Okay, I'll focus on the last bit then, just in the interest of getting the most relevant part out of the way first: All me or Zhora or anybody would be able to do there is offer our opinion, based on our own experiences. And mine just don't square with yours from the sounds of it. I can certainly relate to being thought of as a loser and a virgin... By children who themselves were mostly losers and virgins. Hell, just admitting you used the internet for anything but "for work and business!" was like wearing two signs on your back, one saying "KICK ME", the other "BECAUSE I'M A PEDOPHILE". Now me, that shit's not so much what I still carry anger from. That would be the literal physical assaults. We're talking massive concussions and broken tailbones, back spams so bad you can't go to school for the next 2 weeks, that kind of thing. I could very well have PTSD and not know it... No wait, the sexual assault from just last year, yeah if that's not PTSD, what I deal with now from that, I don't know what is.
One thing I will concede is that when I was newer to the internet, the internet had a lot more safe spaces where people were more or less pretty self-aware about why they were there and honest about it. And I seriously needed them. But looking back I can also admit I often didn't make the best of them. Are you really so certain you would have? Even at their best, they were substitutes for a mental health system that just wasn't there and frankly, still isn't.
But all these self-styled elders were themselves full of flaws, hypocrisies, egoism, and had their own selfish needs and their own lives and obligations to deal with. My best friend, however, was significantly younger than me, and she did more for me than any of them did, and wasn't even really trying to be anything to me but a friend (though I'd later figure out that for her, a lot of it was about trying to be a better person than you were in the past through a friend and it worked as well as it did because that was precisely what I wanted for myself at that point, to just be a better person and a better friend).
All I can tell you is it doesn't fucking matter that you like stuffed animals. I might not literally play with them, but I got some Robin Hood plushies and a few Sonic plushies. The people that would've called me a faggot for that were calling me a faggot for essentially no reason than because I wasn't from where they were from and didn't look or think like them. But the more time passes, if I was still going to be angry over that, increasingly it becomes like being haunted by ghosts. You know, because they're mostly in your head.
Okay, I'll focus on the last bit then, just in the interest of getting the most relevant part out of the way first: All me or Zhora or anybody would be able to do there is offer our opinion, based on our own experiences. And mine just don't square with yours from the sounds of it. I can certainly relate to being thought of as a loser and a virgin... By children who themselves were mostly losers and virgins. Hell, just admitting you used the internet for anything but "for work and business!" was like wearing two signs on your back, one saying "KICK ME", the other "BECAUSE I'M A PEDOPHILE". Now me, that shit's not so much what I still carry anger from. That would be the literal physical assaults. We're talking massive concussions and broken tailbones, back spams so bad you can't go to school for the next 2 weeks, that kind of thing. I could very well have PTSD and not know it... No wait, the sexual assault from just last year, yeah if that's not PTSD, what I deal with now from that, I don't know what is.
One thing I will concede is that when I was newer to the internet, the internet had a lot more safe spaces where people were more or less pretty self-aware about why they were there and honest about it. And I seriously needed them. But looking back I can also admit I often didn't make the best of them. Are you really so certain you would have? Even at their best, they were substitutes for a mental health system that just wasn't there and frankly, still isn't.
But all these self-styled elders were themselves full of flaws, hypocrisies, egoism, and had their own selfish needs and their own lives and obligations to deal with. My best friend, however, was significantly younger than me, and she did more for me than any of them did, and wasn't even really trying to be anything to me but a friend (though I'd later figure out that for her, a lot of it was about trying to be a better person than you were in the past through a friend and it worked as well as it did because that was precisely what I wanted for myself at that point, to just be a better person and a better friend).
All I can tell you is it doesn't fucking matter that you like stuffed animals. I might not literally play with them, but I got some Robin Hood plushies and a few Sonic plushies. The people that would've called me a faggot for that were calling me a faggot for essentially no reason than because I wasn't from where they were from and didn't look or think like them. But the more time passes, if I was still going to be angry over that, increasingly it becomes like being haunted by ghosts. You know, because they're mostly in your head.