Yeah, whatever.

Why am I so constantly bothered by seeing certain people online? Why does it make me twitch so much, even when I’ve made absolutely sure that they can’t really do much to harass me? Just seeing them around makes me jumpy, mostly because all of them will go out of their WAY to make my life miserable if I let them. I try to ignore their presence, but sometimes I just can’t. I basically have to manually remove them from my online presence with various browser plug-ins, because I’m sort of a twit who can’t really enjoy themselves online when I’m constantly worrying about them saying nasty passive-aggressive things about me, which they HAVE before.

Feeling a fraud.

Sometimes, I feel like a fraud.

I feel that people are constantly trying to look through me, trying to find out what a horrible, terrible, fake person I am underneath the mask I wear. When people think that I’m, um, what my parents said I was supposed to be, instead of what I say I am, it triggers me to the core, in a way that I really can’t explain, except that I feel like I’m found out and exposed as a fake. And then I start obsessing over it and it loops in my head back and forth. ‘You’re a fake. You’re a fake. Give it up you fucking fake.’ Never mind that what they want to see is the fake. I have evidence for that, but that doesn’t stop my stupid mind from saying it anyway.

I know I’m not a fraud. My best friend, in her infinite wisdom, will reassure me and pat my back and will tell me I’m not a fake, but still. As much as I trust her, it’s still fucking ridiculous. I want this goddamn mental tape to shut off, but it always takes me a few days for it to stop, not just a few hours.

I’m not a fake. I exist. I’m not a fake. I exist. My friends and family–my real family, that is–know I’m real.

under the microscope

I’ve developed a sublime neurosis. I constantly wonder whether people secretly despise me from the depths of their hearts, yet tell me that they love me, and that I am like family to them, until the day they snap and their true feelings come out. It’s happened to me before, rather recently. It terrifies me in a way that I can’t—and don’t want to—articulate in places where people know who I am, and are more familiar with my long list of foibles.

That people to whom you’ve shared such intimate things about yourself, whom you trusted to be loyal and honest, could turn on you so viciously and cruelly is something I still cannot process that well. That people who once called you family now count you among their worst enemies, on a par with everyone whom they’ve ever hated, ever. From the best of friends to their personal rogues’ gallery. All within a day or two.

It’s in part because my head really doesn’t deal well with snap changes, but it’s also the principle of the fucking thing. If you have an issue with someone, don’t let it build up for ever and ever and then just go insane on people with no warning. That is simply ridiculously scary, and I never know what to do when that happens.

I simply cannot fathom it, and don’t know if I ever will.

I like the anonymity this place provides. Here I can speak without worrying that people are silently analysing every line I write, looking for the impetus to start a hate campaign against me.

This sounds stupid and paranoid and irrational here. I know it’s irrational, but when the hurt is this recent, it’s almost impossible not to be irrational. Time will heal all wounds, but right now, they’re still fresh. As much as I try to deny it and laugh it off and listen to stupid pop music and read blogs about bad logo design and outdated library books and how fucking broken the intellectual property system is, it’s not going to fix it.

pretty little internet hate machine

The internet is a breeding ground for drama. I don’t just mean on debate forums and imageboards and sites devoted to drama like Encyclopaedia Dramatica. It happens in more ‘serious’ places, with more ‘intimate’ interactions.

It seems that small slights seem to mean more on the internet, where you can tally them up through logs. In offline conversation, you can’t ‘save’ what you said with your mouth. What you say in instant messages or blog comments, though, becomes a record, and it is adhered to religiously. People scrutinise logs during a dispute, building ‘cases’ against others. After all, how can anyone call chat logs and saved comments into question, even when words, without vocal tone or body language, can be misinterpreted, even if they are recorded?

It’s easier to cut someone out of your life, even if you’ve been long-term friends. Suddenly, you’re simply ‘removed’. (Sounds really clinical, doesn’t it, now that you think about it? You can simply delete someone from your life on the internet.) You don’t have the little things that add something to offline friendships, like someone’s laugh or their little tics and quirks that make people much more endearing. All you have is their words, and when people are taught that writing on the internet is automatically insincere, then it is highly unlikely that you will be given the benefit of the doubt. Things that would be dealt with through reason offline are transmogrified into unforgivable offences that make the person who committed those perceived offences into Satan incarnate. Subtlety doesn’t factor in. On the internet, excess is king. No slight is minor. Everything is life or death.

Close friendships can be ended with a single click, and no attempt is ever made to reason it out. You’re just ‘deleted’. If offline friendships were handled this way, then no-one would have friends for more than a few years. When you think about it, it’s frightening. Have we become so desensitised to emotion and nuance that we have to do this? That we must simply detach ourselves from the complex emotions of other human beings, who do exist in flesh and blood, even when you can’t see their flesh, or feel the beating of their hearts? Is this how we should treat people?

I don’t think that real friendships are impossible over the internet. That’s not the problem. It’s that people forget that there are human beings behind the screen, with feelings, and nuanced behaviour.