• Des [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    51·
    1 month ago

    while i know it’s been made clear he won’t just “become the old Matt again”, you can tell he’s using his big broken brain’s neuroplasticity to rewire stuff.

    he’s basically learning to process language in parts of the brain that don’t normally do it. if he’s trying to convey more complex ideas he does this kind of word association. it’s not grammatically correct obviously but you can tell what he’s trying to convey. and then sometimes he’ll associate one word with another, poetically, in his “strokes of genius” poem style.

    as weird as this sounds it’s like he’s learning to conversate while peaking on a hallucinogen (this will make sense only to those who have experienced it)

    he’s still young and incredibly smart i think he will eventually weave these new pathways together into a crazy jumbled mess that works. just like how individuals have lost entire brain regions to trauma and eventually other regions replicate the original function.

    compared to his first appearance on the show (post incident) though he’s recovered amazingly

    you will never get the old Matt back, but a new one will be reborn!! manhattan

    (i am just a wistful hypothesizing nerdy girl please if i’m way off base or this seems ableist let me know)

      • Des [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        19·
        1 month ago

        i agree. i only watched a few cushVlogs but i was aware of what he was feeling.

        maybe during his explorations he tapped into some subconscious, autonomic function that knew there was an issue.

        too bad our bodies don’t have built in diagnostic systems, instead you just get “vague sense of impending doom after doing acid”

        paradoxically he may have trained his brain for this exact thing, by both exploring these alternate pathways and supercharging his neuroplasticity.

    • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      13·
      1 month ago

      if i’m way off base or this seems ableist let me know

      I think you’re good, though I think it also depends a lot on what “the old Matt” means, since yeah he’s different now, but it seems possible (especially hearing his poetry and about his book) that much of his actual personality, though it might have been changed by the trauma and hardship he’s experienced, was not destroyed by the stroke. It comes across very differently because his tools for communicating were absolutely fucked, but a lot of what’s actually in there in terms of who he is seems to have survived. Not that I knew him or know him, of course.

      But if you mean not “Matt” the human but “Matt” the podcast persona, then I agree that that’s probably mostly gone because it was so defined by his idiosyncratic communication style, his speed, his range of expression, and so on. It’s super parasocial of me, but I’m mostly just glad that Matt the human seems to have held on to himself despite what he went through.

      • Des [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        7·
        1 month ago

        yeah i meant the podcast persona. i know he’s still there, thats why i used the hallucinogen analogy.

        he’s the same person just in a new, altered state of consciousness that he has to adapt to

        but the only personality change i’ve seen is has kind of accepted his own helplessness, sort of jokerfied, but this is absolutely understandable as traumatic response not brain injury

  • Doubledee [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    46·
    1 month ago

    I won’t lie I’ve really missed him. I think they might need to slow down a little bit to make room for him to contribute, he sounds like he’s a lot more articulate than he was a few months ago but I think they can easily bowl over him or outpace him in their usual tempo.