Some quadrant work and other bad math
STEM = Silly thinking exciting musings! The least important most important thing that’s been occupying my brain these days.
I’ve figured out a fundamental truth about humanity! (As a cult-studies enthusiast I know how dangerous that sentiment sounds hah.)
But this is the not necessarily ground-breaking but extremely useful truth.
All people fit into this quadrant chart.
Comment below where you see yourself! I say, in a Quadrant C YouTuber voice.
I would say everyone in first president of japan is somewhere between A and B. Which is actually such a feat to collect 5 whole adults who are relatively secure.
Quadrant A is the most interesting to me because I think it includes both chaotic good and chaotic evil energy. Some of my favorite people who are so earnest and kind and have no idea why everything they do is SO FUNNY are definitely Quad-A, but a truly shameless asshole is also Secure and Lacks Self-Awareness.
A lot of stand up comedians definitely start and the C-D spectrum. A lot of people who identify as standup comedians are solid Quad-C.
Quadrant D is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy trap for people who are in that quadrant because the Self-Awareness helps them feel better than Quad-C and probably some Quad-A people. What drives ME crazy is some of the most beautiful and talented people I know are Quadrant D. I suspect it’s because being self-deprecating served them by making them likeable (?) to more people, and eventually they learned to believe it.
And then of course a common and super toxic Quad-C person who is either deluded or hyperovercompensating to appear Quad-B so they’re constantly talking in empty therapy-speak. ⛳️ Anybody who puts “Emotional Intelligence” or “EQ” on a dating profile - Run!!
As somebody who is NOT the life of the party (I know, surprise) this chart has been giving me such great peace of mind when I’m feeling unwell at large social gatherings. I can handle big groups of people much easier when I make it a game to categorize everybody. I guess this makes me sound sociopathic, but I didn’t choose to live in a world that accepts and rewards extroversion. We all gotta find ways to survive.
I know everyone’s unique and we’re not supposed to be putting each other in boxes but come on brother, you are already scanning your mind, categorizing the people in your life in to the different quadrants.
The beauty of this quadrant is that it honestly just exposes the way a lot of people just get in their own way. I think it’s fair to categorize people based on these two spectrums because ultimately nobody is ACTUALLY a victim of their own insecurity or their lack of self-awareness. (I’m aware they are specifically people who might feel that they’re victims.)
This brings me to my next quadrant:
In the era of #manifestationgirlies it seems impossible that one who says their needs would not get said needs met. But of course, people everywhere are not getting their needs met.
This quadrant feels pretty self-explanatory, people who say what they need often get what they need, people who keep it in won’t because there aren’t (to my knowledge) many mind-readers among us. Some people are self sufficient enough to just get what they need without publicizing it. The most fascinating is Quadrant A - people who say their needs out loud but cannot get them met.
I have two hypothesis for those in this predicament. Either, this person’s needs aren’t taken seriously or this person is not taken seriously.
Hypothesis 1: This person’s needs aren’t taken seriously.
Maybe the needs they’ve shared have historically been ludicrous. Maybe they ask for things that make people go “okay, so why don’t you do it yourself?” Maybe they say they need things that other people think are just wants. Or simply the way they name their needs are confusing (i.e. passive aggressive talk.) There’s potential correlation with people in Quadrant 1, Quadrant A. This is kind of where White Women Tears happen a lot. I guess this could be solved by finding community with people who have similar value systems and socio-economic backgrounds who might share similar perspective on needs, deeply reflecting on whether these needs are real, or just becoming more persuasive lol.
Hypothesis 2: This person is not taken seriously.
Maybe they are women. Maybe they’re BIPOC. Maybe they’re BIPOC who don’t perform palatability. Maybe they’re trans, queer, a threat to cisheteronormativity. Maybe they come from different cultural contexts, religions, ideologies that seem outside of “accepted universalities.” Maybe we all gotta be more cognizant of whose needs we aren’t meeting.
So, here is a sub-quadrant of the above.
Ugh, can you imagine being a Quadrant B type? How nice it must be…
To be fair, I don’t include like a morality spectrum here, so many cult leaders, politicians, and other con-artists would also live within B.
I guess a Quadrant A type is… a woe-is me type? Or someone who has simply mastered therapy speak without actually going to therapy. I am potentially most weary of Quadrant A, but I’d have to think about it a little more.
My favorite thing about this one is that both people with low self-worth and high self-worth can be bad communicators! People with low self-worth will generally be bad at naming their needs because re: earlier quadrant, they don’t take themselves seriously. They won’t name their needs because they don’t think that their needs deserve to be met. SAD. But then, as someone who tends to sit in Quadrant D, I will tell you that high self-worth generally makes me believe I should be able to deal with and/or meet my needs on my own. So I won’t say my needs out loud. Which is maybe less sad but (I’ve been told) VERY annoying to people who have to deal with how I behave when I can’t meet my own needs. This does make me a massive hypocrite because I’m such a vocally anti-hyper-individualism. We can’t be perfect all the time!!
But of course, all of this needs-and-communicating talk is nothing without action. As I say to everybody in my life “I’ll believe it when I see it” — I’ll ultimately judge someone based on action > lip service. Which, as an easily distractible person with too many interests for the time in the world, I am also very deserving of this judgement.
And with that, the final quadrant (of these series. Believe me, I’ve been making more)
Before people come for me about REAL needs and FAKE needs being pretty subjective, I acknowledge that fake needs can feel very real to the people who are experiencing them! But within the realm of this substack,
Real includes things that fit in the lower half of Maslow’s hierarchy, things that are practically achievable, and things that are integral to your QOL/happiness (like on a true fundamental level, for example, wanting to be able to exercise regularly = real, thinking that banning books is important to your happiness = fake).
Fake needs include things that are mostly just wants, things that are purely hypothetical, things that are contingent to violence to or oppression of other people.
Quadrant A is ideal and admirable. I try to strive for it. But also I’m depressed. So I can lethargically sit in Quadrant B for loooong periods of time. And sometimes I will fixate on fake needs to act upon to distract myself for not being able to act on my real needs. How many times have I panicked about how I “Don’t have enough time to make a bunch of new fpoj shirts” when I haven’t slept or have barely eaten in days. Which does usually result in Fake Needs/No Action, Quadrant C.
But then, I think about how the outer most point of Quadrant C are probably Sad Boys Who Come From Privilege and Are Just in Their Own Way, and the outer most point of Quadrant D are fascists.
And I’m so glad I’m not them!!!
High self worth!
And now for some first president of japan updates…
Well, first of all…
AKI’S BACK!!!!!!!!!!
Photo by Gannon Padgett (sometimes I can get the captioning to work and sometimes I can't!!!)
Woooooooooooooooo. It’s so strange that I now know so many people who’ve seen first president of japan (multiple times even!) and never with Aki. And yet, when I tell you how good our first practice with him back felt… 🥹
It’s just, correct. We’re home now.
The day he landed in New York, Feb 27, 2025, WE were in Philly playing our first out of town show. I am hooked y’all. I love New York, it’s still the best city in the world imo, but IT DOES FEEL REALLY GOOD TO PLAY OUTSIDE OF NEW YORK LMAO. There’s something to everybody at the show to being like “this is the event I’ve been looking forward to all week” — it’s hard to get that in New York, where there are a million things happening every day.
Photo by Dillon Edlin
The show was a Cousin Danny’s Lounge which was the strangest bar, house, venue hybrid and it was perfect. The bands we played with Couch, Ringtone, and Rugby were all so good. 1) You should check them out. 2) I want to play with them again, ASAP, please!! Thank you forever to Naked Lightbulb who put the bill together and were so welcoming. They are someone who’s really doing IT. And big big love to my friend Sara Mae of The Noisy (Check out their brilliant chap book!) for connecting us. Community! Friendship! My writing here is not good because my heart is too full.
And then we played our first festival! New Colossus Festival! I went in with zero expectations, mostly because I’m clueless and ignorant, but also because it felt low stakes since it was in our city. So how different could it be from any other show in the city? Our focus was more on the fact that it was Aki’s first show back and we had one practice to get back on the same page. But phew, did I learn a lot. But my biggest takeaway is that I want to do another festival where I can commit to immersing myself in the experience. Because I think I could’ve learned MORE and there is nothing I’m more horny for than learning. And I just wanted more time to see more shows. Because live performance is the only other thing that I might be as horny for. Some bands that I saw and loved: Suichu Spica, King Youngblood, Wynona Bleach, Touchdown Jesus.
Photo by Gannon Padgett
Last week, we got to be a featured performer at the World Cafe Live’s monthly open mic (again S/O to Sara Mae!). We went first president of japan less plugged for this — Me + Tiny Pianist Mark Benjamin. I still tend to question the merit of our less plugged sets because I feel more pressure to present as a singer, which, I just am not. I sat there watching the first half of the open mic wondering what makes us featured performer worthy. Musically, most of the other performers were definitely more technically skilled (the bar is low). But I get on stage and REMEMBER that this is a SHOW not a classical piano adjudication (RIP Baby Non) and Jack Halberstam has told me time and time again — not personally I’ve just read Queer Art of Failure a bunch of times to feel better about myself — that MY artistic rigor is allowed to live outside of “universalized” understanding of success. As usual, it ended up being SO FUN. I’m glad no matter what I can generally rely on myself having fun haha. And like our last Philly show, everyone was so sweet and gave good energy. Soooooo now I will be looking for more less plugged shows. There are ways I can play within the less plugged space that I can’t with a full band, and vis-versa. My omnivorous brain can’t stand the thought of not getting to push both kind of play further and further.
Upcoming!
We’re playing a Wet Spot show at Parkside Lounge on 4/25
MY 30TH BIRTHDAY SHOW is on 5/15 at Rabbit Hole BK
We’re playing a Punk Island fundraiser show with Grimelda on 6/6 locations TBD
Thank you always to all the first president of japan support. And for humoring my ancillary thoughts. Obvi.
BIG LOVE,
Non
