[ SECRET POST #1574 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1574 ⌋


Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 07 pages, 173 secrets from Secret Submission Post #225.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 3 - too big ], [ 1 - repeats ], [ 1 - unreadable ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

It is true that humans as a group are social creatures, but the same is not true of every individual. In every age, there have been people drawn to asocial callings; note that we have words like "hermit" in the first place, as opposed to having to use a recently invented or borrowed term to describe such a condition. Consider the monastic tradition in many major world religions, for instance, which often had as much to do with a preference for solitude and dislike of society as anything to do with a love of a God.

Similarly, a gambling addiction will cost you your home, a sex addiction will get you STDs and failed relationships, and an internet addiction will cost you... what, your offline friends? But people alter their circles of friendship often in life, and if it becomes an "addiction" they clearly didn't value their past friendships anyway.

As I see it, it's an alternative society, similar to many intentional communities throughout history, and people are drawn to it more often than not because they prefer it for whatever reason to their local society. Perhaps some do so to escape personal problems, but for me it was an escape from a culture I simply didn't enjoy participating in.

I've known many people who lived predominately offline lives who, yes, have been fairly morose people, some who have even self-destructed. But by no means has this proven exclusive to those connected deeply to fandom, or even particularly common among them. Shame, on the other hand, is a matter of how much you value the opinions of people not involved in fandom, and those more involved have tended to feel less shame, not more. Furthermore, many things which people have been shamed for historically now have become reason to cast judgment not on the shamed, but on the society doing the shaming.

And personally, I think fandom has value as a refuge for the downtrodden. It's a lot more important to me that we become a place where unusual people can gravitate than that we join in whatever moral panic is going on outside in a fundamentally doomed quest for societal approval.