I wrote and deleted this many times. It was intended to be a post attached to @road-sparrow and @diskwrite-ffxiv‘s posts here regarding attention/popularity but this got very long, so I broke it out into a post of it’s own. Essentially - they’re right: Close connections and cool stories offer you so, so much more than attention or popularity could ever give you. And getting lots of attention or popularity doesn’t mean you instantly get all of the RP connections you could have ever wanted.
It is extremely surprising and flattering to me that so many people like Tiergan. I am always, always grateful to people who take the time to let me know they enjoy him and find him to be neat, because it honestly just a really nice thing to hear about a character you invested a lot of time and love in. But there another kind of attention that comes with all of this that was extremely damaging for me and has left me a different person than I was before I joined the FFXIV Community.
Many people looked at me and saw me, not as a friend to RP with, but as a means to various ends: a fast-track to becoming ‘popular’ themselves, a way to access to some vast network of RP connections they assumed I had, a path to some RP Paradise of cool ‘in-crowd’ people they believed existed, a steady flow of constant RP I could provide for them, or a chance to force me to fulfill their biggest romantic fantasy. When I couldn’t deliver upon all of the things these people thought I could give them, I was hurt in devastating ways.
It was such a repeat occurrence and happened so many times that I broke. Did this person want to RP with me because they liked me or because they felt like I could make them popular? Did they really like me as a person, or was it just a facade to get some imagined exclusive access to the ‘real’ RP Balmung had to offer? I could no longer tell when people were being genuine or when they were simply trying to use me - so everyone became a possible threat. Everyone became another person who might hurt me if I disappointed them. I eventually stopped RPing for over a year
All the while, Tiergan was still deemed popular. Tiergan was ‘tumblr famous’. Tiergan was well loved. Tiergan got all the attention anyone could ever want. Yet for all of the attention I received - whether it be because I play a miqo’te, create art, or whatever else I do - all it ever did at that time was remind me of how alone I truly was. All that attention was meaningless when it came to actually forging valuable RP connections, because that attention was what hurt me to begin with. I nearly quit the game.
In the current day - most if not all of my closest RP bonds were not gained through popularity. They consist of people I already knew long before arriving in FFXIV, or were connections I sought out myself and slowly, carefully, and meticulously forged over a long period of time.
I watched people. I quietly mingled. I kept an eye on how people treated others - and most importantly how they treated the people they disliked. You can tell a lot about someone by how they treat someone they hate. Then, when I felt I’d found someone who was good, honest, and kind - a person who had a strong chance of caring more about me as a human being than what my internet fame could offer them - I reached out. These bonds are the ones that keep me playing. The ones that make me feel brave enough to RP. These bonds are the ones that reassure me that it’s okay when I hit an RP block - that I’m not there to entertain them like a monkey, that I’m their friend first before anything else. These bonds are where all the cool stories come from, where the best RP lives.
So fuck attention. Find your small close gang of good connections with rad stories. Be picky, be choosy. Surround yourself with only the best people, with the kindest people, with people who treat others the way you want to be treated. Find the people who RP all the same things you want to RP, who value the same things you do, who are interested in the same stories you enjoy. Find the people who care as much about you as a human being as much as they care about your character. They will give you so much more than notes on Tumblr or reaction emojis on discord will ever give you in a lifetime.
