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Cliques, and Empowerment Through Writing
Jan. 6th, 2012 11:09 pmOf the friends and acquaintances I've made in the past couple years, many, many, many fall into a small set of social circles and gatherings that I'm presently not a part of. I feel a large amount of the sting of being marginalized because of this, of being made into this bizarre but well-worn sort of second-class citizen, because I don't have context, have at best a topical grasp of their interests, and can only relate to what's been openly shared to me by others "in the know".
This saddens me, because each one of them that I'm thinking about is him, her, hir, or xirself awesome, and somebody I'd just like to get to know better. Yet I feel pushed out at most opportunities to do so and just plain overshadowed, unable to hold my own, in the presence of those more capable of walking these shared contexts than me. It's impacted my psyche in such a way that I feel I suffer a chronic lack of information or eloquence when I don't; I'm just being worked out of whatever conversations they happen to be in because I'm not privy to that thing that happened to that guy on that day six months ago.
It feels topical, in that middle-or-high school way of being the only kid without friends at the lunchroom table (and I was very often exactly that child). And yet it isn't, wholly. As a race of natural storytellers and builders of shared experience, these completely frivolous happenings are the stories of our (human) lives, and the cliques simply serve as the guardians of culture and ideas. And so, being inappropriately cliqued to my environment, the best I can do to make up for it is put my ideas into writing and hope they're broadly interesting.
I would at some point like to experience the shared story thing again, though. And while I'd made the faintest of steps towards all of these circles and gathers as early as five to seven years ago (surprise!), my inherent shyness and reluctance to make my presence known has kept me out of them after the initial taste or two.
I won't name names, except for the bigger ones, to protect the innocent. But as an example: a large swath of my life is missing on LiveJournal, and was missed of others', while I spent my time engrossed in building tools for Second Life. I've missed out on WoW too, deliberately. But fortunately, I have a backdoor there: I played Warcraft 3 and the predecessor to WoW's primary class mechanics, Dark Age of Camelot, which itself pulled its system from EverQuest, which itself... well, you get the idea. The point is, I can discuss its lore and mechanics in great detail, because of shared sourcing.
These are topical examples, of course, because my targets are primarily text-driven in the vein of MUCKs, IRC, and a shared roleplay or two. I have more knowledge than most people seem to give me credit for, and indeed more than I have any right to, by keeping an encyclopedic buffer of notes and logs of what I hear that I frequently use to supplant my memory.* But bear with me: Not. Naming. Names.
Phew.
I'd like to get over that shyness and actually reach out to the people I care about. At the same time, I wonder what would happen if I made myself more of the shared tapestry of their lives. It seems outright unfair of me, given my shyness, my needs, and my present emotional instability. But, maybe it would be something interesting.
This train of thought hasn't yet reached its conclusion. I suppose in a way, it's a form of social advertising.
***
Oh, about that "Empowerment Through Writing" in the title: I put that there because damned if it isn't cathartic to write out my thoughts to keep me sane right now. My style of being oblique about the mundane and forthcoming about the patterns is especially cathartic to me, since it localizes happenings and drama into these concise thought bubbles that can be inspected, free of their persons and events, and rooted squarely in ideas and emotional qualia.
* That I keep completely private, locked behind layers of AES encryption. Did I mention I value peoples' privacy, while respecting my right to have a clue about what they're talking about? I'm fairly sure it's one of the things that makes me tick.
This saddens me, because each one of them that I'm thinking about is him, her, hir, or xirself awesome, and somebody I'd just like to get to know better. Yet I feel pushed out at most opportunities to do so and just plain overshadowed, unable to hold my own, in the presence of those more capable of walking these shared contexts than me. It's impacted my psyche in such a way that I feel I suffer a chronic lack of information or eloquence when I don't; I'm just being worked out of whatever conversations they happen to be in because I'm not privy to that thing that happened to that guy on that day six months ago.
It feels topical, in that middle-or-high school way of being the only kid without friends at the lunchroom table (and I was very often exactly that child). And yet it isn't, wholly. As a race of natural storytellers and builders of shared experience, these completely frivolous happenings are the stories of our (human) lives, and the cliques simply serve as the guardians of culture and ideas. And so, being inappropriately cliqued to my environment, the best I can do to make up for it is put my ideas into writing and hope they're broadly interesting.
I would at some point like to experience the shared story thing again, though. And while I'd made the faintest of steps towards all of these circles and gathers as early as five to seven years ago (surprise!), my inherent shyness and reluctance to make my presence known has kept me out of them after the initial taste or two.
I won't name names, except for the bigger ones, to protect the innocent. But as an example: a large swath of my life is missing on LiveJournal, and was missed of others', while I spent my time engrossed in building tools for Second Life. I've missed out on WoW too, deliberately. But fortunately, I have a backdoor there: I played Warcraft 3 and the predecessor to WoW's primary class mechanics, Dark Age of Camelot, which itself pulled its system from EverQuest, which itself... well, you get the idea. The point is, I can discuss its lore and mechanics in great detail, because of shared sourcing.
These are topical examples, of course, because my targets are primarily text-driven in the vein of MUCKs, IRC, and a shared roleplay or two. I have more knowledge than most people seem to give me credit for, and indeed more than I have any right to, by keeping an encyclopedic buffer of notes and logs of what I hear that I frequently use to supplant my memory.* But bear with me: Not. Naming. Names.
Phew.
I'd like to get over that shyness and actually reach out to the people I care about. At the same time, I wonder what would happen if I made myself more of the shared tapestry of their lives. It seems outright unfair of me, given my shyness, my needs, and my present emotional instability. But, maybe it would be something interesting.
This train of thought hasn't yet reached its conclusion. I suppose in a way, it's a form of social advertising.
***
Oh, about that "Empowerment Through Writing" in the title: I put that there because damned if it isn't cathartic to write out my thoughts to keep me sane right now. My style of being oblique about the mundane and forthcoming about the patterns is especially cathartic to me, since it localizes happenings and drama into these concise thought bubbles that can be inspected, free of their persons and events, and rooted squarely in ideas and emotional qualia.
* That I keep completely private, locked behind layers of AES encryption. Did I mention I value peoples' privacy, while respecting my right to have a clue about what they're talking about? I'm fairly sure it's one of the things that makes me tick.
