Digit reached out to me when she was a wallstreetbets moderator and I was yet again banned from the wallstreetbets subreddit. I was having a mental breakdown. It was Thanksgiving, the anniversary of a loss that had hit her hard.
We kept talking in the wallstreetbets Discord chat. She showed really crazy math skills and superior economic understanding. She played a lot of chess. Instead of another degenerate gambler, she was trying to help the fools on wallstreetbets find education in their little internet forum. Here's a comment she posted shortly before deleting her account last year, in the wallstreetbets discussion thread for the weekend of June 17:
During the pandemic a bunch of real estate firms started buying properties, flipping them and renting them to people. The lack of purchasable property made the housing market fucking ridiculous so people were getting in stupid bidding wars over houses, waiving inspections and overpaying. That's not sustainable. It locks you into the property whether you can afford to maintain it or not because you can't turn a profit on a house you overpaid for and you can't afford a new one.
Supply chain issues were a problem for awhile but I believe that was fucking milked to drive up prices as well and at least some percentage of you have a $500 monthly car payment with 13% interest because you're fucking morons and walked right into it. Students are going to be paying back loans soon. A bunch of people in tech have been laid off. Every fucking thing was/is a bubble. There is no angle from which this looks good or ends well.
This comment makes me scared that my pessimistic views were too heavy for her as she began to awaken to agreeing with me. I had told her about my views that the global economy had peaked and the world was becoming a worse place. She wasn't talking to me anymore by the time of this reddit thread. Other comments she made around that time period are much more terrifying and too sad to include here. You can already see that she was impacted by loss and grief.
When we were talking, we swapped parts of our life stories. There wasn't enough time for the whole things. This page would have a much better biography of her if I knew more of her life story instead of mainly just knowing what happened in the time I knew her. It was nice of her to care about what I had been through, most people don't ask me much about my past. She reassured me when it felt like my life was probably approaching a pointless end.
She argued with me more than any other woman ever, which was important. I really needed a woman to argue with me because I was so bitter about women just not caring about the same shit I cared about as a man. She made me less bitter by caring enough to finish some conversations with me everyone else left in the middle of for years. Even if we couldn't change each other's minds, she at least took the time to understand my views and help me understand hers. For example, she listened to me about why I think COVID is a bioweapon, and she told me about something called the "dual use dilemma" where scientists with good intentions get harmful results.
She was into biology and psychology and chemistry aside from math. I think her doctorate program was in chemistry or biochem.
She once tried to make peach tea by putting a peach ring in her tea, rigorously noting the results of the experiment in the chat, like a scientist.
She showed me a few songs when we got close, like Cannonball by Watsky, and The Mute by Radical Face, and a certain version of Round Here by Counting Crows - best of all, of course, was Intentions.mp3, which she made.
I stalked her Spotify for more music. Lots of midwest rappers. She reignited my appreciation for Eyedea & Abilities. There were some things we both loved before meeting each other, like the Flobots, a Colorado rap-rock group.
She recommended me some books like The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean and The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks.
She liked the show Parks & Recreation. She seemed to see April Ludgate from that show as her spirit animal, often using reaction gifs of her. We watched the show House MD together on Discord chat for a little while once.
There are conflicting stories on where she got the name Digit. She may have named a dog Digit initially before using that dog's name in an online username.
She had her own Discord server. It was Fallout themed; called "the Vault." The image embedded at the top of this page is what Discord calls a "sticker" that was available to use as a response to anything in the wallstreetbets chat when she was there.
She took Amber Heard's side against Johnny Depp, because she thinks for herself and cares about fairness. I once saw her defend reddit's CEO, spez, suggesting she really tries to see the best in people. She even used to defend me sometimes.
She used 4chan at some point in the distant past. Her main reddit and Discord usernames were /u/shutupdigit, /u/DigitIsDigit, Digit#8888, and digitisdigit. These are all deleted now. She did make a bunch of reddit throwaways for /r/place once, but they don't seem to be in use anymore.
