#(in)visibility

So. Hey. 

Some thoughts I’m having right now. 

I’m staring at the list of people who follow me. I’m thinking, “I know so few of you.” I’m thinking about research that says we can only really “know” and keep track of something around 120 people before we literally start to forget our friends. 

It kind of hurts. I’m thinking about feeling invisible, disposable, and how often I’ve warred against exactly those feelings. I remember a lot of destructive things I did because I didn’t know what would actually work. I turned away, I stopped talking. I thought, ‘if they’re going to forget me, there’s no point in staying.’ I wondered what it was I was doing so wrong, how unimpressive I must be, to put so much into something I love and then show it to the world only to hear nothing for an answer. I remember pushing through and trying again. I remember, over time, gaining a small audience, and thinking, maybe, if I just kept working, maybe something I did would actually matter enough to move people to discussion, to be talked about when I wasn’t there anymore. I wanted to do something worth remembering. I wanted to think, if I left, I’d be missed. 

Seems like such a strange thing to want. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I just wanted to hear that I was known. Or more specifically, that my creations were meaningful to a large group of people, or to one person with a broader reach than I could ever have. I wanted to be recommended, for what I wrote to be cherished and persistent. I wanted that feeling, so I could validate my own attachment to that work, to help me overcome the sharp doubt that anything coming out of my mouth or typed from my hands into a text field held value. 

I was struggling with two beasts in my mind tearing pieces of “I’m brilliant!” and “No one cares!” from the bloody mess of my self-image. 

I was catching breaths every time a review notification showed up in my e-mail, punching my desk every time it was a one-line message on par with “nice story” or “you made a typo.” Someone would link me to an author whose writings regularly got upwards of 60 comments, many of which were paragraphs long, and I’d spend the rest of the night playing video games or writing angrily, trying to figure out why I kept coming back. I was this tiny voice trying to get through a cacophony of other tiny voices and a few people with megaphones. 

I didn’t need to be the greatest. I just wanted to be audible, and visible. I wanted to be associated with this thing we were all circling, and more generally, I wanted to be associated with the ideas I put forward, whether or not they had anything to do with the subject of a given fandom. 

I remember wondering what “popular” people did with their “numbers.” I saw a lot of them organizing events, running contests, doing panels at conventions. 

I was on one of those, a couple of times at Otakon. It wasn’t because I was well-known; compared to the other panelists, I was nothing. I was there because my friend happened to be running the panel and asked if I wanted the empty seat left behind by a panelist who had called out sick. I said yes. 

It was weird. I had a really good time. I had a good stage presence and I was pretty quick, funny and I engaged the crowd along with the other authors. I felt, for the first time, hey--maybe I’m not just a loser who can’t write worth a damn. 

Then it was over, and I watched as people lined up to get things signed by the other authors, and no one came to me at all. You may be brilliant--and no one cares. 

Well...except one person. I remember him as “Green Notebook Guy” because he apologized for not having anything for me to sign except the notebook he’d brought with him. I signed it blindly, and listened to him thank me. He’d come to the panel just to hear me talk. He liked the things I’d put up on FFN and that had gotten onto RPGamer (this was 2001, I think) and was very eager to read more. If he told me his name, I don’t remember. I was too busy trying to restart my heart, to process the fact that anyone came up to me at all. 

He was the only one. I think about him a lot. Green Notebook Guy might not even remember me now, but he was someone who, for years, I used to invalidate “no one cares.” He cared enough to meekly come up to my seat on the stage and ask for a momento from me, like what I was doing meant something. 

Well, I thought, maybe I’m not recognized by the “popular” people, but hell, Green Notebook Guy cares. And if he’s still paying attention, if even one other Notebook Person is reading, then what I’m doing matters. 

There were other events in my life that encouraged me to throw off No One Cares, but that one stands out. Just...this one acknowledgement from one person who I never saw again. Sometimes I think the fact it was a stranger is part of what made it so powerful. 

There are a lot of accounts following mine. More than I could ever befriend. A lot of them are abandoned, I’m sure several are here for the reblogs and artwork I signalboot, and some of them are probably bots. But even accounting for those, there are a lot of actual people--strangers--who have more than a passing interest in what I have to say and the idea always floors me. It’s so unusual, so not how most of my life has been, it’s difficult for me to parse as being something real. 

But I have numbers to back up the facts. So I try to remind myself, from time to time. Read through every name, from people who followed hours ago all the way back to my first follow (a friend who no longer uses tumblr). I try to wrap my head around it, and appreciate it. I try not to take it for granted. 

I don’t know how I come off to those followers, reader, or even the friends I’ve made...if I’m pegged as “popular,” or just another FFVIII fan. I don’t know how well-known I am. But I am known, and that’s enough. I have what I wanted, years ago. 

And then, there are days I still feel invisible. I forget, somehow, how to participate. Those days, it’s easy to forget the numbers. I think of other people with bigger numbers and imagine how quickly I could be erased if just one of them decided they didn’t like me. It paralyzes me, some nights, nights like tonight, the idea of all these people who watch me, just shrugging me off. I imagine how that might happen. I’m terrified of going stale. I’m afraid my ramblings come off as tired, annoying, or conceited. More than anything, I’m scared of making other people feel like I felt when I was in my early 20s...lost in the noise. 

In 2015 (I think?) I did a thing where I called out pretty much every follower and told them what they did for me, or at least acknowledged their presence if I had no idea who they were or why they were here. I remember how many people were just happy they were noticed. I remember how, at the same time, I was happy to have brightened their day, and how sad I was to remember the sort of headspace where being noticed at all by someone I respected or even a stranger was something I’d pined after. 

I did something similar with the Things I Try to Remember When I’m Nervous About Writing post, and received a similar response. I keep myself up at night trying to think of ways to combat this phenomenon. I made an FFVIII Discord, and that’s been wonderful. We rebooted @timblr-maniacs, and that’s been great, too. I’ve seen a lot of people who I’ve never seen before start speaking up and sharing, making connections and being seen. If I can imagine I had any hand in that, it makes me feel really good. Like I did something good. 

Everyone has a story to tell, something to say. Even if you aren’t a writer, or an artist, even if you’re just someone who reblogs everything, you need social capital as badly as the next person. I think the days I’m the most lonely and frightened are the days I feel I’m not paying it forward, where I worry there’s no good way of doing so.

I guess...I’m not sure what the point of this post is. I’m trying to solve a problem in my head that might not really be solvable; the problem that, as you make connections with people and develop an audience, a rift inevitably begins to form between you and that audience. Your experience, as someone who is more visible, differs from the experience of those who are not. And you can’t befriend every single person, it’s physically, neurologically impossible. 

But...if you are reading this, and you’re someone who feels unseen, who has no “Green Notebook Guy,” who thinks I wouldn’t care about you because we’ve never talked and I seem out of reach, or you feel like there are other people you want to communicate with who are out of reach, too popular, etc...I guess, tell me about it. Send an ask, or a message, leave a comment, anything. Tell me what you’d like to see from such out-of-reach people, what would encourage you, what you want to know or hear to feel like you aren’t lost in the noise, to keep yourself going. Because it is worth pressing on, but fuck knows I’ve been there, wondering why.