Is anyone else super tired of playing Russian Roulette when it comes to online communities these days? Whether it’s a guild in an MMO or an art group or a forum for your fav hobby or a Discord server for fans of that show you like?
It’s so exhausting joining somewhere new for me now. So hard for me to get invested. So difficult to be excited about making friends and connecting. It gets worse the older I am. And it’s simply because I’ve had enough of the perpetual ignorance of other people. Here’s why:
You come in as a new person. Maybe you’re a bit shy. You don’t know anyone yet and you haven’t learned the social dynamics of that group. Everyone’s quite nice because they don’t know you either. You’re a fresh slate and so are they and you both kinda want to see each other’s best sides. But then after time people get comfy and you start seeing who they really are.
And then almost inevitably one day you hit up your chat or whatever and ahh, there it is, someone’s posted a racist meme and three other people are laughing at it. You’ve found them. Maybe they’re making fun of fat people or saying that people who are into BDSM are disgusting freaks. Perhaps they’re sharing alt right nazi videos. Whatever it is, you now have the decision to make: do you complain? Do you say something? Talk to the community leaders privately or call them out in public right there and then? Do you say nothing, sweep it under the rug? Tell yourself to pick your battles? Bottle it all up inside and just keep ignoring this content because you don’t want to deal with that level of fallout that can potentially happen if you speak up?
I’m so tired of this. It’s nearly every group - I have so few left where everyone is a decent human being. Whatever option you pick you’re in for a fight. I’ve never called out someone for casual racism and had them go ‘oh yeah my bad you’re right’ whether it’s in public or private.
And then there is the fact that you have to invest a portion of your own emotional wellbeing in the group over a period of time initially because very rarely do these people show their true colours straight off the bat. It comes in the form of casual comments, a off-hand remark in voice chat, a tumblr post their mate sent to them to laugh at that they post in the group. And everyone is laughing but you and you know that eventually it’s going to come down to slipping quietly out the back door or confronting them and both options suck.
Even thinking about joining any new groups is just draining because I have to weigh up whether or not I think it’s going to have garbage bag people in it, and what type of garbage they’re going to post and how I’m going to deal with it and if it’s worth it to my overall emotional wellbeing. As I’ve gotten older I’ve gotten less tolerant of people. And I want to join in in many spaces but I also want to do so with great people and it’s not like I can hand over a list of criteria to check off about their opinions before I head on over. I’ve got to do the legwork of being around a little while and getting to know people and it just saps me.
Anyway, hope other people can relate.
