a regular day on pm, 92 point 5.

started playing again, after i got back last night, and because that just happens to be peak hour for america, on average i end up holding five conversations simultaneously. of course, none of them are friends. my real friends know by now when to leave well alone.

people are just so different. i don't believe it. i don't know what to believe. last night's five was a case in point.

(and this is excluding the normal, quite unanswerable pms like "!! guthix brings you balance!!", "wanna buy full zammy?", "u sed u wanted to be my gf!", "tell everyone to join zezima's chat!" etc.)

1. at fally bank, a guy's hankering after a single law rune. presumably for varrock tele or something, and i oblige. i give it to him free, and that part, maybe it was a mistake. "1 more. 1 more. 1 more." spams the chat screen. i leave the bank. he promptly 1-more'd me through pm. we discuss the merits of plain hard work, and the satisfaction it gives you.

once he's dealt with, i make the mistake of giving another guy mith ores. "more. weps and armour." he weps-and-armour's me via pm when i leave. i don't know where he got the idea that someone who hasn't consciously trained anything remotely melee-related for six months should be lugging mith and addy weapons and armour done to the mining pits. regardless. we discuss the merits of plain hard work, and the satisfaction it gives you.

it's vicious in its predictability.

2. a guy's been lobbying "f2p should get more quests and items!" again in fally. "follow me if you think f2p should get more quests and items!" it's not an extremely crowded world, all things considered, he doesn't attract very much attention, and thereafter resorts to (horror of horrors) pming innocent bystanders. we debate the fairness of jagex's decisions.

i don't see why people won't just play, and be grateful that they get so much for absolutely nothing. he's apparently been playing since rsc came out. it's rather futile, and we both realise it. we promptly move on to other things.

pking's hardly more edifying.

3. someone pms me from out of the blue (not that that's altogether unexpected) and asks what a whetstone is. i point out the search function, and promptly click search for him.

apparently it's a place where you sharpen rusty swords.

4. someone i'm positive has been hounding me ever since she discovered the fact of my existence strikes again. it's the same type of question every time. she starts off this time with "can u like, tell jagex to put me a mod!" as a prelude to whether it's "good" to help someone with a quest, whether it's "good" to report someone attempting to account trade, whether it's "good"... her definition of "good" being whether it'll get her mod status fast enough.

i'm still leery after the last encounter with the guy who initiated the let's toggle the pm settings! game. but this time i just can't help but tell her my views, incorporating all that about position, how to properly earn respect, right and wrong... she simmers. the moment i even mention "ignore list" she goes ballistic.

"ur mean! you're reported!!"

and to think, just the other day she was so surprised when i told her about the number of people who've reported me. was trying to say that reports don't mean a thing unless they're valid. i remind her of as much.

a silence, then she goes back to it again. "who r the people wit gold crowns?" only a matter of time before she gets back to the same form of asking.

i feel like screaming. (and if i did, one room over they'd be speculating tomorrow who presumably spent the night here.) i just log. it's easier to shoot yourself in the mouth than reason with people, it seems, sometimes.

i log in later to be faced with "yh do i always have to say hi y cant u do it]" i wonder if it's too cruel to tell her i delete her from my friends list everytime we're done conversing in hopes that we'll never have to again. initiate a conversation with her? is she crazy?

i stick with "i'm sorry, sometimes i need to clear my friends list when it gets too full, and..." then promptly initiate a conversation with her next i log in.

give me strength.

5. it seems someone really is listening. a person with a vaguely familiar username pms me. somehow we get onto the topic of family. we bond over standing around attracting randoms and talking about deaths of loved ones. he starts off, and in between i mention my friend.

we cover how unfair the world seems, how cruel things can be, grief, regret, time, meaning, religion, missing someone.

saying this almost seems like intruding on privacy. we talk about where we live.

it becomes a mundane conversation, and that's precisely what keeps me when faced with pms from the other four. it's coversations like these that remind me why i don't choose to keep private chat on friends.

four in five of every other person you talk to you won't particularly want to continue the conversation with, but that doesn't mean the latter kind of person doesn't exist.

(self)friend.

i find warlock cute. as in, little kid cute. warlock from one of the too many groups boasting an affiliation to the x-men. the way he says things. or just the one phrase that sticks. self friend. (rahne.) weird, but cute.

so that shall be the title of this post. adding, so it isn't as boring as a title. i do suppose he meant, my friend.

that said, i don't quite know who my real friends are anymore. on runescape, that is.

when big things happen, i tend to measure time, and things past by it. before, and after. it's just that those things tend to be superficial, and i end up forgetting the true nature, if you will, of that big event, when i'm swamped with everything else cosmetic. i know i'm not making sense, i'm sorry.

i was freaked. now, i'm just tired.

most people on my friends list on rs just don't log in again, ever, as far as i know. with my friends on rs, i'll talk to them almost everyday. heck, i'll log in just to talk to them, sometimes, but after a few weeks, they'll just disappear, and don't seem to log in ever again.

and i'll miss them, and i drift till i find someone else to talk to.

now, i've got more than my fair share of "friends".

some people are curious, some people take me to be a sentient knowledge base/world clock/quest guide/price guide, some people flame me.

i can take that. i almost enjoy those situations, when i'm taunted, because i'm tested, i need to give a response that doesn't provoke, and is right. what i can't quite stand are the suck ups. one i know's been called that to his face, within my hearing. it's that obvious, even without pm.

it's like, they're acting, they're showing a face to me that isn't theirs, at all. and i don't quite know what to do about it. they ask, i say, be yourself.

in their answer it's just as obvious they have no intention of doing anything of that sort.

and i know i'm just as guilty, sometimes, of acting like a person i'm not. what's worse is, i can't fault them, they're doing nothing wrong, they're being great, really. like the world, real life. so hypocrisy goes on, hypocrites remain pretty much untouchable, and hypocrisy is just let alone, simply because it's valued above outright disrespect by those who matter.

so. my friends list finally reached its f2p limit.

i'm forced to indiscriminately delete the names that come after. and i don't quite understand why people i converse with just don't understand that being on someone's 'freinds list' makes you no more of a friend than the random stranger.