Posts Tagged ‘Evangelion’

I’m thirty-six. I don’t abide by childish behavior.

I found a streaming server that I decided to join.

For awhile I thought it was great.

And then the whole “I don’t want to be an active part of drama, and I’m going to leave situations that try to drag me into it” thing kicked in, because my blog and Twitter account make clear the fact that the friends that I had in high school and early adulthood were hacktivists, some of whom would later go on to… hack things in less than savory manners, several of whom would go on to become white hat hackers with very lucrative jobs, many of whom would make programming a hobby of theirs that they did in their spare time (which spawned the re-AOL project, as a matter of fact), and this snidely came up on that server even though the only relation that it had to this server was a hell of a stretch — I happen to have been in the same friends’ circle as Lamo, Adrian Lamo, the person who turned Chelsea Manning in for what she did. Almost all of us vehemently disagree with Lamo’s course of action, as does Julian Assange, and as do many hacktivists, even if Chelsea herself forgave him for what he did. But it is what it is. I did find it… interesting that he might have died a death related to kratom of all things though (I did read his Wikipedia article, heh).

At any rate, I decided to leave the server even though I met a lot of awesome people on it and made a lot of great friends. I was talking about the people that I grew up around with one other member of the server, and a mod made it clear that he didn’t like it — he deleted everything that the other person and I said, and he muted both of us. I don’t put up with childish behavior in places that are supposed to have adults on them, so without saying a word, I just quit the server. For better or for worse, I grew up with these people. Sometimes we don’t see eye to eye on issues, but for the most part, the majority of us act like adults most of the time now. We might not have when we were growing up and when we were young adults, but almost all of us do now, and I suppose that’s what matters. I’ve had to remind a few people that I am autistic and that they need to stop expecting me to conduct myself in a neurotypical manner — in other words, masking — but I have faith they’ll get with the program soon enough (maybe I should charge money for them doing it).

I’ve also been watching Evangelion on Amazon Prime now that I have that, and it exceeds my expectations.

Boundary issues in fandom, online, and in general.

One of the reasons that I “left” (wanted nothing more to do with, distanced myself from, have not actively participated in anything having to do with, and am literally all the happier for having done so) fandom was the fact that boundaries were so routinely, cavalierly violated. If you blocked someone, meaning that you did not want to speak to them, that you did not want them to have access to their social media, they logged out of their own social media — especially if this was Twitter and you had a public account — to read what you had to say, and in some cases screenshot for their hate blogs (don’t even get me started on those, I could write a completely separate post on those alone, and I’m not going to do it now). If you attempted to assert boundaries and the other person didn’t feel like giving you the basic human decency of honoring them, well, that was that unless you wanted to make your whole social media account private. But they couldn’t make you participate in fandom, and they couldn’t make you “discuss meta” or talk about the thing — the object of fandom — that was causing all of this drama, and all of this strife, if you just didn’t want to. That was that.

Call it a convenient loophole. Call it whatever you want. It was honest, and it worked. It works. I like that!

On top of that, once I realized that I could not fake the level of interest and passion that people had for… the things that these fandoms centered around, further realizing that I did not want to continue to fake it, my mental health dramatically improved. I want to like things when I want to like them and be able to walk away from them when I need a break from them, not discuss them for twelve-hour benders or be available to do so more time than I’m willing to commit to. Anyway, getting back on topic… me not being willing to fake fandom any longer. This has meant that I’ve watched less television shows on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, but I’ve watched what I’ve wanted when I’ve wanted, and definitely at the pace I’ve wanted (so far I am watching the Evangelion movies since I grew up with the original anime, and I am in love with it).

At any rate, I’ve begun to notice that people are willing to violate boundaries on Discord as well.

If you block someone on Discord, you expect that they won’t be able to see what you write, and you won’t have to see what they write. What’s the point if they circumvent that to see what you write because they’ve developed some sort of obsession with you? What is it with people nowadays and respecting boundaries?