So. I've been feeling extremely exhausted socially. Specifically with Tumblr and Discord. It reached such an extreme social burnout I just had to withdraw for a while. You might've noticed the decreased number of reblogs or original posts or messages on Discord. I turned the notifications off for both platforms, and let me tell you, that actually helped A LOT.
The reason for the exhaustion? Constant exposure to discourse, vents, problems. You open Tumblr and all you see are discourses, people's vents, people's struggles and problems. This country did this. Other country happened to do this. This fucker decided to do this. This person's life sucks.
And all this unwanted content on my dashboard. I'm someone with a huge list of blocked tags, currently around 80, yet I've still been seeing stuff I don't want to see. It's also a double-edged sword. On one hand, you will stop seeing the unwanted content, assuming people tag posts properly. On the other hand, you scroll down your dash and all you see is "This post contains filtered tags." ten times in a row. And there's the psychological aspect of it. Is it wrong of me to filter those things that I'm filtering? I suppose it is not. And to fight back against non-taggers, I now have some words in the filtered post content list.
Then you go to a Discord server you're in. And it's all the same. The content you do not want to see, but this time with no way of filtering it out. People complaining about small stuff and big stuff.
Another thing is when you decide to create something. Some art. You post it. And then you wait. And wait. And wait. And your mutuals are nowhere to be found. And your brain starts asking, "Where are you? Why are you reblogging other people's stuff but not mine? Do you secretly dislike me?" And this is a huge jump your brain is making that is not built on any actual evidence. And yet, it's so believable in the moment. You start feeling hurt and lesser. You may cry.
One day, or one evening, you get a highly concerning message from a mutual. And all you can do is sit there and wonder, "Why am I being to subjected to this? I never asked to be people's therapist." And you start crying again because it's people's problems over and over again. You're tired of it. You don't have the emotional capacity for it.
All you want from the internet is just to have a silly little corner where you can enjoy some arts, have discussions about fictional characters and whatnot! And instead you keep hearing about discourse and problems. Why can't I have my place where I can just chill without any negativity?
You see your mutuals having fun together, leaving nice comments on their posts and showing up in their askboxes. And you're once again asking why you're not part of it too. Is it because I switched fandoms? Is it me? The brain is once again lying to you.
So you reach a breaking point. You leave signs nobody might have noticed (hey babes I reblogged a crashout post like 10 times in a row lol), you withdraw, but you're still around. You check both platforms occasionally in case somebody requires your presence that is not related to struggles or just wants to have some stupid talks. Turning notifications off was a large deal because suddenly there weren't servers and posts asking for my immediate attention. My notification bar has been completely quiet. Choosing when and how and with whom I interact showed me I can make my psyche better.
However, there has been a cost. I miss reblogging posts. Maybe I will return to it soon. Maybe I will not. I'm still feeling kind of tired of society. And I want to interact with the fandom. Unfortunately, interacting with the fandom means going into the misused tag and looking for the posts actually related to the tag in the sea of posts unrelated to the tag.
Why is everyone sharing their problems, expecting to get understood, while I'm sitting here, crying, unable to ask for help, because it would mean acknowledging that I have a problem of my own that needs understanding, about the very people I enjoy talking with? Is it wrong of me to be so tired of the problems of the very people I enjoy talking with?
I don't think it is wrong of me. But that doesn't make it feel any better, does it?
If you recognise yourself in this post, I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm not blaming any of you.
