fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2526 ]

[ SECRET POST #2526 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2526 ⌋

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

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

[Doctor Who]

__________________________________________________

03.

[Disney]

__________________________________________________

04.

[TMNT]

__________________________________________________

05.

[Thor: The Dark World]

__________________________________________________

06.

[As Told By Ginger]

__________________________________________________

07.

[daughter, purity ring]

__________________________________________________

08.

[Sleepy Hollow]

__________________________________________________

09.

[Attack on Titan/Shingeki No Kyojin]

__________________________________________________

10.

[The Producers]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 053 secrets from Secret Submission Post #361.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

In the course of a meandering discussion with someone else in fandom, I listed off my list of things to do, most of which summed up to "busy as all hell". She said - in what I assumed and still hope was a joking manner - something along the lines of "that must take a lot of medication". I joked along and said it was a good thing I didn't actually need any. She started on a tangent, then asked, "wait, what do you have?"

Please note, she did not even stop to ask "if", just "what". I, of course, asked what she meant and at first assumed she meant something in general/physical, and started saying, "I have a system of well-timed naps to minimize the headaches-" and she elaborated her question asking about what kind of mental or neurological disorder, i.e. anxiety, depression, ect.

I have never implied that I "have" anything, and we have almost never talked about it before. I cannot think of a possible way I could have implied I have a condition.

I told her the truth - nothing. No anxiety, no depression, no bipolar, no autism, nothing. She was genuinely surprised. Additionally, she asked as if to be sure, "no medication?" and I said that unless she counts over-the-counter allergy meds and the occasional ibuprofen for cramps and headaches, then no, nothing.

It took far more time than it should have to get her to believe me. Her repeated justifications were that I was online and in fandom a lot and I had a lot to do, so obviously I must need something to "balance it out" (and what that is supposed to imply, I'm not sure - she wouldn't clarify). Eventually she got fixated on my schedule/to-do list/what I do in day-to-day life and got upset that it was so busy and was insistent that I was going to crash and burn soon, despite me pointing I'd been doing well under my current 'system' for the last several years and regularly destress (parties, vacations, fandom, conlangs, etc).

At another point, there was a question of "where and when I had therapy" (again, I could see no point where I implied that I ever got and saw no reason for her asking), and I said I had a few weeks of school-provided psychoanalysis about 12 years ago during the middle of my parents' very messy divorce as I'd started bedwetting at age 8, and that was literally all the therapy I've ever had. Even more strangely, she seemed to almost look relieved when I said that I self-harmed in middle and high school, but then got wound up again when I said that I did stop but not through therapy/external influence - I just stopped on my own. She also got fixated on my history with bullying - namely in that while I've seen a lot, done some myself, and been the victim of it in my past, it's not something I'm severely affected by right now and I'm certainly not being bullied right now.

It ended with her asking that if I didn't have any problems and I had so much to do, why was I in fandom? I just said I enjoyed fandom, and we both had things to do and left it at there.

This was...an incredibly unsettling conversation for me, namely because - I understand that fandom is often seen as a 'haven' for people with various disorders and being bullied and such, and I am not surprised by the fact there seems to be a higher proportion of people with negative backgrounds in fandom that in the general population, but when did it become so normal that someone who doesn't have any "problems", and genuinely uses fandom for fun instead of an escape, is shocking?

This is not even the first time someone seemed to assume I would "have something", though it's never been anywhere close to this intense/interrogative as today.

Is this just the latest fandom trend, or is it some long-standing cultural shift, or what? I am curious to see if this was some weird fluke I had the misfortune of running headfirst into, or if this is something other people have experienced in any capacity.

WTF just happened?

*still unsettled by the whole damn thing*

Yeah, I would consider that pretty intrusive. It's kind of rude to ask people "what they have" - maybe they don't feel comfortable telling people, and maybe they don't "have" anything and it's actually kind of rude to make assumptions like that.

If I was you, I'd probably avoid talking to her from now on - that kind of behavior is intrusive and rude.

I have noticed that, on tumblr at least, people tend to list off big long descriptions of labels, with mental illnesses among them. IDK if this is a recent trend, or if people with mental illnesses tend to gravitate more towards fandom.

Sometimes I feel like it's almost a badge of honour, like the more things you have "wrong" with you, the more authority you have, or something. IDK.

Def agree with the "badge of honour" thing. Why do you think that is?

Re: Is having a mental disorder or no life a requirement for fandom, now?

diet_poison - 2013-12-03 03:18 (UTC) - Expand

Eh, I'm going with that it's the trend to basically lay it all out (psychoses, gender-identity, privileges, fave ice cream, etc.) from the get go, and these folk you've talked to are just so used to most everyone having something. Not to mention the general internet thing where (generalizing here) it's so common to self-diagnose.

What I find odd is their assumption that you having nothing but fandom or godly time skills at hand. Have they never met a phd student writing 100+ chapter fic, or those with full-time jobs popping out reviews during their free time.

Man, why do people list what they have? I saw this girl put on her tumblr info that she "is semi-depressive and cuts." Along with her real first name, age, and state. How dumb is that.

I'm a bisexual woman of color of one of the most underrepresented minorities ethnicities in my country. Is that like not enough or something? o.O

The funny part of the time management thing is that I don't even consider myself all that active in fandom. I am only writing a handful of fics, mostly on anon/in memes, and reading, and popping in here on F!S. That's pretty much the extent of my fandom activities, these days, so I honestly don't see it being much of a strain on my time. But with the way this person was acting...

Re: Is having a mental disorder or no life a requirement for fandom, now?

cloud_riven - 2013-12-03 02:49 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Is having a mental disorder or no life a requirement for fandom, now?

nyxelestia - 2013-12-03 04:01 (UTC) - Expand

I kind of get where you're coming from. I didn't get it quite as bad as that, but I balance out fandom and real life pretty well and I'm decently successful/happy, with no particular mental illnesses to speak of. I jokingly mentioned that I was going to snap because of the planning for my wedding that I'm doing right now while trying to balance time at my job, and I had two different people tell me that I absolutely didn't belong in fandom because I wasn't a permanently single shut-in. It was bizarre.

Tell us more about what they said.

Re: Is having a mental disorder or no life a requirement for fandom, now?

nyxelestia - 2013-12-03 02:32 (UTC) - Expand

O.O And here I thought fandom was supposed to be welcoming.

Re: Is having a mental disorder or no life a requirement for fandom, now?

nyxelestia - 2013-12-03 02:31 (UTC) - Expand

I don't know WTF that person was on about, but I think I'm guilty of expecting everyone to have something "wrong" with them, even if it's really mild or an on-and-off kind of thing, just because its been my experience. And not exclusively in fandom or anything.

My definition of "wrong" might be pretty broad? I dunno.

The most I have wrong with me is "you need to go the fuck to sleep". Does insomnia count as something wrong with you if it's self induced?

Re: Is having a mental disorder or no life a requirement for fandom, now?

starphotographs - 2013-12-03 02:23 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Is having a mental disorder or no life a requirement for fandom, now?

nyxelestia - 2013-12-03 02:29 (UTC) - Expand

That is so rude. You don't ask people "what do you have." It's none of their business what your mental health is like.

I think there are two main factors in people being expected to have some sort of disorder.

1. People in other spaces don't really talk about them. With the trend of stating this sort of thing right from the beginning, it can seem like everyone has something because it's more common than expected and that gets exaggerated in the mind.

2. Fandom can attract people with certain kinds of problems that make it difficult to interact with people in person and easier to interact through text.

I feel like that person was just exceptionally rude and not a common example. Yeah, fandom has a higher proportion of people who aren't neurotypical, but poking and prodding at you like that was just completely uncalled for. The fandom people I interact with, we don't sit around comparing and examining deeply personal issues, but that may be because I actively try to avoid anyone like that, because if I wanted to talk about real life, I wouldn't be in fucking fandom.

It's a logical fallacy: it is probably true that people with mental disorders tend to gravitate towards fandom, because it's the kind of space where having a mental disorder doesn't make normal interaction into a pain. However, the converse -- that if you're in fandom, that must mean you have a mental disorder -- is very patently not true.

Because of logic!fail, people still tend to think the latter is true, due to the misconception that association equals similarity-in-all-things, not just similarity in enjoying fandom.

Oh man was this a tumblr person? Because even the people I seem to like the most on tumblr, if they fall within a certain age-set and fandom proclivity, they invariably have a little blurb in their bio about "what's wrong with them". Anything from a mild anxiety order to their sexual identity, to freaking digestive disorders.

Look people, I don't give a shit about your dyspepsia or your confused state of genderfluid cishet socially anxious ethnicity. I really fucking don't. I am not here to rage against society and mope and give asspats for your good day of duking it out with what you sniffily insist is depression an

It's gotten to the point where if you don't have "anything wrong with you", you still need to identify yourself (neurotypical cishet straight blah) so that they know you're in the "privileged camp" and they can slap HDU language on you.

Maybe it's because I'm fucking old in fandom. I'm in my midtwenties, and I feel like a goddamn senior citizen when "back in my day" we left that shit f-locked and under a goddamn cut so that the million+ casual browsers on a journa/personal site and happening across your blog for the Snape porn didn't get an eyeful of the latest installment of your misbehaving vagina and how that makes you feel.

I may love you to death on the internet, but I still have a really hard time getting super invested in your problems when I just want to be your friend because you make really awesome angsty Casablanca/Metal Gear Solid crossovers.

I have enough shit going on in my life that I don't really need for my internet funtiems to become an extension of my RL experience. I don't want to make fandom butt buddies with someone who just wants to fucking moan about their latest over-prescribed pill regimen about something that shouldn't be medicated for anyway.

Wow this got longer and angrier than I intended. Uhm. Well, I'm not sorry. I fucking hate Tumblr, and I wish fandom would gravitate somewhere else that encourages a system of fucking privacy, man. I don't need full disclosure about everything.

It was a Tumblr person, but to be fair I'm on Tumblr as well, mostly by necessity, and we were already talking about some other stuff surrounding this topic, which led us into this line of conversation in the first place.

One thing I'm thinking throughout this thread is, "I'm a bisexual woman of color, is that no longer enough? Do I somehow gain fandom legitimacy if I go on at length about, IDK, how much my teeth hurt or something?"

And dude - I'm 20, exactly, and I feel old in fandom. For fuck's sake I've been in fandom for less than a decade. When I got into fandom, NO ONE under the age of 18 revealed their true ages, and revealing a real name or location was a huge no-no, even to your fandom friends. I remember it being a big deal for me and a fandom friend when we told each other our first names and where we lived, and even that was only after we'd known each other for years. And now people plaster it all over their front page? WTF?!

/rant of my own

(In all seriousness, vent away, because I feel your pain.)

Re: Is having a mental disorder or no life a requirement for fandom, now?

(Anonymous) - 2013-12-03 02:51 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Is having a mental disorder or no life a requirement for fandom, now?

nyxelestia - 2013-12-03 11:56 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Is having a mental disorder or no life a requirement for fandom, now?

diet_poison - 2013-12-03 03:38 (UTC) - Expand

"an eyeful of the latest installment of your misbehaving vagina and how that makes you feel."

This post is gold, jsyk.

I think this might be the best post of all time.

"I don't give a shit about your dyspepsia or your confused state of genderfluid cishet socially anxious ethnicity."

Hahaha, this is fabulous!

ahahaha I love this rant

I feel you. I used to f-lock EVERYTHING. I still kinda do, on DW, twitter, Facebook and whatnot. I HAVE tumblr, but I hate going on it unless I get bored and want to go through fandom tags. I skip all the personal posts from people clearly seeking attention (I like to mope silently, I think it's weird for strangers on the Internet to be overly sympathetic but whatever), and I don't even read bios. Ever. I'm just really tired of seeing why everyone thinks they're a special snowflake.

Even when I skip all the personal crap on Tumblr there's always some SJW bullshit or other. But that's a whole other rant.

Chiming in with the folks who have suggested that (a) this person frequents tumblr too much, where everyone introduces themselves with a long list of their ailments, sexual identifications, and privileges, and (b) this person is unusually intrusive and rude. It sounds as if they aren't comfortable with a person who might be managing their time and negotiating a demanding schedule with some degree of success--like they're almost hoping for you to come apart at the seams. And perhaps their favored means of relating to people is through their common wounds. I don't think this is a fandom norm; you can run into unpleasant people anywhere.

Re: Is having a mental disorder or no life a requirement for fandom, now?

nyxelestia - 2013-12-03 11:14 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Is having a mental disorder or no life a requirement for fandom, now?

(Anonymous) - 2013-12-04 04:43 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Is having a mental disorder or no life a requirement for fandom, now?

nyxelestia - 2013-12-04 16:54 (UTC) - Expand

...what

Re: Is having a mental disorder or no life a requirement for fandom, now?

nyxelestia - 2013-12-03 04:06 (UTC) - Expand

I'm not sure it's a fandom trend per se, I think this person just has poor social skills and boundaries... which, admittedly, is not uncommon in fandom, but still.

That's just...wat.

I was bullied in elementary school, but that was it. Had some issues with my dad up until the day he died, but otherwise? Nothing.

I was a bit of a loner in school, sure, unless I was with my friends, but no illnesses, no disorders, no nothing.

This is apparently odd, at least on tumblr.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only