I remember seeing your "Fault in Our Stars" story on FFnet -- it came across as a pretty obvious piece of bashing-with-an-agenda, rather than actual fanfic (e.g. the characters exist simply in order for the author to tell them what she thinks of them).
Yes, when you dislike something it's natural to seek out validation in the form of people who have articulated (and analysed) a similar reaction better than you could -- and the same when you fall in love with something. And it's human nature to ignore anything that questions your own opinions and eagerly endorse anything that agrees with them.
And wanting to be included is also a very basic human reaction: that same self-amplifying mechanism is what drives almost all mass movements, as well as gangs and cliques. (It's also why mob rule is so scary, and why perfectly ordinary people will commit atrocities when they egg each other on.)
For what it's worth, I ended up making a conscious decision when I was about your age that I simply couldn't believe all the things that 'right-thinking society' told me I had to believe; that was in the days before Twitter and so on, but it involved a lot of highly idealistic political editorials and campaigning. During my teens I had tried very hard and without question to believe in all the causes that I was told were right, and to discard all the prejudices that I was told were wrong (and held only by those on 'the other side'); eventually it got to the stage where I found the only solution was to sit down and say 'this is what I actually believe, and if it makes me a bad person then it's easier to accept that I'm an inherently bad person than to try to make black white' -- which I suspect is what you call 'internalizing it'.
My compromise was to say that I believe in treating people decently whether I consider them my equals or not -- particularly if I don't consider them my equals. But it doesn't mean I have to like all their habits or endorse liberations I disapprove of or believe that everything is culturally relative (with my own culture being automatically discounted as tainted by association).
It's simply not possible to be the ideal person that others demand that you be (and if they're pretending that they themselves are, odds are that they're probably covering up). You can never please all of the people all of the time... and what most of these 'problematic, toxic' people don't realise is that they are almost certain to end up on the wrong side of history themselves some day (the way that people like Germaine Greer are now being attacked for being 'not real feminists' after having been attacked in their youth for being hairy-legged ballbreaking man-haters).
Yes, when you admire people who are more experienced and knowledgeable than you on a subject you enjoy, you naturally assume their opinions and beliefs are the one revealed truth and that you ought to think as they do. And yes, it's fun to all pile in on a mutually loathed object (like The Fop...) and compete to see who can denigrate it the most and in so doing gain plaudits from the rest, even if left to yourself you wouldn't actually dislike it.
And yes, when you threaten people's sense of identity by exposing them to a possibility that their beliefs might be wrong and that their behaviour might have been less than ideal, they are not going to react by saying 'well, maybe you might have a point there' -- they're going to react by attacking you in order to efface any possibility of doubt, because that's human nature.
I don't share my opinions because I'm afraid someone will think poorly of me. I feel like I can't trust my own judgement. I frequently worry about doing something wrong. I feel like my life isn't worth anything.
I'm tempted to say 'welcome to the adult world', but maybe that's just the world I inhabit...
You claim that you intensely dislike writing and have always struggled with it -- and yet you've written a good deal here, eloquently expressed. Why not try writing for yourself rather than trying to 'be a writer' in others' opinion? Why not write in private, the way we all did before the Internet (when we were learning our craft in decent privacy!) -- why not write for fun, in utter self-indulgence and without any intention of publication?
Write a gratuitous self-insert story where you save the world. Write a story where you are an outrageously over-the-top villain (the villains get all the best lines), laughing sardonically at the heroes and plotting cataclysmic evil, only to repent in the last reel and die heroically saving the world (again). Write a story where you make mad, passionate love with a dark and seductive stranger (or whatever you enjoy). Don't do any of the hard work bits at all -- don't worry about choosing words or accurate punctuation or meeting a prescribed level of output. Don't even bother writing anything down. Just tell stories and have fun where no-one will ever see.
Then and only then -- if you still want to and you happen accidentally to have come up with a really effective idea -- try writing it down to share with other people.
(The bit about being afraid what people will say, I'm afraid, doesn't go away; I still get that when reading book reviews in the national press, never mind sporkings...)
no subject
Yes, when you dislike something it's natural to seek out validation in the form of people who have articulated (and analysed) a similar reaction better than you could -- and the same when you fall in love with something. And it's human nature to ignore anything that questions your own opinions and eagerly endorse anything that agrees with them.
And wanting to be included is also a very basic human reaction: that same self-amplifying mechanism is what drives almost all mass movements, as well as gangs and cliques. (It's also why mob rule is so scary, and why perfectly ordinary people will commit atrocities when they egg each other on.)
For what it's worth, I ended up making a conscious decision when I was about your age that I simply couldn't believe all the things that 'right-thinking society' told me I had to believe; that was in the days before Twitter and so on, but it involved a lot of highly idealistic political editorials and campaigning. During my teens I had tried very hard and without question to believe in all the causes that I was told were right, and to discard all the prejudices that I was told were wrong (and held only by those on 'the other side'); eventually it got to the stage where I found the only solution was to sit down and say 'this is what I actually believe, and if it makes me a bad person then it's easier to accept that I'm an inherently bad person than to try to make black white' -- which I suspect is what you call 'internalizing it'.
My compromise was to say that I believe in treating people decently whether I consider them my equals or not -- particularly if I don't consider them my equals. But it doesn't mean I have to like all their habits or endorse liberations I disapprove of or believe that everything is culturally relative (with my own culture being automatically discounted as tainted by association).
It's simply not possible to be the ideal person that others demand that you be (and if they're pretending that they themselves are, odds are that they're probably covering up). You can never please all of the people all of the time... and what most of these 'problematic, toxic' people don't realise is that they are almost certain to end up on the wrong side of history themselves some day (the way that people like Germaine Greer are now being attacked for being 'not real feminists' after having been attacked in their youth for being hairy-legged ballbreaking man-haters).
Yes, when you admire people who are more experienced and knowledgeable than you on a subject you enjoy, you naturally assume their opinions and beliefs are the one revealed truth and that you ought to think as they do. And yes, it's fun to all pile in on a mutually loathed object (like The Fop...) and compete to see who can denigrate it the most and in so doing gain plaudits from the rest, even if left to yourself you wouldn't actually dislike it.
And yes, when you threaten people's sense of identity by exposing them to a possibility that their beliefs might be wrong and that their behaviour might have been less than ideal, they are not going to react by saying 'well, maybe you might have a point there' -- they're going to react by attacking you in order to efface any possibility of doubt, because that's human nature.
I'm tempted to say 'welcome to the adult world', but maybe that's just the world I inhabit...
You claim that you intensely dislike writing and have always struggled with it -- and yet you've written a good deal here, eloquently expressed. Why not try writing for yourself rather than trying to 'be a writer' in others' opinion? Why not write in private, the way we all did before the Internet (when we were learning our craft in decent privacy!) -- why not write for fun, in utter self-indulgence and without any intention of publication?
Write a gratuitous self-insert story where you save the world. Write a story where you are an outrageously over-the-top villain (the villains get all the best lines), laughing sardonically at the heroes and plotting cataclysmic evil, only to repent in the last reel and die heroically saving the world (again). Write a story where you make mad, passionate love with a dark and seductive stranger (or whatever you enjoy). Don't do any of the hard work bits at all -- don't worry about choosing words or accurate punctuation or meeting a prescribed level of output. Don't even bother writing anything down. Just tell stories and have fun where no-one will ever see.
Then and only then -- if you still want to and you happen accidentally to have come up with a really effective idea -- try writing it down to share with other people.
(The bit about being afraid what people will say, I'm afraid, doesn't go away; I still get that when reading book reviews in the national press, never mind sporkings...)