Read on Twitter
I didn't know what it was like to be nobody until I stepped outside the communities I was somebody in. It was necessary and humbling to reflect year after year and observe. It's years later and I still haven't completely gotten over it.
The strange part about this is it kinda got me through my teens. I could be beat up and bullied during the day and be a celebrity among my circles at night. Day life turned into the price of growing up in the US.
I feel like some of that had to be unlearned after growing up. But even after I graduated high school and went to college; education and a day job became just a different cost of living in the US, necessary but easily blanked the moment I stepped in the door at home.
I didn't really pursue a career, calculated the minimum that would get me by, daydreamed through all of it and lived my real life outside those obligations, writing music and hacking games. It was my only way to chew through unaddressed social trauma.
A cycle of doing a thing, finding out people liked it, doing more of the thing, time translating directly into feedback.. it wasn't success, it wasn't sustainable, it was a circumstance of both the internet (which was still growing) and the limited size of my circles at the time
The 2010s were a very interesting time. YouTube really came into its own. The prevalence of social media exploded. I took for granted the notoriety I had, but it wasn't going to be a zero effort thing anymore. I wanted all of it with none of the effort. You know how it plays out.
These days it's *actually a foreign thing for me* to enter into a space, sign my name as Saxxon(Pike)/Sanxion7 and *not* have someone be like "omg I know you". I used to thrive off that. I had to unlearn that, among many other things.
Fame before you know how to handle it is dangerous as shit.
It's dangerous because it taints your understanding of how you interact in social spaces. It's dangerous because it conditions you to think that if you aren't somehow a very important figure in a space, you are not welcome in said space. That isn't true at all.
And worst of all, it conditions you to assume by default any arbitrary member of a community is inferior. It feeds a fragile superiority complex.
Kinda glad I grew out of being a total shitlord, but also kinda wish I could gain back all the years I lost being one.
It's not too late; it's never too late to learn lessons and be better. But no matter what kind of epiphany you have, you are never entitled to closure with those you have wronged. You are never entitled to friendship with those who have denounced you. That's gotta just be okay.
