overhead, one thing that struck me hardcore was how he equated love and fear. A truly abusive relationship.
So sorry about having to quit your job!
Anyway, it is entirely possible for individuals and those within cultures to be spiritual, to have values and act on them without believing in the supernatural. Symbols, heroes, rituals, they’re all just efforts of memory, reminding us of our collective (and sometimes individual) origins, how we got where we are today and after how long.
Some rituals of the past may be of practical benefit to us even today, and it is a fool’s errand to live as if nothing had been learned about the world before we came into it. But we should feel free to critically assess the traditions and customs we’re born into. We’re not obliged to follow empty or outdated conventions that have failed to anticipate our modern insights. It’s no justification to continue practices on the grounds they’ve
always been done. Justification requires evidence of ongoing relevance.
False beliefs about the universe can be preserved for whatever value they may have had for the believer, but increasing amounts of reality will inevitably have to be blocked out in order to sustain said illusion of validity. Ignoring reality like that has far-reaching consequences that cannot be ignored, sometimes even deadly.
I don’t really think that the supernatural is really necessary or even conducive to feeling in awe about the universe. I mean, does an explorer pretend they know what they’re gonna find when they explore UNCHARTED territory? Of course not! That would take all the fun out of it!
What if explorers acted like religious apologists? What if, upon reaching the edge of an uncharted region, they threw a breadcrumb trail that led them back home? Would you call this exploring? Would anyone in their right minds fund the “adventures” of these “explorers”?
Not even Judeochristian, really – Christianity and Judaism are VERY different belief systems on the whole, particularly with how they differ on the subject of belief and ethical expectations and also how much you’re expected to question and interpret religious teachings.
You really can’t separate modern Anglocentric atheism from the Christianity-centric cultures that surround it. We don’t let go of the ways Christianity taught us to think about religion just because we don’t believe in God anymore, and you can tell because any blanket statement ‘all religion is bad because it does X’ is WILDLY ignorant of how non-Christian religions tend to treat belief and scripture and what they expect of followers. Hell, even some branches of Christianity encourage a lot more critical thinking of their followers than others. Plenty of Christians do believe in science, but don’t ultimately find any of it incompatible with the potential existence of a deity – the divine watchmaker theory’s been around for centuries. And if they find value in prayer and faith while still being able to critically assess information, I will let them. There’s plenty of scientists out there who are remarkably bad at accounting for and interpreting social sciences and the humanities. Science doesn’t actually stop you from thinking you know better than everyone else in subjects you are wildly unqualified for, or thinking a lot more of hot new things without assessing them properly. (Example: Anyone who thinks that AIs are capable of doing everything and anything better than humans has a very skewed knowledge of actual AIs at the moment. The more we learn about brains, the harder they get to imitate. AI is a very useful tool, but they don’t interpret things like a human can and that results in some weird results, even setting aside bias in the data we train them on. Or doctors – DOCTORS! – who recommend bizarre fringe treatments. Atheists who just ‘have questions’ about vaccines – and believe me, they exist. Every single psychologist and doctor who decides they know better than the patient about their lived experience – or better than other doctors about what’s REALLY going on with their patient, shout out to the psychiatrist who tried to change my autism diagnosis on the grounds I was ‘too social’ as an adult with coping mechanisms over the literal experts in the field who diagnosed me as a child.)
Yeah, a lot of atheism is very reactive to Christianity – often to the specific form of Christianity they grew up with.
While there’s almost no point in “JudeoChristian” without Islam, there are commonalities in the three main Abrahamic religions that make them worth considering together and in comparison to other faiths.
Just so you know, my reasoning up there applies to ANY superstitious and supernatural beliefs, not exclusively to religions.
“You really can’t separate modern Anglocentric atheism from the Christianity-centric cultures that surround it. We don’t let go of the ways Christianity taught us to think about religion just because we don’t believe in God anymore,”
This stands on rather shaky grounds. I mean, if a feminist movement very gradually emerges within an otherwise misogynistic culture, is feminism rooted in misogyny? If science very gradually emerges within a culture that rejects science for superstition, is science rooted in superstition? Sometimes values emerge as an attempt to shake humans free of the surrounding culture’s retrograde influence, and they emerge despite the best efforts of the surrounding culture to stifle and suppress them.
Also, in regard to my last statement, there’s a very important difference between being a mere believer in a religion and being an apologist (this entails acting like a lawyer or a press secretary towards an ideology instead of caring or even being curious about what’s actually true).
A whole lot of culturally Christian atheists – myself included – still think a LOT like active Christians in a lot of ways. A Jewish atheist’s approach to ethics and goodness and what you owe other people tends to be distinctly different from a culturally Christian atheist, and I suspect that applies to atheists raised in any other major reigion. We might reject the existence of God, but there’s more to theology for any given religion than the simple belief in a deity, and a lot of subtle things do still influence our worldview. Which I’ve seen people from non-Christian cultures take ex-Christian atheists to task for.
Secular humanism and modern morals and ethics really don’t borrow any intellectual capital from Christianity (or Judaism).
Christians do and think all kinds of things – good, bad and indifferent, that have nothing to do with their religion. It’s not enough to say that Christians think that way.
I mean, a sauce recipe could be thought up by Christians. That doesn’t mean the sauce has Christian roots. In order to give Christianity the credit, you have to demonstrate a sound ideological pathway to Christianity itself. When we look for that pathway, we find a problem: the pathway repeatedly splits into conflicting directions.
This helps explain why, historically, we’ve often seen Christians on both sides of a dispute. In the 1800s, on the issue of slavery in America, there were Christain advocates and Christian abolitionists. A religion claimed to be the source of secular humanism should unambiguously condemn the owning of people as property. However, it doesn’t. Instead, Christian (and Jewish) scripture explicitly endorses slavery and even proposes a set of laws to regulate it. A religion that stands for everything, stands for nothing.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
I mean, this started as me disputing that ‘Judeochristian’ ideology is actually a thing beyond Christians trying to piggyback off other religions while also excluding Islam, because Islamaphobia. I’m not gonna change your mind, this is clear. But seriously, if you haven’t, I recommend you look into religious, non-Christian philosophers and ethicists. Read some of what they say about intent, about what makes a good person, about what people owe to each other, and then see how they stack against your perspective. Read some translations of works by non-native English speakers, too, and how atheists from non-Christian cultures write about their atheism.
Culture shapes us a lot, Christianity deeply shapes American and European cultures, and we aren’t always aware of the assumptions we’ve had baked into us. I definitely wasn’t until I started reading a little Jewish ethics and philosophy, and I’ve barely scratched the surface. If you start with a slightly different approach to religion in the first place, you get a slightly different journey and approach to atheism. Hell, some Jewish atheists don’t consider atheism precluding being Jewish and observant. I wouldn’t be shocked if there are atheists from other religions that can hold those pieces simultaneously as well, I just haven’t read enough to know offhand. You don’t get Christian atheists, really. Big difference in approaches here.
Even when it comes strictly to atheism – the God that atheists don’t believe in is shaped by the ideas of God they grew up with. The arguments they use, the reasons they have for not believing are all in reaction to that. We are all shaped by our culture and in the West that culture is a very Christian one.
Atheists from a Hindu culture or a classical Grecian one would think in very different terms.
As for the feminism analogy – absolutely. Feminism is rooted in misogyny. Specifically, it’s a reaction to misogyny. In a culture that lacked misogyny, that was already equal, there would be no feminism because there would be no need for it.
But wouldn’t a culture that started out discouraging misogynistic treatment as a primordial social custom already be feminist by modern definition, regardless of whether they originally had a word for it?
imagining a slight pause at the line-break in “psychological”.
Something very Mike-y about Booster’s expression in that first panel :’3 I’m like, 70% sure Booster is their own person and not someone who chose to go under a Witness Protection Program at the very same college as this dearly departed fellow, but it’s fun to think about it.
That’s because, out of universe but probably not in universe, Booster is absolutely 100% a replacement for Mike, without all of the qualities that made the latter a bad fit for this comic.
Booster is taller.
Also, I’d really rather not have a revelation later be ‘Surprise! Brownface!”
I like Booster more and more. Also, it’s nice to see someone going to visit Amber in her lait.
Supervillains have lairs.
Amber is a superhero. They get ___Caves, fortresses of something, Tall Towers, and their aunt’s extra bedroom.
What does an anti-hero get? Or an aunty-hero? Or Aunties gyro?
Ant heroes get farms.
I’m now seeing Amber as not-quite-a-tall glass of milk. Or bathing in some milk.
Excellent life hacks from Booster.
“Paging Captain Peachfuzz!”
I wonder if Amber would be pleased or insulted if she knew that process that had brought Joyce to her side today?
Yes.
Panel 2 Joyce looks like she’s reading the comments.
Joyce has Booster’s number, damn.
Joyce why are you on facebook
Wait, hold up – are you telling me a first-year psychology student just gave terrible advice on multiple fronts? So much so that it caused collateral damage? But how could this happen?
i realize this is a lot deeper than this but the obvious solution is SCREENSHOT
I was going to say that!
You can go to the “memories” page all day to see that stuff. It doesn’t disappear after you scroll. I don’t understand what Joyce is saying.
Also, screenshot.
It may not be a technical problem she’s stuck on. I’ve had things on my phone that effectively crippled the device for days, but there was no technical problem. I was just psychologically unable/unready to cope with the news that had arrived. I eventually unlocked the phone, marked it as read/archived it and then continued wallowing in the despair and futility of existence’ absurdity, but was at least able to free up my phone again.
“Can you beta read my faaaaanfic?”
“Beta read them? I’ve beem posting them under your name! You’re a breakthrough sensation right now!”
Beta-read?
Is that like proof-read? Edit? Or is it asking someone to read it and then give you blind fawning adoration for your work? Something else?
Proof-read and check for errors, usually.
(I read/sang that to the tune of “Do You Want to Build a Snowman”.)
Another theory, for those saying “screenshot”: Maybe it’s a video? I was thinking one of those “you’ve been Facebook friends with this person for x number of years!” videos (maybe with her mom, if she hasn’t already removed her?). I’m not sure those are referred to as “Memories” by Facebook, but it’s possible Joyce isn’t being exact. It could also be a different, standard Facebook memory video.
Amber is cool and brooding to Joyce.
Amber: I AM NOT!
is Amber doing a meta ‘The Office’ ‘look into the camera’ shot, because theres no way she heard what Booster had said.
I think she’s just not in a place where she can deal with Joyce right now.
JoycepeopleJoyce is the last sort of person I’d want in my face if I was feeling antisocial.
Booster running in going “Wait, I meant that in a more thought experiment kinda way! I didn’t mean literally!!!”
If Joyce calls me up for Dating advice, I’ll know why.
I really hope this convinces people that Booster is a good person at heart.
I’ve always felt Booster was a good person, at heart. Sort of like the sequence in one of the Sherlock Holmes books where Holmes reaches all these kind of depressing conclusions about Watson’s brother based on a watch Watson owns that USED to BE the brother’s watch. (Done hilariously in the series “Sherlock” where Holmes gets everything right using Watson’s cell phone, EXCEPT one important fact.
Methinks Julia Grey will soon make her appearance on the campus
I use the share to Only Me feature all the time! Great for contests
BOOSTER APPRECIATION TREAD ❤️
We are back! Like our prodigal child! Yall know what this is, reminder you’re free to hate Booster all you want but keep it to your own comments! This thread is not the place! If you have any kind of love or appreciation for them, drop it here!
I really like booster this strip, they’re just honestly trying to be helpful while still respecting Joyce’s boundaries. I hope they get more screentime soon, i really want to see them make proper friends and get some character development
Sadly since it smash cut to ambers room i have a feeling this is gonna be the first and last thread I’m gonna get to do for a while 😢 hope I’m wrong
Maybe it will smash cut back to Joyce and Booster with Joyce saying, “Didn’t work.” Bad for Booster’s advice record, but good for more Booster!
YAY! And agreed, Booster’s just trying to be helpful here. Their advice not end well but well, that’s life when you give advice.
Yay Booster! I really do not understand people who said Booster is the new Mike. Just look at how Booster reacted to Joyce in this strip and think about how it would have gone with Mike.
The comparison is because Booster says the things that people really don’t want to hear. The difference is that Booster isn’t doing it to deliberately upset people or drive them away. Like Holmes, Booster’s doesn’t have the social interaction to realize what they’re doing. Mike knew full well what his statements were doing.
No.
Panel 4 Booster felt insulted by Joyce’s ‘no’, and gave a smartassed reply.
Cool interpretation, but this particular thread really isn’t the place for it.
An interpretation isn’t hate.
what if it’s an interpret-HATE-ion
Hi! If you think so, cool! But i explicitly asked for booster negativity not to be brought here so please take it to another comment!
i genuinely love booster a lot, and i hope we get more of them.
Amber: *looks at the camera like in The Office*
I am really loving Booster.
Oh come on Joyce you can do worse than Amber.
What’s Mary doing these days anyway?
… What the hell is Joyce even talking about?
Some kind of newfangled FaceySpace thing all them boomers are talkin’ about these days.
Every day facebook gives you a series of posts you’ve made on that day in the past few years. Most of it is nonsense, but it can also be pic posts, or just memes you shared and so on.
I can imagine if the memories show you a post with pics of say someone who just recently died, that you might be hesitant to share it.
Wow, that sounds really annoying and dumb. Toss another reason on the pile of why I’m glad I never got into that whole mess.
Whats this? Booster giving advice and not being total awful, must be an off day for them.
Sorry Amber, but you were wrong about Booster. YOU’RE the replacement Mike.
Judging by yesterday’s comments, it appears I have a Booster pronoun problem. I usually avoid this by not talking about Booster.
Some seem to think it was my intention to misgender or dehumanize. That was not the case. But is a sensitive topic. I should have known better. If I annoyed or upset you, I’m sorry.
Being rude to web-comic characters is good practice for doing the same to real people.