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Raphael Hythloday

@eshuelegbara.bsky.social
202 followers 1.3K following 1.6K posts

Abyss-gazer, monster-fighter, part-time bartender. Full-time movies, philosophy, books, chess, and baseball. when i'm not skeeting into the abyss, I write here: substack.com/@eshuelegbara

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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
Pogroms need no reason, sir, none that weather challenge, in any case. Difference in kind is the first recognition, the only one needed, in fact. Land domination, pre-emptive attacks—all just excuses, mundane justifications that do nothing but disguise the simple distinction. They are not us.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
the back of my mind a needle into my thalamus spun a tale well-defined 'tween a hero 'nd scandalous July 11, 1804: Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton in Weehawken, NJ. Hamilton died the next day. Two founders, one feud, one duel — the young republic's most infamous morning. #ThisDayInHistory #OTD
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Aaron Burr & Alexander Hamilton: Other Side of War
ALT: Aaron Burr & Alexander Hamilton: Other Side of War
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
miss Shark/miss Shark/miss Shark/miss Shark/Shark/Shark/Shark
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Finding Nemo: Bruce the Shark's Grin
ALT: Finding Nemo: Bruce the Shark's Grin
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Time dresses the space Between the thens and nows Where real goes missin'.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
See ourselves as others see us. So long as women don't mock what matter?
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 01/11/2025
Marx wasn’t talking about Tinder, but he may as well have been. People are dating lifestyles, not humans.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 01/11/2025
Even sexuality gets warped into branding seasons. Pivot the label, pivot the vibe, curate the aesthetic. The farm fantasy isn’t love. It’s escape. “Please absorb the economy for me.”
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 01/11/2025
Capitalism turns everything into a transaction: security for beauty comfort for attention lifestyle for companionship
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 01/11/2025
We’re not building lives with people anymore. We’re shopping for partners who already have the life assembled.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 01/11/2025
I overheard a woman on break saying she’s “dating men again,” but only if one can give her the lifestyle she wants: a farm, no job, no stress. That’s modern romance in a capitalist world.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
Not every preference needs a pathology. Not every awkward moment is abuse. Sometimes you’re just human and that’s okay. #Language #Culture #TherapySpeak #Neurodivergence #Trauma #Accountability #GenerationalDifferences
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
It’s easier to say “my neurodivergence won’t let me” than “I don’t feel like doing that.” It’s easier to blame “trauma” than admit “I struggle with boundaries.”
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
But these are clinical terms meant to describe real diagnoses and real suffering. When everyone uses them casually, the language loses meaning — and the people who actually need those words lose support.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
I’ve been noticing something lately: Every minor social inconvenience gets medicalized. A harmless joke becomes “gaslighting.” Awkwardness becomes “autism.” Any childhood discomfort becomes “trauma.”
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
Camus didn’t say “give up.” He said: Life is meaningless, so rebel.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
You can either build a shrine to the void…or you can laugh, love, create, mess up, and start again knowing it’s temporary, but yours.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
Life is absurd. We’re monkeys on a space rock with no script, no cosmic applause. Terrifying? Yes. But also freeing.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
Camus warned that people would worship death before accepting freedom.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
Real nihilism doesn’t replace meaning with a darker meaning. It says: there is no final answer. So if you’re brave enough, you create your own.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
That’s not nihilism. That’s religion flipped upside down with sadness as the new savior. Still desperate for a Grand Answer just picking the bleak one.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
Religion: “Life has meaning because of God.” These folks: “Life has no meaning, so death is the only truth.” It’s the same worldview, just dressed in black.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
When people finally accept life has no inherent meaning, most don’t handle the void. Instead of facing it, they invent a new “truth” to cling to. Camus called that philosophical suicide.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
Got invited to a subreddit called r/CosmicExtinction and… man, Camus called this decades ago.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
Otherwise it’s just performance all the way down.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
The fix is simple, but slow: Think first. Check later. Show your receipts. Be wrong publicly and learn out loud.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
We’re not training thinkers anymore. We’re training actors—people fluent in the aesthetics of expertise but empty of the substance.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
The result? Everyone looks like an expert. No one is one. And honesty—real, verifiable honesty—becomes almost impossible to prove.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
In real life, you get called out. Online, you respawn with a new handle. No consequences, no humility.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
Online, nobody checks your receipts. You can delete, rebrand, start over. Proof-of-performance beats proof-of-work. It’s effort-laundering.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
Wikipedia, summaries, AIs—these are great tools. But people use them to skip the grind. They outsource thinking, then cosplay as scholars.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
This isn’t just chess. It’s philosophy, art, politics—everything. People mistake being a Google expert for being an expert. They perform insight instead of earning it.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
Used to be: want to be good at chess? You studied, lost, studied again. Now? Copy a position into a bot, paste the answer, and pretend it was you. Instant genius.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
Around 2000–2005, something broke. Online identity stopped being something you became over years of work and started being something you performed overnight.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
It doesn’t mean free will is an illusion. It means responsibility still exists — even in a world of pressure and pain. Freedom isn’t purity. It’s the space to admit: Yeah. I did that. And I can do better next time. #MorningReflection #Philosophy #Accountability #FreeWill #HumanNature
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
And that’s what being human is: sometimes good people make bad decisions, and bad people make good ones.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
We live in a world where no one wants to say, “I made a bad choice.” Everything has to be the system’s fault, or biology’s, or trauma’s. But sometimes the truth is simpler — you just did the thing you chose to do. Not because the world made you, but because you wanted to.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
But regret disguised as advice is still regret. And just because one path hurts doesn’t mean the other would have healed you. #MorningReflection #Philosophy #Identity #Regret #Growth
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
And the people around us — friends, followers, communities — often live through us the same way parents live through their kids. They push us toward the versions they wish they’d had the courage to live.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
But sometimes what looks like “becoming” is really grieving — grieving the self we never got to be, or the choices we can’t undo.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
Identity today feels like it’s always in motion. We reinvent ourselves, often because we can’t bear the version we were before.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
The internet made it easy to reinvent yourself, but it also made it harder to sit still and admit: yeah, I did that. Healing isn’t deletion. Growth requires honesty. You can evolve — but you can’t erase. #MorningReflection #Philosophy #Identity #Culture #DigitalAge
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
🪞 We used to call it a midlife crisis. Now it happens five times before 30. People used to live, reflect, and face what they’d done. Now they delete, rebrand, and pretend the old self never existed.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
No wonder they feel dissonance. Because who you are isn’t what you’ve posted. It’s who you are right now, in the unfiltered moment, away from the screen.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
I feel bad for this generation. They’re trying so hard to live up to the curated selves they’ve built online — perfect mirrors they can never match. #reflection #identity #philosophy #generation
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
Das Man is watching me, piercing and true, He knows what I do, what I did, what makes me you. I hate those gypsy eyes, surveilling my very soul, Telling me who I am, what must be my role. It builds a simulation where I am always lost — And me? I only ever wanted the cost I never bought. #poetry
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
Because that’s not profitable in the online marketplace of attention. The crowd doesn’t want truth. It wants curated perfection — the illusion of virtue. A world they can believe in, not the one they actually live in. #philosophy #identity #Barthes #internet
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
No one logs on to say, “Yeah, I bullied someone once.” “I cheated.” “I lied.”
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
Online, we get to choose how we represent ourselves — and in doing so, we build a shadow self. A second, curated version of who we wish to be. But it’s never the full self.
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
That’s not oppression. That’s life. You can’t always change the room. Sometimes you have to change your frequency. #worklife #psychology #reflection #honesty
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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
At work, you don’t get that luxury. You deal with everyone — people from all walks, who don’t share your triggers or tone.
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