I was in a Fanders voice chat today, and a lot of us realized that we felt pressured to perform in the Sanders Sides fandom to fit in. We reblog certain posts because everyone else is reblogging them; we agree with certain opinions because we feel like that’s what people want from us. We feel unable to be ourselves; we feel afraid to open up about our identities beyond generalized labels; and we worry about backlash if we post our genuine ideas, thoughts, content, and opinions.
A lot of us don’t feel good enough to talk to people with relatively larger follower counts due to overlord mentality (Or afraid to talk to anyone really, let’s be real). We’re afraid to share our writing and art, and we don’t feel like our ideas will count because they seem “unpopular.” We feel like we have to participate in drama or call out culture because we don’t want the backlash of going against the status quo. But what was more eye-opening to all of us tonight when discussing all of this was realizing that we all resonate with these feelings so deeply. If a lot of us feel this way, there’s a chance that all of us are performing for each other, when none of us really want to perform in the first place. We all wish we could be ourselves, but we’re too afraid of putting ourselves out there because of the unhealthy patterns of thinking that have prevailed as a part of Internet culture.
Unabashedly Ourselves
Published
Tayla's photography 