[some_furry]

The trouble is, you can think you're dealing with a Bob, but you're actually dealing with an Alice, even after enduring multiple crises that didn't trigger their specific type of badness.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/03/how-i-...

But as fun as this line of thinking is, my initial charitable post was only asking for a kind of "superficial" indistinguishability. As long as you don't think about it too hard, y'know?

[shandor]

Which in the end is precisely the reason why we want to understand the intentions behind the actions, right?

[some_furry]

Right.

My stance on this is: Try to find a way to do good that doesn't make you miserable. Lying is to yourself is a form of oppression, and lying to others is a tactic for enduring oppression. (Ask a queer person about their time in the closet if you don't understand what I mean here.) Oppression makes you miserable, and misery tends to result in vapid thinkpieces that don't scratch below the surface of the referenced source material.

But also: Be honest with yourself about what you want and why you want it. Whether for good or for ill. That way, at least you can have a modicum of peace. I wrote more about this train of thought recently, if anyone's curious: https://soatok.blog/2025/10/15/the-dreamseekers-vision-of-to...