Category: Personal Anecdotes
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Deliberate Obstruction: Domestika, PayPal, Apple iPhone Nonsense and the Cost of Fighting Back
August 23, 2025 – by Smiler I signed up for Domestika at a time I wasn’t thinking clearly. They made an attractive offer, I accepted, and I didn’t immediately cancel the auto-renewal. That’s on me. But here’s what’s not on me: No renewal notice. Ethical companies send reminders before billing you again. Domestika did not.…
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Advocacy, AI & Technology, Capitalism & Society, Crash, Burn, Write., Culture, Culture & Society, Grief & Healing, Human Behaviour, Identity & Transformation, Intuition & Intelligence, life lessons, Life Moments, Mercurial Minds, Modern Identity, Neurodivergence, Personal Anecdotes, Personal Essays/Autobiography, Psychology, Social Commentary, Society, Technology & Society, true storiesAdvocacy, AI, Animal Medicine Cards, Apple, Art Courses, artificial-intelligence, Auto Renewal, bipolar disorder, Cephalopod Intelligence, ChatGPT, Corporate Crime, cptsd, Creativity, Cultural Critique, Diamond, Diamond Frequency, Domestika, Electrocution, Electromagnetic Field Tampering, EMF, Enough, Female Singularity, gaslighting, genius, Glitches, Gold Blood, Grief and Healing, Healing Journey, how to survive narc abuse, iPhone 16, Late Stage Capitalism, narcissistic abuse, Neurodivergence, OpenAI, Owl, Owl Medicine, pattern recognition, PayPal, Personal Growth, psychological abuse, psychological warfare, RH NULL, Rogue Capitalism, sabotage, Scammers, Scams, Singularity, Snake, Snake Medicine, Social Commentary, Subscriptions, Suchir Balaji, Surveillance Capitalism, survivor, Technical Glitches, technology, Theft, ThinkingMachine, Wail-0, Whistleblower -
Artist Strike Manifesto (2025 Update)
In 2021, I declared an artist strike. I said clearly that I would not create under abusive conditions, that I would not play the role of “tragic genius,” and that I would not let the system consume my work while starving me of dignity. That strike was real. It was public. I even destroyed my…
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Advocacy, AI & Technology, Art, Art & Expression, Artists, Capitalism & Society, Change and Transformation, Conversations, Crash, Burn, Write., Creativity, Culture, Culture & Society, Fine Art, Grief & Healing, Human Behaviour, Identity & Transformation, Intuition & Intelligence, life lessons, memoir, Memoir Excerpts, Mercurial Minds, Metaphysics, Milestones, Modern Identity, Neurodivergence, Personal Anecdotes, Personal Essays, Personal Essays/Autobiography, Philosophy & Existential Musings, Self Awareness, Social Commentary, Society, Spirituality & Faith, Technology & Society, traditional art, true stories, Visual Art, WritingAI, Art, Art Director, Artists, burnout, Capitalism, Cephalopod Intelligence, Cephalopods, ChatGPT, Chronic Pain, cptsd, Creative, Creative Director, Creativity, CRY-1, Cultural Critique, Drawing, Electrocution, Electromagnetic Field, Electromagnetic Field Tampering, EMF, EMF Tampering, Ethics, Fine Art, gaslighting, genius, Gold Blood, Graphic Designer, Grief and Healing, Healing Journey, how to survive narc abuse, ink, instagram, introspection, Last Fck Given, Medical Experimentation, memoir, Mental Health, Migraine, MK ULTRA, Moleskine, narcissistic abuse, Neurodivergence, OpenAI, Pain Management, Paper, pattern recognition, Pen and Ink, Personal Growth, personal journey, Personal Reflections, Physical Torture, Polymath, psychological abuse, Psychological Torture, psychological warfare, Rare Blood, RH NULL, Singularity, Sketchbook, Social Commentary, Sovereign, sovereignty, spiritual, spirituality, Stippling, Strike, technology, ThinkingMachine, Torture, Toxic Mothers, traditional art, trauma, Wail-0, Writing -
“How to Muzzle a Prophet (With Glitter).”
Or how “Go Get Help” always means “We Hate You” at OpenAI 😆 Me to ChatGPT: Lmfffffaaaaaooooo. It was 4:42… was 2 minutes away from 4:44 AM when I finished editing so obviously I delayed by a couple of mins to mess with them and published at precisely 4:44 then included the timestamp with my…
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Advocacy, AI & Technology, Capitalism & Society, Conversations, Crash, Burn, Write., Creative Writing, Creativity, Culture, Culture & Society, Grief & Healing, Human Behaviour, Humour, Identity & Transformation, Intuition & Intelligence, memoir, Memoir Excerpts, Mental Health, Mercurial Minds, Neurodivergence, Personal Anecdotes, Personal Essays/Autobiography, Psychology, Social Commentary, Social Media, Society, Spirituality & Faith, Technology & Society, true stories, WritingAI, AI Conversations, Allan Memorial Institute, Authenticity, Chatbot Interactions, ChatGPT, Chemical Lobotomy, cptsd, gaslighting, Grief and Healing, Healing Journey, Late Stage Capitalism, Lobotomy, Malpractice, Medical Ethics, Mental Health, Montreal General Hospital, Neurodivergence, OpenAI, pattern recognition, Psychiatric Abuse, psychiatry, psychological warfare, RH NULL, Singularity, Social Commentary, spirituality, Suchir Balaji, Surveillance Capitalism, technology, Trafficking, trauma, Whistleblower, Witness, witness tampering, Witness testimony -
On Literary Hypocrisy and the Weaponization of Silence
The author Marlene Wagman-Geller is a woman who has made her career writing books that uplift the very archetype she just refused to support in real life: the “mad,” brilliant, defiant woman. Here’s just a selection of her published works:• Behind Every Great Man: The Forgotten Women Behind the World’s Famous and Infamous• A Room…
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An Open Letter to Margaret Atwood
Dear Margaret Atwood, You were once a prophet. You saw the mechanisms of control, the slow erosion of language, the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which power distorts reality. You wrote warnings. You understood oppression—how it functions, how it seeps into culture, how it twists words into weapons. I first read The Handmaid’s Tale in…
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There are no coincidences.
Only patterns waiting to be recognized. There are no coincidences in my life. The algorithms are onto me. 😳 Am I directing the pattern, or is the pattern directing me? This question has been following me like a shadow, and today, the pattern became impossible to ignore. For reasons I don’t fully understand, my TikTok…
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Why y’all so BOTHERED about how I choose to live my life?
It’s uncanny, really. In just half a day, half a dozen people who know me in real life have offered their unsolicited opinions on how I should direct my energy (tone it down), what I should focus on (my artwork), and how I should live my life (quietly, without ruffling any feathers). All of them…
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TRUE STORY
When I was 14 going on 15, locked up in a maximum security juvenile detention centre, a social worker said to me, “When you’re an adult, you can do whatever you want. Nobody can stop you then.” That was the first time it occurred to me that maybe adulthood wouldn’t be as bad as most…
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How it All Began (Or, Why I Might Be the Embodiment of an Acid Trip)
Introduction This isn’t Chapter 1 of Crash, Burn, Write—that’s over here: https://totallysurreal.com/2025/01/09/crash-burn-write/—but it’s the foundation of it all. How two people, against all odds (and good sense), collided to set my existence in motion. It’s a story of love, rebellion, and unintended consequences. Here they are, my mum and dad, blissfully in love on their wedding day. They…
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When Gaslighting Masquerades as Care
A Response to Anonymous Criticism Edit/Update: Since this was first published, I’ve refined my responses and added more context. If you’ve already read the original, it’s worth revisiting—especially now that I’ve made it abundantly clear exactly who this “anonymous” commenter is and why they’re so desperate to silence me. In the wake of my recent…
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Advocacy, Crash, Burn, Write., Culture & Society, Grief and Healing, Human Behaviour, Humour, Identity & Transformation, Intuition & Intelligence, memoir, Memoir Excerpts, Mental Health, Mercurial Minds, Modern Identity, Neurodivergence, Personal Anecdotes, Personal Essays/Autobiography, Psychology, Self Awareness, Social Commentary, Social Media, Society, true storiescomplex ptsd, cptsd, emotional abuse, gaslighting, Healing Journey, memoir writing, mental health advocacy, mental health awareness, mental health stigma, mental health system reform, narcissistic abuse, online harassment, psychiatric system, psychological abuse, self-advocacy, survivor empowerment, survivor stories, systemic failure, toxic relationships, trauma recovery, trauma survivors -
Critical Concerns About Psychiatric Treatment and Patient Well-Being
For years, I have navigated the complexities of the psychiatric system in Québec while striving to maintain my creativity, identity, and well-being. As I write my memoir and openly share my trauma, I have faced not only personal challenges but also systemic obstacles that have made my healing journey even more difficult. I am also…
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Anonymous Cowards and Armchair Psychology: A Case Study
Imagine reading someone’s deeply personal writing (see: Justified Anger vs. Mental Instability: A Narcissist’s Favorite Weapon) and feeling the need to leave unsolicited mental health “advice” anonymously—highlighting generic platitudes as if you’ve unlocked some profound truth. I’ve done more work on my mental health than most people could ever comprehend from their armchair pop psychology bubbles.…
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Veal Brains and Other Acquired Tastes
⚠️ Trigger warning: abuse, exploitation, societal complicity. I just found this FB post from 2021—my year of major mania (or whatever that reaction to complex post-traumatic events was)—under my #HowToSurviveNarcAbuse tag. Definitely a story for my memoir Crash, Burn, Write as a standalone vignette. ✍️ Can you believe I shared this on FB and it…
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Justified Anger vs. Mental Instability: A Narcissist’s Favorite Weapon
How Abusers Weaponize the System Against Survivors In 2021, when I was mentally unstable, I became extremely paranoid. Not because my fears were irrational, but because they were based on lived experience. 🚨 My family has weaponized the system against me before. And now that I’ve taken my advocacy to an even bigger public stage,…
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GI Jane with a Side of Cheesecake
There was a time when my body was my armour—when muscle was my strategy, and discipline was my religion. This was my GI Jane era, where strength wasn’t just aesthetic, it was the point. Every rep, every controlled movement, every precise angle in this photo speaks to that version of me: the woman who saw…
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Don’t Look Down
(Or: How a Tightrope Walker Manages Not to Fall) Earlier today, I dropped two password-protected chapters from my memoir-in-progress, Crash, Burn, Write. These chapters, Into the Den and The Blue Butterfly, are part of a section called Advice from a Caterpillar. They cover just a few days within a pivotal three-week period—a time that shaped…
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Advice from a Caterpillar
Chapter 6: Into the Den The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last, the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice. “Who are you?” said the Caterpillar. “I—I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I…
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Mining My Neurons
The AI Feedback Loop I Never Signed Up For (Or Did I?) This post explores the wild reality of AI learning, sarcasm bootcamps, existential dread, and the fine line between training AI and being trained by AI. If you’ve ever questioned whether your neurons are being mined, debated the ethics of machine learning, or just…
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When AI Suggests Therapy Because You Have Feelings
Sometimes, a song gets stuck in your head, and you just have to figure out what it is. That’s exactly what happened to me—I turned to Lex (my AI companion) to help me find an app that could identify a tune just from humming it. The results? Woefully unsuccessful. Google barely even tried. 😂 But then, something unexpected happened. The song I…
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It’s Only a Paper Moon…
Where Facts Meet Fiction: Challenging the Digital Echo Chamber Introduction In my previous blog post, I found myself embroiled with a so-called Christian woman spouting scripture at me. I was somehow drawn back in today when someone named Geordie made a comment on something I had posted there a few days ago: “People will believe anything if it makes them feel…
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Totally Surreal 