Don't know if you ever felt like this but once you leave the online sphere for a while and then come back here... the way people talk about things on the internet feels so silly, like everyone takes the smallest things so seriously and everything is so performative, specially in the fanbase like wow ya'll can't be real speaking like this. 'Stanning spaces' are so odd, and the whole idea of stanning is so weird too, just feels very unhealthy to have this person you've never met have this much control over you
The fact that not too long ago I also let small things bother me like everything was a personal attack, the internet is a weird place and nowadays I'm just glad I've been able to sort of understand how damaging it is to see everyting through the lens of overwhelming virtual acceptance instead of actual self fulfillment
Yes, anon, I have felt this way and I'm trying to understand how we've ended up in this situation. Which is quite complex, but among the reasons behind it is this dependency we have on the online medium that is growing stronger by the day.
Lately there's talk again about the lack of third spaces and how we feel more and more alienated. It's even worse when the home and working spaces become one and we're trapped in one environment and our connection to the outside world is connected to more consumption than leisure or social activities. In turn, we spend time on our phone and I think that on one hand, we become desensitized (because our contact with other people is artificial, the lack of face to face conversation, we don't care about the person's feelings because we don't see the effects), and on the other hand, our echo chambers that we all inhabit to some degree, are able to turn every minor issue into a bigger problem. Of course, since we inhabit virtual spaces that have a singular focus. For example, the more time we spend in one fandom and it occupies a significant part of our free time during the day, the more we believe that any inconvenience is important. We exacerbate what would usually be brushed off. And it's even more dangerous because it's usually focused in fandoms surrounding real life people that end up being worshipped.
There's not a lot going on in people's lives sometimes. We've also been through a global pandemic (still ongoing actually) that contributed to our isolation. We consume products and content. It's a contemporary curse and as much as it has to do with individual choice, it is also generational, societal and a result of late stage capitalism.
