Is this not normal?
OP is full of shit.
Everyone was mocked and belittled for anything and everything they ever say or do, right?
Thenwhen what they say and do is nothing, they get physically assaulted and punished for it, right?
I mean, that was my experience. Niche interests? Lol. Fucking queer.
Man. Texas sure was a great place to accumulate all this trauma!
Oh, hey, stop that.
Fuck Texas
Are you offering? Because I’m drunk enough to try some shit tonight!
Seriously though, I like Texas. I like the scenery, the people I currently surround myself with, the food, the night life, the local music, and about a million other things about it. A lot of Texas is genuinely really cool.
I fucking hate the small towns like the one I grew up in and the fucking politicians. I hate the voter suppression and apathy. I hate the people who traumatize others for not being “normal”, whatever the fuck that is. A lot of Texas is genuinely really fucking shitty.
All that being said, I totally get the sentiment because y’all don’t get to see the cool shit. The people stuck in the shitty little towns don’t generally get to see the cool shit. And the politicians are trying to do away with a lot of the cool shit.
I’d prolly move back if it weren’t for the generations of assholes. I grew up in a suburb of 150k+, and I do miss the weather. But fuck, it’s so backwards!
I don’t blame you. It’s definitely not for everyone and not everyone can find their tribe here without a lot of work that not everyone can put into it for various reasons. On top of that, did I mention the shitty politicians?
It’s just not the same since you went away. And the Mexican food sucks north of here anyway </bowling for soup>
I did go to LA, so I’ve got that going for me (despite my renewed homelessness). Taco trucks galore!
From one Texan to another, I’m sorry you went through that. I hope you have or are able to work through it. And I hope you’re enjoying your niche interests these days!
I think you and I are the only Texans on here… I swear any time I mention it, bam! There you are! Still think you’re a better option than MIA governor Abbott. Lolol.
The Fartographer is also one of our kin. They’re (she, I think, but I won’t swear to it) pretty fucking cool. You are, too.
I like to sit at the bar and people watch while I’m chatting on Lemmy so I’m always around.
Fair enough! And I appreciate that! And I think I’ve seen their name around here before too. I do enjoy your perspective on our shared plight in this… place.
And that must be pretty entertaining considering what our drunks can get up to.
I’ve been all around the world and there ain’t no drunks like the ones in Houston. I’m sitting in a bar in a strip mall next to a children’s learning center. They’re kind of extra tonight, probably because they’ve been down due to Beryl.
Oh, I forgot to ask, did you get power back?
Nope! CenterPoint is still pissing away all our time and I can see the fuse blown on the damn pole that’s keeping my power off.
Thankfully, I have some mitigation for the heat, but it’s been rough! Today was the first day any of the gas stations near me had any power to even pump gas.
Thanks for asking!
Ok, that’s pretty fucked up. Which side are you on? I’m a hair out of Katy in a suburb up from the energy corridor and my power was back on in like 24 hours.
I’m so sorry that shit is happening to you. You need anything? A care package?
I’m being punched right now.
That seems to have changed recently.
Just painstakingly craft different personas based on the people you’re around, including a bland generic person for mass appeal, because you simply can’t handle the unending stream of ridicule.
The most important part is to not let different groups of people mix until you can safely merge the corresponding personas
Is this a thing? I thought I’m the only one who did it
A lot of people wear masks. Life’s a stage and we are just performing for the masses.
Baby
Take off
Your coooool
I want to
Get to
Know yoooooooou
If that’s what they were singing about, I’d guess this isn’t all that weird.
Unfortunately, that fear is not based on instincts, but on prior experience
I remember saying “I don’t listen to music” in high school and half of college because I didn’t feel I could listen to the music I enjoyed without being made fun of. I basically didn’t listen to music until I was in college and I had space to explore what I liked and didn’t like without peer pressure.
To this day I don’t listen to music in front of anyone other than my wife and kids. I still remember the exact derogatory quote that a person I thought was my friend said in regards to me showing them some music I liked… from about 40 years ago.
That’s one thing I instill in my kids, everyone is allowed to like and not like what they want and they should not be made fun of for any of their preferences.
What kind of music?
Yeah, music is a weird one. I also always said I didn’t listen to music. I did listen to a lot of songs from video games though. When I was annoyed enough I told them something like Rock, but that always led to the question if I can name some artists or songs. Didn’t knew many. I hate these kinds of conversations.
You’re taking the one bad experience with a so called friend too far.
It wasn’t just one experience, that’s just the one that sticks in my mind the most.
I was also a shy dorky kid and I avoided social conflict and I didn’t care enough to dive into music and find what I liked back then.
Sorry to hear that
F your so called friend. And I hope you get to enjoy music without shame for the rest of your life
It hurts the most when it’s your family :/ I’m 30 years old and I still have trouble saying “I want to watch this movie” when it’s just me and my husband having a movie night. Literally anything I wanted to watch or do in that house was somehow the weirdest thing anyone had ever heard of. That’s growing up in an Arkansas white-flight suburb for you.
I just plain don’t tell my mother anything. Every hobby is an opportunity to criticize and belittle, so why bother?
Exactly, think: How does my mother treat me? How should I treat her?
And then they get mad that you don’t tell them what you’re up to. Either listen and don’t belittle, or be a belittler and don’t expect to hear anything.
Pick one, you can’t have both.
I genuinely wish there was a license, or barring that, at least mandatory psych evaluations and training, to be a parent.
because jesus christ so many people seem to actively hate their children. You should encourage your children and hope they flourish. Not stamp them down and grind them into the concrete like an finished cigarette.
the real solution is that individuals shouldn’t be solely responsible for raising children, children should be raised collectively by at least like 5 people and ideally more like 50…
think about how kids would grow up in the past, they might not even be with their parents most of the time! Running around the village or local neighbourhood, staying at their friends’ house, buying groceries for old lady Stephens (who is effectively everyone’s grandmother) since she’s too old to walk to the store and then being treated to her homemade pastries, etc etc
humans just aren’t made to raise kids on their own, we’re made to share the responsibility so the kids can actually get all the attention they need, and they can get varied perspectives and knowledge.
There are plenty of people who have support networks and still treat their kids like shit, and/or abuse them.
I actually forgot how to be interested in thingd
Same, brother. Same.
Friends!
Let’s not be presumptuous. Like. I don’t even know if he likes Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
I think I remember the film.
Well if you even barely liked it, so did I so that’s enough of an excuse to keep our bad, unhappy relationship going just a little bit longer. At least until it absolutely crumbles apart beyond recognition.
That song is so sad.
I’d rather not give my family anything on me. I don’t like being judged or tasked to do things for them because I’m the techy one.
Also hate the spotlight
I still feel I need to hide when I am interested in something. Am I not the only one?
Definitely not, and the solution is to stop hanging out with people who ridicule or mock you for your interests and hobbies, and find those who admire and/or encourage you instead.
It’s not that easy when those people are your parents
Once you’re an adult, you have no obligation to spend any time with your parents if they do not appreciate you for who you are.
Unless you still live at home, that is, in which case, you should probably fix that first.
You can’t just find different friends. You just meet people by chance, so you have to be loyal to people no matter how much of an asshole they are.
What if I told you you do not have to be loyal to people who don’t respect you?
A very small part of people who I call friends are people, who I actually care about. I’m just forced to communicate with others to get important info I need for school.
Well, people you HAVE to see for professional reasons aren’t your friends, and you shouldn’t really care what they think about your hobbies or interests.
At school, it’s different, than at work, as children/teens (including me) are generally less mature, which means most of them don’t help you or inform you unless they benefit from it. TLDR: I make people think they are my friends because I’m forced to.
Okay, I understand that, and that’s fine, everyone has people like that in their lives at some point.
But if you KNOW they aren’t really your friends, why would you complain that they don’t act like they are?
You can just ignore the first part of my advice (about not spending time with them) because it doesn’t apply to this situation, but you should probably still try and find people who you can actually be friends with based on your hobbies and interests.
You should be loyal to people, they might also be afraid to show their interest in the stuff you like. But don’t stick to them “no matter what”. That can bring you into dark places.
Enforcing boundaries helps, talking about things helps, but sucking it up and abandoning people seemingly willy-nilly will leave you alone and angsty pretty fast. So will just taking everything from an asshole.
I don’t have an answer to finding friends yet. Try going to social stuff about the things you like. If you have stuff you deliberately hide then try not to go to those things first, as the shame might make you lash out at potential friends. Wait till you can come to terms with yourself.
This is actually inspirational, but the point of the post is, that you are on terms with yourself, but you know they won’t respect you.
Apart from what other people have pointed out- what if one of your friends does great harm to another of your friends? How do you stay loyal to both of them?
You pretend to be on the side of both of them, but it could fall apart very quickly. So I don’t do it anymore. I just make my own arguments and side with the victim.
So you were lying to your friends about having their back? That makes you the bad friend.
Yes, that’s kind off true. I don’t lie to them about having their back, I lie to them about my opinion as I try to avoid conflict. I don’t do it against my actual friends, just to people I’m forced to communicate with to function in society.
What is the difference between your friends and your actual friends? Because I thought we were talking about your friends and I also thought that friends are actual friends.
Just yesterday, my teenage daughter (not trying to say anything about your maturity level here) said to me that she didn’t like it when I talked about anime because she thought the word was embarrassing. She really likes anime, but she is embarrassed about it because even though she knows anime is fairly mainstream now, she likes more obscure stuff.
I told her that apart from it being a perfectly acceptable word to describe the art form both in and outside Japan, if you spend time worrying about what people think of your interests, you’re wasting time you could spend on those interests- and actually stopping yourself from doing it. And then while you’re doing it, you’re wasting time feeling bad for enjoying yourself when you could just be enjoying yourself.
On top of that, if a friend is going to judge you for your interests, maybe they’re not really a friend. And everyone else? Fuck them. They have to share the Earth with you regardless and if they don’t like it, that’s their problem.
Kids in my sons junior high school are unapologetic weirdos now and are embraced for it. Normies watch anime.
Contrast when I was in high school and you were called homophobic slurs for liking Star Wars or reading manga. Bizarre times indeed.
I too grew up in a southern military family. Interests other than football or otherwise hurting other people? That’s a paddlin
Did you know you can do both at the same time? Bonus
I don’t know about y’all but when I was in school there were only three kinds of kids; bullies, victims, and the ones who weren’t noteworthy enough to be victims most of the time. Nobody was immune to mockery, but at least occasionally people would have friends to stick up for them.
Honestly wonder if I was just too oblivious to be bullied? Like, if you tried, I might just be too confused by what they were trying to accomplish that they just feel like they’re the one being made fun of? Like, I thought being gay was cool, so its not like you could use that as an insult for me. It would just be stolen valor. Guess it could fall into the group of “weren’t noteworthy enough to be victims.”
There’s the stereotype of the quiet kid who eventually does a mass school shooting. That might also discourage would-be bullies, but doubt it.
After years of the school doing nothing, I punched my bully. That got me in trouble and I had to switch schools.
So what’s it called when you get picked on for being outside the norm so you decide to try get the interests of everyone else but go too far in that study and end up with so much knowledge, hobbies and interests that you go right out the other side of not being relatable anymore. And while people no longer directly mock you for not having their interest they find you weird and untrustworthy to be in their social circle because they don’t think you actually belong there?
autism
I don’t know about anyone else, I’d call you a goddamn king
I’m in this comment and I don’t like it.
Several times I would end up in a situation where I’m talking to someone and they mention something that peaks my interest. After that encounter, I would go home and furiously research the topic of interest becoming, essentially, a “prosumer” overnight in the subject.
The next time I see that person, I’d talk about that subject and I would have so much more knowledge than they do that I’d talk over their head.
Oh well.
People just want to enjoy their thing, not be infodumped at by an encyclopedia. It’s fine to read everything about the hobby but try using that to understand what interests them about the subject and relate that way.
I’ve gotten a lot better about it over the years, but this is good advice for anyone still in the situation.
Yeah I think it’s something a lot of us do.
Masking is definitely a skill that can be developed. I don’t even think of it as a negative thing really, it’s just knowing your audience and trying to relate on a similar level.
Until your entire personality is just masking.
Took me a while to unlearn that one.
I guess I find it interesting that if people truly enjoy their thing, wouldn’t they want to know/hear more and not be turned off by a person who might know more?
Hey ! It’s me !
But one thing that I have noticed is that the people that are mocked for their hobbies are also the one’s that are the most accepting of others.
My guess is they know the pain of being the butt of other people’s jokes and empathize with others more.
Or that others would take an obsessive, invasive interest in it that sucks the joy of of it.
My proudest moment as a teacher in my career so far was when one of my grade 9 girls quietly confessed to me that she liked K-pop, and that people had made fun of her for it.
Coincidentally, I had done some teaching in Korea, and loved it. So, I excitedly said (at a nerdily loud volume) “I LOVE K-POP!!”
She didn’t believe me at first, but eventually did when I named my favourite bands/songs.
She looked so happy! I told her that even if no one else thought so, we both knew each other were cool 😎
Don’t ever let anyone shit on your enthusiasm, kids. Your interests are part of who you are, and it’s not ok to make fun of that.
Let your freak flag fly, and you’ll be a much happier person.
And to anyone who has ever been discouraged from their interests: I’m sorry you went through that, it’s not OK. It’s never too late to get back into it, whatever it is. And I will know you’re cool 😎
