oh hey look, its my childhood trauma that led to me being unbearably boring in conversations
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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!
I love plushies. I grew up AMAB which meant that after a certain age (typically before 10yrs old, somewhere around 7~8yrs old), it became unacceptable to have plushies. I held onto them long past that age and didn't "put them away" until I was well into my teens, but I was still very aware of the fact that I couldn't let anyone outside my family know that I still had my plushies because I might get bullied if I did.
Afaik, no one outside the family ever found out, but it took a long time for adult me to accept that it's okay to like plushies and start pulling my og plushie crew out of the closet. Now I'm starting to expand my plushie portfolio again and I have a small army of protobeans, several high-quality dragon plushies, a medium-ish roadkill opossum, a few makeship/misc plushies like a Gardener from Gemini Home Entertainment or Acrid from Risk of Rain, a big moth, backstories and names for almost everyone, and I still have my OG beanie-baby crew (some of whom I've discovered would be fairly valuable if they hadn't been well-loved).
I regret letting my fear stop me from covering my bedroom in plushies.
No one will ever stop me loving my Indi-Bear. I'll fight em.
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.
Unfortunately, that fear is not based on instincts, but on prior experience
After "fear of getting ridiculed or mocked" I'd also add "or told you're going to go to hell."
Ugh.
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.
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?
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.
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 too grew up in a southern military family. Interests other than football or otherwise hurting other people? That's a paddlin
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.
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 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.
I had people try to bully me. I was tall enough that most kids thought I was strong (I wasn't, I struggled to build muscle even when I was a gymnast, but they didn't know that), so they almost never tried anything physical. Furthermore, I was kinda too ADHD (or possibly autistic) for insults to work. They just didn't register as something I was supposed to be offended by. In my head, that was just someone's opinion or someone teasing (in hindsight they weren't, but at the time I thought they were); for the former, "opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and most of them are full of shit" while I interpreted the latter as someone just trying to play around.
People tended to just give up when they realized that they couldn't find my buttons but I could find theirs very quickly.
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
Thanks op, I really needed that psychic damage out of the blue.
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.
Mine it mine it mine it, grind it down down down, get the juice, get the dope, get it quickly it's almost gone, I love this I love this, damn it's gone, okay what's next oh yeah that, get it get it, mine it mine it
Liking things is so cringe.
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 😎
Technically. I don't like other people getting all up in my business. So while it is part me not wanting to be mocked, it is also way more me not wanting them be excited and trying to join.
Having to deal with people positively means adjusting both your paces to work together. You can't do what you want and when you want, you gotta coordinate. And that's a pain in the ass.
I get no leisure from having to include someone else's feelings in my personal enjoyment.
I used to think that way. Then I realized that in order for me to enjoy something I need to have someone to share it with.
I remember playing an anime game on my phone in high school, and this one classmate made fun of me for it. Not because of anime, he already knew I watch them and didn't (seemingly, at least), care one way or the other. But because the game has a hub-like area where the characters are shown in a chibi design. He kept pestering me after that to try out Barbie games.
The "best" part? Dude literally said the game looked fun when he saw me playing the actual gameplay, and even asked me to let him play a round. Then the round ended, saw the hub, and he did a 180 on me and on the game.
To this day I don't feel comfortable watching certain anime in public. I'm not even talking about ecchi here. Just basically any stuff that is "girly".
You know, about that guy:
Absolutely, and it was uncomfortable trying to invert that concept especially in an unfamiliar setting like first dates and such.
Just gatta find people to vibe with. With the internet being so prevalent now it should be fairly easy. When I was in highschool and the internet was basically just instant messenger and rotten.com it was hard to find people that were into bugs and insects and other invertebrates.
Yep. Took about half dozen attempts before i learned to keep myself to myself.
If "normal" means "needs to attack anything slightly strange to receive validation from the in-group", I do very much like being weird as fuck, thank you very much.
Normal means healthy. The first example isn't healthy, because the environment wasn't healthy. You can be healthy. It just takes time and a lot of dirty work (looking and working with painful things, and finding tools to deal with them, them doing so).
I always had to hide the fact that I like to draw at home.
First because I was doing kinda cringy anime drawings and didn't want the ridicule, but at some point I actually got pretty good in a "classical art" sense. I couldn't let my family find out even more after that, because my mother had already claimed drawing as "her thing". She would have been absolutely awful to me due to jealousy (because that's exactly what happens every time).
She wasn't even good at it, she just traced designs from the Internet because she has never been willing to take the critique & feedback that is necessary to actually become good at art. Her stuff literally looked like AI art nowadays, completely soulless and disinterested. She was always just after the praise of having drawn something, no matter the integrity of her work.
At least it was easy to hide my interest. I'm still baffled how people can be such control freaks but also care so little? Like they found my graphic tablet in the back of my closet at some point, but totally accepted the excuse of "oh that's just a thing to digitally sign pdfs"
That is supposed to change?