That’s all well and good if you’re in a therapist’s office, but Booster does this shit unsolicited and they’re pretty much an asshole about it.
Aura
On the off-chance you’re not intentionally being a dick, Booster’s pronouns are they/them and using s(he) like that instead is pretty shitty.
Nymph
I’m going to go ahead and report your comment for misgendering them, and I hope others do the same. They’ve been in the comic for WAY too long for this kind of thing to get slack.
“this kind of thing” here meaning “blatant enby/transphobia whether intentionally cruel or not”
I love booster because they remind me of the kind of stock characters in ancient Greek theatre and commedia dell’arte where they have a clear comedic/narrative function
I think you may have just put your finger on why I dislike Booster so much.
I mean, as a person, Booster would be intensely annoying to hang around. But that’s true of many of the cast, whom I still enjoy as characters.
But Booster’s not fully developed as a character; Booster’s just some sort of set-piece or exposition device. Booster is thus not sympathetic enough for me to like as a person, and not developed enough for me to enjoy as a character.
Jeremiah
I mean sure, if you like read most of the strip they were in with your eyes closed
I favor knowing Booster actually knows what they’re talking about instead of armchair analyzing someone with circumstances they likely have no experience with. I could be wrong. Maybe Booster is the perfect person for this. It just doesn’t feel great. This isn’t the same as giving Sarah dating advice. Amber has very real and serious trauma.
I mean even with experience, speaking as an autistic person with PTSD, doesn’t feel real great to be “analyzed” like an insect under a microscope or some kinda zoo animal or some shit :/
Sirksome
Booster’s energy for this also feels weird. More like Amber is a fun project to work on over a person, but that could just be Booster’s cadence and not indicative of how they see Amber. They have talked to her before and seemed to spark a friendship.
Jeremiah
Booster its just like That, I don’t think it should be taken personally
Joy
I had to be treated for my interactions with social workers in a psychotherapeutic office.
Professional asexual
What in the WORLD, Joy. I read your interactions with Li, and I don’t know what to say except those were some very rude things to accuse another person of when they have shown nothing but good faith. And yes, you did in fact put loads of words in their mouth. I feel a very strong urge to defend them because of how condescending you were. Please introspect, because Li did NOT say what you think they said. I don’t even agree with all they said!
I feel the need to mention that I have been to a psych ward, since I noticed you used that as a metric for how valid their insight would be (quote: ”from what I’ve read, you’ve never been in a psych ward, is that correct”). I’m also now second-guessing this paragraph because I fear you’ll use in bad faith.
People have different experiences than you, and sometimes they speak out of turn. That is NOT an excuse for how you treated Li.
I’m very sorry you’ve had such dreadful experiences with mental healthcare.
clif
The joke is that none of the psychoanalysts actually knows what they are talking about.
Sirksome
Oh. Well then that was an r/whoosh to me.
VicMortimer
Not sure how. The state of mental health care is and has always been awful. We just don’t know enough about how brains actually work yet to actually do anything very useful. It’s either “talk to somebody who might say something helpful” or “take this random assortment of pills that do something to your brain, see what happens, and when the first set don’t work, we’ll try another set and see if that’s better”. At least the pill pusher has an actual MD, the talking doctor’s education seems a lot less science based.
It’s an improvement from “lock you in a facility for the rest of your life” but that’s also meant there are lots of really crazy people who have nowhere to sleep but the street.
Li
Look. I support bodily autonomy, and people’s right to be unmedicated, and I am sorry your personal experience with therapy has been so awful, but “random pills”? Throws a lot of people who would agree they need and have benefitted from medication under the bus.
Not all treatments are equal. Antidepressants, ADHD meds, HRT… you’re throwing the baby out with the bath water here. It’s possible to be critical of psychiatry without painting the whole industry as random and universally useless.
Joy
HRT isn’t even psychiatry….?
Also, yes that’s essentially accurate to how the psychiatric process works and the PDOCs I’ve actually enjoyed talking to are very straightforward about it… they’re also straightforward about how brutal psychiatry used to be. Also like, are you familiar at all with antidepressant induced mania, antidepressant induced psychosis, the suicidal thoughts and actions that often lead to suicide, or PSSD?
…like SSRIs are the clinical first line treatment for pedophilia these days, the sexual dysfunction SSRIs cause is that reliable.
Li
Hey now. This is a lot of stuff I didn’t say, Joy. ?
I didn’t say psychiatry was perfect, and I definitely didn’t say it had ever been perfect. I didn’t say medications always worked or that there were no side effects. I also said I am all for patients having bodily autonomy and the ability to refuse medications, even if those medications don’t have horrible side effects, so of course I believe people should be able to refuse ones that do.
You are responding to a comment where I said “don’t throw the baby out with the bath water”, because I was responding to a comment that said “the state of mental health care is and always has been awful” and then added “take this random assortment of pills” as a description of… all treatments, ever.
Also, I did kind of think someone would object to my including HRT among psychological treatments, but they’re both. They’re physiological and psychiatric. They cause physical changes to relieve dysphoria (mental distress). I don’t think there’s anywhere in the world where you can currently get HRT from a doctor without also seeing a psychiatrist…? I hope I’m wrong but it feels like we’re all going backward at light speed.
Should it be that way? No. I am generally opposed to the medicalization of dysphoria. I think informed consent should be enough for patients to get HRT, especially since we don’t all suffer from dysphoria and gender euphoria is just as important.
Li
Also I’ll own up to having had much better luck getting ADHD medication than a lot of people! My first prescription worked and I’m still on it. LOTS of people have to try more than one, more than two. Lots of people do have to deal with psychiatrists who don’t listen to them and insist on first trying to treat depression in patients who need ADHD meds — and that’s not counting the off-label use some antidepressants get for ADHD.
I will always acknowledge that I’ve been lucky.
But I have a lot of friends who have been less lucky but are on the right medication now, and who still wouldn’t appreciate their meds being called “random pills”, and who especially wouldn’t appreciate their psychiatrists being described as pill-pushers.
Again: bodily autonomy good. No one should be forced onto medication.
But no one should be forced off medication, either, and describing psychiatry as useless and random and populated by pill-pushers… really got to me.
It sounded like an advocation for abolition instead of reform.
Joy
Test.
Joy
For what it’s worth, I read all of this.
Yes, the state of mental health care is awful, currently, presently, contemporarily, today, and right now. From what I’ve read, you’ve never been in a psych ward, is that correct?
…I don’t have it in my to rewrite the trauma dump. I think it’s a small blessing that my comment was eaten, because I don’t actually want it in this comments section. What I wanted to say is that you’re not lucky because you have it good, you’re lucky because you don’t understand how bad it gets when it gets bad. Psychiatry was founded on eugenics, and the eugenics are still present.
(My comment was eaten. I tried to reconstruct it. I didn’t reconstruct most of it.)
Joy
…Forgot to close the em tag. Also! Yes, that is a lot of things that you didn’t say, these are things that I said, not things that you said. I would say that I don’t understand why you said that, but I assume that it was some obtuse social tactic? The self pitying nature came across as guilt tripping, so I would assume it’s that. Would you kindly cut that out?
Li
… what I meant is that you were putting words in my mouth, responding with a lot of assumptions about what I must think on this topic.
I am done addressing it with you now. I am sorry for what you have been through, and I don’t want to trigger any more negative feelings or bad memories or anything else.
They likely have finished at least one psych class, but… that’s, like, almost nothing. It definitely wouldn’t make me feel *better* about someone trying to assess others. (Being at that point in their education would, in fact, likely make me feel worse about it.) Their attitude and views towards things would be more important.
Booster’s isn’t ideal, in my opinion, but I do think they actually care about Amber.
I know someone who took a psych 102 class and described it as something like, “well, basically everything we taught you in psych 101 was wrong, and we’ll go over why, but we’re still required to teach it to you as though it’s correct.” Like on syllabus week.
Maybe a high school one? And that inspired them to get really into studying it on their own time?
I know my high school had a psychology class. I mean, it was very poorly taught but that’s my personal experience, hopefully it is not a universal one.
222 thoughts on “Incentivized”
Ana Chronistic
BOOTYDUTY CALLSjeffepp
Duty you can bounce quarters off of.
NGPZ
bounce how? like one of them plinko machines?
Lysbeth
No, those are saturated with horses nowadays
clif
“Picture or it didn’t happen.”
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/281/888/d49.gifv
Steamweed
No, no, you had it right the first time.
Doctor_Who
Booster keeps getting Amber Alerts on their phone and is always disappointed when it doesn’t mean this.
clif
Well, so am I.
Thag Simmons
Be nice Booster.
JA
Booster is nice. People just don’t like introspection and facing their demons.
Queen Anthai
That’s all well and good if you’re in a therapist’s office, but Booster does this shit unsolicited and they’re pretty much an asshole about it.
Aura
On the off-chance you’re not intentionally being a dick, Booster’s pronouns are they/them and using s(he) like that instead is pretty shitty.
Nymph
I’m going to go ahead and report your comment for misgendering them, and I hope others do the same. They’ve been in the comic for WAY too long for this kind of thing to get slack.
“this kind of thing” here meaning “blatant enby/transphobia whether intentionally cruel or not”
Jeremiah
And I love that for them.
Jimbotherisenclown
Nah, Booster is just a jerk who pretends to be nice.
Taffy
That’s your mom you’re thinking about, not Booster.
Wizard
Every time I start to forget why I violently dislike Booster, they do something to remind me.
shadowcell
booster can’t be passive-aggressively deployed but can be aggressively deployed
Effie
aggressively pacified
Slartibeast Button, BIA
So, like washing your car to make it rain?
Steamweed
Active-aggressive deployment.
ZombieKyrik
Booster continues to be interesting despite how much I want to punch their stupid face.
clif
Replacement Mike at their finest.
VicMortimer
Mike was likeable as a character. Booster is just annoying.
Li
You have to at least realize this is not the majority opinion on Mike. Surely.
Taffy
Why does that matter?
Li
honestly I regret this comment, heh
I just wish folks who hate Character X would leave a little room for the people who like them…
Li
But VicMortimer didn’t say no one likes Booster or that everyone liked Mike. So I was too quick to respond, even mildly.
Bogeywoman
I love booster because they remind me of the kind of stock characters in ancient Greek theatre and commedia dell’arte where they have a clear comedic/narrative function
Freemage
I think you may have just put your finger on why I dislike Booster so much.
I mean, as a person, Booster would be intensely annoying to hang around. But that’s true of many of the cast, whom I still enjoy as characters.
But Booster’s not fully developed as a character; Booster’s just some sort of set-piece or exposition device. Booster is thus not sympathetic enough for me to like as a person, and not developed enough for me to enjoy as a character.
Jeremiah
I mean sure, if you like read most of the strip they were in with your eyes closed
Wizard
I get the face-punching, but not the “interesting”.
Jeremiah
Then I fell sorry for you.
Sirksome
Has Booster even finished one psych class? I’d feel a lot better about their psychoanalysis if they have,
clif
You favor credentials over results?
Sirksome
I favor knowing Booster actually knows what they’re talking about instead of armchair analyzing someone with circumstances they likely have no experience with. I could be wrong. Maybe Booster is the perfect person for this. It just doesn’t feel great. This isn’t the same as giving Sarah dating advice. Amber has very real and serious trauma.
NGPZ
I mean even with experience, speaking as an autistic person with PTSD, doesn’t feel real great to be “analyzed” like an insect under a microscope or some kinda zoo animal or some shit :/
Sirksome
Booster’s energy for this also feels weird. More like Amber is a fun project to work on over a person, but that could just be Booster’s cadence and not indicative of how they see Amber. They have talked to her before and seemed to spark a friendship.
Jeremiah
Booster its just like That, I don’t think it should be taken personally
Joy
I had to be treated for my interactions with social workers in a psychotherapeutic office.
Professional asexual
What in the WORLD, Joy. I read your interactions with Li, and I don’t know what to say except those were some very rude things to accuse another person of when they have shown nothing but good faith. And yes, you did in fact put loads of words in their mouth. I feel a very strong urge to defend them because of how condescending you were. Please introspect, because Li did NOT say what you think they said. I don’t even agree with all they said!
I feel the need to mention that I have been to a psych ward, since I noticed you used that as a metric for how valid their insight would be (quote: ”from what I’ve read, you’ve never been in a psych ward, is that correct”). I’m also now second-guessing this paragraph because I fear you’ll use in bad faith.
People have different experiences than you, and sometimes they speak out of turn. That is NOT an excuse for how you treated Li.
I’m very sorry you’ve had such dreadful experiences with mental healthcare.
clif
The joke is that none of the psychoanalysts actually knows what they are talking about.
Sirksome
Oh. Well then that was an r/whoosh to me.
VicMortimer
Not sure how. The state of mental health care is and has always been awful. We just don’t know enough about how brains actually work yet to actually do anything very useful. It’s either “talk to somebody who might say something helpful” or “take this random assortment of pills that do something to your brain, see what happens, and when the first set don’t work, we’ll try another set and see if that’s better”. At least the pill pusher has an actual MD, the talking doctor’s education seems a lot less science based.
It’s an improvement from “lock you in a facility for the rest of your life” but that’s also meant there are lots of really crazy people who have nowhere to sleep but the street.
Li
Look. I support bodily autonomy, and people’s right to be unmedicated, and I am sorry your personal experience with therapy has been so awful, but “random pills”? Throws a lot of people who would agree they need and have benefitted from medication under the bus.
Not all treatments are equal. Antidepressants, ADHD meds, HRT… you’re throwing the baby out with the bath water here. It’s possible to be critical of psychiatry without painting the whole industry as random and universally useless.
Joy
HRT isn’t even psychiatry….?
Also, yes that’s essentially accurate to how the psychiatric process works and the PDOCs I’ve actually enjoyed talking to are very straightforward about it… they’re also straightforward about how brutal psychiatry used to be. Also like, are you familiar at all with antidepressant induced mania, antidepressant induced psychosis, the suicidal thoughts and actions that often lead to suicide, or PSSD?
…like SSRIs are the clinical first line treatment for pedophilia these days, the sexual dysfunction SSRIs cause is that reliable.
Li
Hey now. This is a lot of stuff I didn’t say, Joy. ?
I didn’t say psychiatry was perfect, and I definitely didn’t say it had ever been perfect. I didn’t say medications always worked or that there were no side effects. I also said I am all for patients having bodily autonomy and the ability to refuse medications, even if those medications don’t have horrible side effects, so of course I believe people should be able to refuse ones that do.
You are responding to a comment where I said “don’t throw the baby out with the bath water”, because I was responding to a comment that said “the state of mental health care is and always has been awful” and then added “take this random assortment of pills” as a description of… all treatments, ever.
Also, I did kind of think someone would object to my including HRT among psychological treatments, but they’re both. They’re physiological and psychiatric. They cause physical changes to relieve dysphoria (mental distress). I don’t think there’s anywhere in the world where you can currently get HRT from a doctor without also seeing a psychiatrist…? I hope I’m wrong but it feels like we’re all going backward at light speed.
Should it be that way? No. I am generally opposed to the medicalization of dysphoria. I think informed consent should be enough for patients to get HRT, especially since we don’t all suffer from dysphoria and gender euphoria is just as important.
Li
Also I’ll own up to having had much better luck getting ADHD medication than a lot of people! My first prescription worked and I’m still on it. LOTS of people have to try more than one, more than two. Lots of people do have to deal with psychiatrists who don’t listen to them and insist on first trying to treat depression in patients who need ADHD meds — and that’s not counting the off-label use some antidepressants get for ADHD.
I will always acknowledge that I’ve been lucky.
But I have a lot of friends who have been less lucky but are on the right medication now, and who still wouldn’t appreciate their meds being called “random pills”, and who especially wouldn’t appreciate their psychiatrists being described as pill-pushers.
Again: bodily autonomy good. No one should be forced onto medication.
But no one should be forced off medication, either, and describing psychiatry as useless and random and populated by pill-pushers… really got to me.
It sounded like an advocation for abolition instead of reform.
Joy
Test.
Joy
For what it’s worth, I read all of this.
Yes, the state of mental health care is awful, currently, presently, contemporarily, today, and right now. From what I’ve read, you’ve never been in a psych ward, is that correct?
…I don’t have it in my to rewrite the trauma dump. I think it’s a small blessing that my comment was eaten, because I don’t actually want it in this comments section. What I wanted to say is that you’re not lucky because you have it good, you’re lucky because you don’t understand how bad it gets when it gets bad. Psychiatry was founded on eugenics, and the eugenics are still present.
(My comment was eaten. I tried to reconstruct it. I didn’t reconstruct most of it.)
Joy
…Forgot to close the em tag. Also! Yes, that is a lot of things that you didn’t say, these are things that I said, not things that you said. I would say that I don’t understand why you said that, but I assume that it was some obtuse social tactic? The self pitying nature came across as guilt tripping, so I would assume it’s that. Would you kindly cut that out?
Li
… what I meant is that you were putting words in my mouth, responding with a lot of assumptions about what I must think on this topic.
I am done addressing it with you now. I am sorry for what you have been through, and I don’t want to trigger any more negative feelings or bad memories or anything else.
PedanticJerkass
The “””””joke.”””””
Queen Anthai
What results have they gotten, exactly?
Freezer
A pavlovian “Ah shit” response from several characters whenever they appear?
PedanticJerkass
Not to mention from several readers, too.
Mturtle7
Well, they did get Ethan to sort of open up and accept companionship that one time! At Amber’s request, no less.
NGPZ
I wouldn’t, unsolicited shit is annoying like a twelve year old who just discovered the word “communist” 9-9
Dante
Considering the people involved this feels more like the equivalent of “hey aren’t you two friends why don’t you go check on her” tbh
NGPZ
I mean, fair?
Just really hoping Booster has the effect of an actual boost instead of the “Turbo Boost” button on old PCs that does the opposite :/
Nymph
Yeah, I would even go so far as to say this is flirting.
elebenty
Booster may have hit the line between fascinated and interested.
Dante
OH sdkgjsldjg I’m happy I’m not the only one who got that vibe??
Yumi
They likely have finished at least one psych class, but… that’s, like, almost nothing. It definitely wouldn’t make me feel *better* about someone trying to assess others. (Being at that point in their education would, in fact, likely make me feel worse about it.) Their attitude and views towards things would be more important.
Booster’s isn’t ideal, in my opinion, but I do think they actually care about Amber.
Joy
I know someone who took a psych 102 class and described it as something like, “well, basically everything we taught you in psych 101 was wrong, and we’ll go over why, but we’re still required to teach it to you as though it’s correct.” Like on syllabus week.
Proto
Maybe a high school one? And that inspired them to get really into studying it on their own time?
I know my high school had a psychology class. I mean, it was very poorly taught but that’s my personal experience, hopefully it is not a universal one.
jeffepp
Muscularly round, though.
clif
Dense bones too. Or at least after the lab accident.
Aquila
What, was she bitten by a radioactive fossil or something?
clif
See https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/04-the-bechdel-test/weigh/
BBCC
Quick, don’t let her get away!
Furie