She ain't wrong.

No, no thank you. 

There is a meme i see going around lately about wanting to be loved despite the horrors of being perceived. Just lately in pop culture news singer Chappell Roan has been talking about the things she’s going through with fans: 

“I don’t care that it’s normal. I don’t care that this crazy type of behavior comes along with the job, the career field I’ve chosen. That does not make it okay. That doesn’t make it normal. Doesn’t mean I want it. Doesn’t mean I like it.” Found via a Vox article. 

A few years ago, I stopped seeking publication. I had slowed down quite a bit and finally gave it up, one of the reasons was my deep loathing of being perceived and put into weird parasocial situations I can’t handle it. I have never done well with the concept of a parasocial relationship and had no idea the phenomenon had a name. For me this was a mixed bag of problems that culminated in me feeling deep dread doing readings or on occasion being recognized in public. 

To make it clear this wasn’t because of trolls. I've had a few of them show up in my physical life and shit happened but it wasn’t terrible. What was terrible for me were the fans. The people who maybe read one of my social justice-oriented pieces and thought they knew me. The problem often came when they read my other work and felt a sense of betrayal because I wasn’t writing what they thought I would be or that they personally didn’t like. And more often than I’d like to say people felt no compunction in telling me about it. 

Something about me as a writer is over the years I’ve taken time to consider critique from readers in a very serious way. More so when it comes to non-fiction. It is a large part of who I am to really analyze my own thoughts and behavior, I do not want to harm people and for a time couldn’t seperate trolls and legit critique. The problem for ages for me was that i did not understand that a big part of the critiques i did take to heart were more parasocial than anything else. 

I’d get notes form long time readers to express how disappointed in me they were if I said something a certain way or that I posted fiction they didn’t vibe with. A lot of them used very social justice flavored terms for what was essentially, “I personally don’t like this how dare you.” My response to such things has gone from, “oh no did I fuck up?” to “I don’t even know you.” The latter makes peope very angry. 

I see this happen so much with influencers and other stars. I don’t get it. I’m not even close to a teeny bit famous and to have had people behave that way with me upset me to the degree I have given up opportunities and stopped doing a lot of things to avoid it. And here we are. I don’t publish or even write half of the things I'd like to mainly to avoid finding myself in that situation again. I have deep empathy for Chappell and some anger at the people making her feel that way.  

The part that bothers me above all is how if you are a fan, if you love x person how could you be aware that your behavior is a problem and be mad someone says, this is a problem. No amount of fame or notoriety erases the humanity of a person. The public has no right to stars bone marrow so to speak. For me the last of this was after a particular reading and the last straw for me. 

I had done a reading that was great and fun. The audience was into it, they laughed at the funnny parts and overall were a whole vibe. I was particularly nervous that time because I was reading with authors way more famous than me, and I had no books or anything to offer. After I got done, I was mingling a bit and was cornered by a concerned older white woman. 

At first she said she knew my work; she loved the essay i read but she had concerns. She corralled me into a corner to explain to me why it was more important for me to focus on reading and performing my work about anti-racism and how she was personally so hurt I didn’t talk about being Black in Seattle. I didn’t know her. She wasn’t contributing to me in any way but when I told her I appreciated the feedback but, am not an anti-racism jukebox and it wasn’t the appropriate venue for that she got very upset. 

Luckily I had my partner who is also my emotional support human and he hustled me out as I was descending into a panic attack due to how aggressive she got about it. She wasn’t physically aggressive but emotionally so, when I said politely that the event wasn’t really right for what she wanted she teared up and said, “I’m just so disappointed in you.” And that freaked me out, it felt too intimate, and she kept getting too close to me and I don’t deal with that well. 

After that i sat back and examined a lot of what folks have said to me about my work over the years, particularly what I wrote about self-care. Much of it came down to folks believing I had them personally in mind and willfully wrote things not useful to them individually. For a while I took those very seriously and worked to try and be more “universal” and the work became toothless and not what I needed it to be or wanted to do. My response was to stop then try again. 

I tried agan and got a lot of the same types of responses. I see the same type of comments all over social media and they give me terrible anxiety. I haven’t been able to return to regular non fiction postings or blogging because I don’t want to deal with that. I realize that in the grand scheme of things anything I have to say might be helpful for 4 people but the hateful, weird comments are too much for me. 

I have come to realize that there are particular parts of authorship in the modern world i am not capable of. I am never going to be palatable enough to the masses to not participate in cultivating a parasocial relationship with people. This led me to research the concept of social capital and quite suddenly much about my failures to “connect” with an audience and my distaste of certain interactions made much more sense to me. 

I do not have it. I don’t have the It factor and a lot of being a writer with any degree of success, you need it. You need to cultivate your own fandoms, I am not good at that. I try but my tolerance of how you must behave to be good at that never lasts because it is fake as hell. I don’t want to pretend to be your new bestie. I don’t want to do that.  

My aversion to this is yes, probably a bit extreme but I have learned to live with it and the consequences of it. I’ve held on to authenticity to the dismay of my bank account. And yet i continue. I am incapable of being other than i am even when it would be to my own betterment. I’ve been trying since I was a little kid.  

The only time i get bitter and salty about it is during times of financial bullshit. It does frustrate me that while I know technically how to make adverts, and do seo and all that I am lacking the part where I’m liked in enough of a general way to get traction on things. I know a lot of my long time ride or die audience is more like me than not. We do not have a lot of money to throw around. Im not at all mad at that. 

I am mad that I am an asshole but not the right kind of asshole to flourish on the internet and that bugs me. It is why I get upset when I spend hours and hours on projects or other things i know I can’t make profitable on my own. It is never that I am not like that much. That’s fine with me. It is thar I have to be percieved and most of the time it is for nothing or winds up costing me money I don’t have. 

And so here we are. I write these blog post flavor substacks sometimes. I post a lot of stuff to read on my website and even have lit for sale and I have to not think about it. I have to sit with the awareness of monetization but also sit with the reality of me not being able to make it happen for myself.  

I say all this to get to one thing. 

Some friends have worried as I’ve been going through some things and I need you to remember if I’m upset it isn’t necessarily personal. I’ve accepted where I fall on the spectrum of who can and does make money that depends on social capital and who doesn’t. My heart is not at all hurt. 

What hurts is my wallet. What hurts is hours of work I essentially pay to do and not being able to even break even. That is what hurts.  

As time has gone on I’m more comfortable in not going for opportunities based on the winning outcome. Looking back I’ve done this a lot. Opting out before I get the chance for success in some things. I thought I was just a shitty person for years and then I realized I was protecting myself from the consequences of success. I did it when I was a blogger, with my youtube channel, with this here lil newsletter etc.

I don’t want to get more death threats because I’ve said something people don’t like on the internet. I don’t want to have to moderate my space because some folks can’t behave themselves on the internet. I don’t want to expose my ride or die readership to online abuse. And I don’t have influencer money so I can’t hire mods etc. I just don’t want it.

Like Chappell I don’t care if it is the norm it is not a game I want to play. I don’t think I would ever become an aspirational luxury blogger or anything like that.I don’t want that and I’ve become pretty comfortable in knowing this about myself. If I could have the access and cashflow without the other bullshit I’d be into it but I just don’t see that happening.

In terms of surviving under capitalism this is a disaster for me. I often have profitable ideas but I’m not gonna be the on to profit from the and yes at times I get too bothered to live but overall it has become just another part of culture I don’t partcipate in. I know a few of you are reading this like BUT U DO GET MAD.

I get mad when I see concepts I was relentlessly trolled for making mad dollars. more so when I can see connections to my work and yeah that bothers me, primarily because I’m fucking poor. If I weren’t poor I wouldn’t be so sensitive about it but here we are.

It is a contradiction I have to live with in my head and heart. I have to often remind myself that I am not nor do I know how to be that girl and thats fine even though I remain poor.

Thus things like this and my asmr series on youtube are irregular as hell. If I’m feeling too poor I’m not putting in days of work, that is an expense I can no longer shoulder. As they say time is money and I’ve not got enough free of either.

Okay darling dears that’s enough of me right now. Feel free to join me on the youtube. I;ll be posting more more writing vlogs and whatnot after we get settled in our new place and I get my set up figured out. You can support me by buying my stories if you like. Or leave a tip somewhere.