Honestly, Fuck External Validation

Just keep realizing most people don’t think about much outside of their immediate — and have some good experiences.

There are all sorts of navel-gazing articles about external validation all over the AI Slop we currently call “the Internet,” including a bunch on this very site. I will do my best not to make it more of the same. I think we can begin with a simple thesis, though: any article that tells you to “eliminate” sources of external validation is full of feces. It’s baked into the human condition from the first time you realize that impressing your parents could get you something, if not before that.

On that note, I’ve thought about external validation for my entire conscious life, best I can tell. My parents struggled to have me, apparently, and as that was all going on, I do believe they had NYC friends (and even Hamptons friends) and went out and did things and partied. I have seen photos to that extent. Four and a half decades later, I’m currently in a long infertility spiral of my own, which used to be hell and now doesn’t really affect me much at all, but I can tell you that somewhere along the way, you burn out on even the idea of having a kid, because the process is so much. (If you’ve never felt this, consider yourself blessed — at least in one area.)