Less than a week till this blog closes. Do you have any wisdom to share about navigating the Agere community? What have your learned? Were there any particularly enlightening moments?
So honestly the blog closing has yet to fully hit me (the fact I am turning 18 has yet to really hit me lol) but I have been trying to think about what I will be taking away from this blog. I mean for a blog so filled with drama during some. points I always loved being here so there must be a reason.
I think I know the reason.
The internet is filled with perspectives and many contradict. The backlash many people face for expressing an opinion is real and can have a huge impact. I think that leads to people being very set in their beliefs since nobody can challenge them if they remain unspoken. When I joined agere I was 13. I was immature and not yet aware of some mental health struggles (that I got treatment for in 2018) I wanted to fit in so I ended up becoming anti cglre...until I found this blog. One of the mods of a community in chire at the time used to get a ton of hate here and she would send us to defend her. I only ever sent one ask telling Evie how kind and caring this person actually was (she was not) but this blog had all sorts of ideas. I realized cglre was not bad and when I had a falling out with chire this place became my refuge. I changed people’s mind and others changed my mind. Over time this place almost became a neutral ground that people could use to just talk. That’s important. I am seeing the new bunch of 12-19 year olds come in almost doomed to repeat the same mistakes. So here I what I learned.
Real life is not the internet: None of this matters offline or really impacts anything
Life is 100% more nuanced than any of us want but that does not make it less true: It tends to come down to what is right for a person not sweeping statements
Predators are in agere too not just a risk for mik: agere tends to ignore the issues of minors participating in dd1g lite stuff and predators in our own community. As agere becomes less centralized to tumblr and people go to tiktok and insta the risk increases.
Now everything I have said here is for agere not for big issues. I would handle a bully or a wh**e supr3mac1s! very differently. But the biggest thing I learned is: agere is not a big deal. It’s just a way to relax, to process, to have fun it’s not high stakes. Just be nice to each other.
The most enighting moment was realizing I was not a bad regressor or a bad person. This was something I realized many times. When I got kicked from chire, when I joined this blog, when I realized I had to leave for k!nk. I was never bad I was just doing things differently and that’s ok.
I am thankful for all the conversations we had even the repetitive ones, the ones that ended in insults, the stuff I had to ban. While not all of it was fun or even good I am glad it had a place I think it reduced the game of telephone we all play by having everything in one place. I am thankful for age dreaming, cglre, the anons who has nicknames since we saw them so much, the people who felt safe enough to dm me, the people who tell me I helped them in some way, the three or so posts left in the seasonal regression tag, and of course Evie plus some other close friends and everyone on the RU discord server from 2017-2019
When I look around and at myself I am not the same person who joined this place. The hair I grew so long now just grazes my chin, I am taller, I can see my stuffies and the bag I keep my pacis but I also see my DBT book and my ear defenders, my combat boots and my bold makeup. I have grown and changed but in some ways I am still the same. I giggle at everything and hug my stuffies and dream of finding somebody who loves me for me.
I think what I want people to know is you can be mature and small. And I know many of you are not adults or even close and I only became like this at my age due to so much being thrown at me at once online. so some of you might not be in the same spot. That’s ok, but please don’t go out of your way to be hurtful. Don’t send hate mail or call your fellow regressors things they have to hear from the outside world anyway.
I was only able to grow when I felt accepted. I spent so long in agere in defence mode and I hope others don’t have to do the same.
I know this was long I wrote this while super sleep deprived but thank you for the question!-Lyra
