-I'm avoiding naming anyone in this post even when linking to their public writings, in order to try to keep the _rhetorical emphasis_ on "true tale of personal heartbreak, coupled with sober analysis of the sociopolitical factors leading thereto" even while I'm ... expressing disappointment with people's performance. This isn't supposed to be character/reputational attack on my friends and (former??) heroes—I just _need to tell the story_.
+Sidebar: I'm avoiding naming anyone in this post even when linking to their public writings, in order to try to keep the _rhetorical emphasis_ on "true tale of personal heartbreak, coupled with sober analysis of the sociopolitical factors leading thereto" even while I'm ... expressing disappointment with people's performance. This isn't supposed to be character/reputational attack on my friends and (former??) heroes—I just _need to tell the story_.
+
+I'd almost rather we all pretend this narrative was written in a ["nearby" Everett branch](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9cgBF6BQ2TRB3Hy4E/and-the-winner-is-many-worlds) whose history diverged from ours maybe forty-five years ago—a world almost exactly like our own as far as the macro-scale institutional and ideological forces at play, but with different individual people filling out the relevant birth cohorts. _My_ specific identity doesn't matter; the specific identities of any individuals I mention while telling my story don't matter.
+
+What matters is the _structure_: I'm just a sample from the _distribution_ of what happens when an American upper-middle-class high-Openness high-Neuroticism late-1980s-birth-cohort IQ-130 78%-Ashkenazi obligate-autogynephilic boy falls in with this kind of robot cult in this kind of world. End sidebar.
+
+-----
+
+I don't think I'm setting [my price for joining](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Q8evewZW5SeidLdbA/your-price-for-joining) particularly high here? That's a reference to a post by the Great Teacher about how people [(especially nonconformist nerds like us)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7FzD7pNm9X68Gp5ZC/why-our-kind-can-t-cooperate) tend to impose far too many demands before being willing to contribute their efforts to a collective endeavor. That post [concludes](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Q8evewZW5SeidLdbA/your-price-for-joining)—
+
+> If the issue isn't worth your personally fixing by however much effort it takes, and it doesn't arise from outright bad faith, it's not worth refusing to contribute your efforts to a cause you deem worthwhile.