I believe every attempt to explain the self is a cultural self-genocide. So here, I present you with a few snapshots of me. All are true in the moment they were written and in so far as you believe in them and the shared language they’re presented in - each one a deliberate act of egocide I've willingly committed just for you, the extent of which depends on how much your current mind aligns with the state mine was in at the time of writing this. Each snapshot is measured in muons (μ) representing the level of abstraction from my real self, that is, the level of egocide that was committed in constructing that snapshot. (NSFW warning for Level 2 and below.)
At this level, people typically refer to me by the label "Jesse." Jesse is a linguist and aspiring cognitive scientist and perhaps other things 's yet to realize. In case you're the kind of English speaker who cares about one's 3rd person pronouns, 's are pro-drop. Currently a PhD student in Estonia, has lived in various countries around the world. Grew up in the US, did a Bachelor's in Poland and Master's in Taiwan. Has also lived in Korea, France, Georgia (the country), the UK, and Thailand, and has visited countless other places.
I've been interested in languages since a very young age; though, I think the real catalyst
might have occurred when I was 12. My English teacher at the time was very strict and very
unpopular, because she was of the few teachers that actually wanted you to learn
and think critically for yourself. One of the exercises she had us do at the beginning
of every class was to take English sentences, break them down word by word into their
parts of speech, and then organize them into syntactic trees. I thought this was fun,
and it gave a me vague meta-linguistic understanding of how English worked. But more
importantly, I started asking questions. Why do adjectives always precede the noun? Why
can't we put the verb at the end of the sentence? And so on. (You see, I was the type of kid to
ask why ad infinitum, and the moment an adult responded with 'because I said so', I'd
lose all respect for them... I was also the type of kid who'd stick their finger in
electrical outlets and electrocute themselves, not once, not twice, but multiple times -
just to make sure.) As a result, I started making my own miniature languages to
experiment with different grammars or ways sentences could be structured, as
any sensible 12 year old would do in their free time. Now, I was already heavily into anime
at that point and had learned a bit of Japanese simply through exposure -
I had also taught myself a bit of kana - but I didn't really have a meta-linguistic
understanding of how the actual words worked. But then, the fire nation attacked
I discovered Korean.
I don't remember exactly how I discovered Korean, other than it happened when I was around 15, and it either involved stumbling upon the classic 2005 K-Drama My Girl or the K-Pop MV "Cooking? Cooking!" by SUPER JUNIOR-Happy; whichever one was first. In either case, both were beautifully weird, and it immediately exploded into a linguistic and cultural obsession, where I set out on a mission to learn Korean. I first learned Hangeul (which completely blew my mind that such a writing system existed), then I started grinding vocabulary, grammar, and sentences with thousands of flashcards, endless hours of online lessons and podcasts with Talk to Me in Korean, setting all my devices to Korean, reading Korean textbooks and Korean novels, and hours upon hours of watching K-Dramas and listening to K-Pop. At every waking moment, I lived Korean, I breathed Korean, and when I slept, I dreamed Korean. And every new piece of grammar I learned, each one a brick layed in the picture I was building of this new and fascinating language system, drove me deeper into obsession - how could such an alien system like this, something so imcomprehensibly different from the one spoken all around me, exist? As a result, I had virtually no social life. I was mostly holed up inside studying and rarely left my room, and a lot of my grades suffered because Korean was infinitely more important than homework. After about a year of this, my parents and grandparents surprised me for my 16th birthday by paying for me to participate in a Korean homestay program over the summer (still the best birthday present I've ever recieved).
As part of the homestay program, I was to participate in Korean language classes. Initially, they gave us a placement test... and I accidentally got a perfect score. So the teachers, deciding that I was too advanced for any of the courses, took me to the local bookstore to pick out some college-level textbooks and let me just work through them on my own. I'd occasionally have lunch with one of the teachers, who'd go through and check all my work, correct all my essays, answer all my questions, and have conversations with me in Korean. At some point, though, I decided I wanted to learn Japanese, that is, actively - like I did Korean - rather than passively through anime. So I went back to the bookstore and got a Japanese language textbook for Korean speakers, and within a year, I was watching anime and Japanese films without subtitles, reading my favorite manga in the original Japanese, immersing myself in the Japanese side of the internet, and reading Japanese novels.
At some point in the middle of all that, I discovered C-Pop, including Taiwanese artists like 楊丞琳 and S.H.E., and Chinese shows such as 步步驚心 and 仙劍奇俠傳, and became equally obsessed with learning Chinese, which would eventually go on to be the natural language I've invested the most time into actively learning. Soon after, my linguistic obsession exploded into Mongolian, then Kazakh, then Russian, then Polish, then Finnish and Greek and Hebrew and so on, constantly jumping back and forth and always learning like five different languages all at once. And at the same time, I started creating languages, both as art projects and thought experiments, with spreadsheets upon spreadsheets of dictionaries, and documents upon documents of grammars and imagined cultures, binders upon binders of writing systems and phonetic systems and corpora and sketches. What if a culture existed that believed this? Or an organism existed that looked like that? Or a language existed that had grammar like this? Or a communication system that emerged in this setting by this kind of lifeform? What if I combine this feature of this language with that feature of that language? What if I try to think of something that doesn't exist in any existing language? What if I try to create a language that is fundamentally unhuman? And so on ad infinitum. And well, from that you can probably get a vague idea of how I've ended up where I am doing what I do. (Though, the path I've taken to get here, and the decisions I've made along the way are very sporadic, sometimes seemingly nonsensical, and filled with more serendipity than I probably deserve.)
I know too many languages, and I hate when people ask me "how many?" After all, what does it actually mean to "know" a language? Where is the line between knowing and not knowing, or proficiency and deficiency? In what areas and for what tasks? And what even defines a language? These are not simple questions and to a large extent are pretty subjective (one could even go as far to say that all humans know the same language, just different variations), but I'll try to give the most general answer I can here and spare you the finer details (and my perpetual struggles with ontology). First of all, while my first shared language is English, I do not consider it my native tongue. I instead have a personal (unshared) language (in English I might call it 'Muonese') that I alone speak and consider my native tongue, for it is the best language for expressing myself and accurately articulating my thoughts, and it is the language for which I have the strongest affinity. My second best shared language after English is Chinese, and when spoken, specifically Mandarin. Other shared languages I consider myself proficient in include: Japanese, Cantonese, Korean, Thai, and Indonesian. I also know some Estonian, Finnish, Polish, Russian, Romance (French, Spanish, Italian), Taiwanese (Southern Min), Swedish/Norwegian, and JSL, and I've studied a bit of Mongolian, Burmese, Turkish, Modern Greek, Modern Hebrew, Scottish Gaelic, and probably some others I'm forgetting; though, I don't know if I'm confident enough in my ability in these languages to label myself truly 'proficient'. In a broader sense, I'm not entirely sure how to accurately evaluate my proficiency in any of these languages, as it's constantly changing with how much I'm using it at any given period of time. In general, though, I watch a lot of anime and read manga, books, and articles somewhat regularly in both Chinese and Japanese, so those two are perhaps the most stable shared languages for me outside of English (these three being the languages I talk to myself with most outside of using my personal language). My favorite shared languages for which I have the strongest affinities are Chinese (written, traditional), Cantonese, Japanese, and Thai.
Now, while I genuinely love nonsense like '6 7', silly memes, and the ability to observe real-time mass cultural evolution and language change on steroids, I have an overall dislike for modern social media (especially centralized platforms) and instant messaging. Specifically, I feel like it's made communication too cheap, such that we are prone to forget the tax on the self that comes with every uttered word, where erosion of depth inevitably shallows the vessel that the self must use to share itself with other minds. In such an environment, it seems to me that communication becomes less about sharing and more about posturing, as we confine ourselves to ever-shrinking echo chambers of ever-shrinking utterances, where the meaning of every word becomes but yet another 'us' and a 'them', perpetuated by the omniscient and omnipresent algorithm Gods enslaving you to the endless scrolls and feasting upon your very soul. Currently, the word tax has never been higher, yet we've never been so blind to it - truly, a slaughterhouse of ideas (I feel similarly about socializing in groups - the more, the miserabler). Instead, I think we should strive to read more books, especially the weird ones that aren't trying to sell themselves, where intricate ideas can be laid out on a canvas of pages and painted with words chosen with intent, for the transmission of the idea itself. (And by extension, I think we should intentionally seek more inconvenient forms of communication, like writing emails - not for work - but for casual correspondences, or design our own webpages where we can go into fathomless depths with unbridled creativity, or perhaps even use snail-mail again where you know you won't hear back from your interlocutor for days.) Anyways, while my insatiable curiosity paired with an obsession for languages has certainly led me down the path of a linguist, my approach to linguistics, and the world at large, has been profoundly shaped by other thinkers and their works. Here, I list a few of the books (and poets) that have had the largest impact on me as both a linguist and an individual. I won't comment on them too much, as it won't do them justice, but I encourage you to read them if you're interested.
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-glass by Lewis Carroll: I love nonsense, because I think nonsense often ends up making more sense than a lot of the sense that people try to make of the world. In this sense, or lack there of, Lewis Carroll is a genius and is one of the few authors I've come across who I consider a true master of this art. More specifically, it is this nonsense that really drives home for me the fragility of logic and the fragility of words and their meanings.
Zhuangzi: My favorite philosopher and another master of nonsense and paradox. What else is there to say except that I've now already said something? But on a serious yet lighter note, Zhuangzi has profoundly shaped the way I think and view the world, as well as my view of words. He has contributed significantly to my perpetual struggles with ontology, among other things.
The Incerto Series by Nassim Taleb: While I don't agree with everything Taleb says, his books have certainly had a notable effect on the way I see the world, and they likewise acted as a catalyst sparking my obsession with probability and epistemology. They also sent me into a months-long spiral of questioning everything I thought I knew and took for granted when I first read it.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: Jane is one of my favorite literary heros, particularly for her autonomy and her integrity, and so many other defining features of her personality. When I first read this book, I read it twice, and for a while after, I kept Jane with me everywhere I went as an imaginary best friend.
Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en: Perhaps the best piece of fiction ever created in all of humanity. This is literally the OG anime. I love Sun Wukong (I mean, how can you not? If you're the Jade Emperor, don't answer that.) I love all the crazy chaos, the deities and demons, and the constant obstacles Sanzang and co. must overcome, and I especially love the mythology and depth that make up this story.
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson: This book holds a special place in my heart from childhood, especially
since I identified heavily with the main character - his name is 'Jesse' after all. This book made me cry a lot. One thing I do think is very important -
though perhaps not directly related to this book - is to never lose your inner child. I believe every person in this world, whether they realize it or not,
is just a dumb child inside (even especially when they wear their silly neckties to try to look extra intimidating and adulty.)
Emily Dickinson: One of the very few humans to have ever existed who I feel I can somewhat relate to. I'll just leave a couple of my favorite poems of hers here:
(632)
The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and you—beside—
The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As sponges—Buckets—do—
The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound—
(303)
The Soul selects her own Society—
Then—shuts the Door—
To her divine Majority—
Present no more—
Unmoved—she notes the Chariots—pausing—
At her low Gate—
Unmoved—an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat—
I've known her—from an ample nation—
Choose One—
Then—close the Valves of her attention—
Like Stone—
I sometimes like to invert/subvert her poems adapted to my own perspective. I'll leave this example here:
Dickinson (466):
I dwell in Possibility—
A fairer House than Prose—
More numerous of Windows—
Superior—for Doors—
Of Chambers as the Cedars—
Impregnable of eye—
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky—
Of Visitors—the fairest—
For Occupation—This—
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise—
Me:
I float beyond Impossibility—
A stranger Ocean than Improbability—
More numerous of Fathoms—
Superior—for Gleams—
Of Trenches as the First Light—
Impregnable of sense—
And for an everchanging Floor—
Horizon of the Void—
Of Mariners—the strangest—
For Recreation—All—
The spreading wide my Tentacles
To feel Absurdity—
My general research interests primarily involve using linguistic typology, artificial language learning experiments, and computational modeling to try to understand the cognitive and communicative pressures shaping human language. What the heck does all that mean? Basically, with linguistic typology, you look for patterns across the world's languages and then form hypotheses about what that might tell us about underlying human cognition and communication. Then, you take it to the lab and teach a tightly controlled miniature artificial language to a group of people to see how they change the grammar, either through learning biases (perhaps some structures are harder to learn than others) or communicative pressure (perhaps some structures are harder to communicate with than others). We then compare those results to the typological patterns. The reason we do this is because we don't know whether those typological patterns are truly a result of the way the human mind works or whether it happened by historical "accident" via language exchange from migration and cross-cultural contact. Finally, you can create formal computational models to generate more hypotheses and better make sense of the experimental results and typological data. Basically, this lets you formally write down a few set of parameters (that you actually know about because you put them there), which you can then play with and run simulations to see what predictions it makes and how that lines up with the data. The main thing is, I'm interested in why languages are the way they are, how human language is different from or similar to other communication systems, and what language can tell us about how the human mind works, what it means to be human, and perhaps what alien communication might look like.
My current research (the topic of my PhD) involves a silly phenomenon known as 'differential argument marking'. Essentially, when we communicate about an event, we often want to be able to tell who's doing what to whom in that event. Languages have many different ways of encoding that, such as relying on word order as in English, where we typically put the doer first (before the action) and the affected actor last (after the action). For example, in "Alice hugs a jellyfish," the hugger Alice is first, followed by the action hugs, then finally, the thing being hugged jellyfish. If you reverse the order, "a jellyfish hugs Alice," then the meaning changes. In many languages, however, instead of relying on word order, they explicitly mark the relationship with an extra word or affix. For example, if we pretend the word 'ko' marks the affected actor, then you could imagine a sentence like "ko a jellyfish Alice hugs" to mean "Alice hugs a jellyfish," and the order you say it in no longer matters. This is what we call "argument marking," and while many languages mark the affected actor of such phrases, some mark the doer instead, and some may mark both. Differential argument marking refers to when a system marks a role, such as the affected actor, but only marks it sometimes. So for example, maybe you'd mark Alice with ko when she's the one being hugged, but you'd leave jellyfish unmarked when its the one being hugged (in this case, perhaps marking the affected actor only when its human). Many languages across the globe do this, and they seem to follow similar patterns; that is, the rules in one language determining when to mark is often similar to those of other languages, even ones that are completely unrelated spoken in an entirely different area of the planet. Why might that be the case? What would cause such similar structures to arise across different languages? What drives these specific set of patterns to be more common and others to be more rare? Can this tell us anything about our own cognition? These are the kinds of questions I'm asking in this research and trying to find answers to, using the methods I briefly outlined above.
2022–Present. PhD in Linguistics, University of Tartu
2018–2021. MA in Theoretical Linguistics, National Tsing Hua University
Dissertation: The Partitive through Quantification in an Artificial Language: How Learners Mark the Direct Object of a Transitive Phrase
2014–2017. BA in European Cultures, University of Wroclaw
Dissertation: A Grammar of Eastern Classical Dryadic
2022–Present. Junior Research Fellow, Department of Applied Linguistics, University of Tartu
2024–2024. Visiting Student, Centre for Language Evolution, University of Edinburgh
2019–2021. Research Assistant, NTHU Neurolinguistics Lab
2020–2021. Teacher's Assistant, Cognitive Neuroscience of Language, NTHU
2020–2020. Teaching Assistant, Applied Statistics in Linguistics, NTHU
August 2025. Typicality biases in interpreting unmarked sentences: an artificial language learning experiment on differential argument marking. 47th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2025). San Francisco, CA, USA.
August 2024. Differential Argument Marking through communicative pressure: an experimental study. 57th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE2024). Helsinki, Finland.
October 2023. The role of dependency length minimization in the emergence of differential object marking cross-linguistically. CLARIN Annual Conference 2023. Leuven, Belgium.
August 2023. The role of dependency length minimization in the emergence of differential object marking cross-linguistically. 56th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE2023). Athens, Greece.
March 2023. Constructed Languages (Conlangs). Workshop taught at University of Tartu. Tartu, Estonia.
April 2015. My Universe: Languages, Numbers, and Cultures. Sixth Language Creation Conference (LCC6). Horsham, UK.
coming soon...
Holmes, J., & Vihman, V. (2025). Typicality biases in interpreting unmarked sentences: an artificial language learning experiment on differential argument marking. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 47. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3hc1g645
even more than languages and linguistics, i love anime, manga, and vtubers, especially cute-and-funny stuff like cgdct (cute girls doing cute things), lolis, and yuri (feel free to check out my cute-and-funny shrine here). while it is true that i'm a linguist, or i'll at least accept such a label, i would say i am first and foremost an otaku. i originally watched anime as a young kid - perhaps early enough that i don't remember exactly since when - in the form of shows like pokemon, yu-gi-oh, sailor moon, and so on; though, at the time, i watched them in english and didn't realize they were anime, or that anime was even a thing. eventually, around age 12, thanks primarily to youtube, i discovered what i would consider 'proper' anime (and eventually manga) with titles such as The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Lucky Star, Rurouni Kenshin, Inuyasha, Naruto, Fruits Basket, Elfen Lied, and so on. this went on to define much of my teenage years, and in a way, contributed significantly to my path to becoming a linguist.
discovering anime as a kid was MAGICAL. it wasn't just an escape into this bizarre other world built upon this completely foreign culture that threw my imagination into a frenzy, but it fueled my curiosity and passion to both learn and create. i naturally was bullied a bit - i mean, i was anything but shy about being a weeb; i would literally wear naruto headbands to school - and often lost friends who were afraid of being bullied by association (what a bunch of cowards smh). over time, along with my obsession with languages, my obsession with anime has been one of the few most constant features of my life. in fact, i've often combined it with my language-learning endeavors: from watching japanese-dubbed anime with korean subtitles, to reading manga in chinese, to joining a polish anime club while living in Poland, to rewatching my favorite series dubbed in thai or cantonese or russian, and so on.
here, i'm going to talk a bit about the anime/manga series that have had the most profound impact on myself. these aren't necessarily my 'favorite' anime - though there is significant overlap - they're just the ones that have heavily affected me or that i associate with very strong sentiments.
this was probably the most defining anime of my youth, and one of the first 'proper' anime i ever watched. when i first watched it, the computer i was using had no sound card, so i watched the entire thing with no audio, only english subtitles, all in one sitting. and i got OBSESSED. i bought the DVDs, the manga, the light novels, and i read everything and i rewatched it over and over and over - yes, even the endless eight episodes. i fully ascribed to Haruhiism, to the point where i printed out the big red H with Haruhi's sillhouette and placed it front and center on my school binder. for me, Haruhi wasn't just God, she was my hero. she was unabashedly weird, the weirdest of the weird, she believed in aliens and espers and time-travelers, and she was on a life mission to find them, and in doing so, unknowingly willed them into existence, because as it turns out, she was, in fact, God (yes, God is a 15yo japanese highschool girl), and she had also willed the entire universe itself into existence 3 years prior, along with all the people in it and all their memories. the rest of the show involves an alien, an esper, and a time-traveler who are all trying to hide their true identities while observing and appeasing Haruhi in all her crazy antics (you know, so she doesn't accidentally destroy the universe - or worse, realize she's God), and at the center of it all is the perfectly ordinary and boring main character who knows their secrets and is the one force that seems to be able to keep Haruhi somewhat contained. i cannot even begin to articulate the profound effect this piece of media has had on me as a person, and how special of a place it holds in my heart.
this is another of one of the first 'proper' anime i watched. i don't even remember how i stumbled upon this but it must've been pure accident from browsing youtube. everything about this anime - the art style, the atmosphere, the characters, the story - just completely blew my mind as a kid and fueled my imagination well beyond this world. the mysterious girl who only appears at night and is obsessed with canned tomato soup that always seems to get stuck in the vending machine, the main character who is obsessed with taking pictures of the sky and meets her while waiting to take a picture of the sunrise, and all the other mysterious characters with their fantastical and tragic backstories... i'm not sure what else to say here, other than this is probably the most nostalgic anime for me. it's not a well-known series, but every time i hear the opening or any of the soundtrack, or i see art from the anime or manga, it causes such a deep and profound feeling of nostalgia in me that is quite difficult to articulate.
this might be the anime/manga series i obsessed over the most as a teenager. i first watched the anime series and immediately fell in love with the art, the aesthetics, the characters, the lore, the music, the atmosphere, EVERYTHING. i then read the manga, first in English, and then during my highschool summer homestay in Korea, i bought the entire series in Korean and filled my carry-on, and then reread the entire series in Korean. i've since rewatched it and reread it countless times, in Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, and Cantonese. this series is vampires done RIGHT. this is what twilight would be if it was actually GOOD. and the art style of the mangaka - Matsuri Hino - is absolutely stunning and has left such a profound impact on me to this day. every once in a while i still go back and rewatch the anime or reread the manga.
this entire series is, to put it simply, a fever dream. it's deeply philosophical, postmodern, and relies HEAVILY on japanese language puns, word games, cultural references, and so on. when i first watched the series way back when i was 13, i was VERY CONFUSED to say the least. but the animation, the visuals, everything, are pure art. and the more japanese i've learned over the years, alongside kanji (via Chinese) in general, the more i've come to appreciate this series, and the more i get from it every time i rewatch it. this anime is not something you watch, it is something you experience. and it is WEIRD. and i love every character in it. my waifu, and one of my first anime crushes, is also from this anime - Hachikuji (the girl in the clip below). anyways, this anime is impossible to summarize and you could probably quote from it literally all day until the heat death of the universe, and all the character-specific openings are just CHEF'S KISS. anyways, i'll just leave one of my favorite scenes/dialogues here.
this is one of my favorite manga series i've ever read, second only to Land of the Lustrous (the one below). the anime is also good, but they didn't animate the entire series grrr!!!!!!! (i imagine because the ending is a bit too dark for TV? who knows... it'd have probably been one of my favorite anime too if they had actually finished it.) anyways, i'm not sure what else to say here other than you should go read this manga. it's basically about two girls who are the last survivors of humanity as they take their final journey in trying to survive and pass the time among the ruins of civilization. this is the one piece of media that i cannot think about without tearing up and wanting to cry a little. not necessarily because it's sad, but because of the profundity of it and the message it communicates... hell, i'm literally tearing up right now as i type this. reading this manga is a very grounding experience. i love this manga. it is a master piece. and it has impacted me and the way i see the world in truly profound and inexplicable ways. even if you never read manga or watch anime, i would at least encourage you to try taking a look at this one. and here, have a fan-made MV using a banger song from the anime:
alas, we reach my most favorite manga and piece of media ever created (as far as i'm aware). this manga is VERY WEIRD, and possibly the most "unhuman" piece of media i've ever seen. if i were to try to summarize it, it's about sentient rocks fighting mysterious moon spirits that are trying to kidnap them to use as jewelry, and then it just gets weirder and weirder from there. but it's also just REALLY GOOD. i love the world, i love the characters, i love the art, i love the story, i love the philosophical questions it raises, i love EVERYTHING. they made an anime adaption of this as well, but THEY NEVER FINISHED IT. hell, THEY STOPPED RIGHT IT IN THE MIDDLE OF IT. they never even got to any of the good parts either. and the animation style was so weird too, blending 3D graphics with an anime format, and the OST was stunning; it would've been truly spectacular had they animated the entire series. but oh well, the manga exists at least, and it is an absolute masterpiece. here, have another fan-made MV (technically there's spoilers, but i imagine this series is so weird that you likely won't have any clue what anything means anyways.)
vtubers (virtual youtubers; basically streamers or youtubers that use an anime avatar with a fictional persona) are another important part of my otaku life. i first learned about vtubers when Kizuna AI became a thing back in 2016, but didn't really pay too much attention until the covid years, when i discovered hololive. initially, vtubers were more peripheral for me, where i mainly saw clips and memes here and there of gawr gura or nanashi mumei, for example. but then i discovered hololiveID (Indonesia), including members such as kureiji ollie, risu, and iofi, which not only sparked my obsession with vtubers, but also led to me obsessively learning indonesian and about indonesian culture for a while. eventually, i found and settled on two main vtubers that i watch pretty consistently and consider my oshis (idols): Jelly Hoshiumi and Marimari_en (both of them are weird silly dorks in the best of ways). vtubers have helped me a lot in life, particularly during my darkest days, in ways that are difficult to articulate. this is especially the case with my two oshis, jelly and mari; to some extent, im not sure i'd have made it as far as i have in pushing through my phd and especially the harsh estonian winters, if it wasn't for them (it'd at least have been a lot harder with less laughs). i don't go out of my way to interact much with communities of any sort, but the starknights (jelly's fans) and fincels (mari's fans) are at least two exceptions i've made and two more labels for myself that i proudly accept (and even in those communities, i'm mostly a lurker haha). here, have a silly clip from their collab:
now, i can't talk about being an otaku without also talking about lolis - im a lolicon after all. what are lolis? lolis are basically anime characters that look like young girls or have a petite and flat-chested body-type. lolis can technically be of any in-universe age though, ranging from being an actual young girl to an old woman or even thousands of years old (aka, a 'lolibaba'). in some cases, you can have a man being turned into a loli (such as in Onimai - where a guy's scientist sister transforms him into a loli - or Saga of Tanya the Evil - where a middle-aged japanese salary man is transformed into a loli and ends up in a WW2-like world and basically becomes loli hitler). the word 'loli' itself has other meanings in japanese, including referring to a specific subculture of fashion (involving lots of frills and corsettes, inspired by Victorian and Rococo style clothing), as well as a general term for a body-type referring to women who are petite or child-like. a lolicon both refers to someone who likes lolis (either aesthetically or sexually) and to fictional media that focuses on lolis. lolicon is generally understood in otaku culture as distinct from desires for realistic depictions of young girls, or real young girls as such. despite this, lolicon is very controversial outside japan, especially in the west, where many countries do not legally distinguish between stylized/fictional and realistc/real depictions of what people are now calling "child sexual abuse material". this has had all sorts of effects in terms of censorship and banning, among other things, both through actual legal enforcement (for example, in countries like Australia, lewd loli art can literally land you in jail and make you a registered sex offender, with similar cases - though, Australia's by far the most extreme - in the UK, France, Norway, etc.) and through corporations and platforms, such as mastercard and visa terminating payment processing services for platforms that sell lolicon content (based solely on body-type), resulting in an innumerable amount of manga, anime, and art being censored or straight up deleted, many sites being geoblocked in western countries, and western Vtubers and artists losing their income or being forced to seek new platforms. and this is only getting worse as governments are becoming increasingly censorious and authoritarian, particularly regarding online regulations. this also isn't to mention that if you even talk about lolis to AI, there's a pretty decent chance it'll call you a pedophile and give you a whole essay filled with hallucinations and false information about why it's universally illegal and "harmful". (you'll similarly be attacked on social media; although, being called a "pedophile" is kind of just par for the course for anything on social media at this point.)
and just to prove i'm not insane, here's an example of a lolituber going on a rant about censorship:
anyways, this is only a drop in the bucket of on-going issues surrounding lolis (the extent of which i don't think i myself even fully grasp), but for me, lolis are culture and a harmless art form, one that has had a profound effect on my life, and one that means a lot to me, more than i can put into words. in the grand scheme of things, my life is short, and i don't know where the world is going, what cultures will dominate in the future, and what much else i can do about it; maybe this culture will die with me and the other otakus alive during this brief time period in history, along with the innumerable other cultures that have died and been replaced through the eons and will continue to die as humanity continues changing shape until its final breath.
in the first chapter of the dao de jing, laozi says:
道可道，非常道。名可名，非常名。無名天地之始；有名萬物之母。故常無欲，以觀其妙；常有欲，以觀其徼。 此兩者，同出而異名，同謂之玄。玄之又玄，衆妙之門。
this is essentially how i view metaphysics. there is an objective reality - 道 - but it is fundamentally ineffable and ungraspable, as we are confined to our own minds and symbols in measuring and modeling it - 名 - where every model is wrong, just some more useful than others, that is, better at prediction and accounting for observations. the universe exists independent of our minds, yet our minds do not exist independent of the universe - all is holistic until we name it and slice it into our theories of causality, the act of which itself corrupts the structure and breeds new causality. this is related to why i think quantum theory is the way it is - reality is not fundamentally probabilistic, simply there is a limit to what can be meaningfully measured before we must rely on probability for description. accordingly, i am a bayesianist, as probabilities are very useful in measuring our own subjectivity and comparing models to find the one that is most rational given our measurements and assumptions, and ideally, should most align with the ineffable structure of 道 - that is, given a set of observations and a certain problem, what model or solution should a rational agent put most of their belief into. i ascribe to bayesianism at all levels of description of reality from quantum theory to cognition, and as a useful meta-model for finding such models.
now, in truth, as we are in fact bound to our minds, the only rationally defensible metaphysics and epistemology is solipsism - one can only experience their own mind and know that their own experience is what's real. but solipsism on its own isn't very useful. what i ascribe to i would rather describe as a form of pragmatic solipsism - i believe in the objective because it is useful to believe in, as it is the very foundation of scientific thinking. this is circular, which is unavoidable and why i call it a "belief" or an inevitable "leap of faith," and is likewise why i might call myself a "daoist" because i believe in 道, which for me, in this context, means the objective.
there is, however, an issue with this, or rather, something i think is very important to point out. the questions we ask - particularly the further we abstract from the most fundamental descriptions of reality - determine the models we construct. nothing in science - or when seeking rational solutions to problems - is free from the very fundamental and subjective question of should. what questions? what problems? and why? for example, should you go about seeking an effective and affordable cure to a deadly disease, or should you go about seeking a deadly disease to use against an enemy in warfare or for interests of national security? or why not both?
so, again, given all that, what questions should one be asking? what problems should one be solving? or rather, what epiphenomena should one ascribe to or seek to construct and preserve? and how should you live your life accordingly? this brings me to morality and ethics.
here, too, i might describe myself as a pragmatic solipsist. for me, the most important thing is the self. in this context, i view the self as another expression of 道, ineffable and ungraspable, and any attempt to name, label, constrain, describe, or identify the self as another expression of 名. this too is a circular assertion: i believe in the self because it is useful to believe in, as it is the very foundation of autonomy and meaning creation. accordingly, i think all expressions of the self that involve communication with other individuals are fundamentally self-destructive and at odds with the self.
to begin with, i do not believe there is freedom in so far as the self interacts with others, as true freedom is something found only in complete social isolation. all forms of shared reality are inevitably hierarchical through constructed causality, and any interaction inevitably results in offense. in such an environment, there can be no equality, there can be no liberty, and any claims to such is simply either naive self-delusion or part of the ploy of a given hierarchy seeking to assert dominance over its domain. the rational individual may therefore act accordingly: seek power and assert the self to shape the hierarchy according to one's own ideals - i call this the 'will to power' - or refuse power and seek freedom in isolation - i call this the 'will to self'. the more an individual asserts their will to power, particularly when they are unaware of their doing so, the more they surrender their autonomy to the hierarchy and enslave themselves - the more power they accrue, the more this is true. the more an individual asserts their will to self, the more they maintain autonomy at the cost of isolation - the more power they refuse, the more this is true. neither is attainable in absolute.
i see it as such: the will to self is the ideal, what i strive for, but the will to power is the inescapable reality. accordingly, i seek to minimize the will to power and maximize the will to self, while simultaneously recognizing the will to power and utilizing it to my own benefit to maximize the will to self. what does this mean? it means many things depending on context. in the case of language, this means being highly selective and deliberate in my words when using a shared language - for all forms of expression in such languages are inevitably forms of posturing and self-immolation, a tax upon every word uttered; it also means creating my own personal, unshared language of one for which the incomplete and transient dictionary exists solely in my mind, for which informativity is irrelevant and for which true meaning is maximized, the closest to which one can achieve the ideal of truly free self-expression, of the self and for the self. in the case of life, this means embracing death while remaining selective of ones momentary imagined life, for will to power relies on fear of death while will to self relies on the total love and acceptance of death as life itself. in the case of belief, this means never believing whole-heartedly and always remaining skeptical while remaining selective of ones momentary beliefs, for will to power relies on unquestioned belief while will to self relies on skepticism as belief itself. in the case of career, this means embracing art and absurdity while remaining selective of ones momentary imagined future, for will to power relies on gravity and progress while will to self relies on levity and absurdity. in the case of relationships, this means never loving unconditionally and always keeping others at a distance while remaining selective of ones momentary love towards others, for will to power relies on unconditional love and hedonism while will to self relies on isolation and abstinence. in other words, i live only for the self and concern myself with others in so far as it is inescapable, in which case i strive to act deliberately and exercise my autonomy to the extent of which my autonomy is exerciseable in that context. i do not (or strive not to) care for the state of the world or society or any given hierarchy, i do not care for power within a given hierarchy, i do not care for utopia; rather, i view all of these things not just as illusory, but as something that should ideally - and perhaps as paradoxically as this very text im writing - be avoided as a matter of moral duty to the self.
so then, what is the truth i seek? it is simple: i seek 道.
