For the past few years, the only thing I thought about anonymity online was that it perpetuated bad behaviour. Thanks to lots of articles about safer internet, cancel culture and hate trains, I saw anonymity as something terrible. People could just leave mean comments and behave unlike they’d ever behave in real life, because no one could really trace it back to them.

And this is certainly true. Lots of people are awful. They’re awful in real life too but due to social constructs and the results their actions might have in person, they behave according to social norms.

However, online this all flies out of the window.

Somehow the positive aspects of being anonymous online never really occurred to me. As I have always been more offline, I never really fully understood what people meant when they talked about the positive sides of online communities.

Recently though, I wrote this article about once hating things I now like - Kpop for instance - which made me think about anonymity differently. I realized: Holy moly, I feel so good after writing about this. Something I still feel shame around (read my last article if you’re interested), I can put out there into the vast internet and have no repercussions in my real life. Unlike the teasing I received back in school.

Teilen

Social anxiety is less of an issue for me online: I could theoretically compliment everyone I want to online, without the possibility of the encounter being awkward. I can simply chat with people who have the same interests as I do, but it is way more casual and less intimidating than talking to people in real life.

To be fully honest, I don’t even know if this fully makes sense right now. But I think that the only way you’ll actually understand what I mean is if you live it. Just imagine: You might an interest in or liking for something other people shame you for. Maybe you love Taylor Swift but everyone around you shit talks Swifties. Maybe you love a certain sport, love dressing in a certain way or have a special interest in baking shows but you’re also a rugby player and your friends would take the piss out of you for it.

Maybe - and I say this because this is something about a friend of mine I only later realized - you can find community regarding your sexuality, gender identity, etc. online. My friend used to spend so much time alone - never really telling us what she was up to. Only when she came out as trans, I started to wonder whether showering - something that seemed to take her ages - was something she just silently despised because of body dismorphia. Something she could not openly talk about with us at that point so she just ignored our little teasing. Online she was able to first talk to people who understood her before confiding in me and other friends.

So I personally would compare anonymity to a wolf in sheep’s clothing. While definitely dangerous, it can sometimes dress up as something amazing and cute. Still, caution is advised.

Hence, I dare you to act on it. Join a Reddit group, Discord chat, post on Tumblr, Substack, etc. about something you like. Be anonymous if you want to. But engage in something you would be too ashamed to act upon in real life (be safe and don’t break any laws though please, this is not about any creepy or harmful ideologies).

I hope that you can also find something good in the anonymity of the internet. Spread love by posting under someone’s posts for instance. The internet can help you feel free and honest about what you like and who you are before you’d ever consider the possibility of it offline. Use it to your advantage.

I might have to start here: I am a big family person. I grew up living in a loving family home where everyone just takes care of the others - something I am very grateful for. Hence, I have always known that I want to one day help take care of my grandparents and, in the future, eventually my parents. Something I don’t want to do out of obligation but rather because I simply want to give back.

I might also have to preface that I have simply always leaned towards an overthinking, overly sensitive personality. I feel bad very, very easily. And I don’t want others - especially older people - to ever feel sad or hurt. Once, when I was 8 or 9 years old, I even cried when I saw my great-grandma’s jacket on the street. I of course knew that no car could have killed her without blood or her body lying on the street. I of course knew that she had simply lost her jacket on the way to her house. Still, I was just too worried, so I had to cry.

Luckily, none of my family members currently require care. While my grandparents are old, they can still take care of themselves for the most part. However, within the past year, some things have changed.

Firstly, my grandmother surprisingly passed away. Something no one really saw coming and something that fundamentally changed how I viewed my remaining grandparents and, in general, the time I get to spend with my family members. Secondly, I spent a semester abroad. When I went away, my grandfather cried because he was so sad. He was going to miss me and I was going to miss my entire family. Luckily, nothing bad happened - however, the fear that one of my grandparents could pass away while I was gone was constantly with me. Lastly, I moved out. Although I only moved less than an hour away into my first apartment, I was only going to see my family on the weekends when I was off work.

So that’s what I started doing. Every weekend - or at least let’s say the last 26 out of 30 weekends, I have been back home. Most of the time only for Saturday and Sunday, and in a lot of the cases, my partner came with me. Most weekends would consist of me being back home on Saturday at 10 or 11 am or maybe even Friday evening, eating lunch with my family, playing with the dog and hanging out with the cats, visiting my other grandparents, … lunch again on Sunday and by Sunday 3 or 4 pm I’d be back home.

Something that has been starting to really wear on me. As someone who needs a lot of alone time, I just haven’t been getting any lately.

So now for today and this moment right now where I am close to tears. Another weekend with my family, and please don’t get me wrong - I love them so much and I am so incredibly grateful to have them. However, my grandparents told me that they’d be very, very happy to see us this weekend. So naturally, we went to see them half an hour ago. When we got there, they were still napping. No big bad thing happened.

It’s the feeling that I’ll miss the last time I have with my family - but especially with my grandparents. I don’t ever want them to feel sad, and I especially want to take away some of their boredom. Hence why I come to visit every single weekend.

But it’s draining. I don’t want to have to drive back to my grandparents tomorrow to visit them. I am exhausted from work, and I’d much rather just lie in bed and watch something stupid.

But then again, I feel terrible about thinking this way. My sister or cousins care about this way less - although they still live close by, some of them see them way less than I do. It’s simply something within me that cares a lot - maybe too much.

Sadly, I don’t have a resolution for this problem right now. It’s this terrible gray area between wanting to spend more time alone, but at the same time, I want to spend as much time with them as possible. I can only imagine how a caretaker must feel when taking care of a family member just becomes too much, but at the same time, this fear of death and hurt is lingering in the air.

I don’t know yet whether this is something I just have to push through. I would never want a family member of mine to read this and think that they have to make up plans or act like they want to see me less.

I sadly, simply, truly do not know. If anyone has any advice or feedback, it would be badly appreciated.

x

With some of the things that I am about to mention, there was this underlying shame that I learned about liking those things. So, deep down, I resented myself for admiring certain people, activities or objects - and in consequence, I started judging the thing and the people liking it. Buckle in there, we’re taking a trip down memory lane while I bring you some examples…

First we’re starting with a loaded topic: Sexuality. Sexuality is a heavily discussed topic with so many heated discussions because most people just have strong opinions about it. There’s no doubt in my mind about the fact though, that everyone - even heterosexual people - can understand why one own’s sexuality can be so hard to reckon with. Shame. Even though some people might want to picture the painting of western societies being so accepting and welcoming to LGBTQ+ people, that’s simply not the truth. Hence, I also struggled with my own issues. Although I can’t really name the source of it - I would only later come to actually see the homophobia around me - I used to think “I don’t know if I could one day see my child dating a same-sex person as completely normal” when I was young. Turns out a few years later… I didn’t have to reckon with a child dating someone same-sex but I had to reckon with my own sexuality.

However, I also had experiences where my initial judgement was the majority opinion and I got heavily teased for liking something: Kpop. Back in 2017, Kpop reached my town. I remember a friend of mine showing me BTS’ DNA during our arts class and I too, initially had the stupid prejudices and to be fully honest here, I too initially had thoughts like “They all look the same” or “They look too feminine”. I was young back then so I now give myself grace for some racially insensitive thoughts I had growing up in a 99% white town - while still keeping myself in check here. Anyways, of course I fell in love quickly. Within a few weeks, I was a huge Kpop fan.

I don’t remembering apparently wanting to show my teacher Kpop - one of the things I was later teased about. Although I never was what some people would call an “overly embarassing” Kpop fan - I remember hiding the fact that I liked kpop after this first initial “omg this is so cool, I want to show this to everyone (and apparently my school class too)” phase. My faith was sealed. One of my friends even told me that I had changed and that she prefered my earlier version. My kpop phase died down after only a few months and over the next years I would only dip my toes back into kpop. At times I would even “block” kpop groups on spotify after listening to them, so that they would not show up in my Spotify wrapped. There’s a lot still left to unpack here. Less than a year ago, someone even wanted to shame me for occassionally listening to kpop - but I’ll tell that story another time. Still, I initially judged something that I later loved and started hating it again because of my shame surrounding it.

While vastly different, I am also a huge rock fan. Probably my most listened genre with still, quiet a lot of white girl music hanging in there too. A few years ago however, I thought: “Who tf would want to listen to loud ass music and mostly, men jumping around on stage”. Especially grunge style and screaming in songs was something I just could not wrap my head around. As fate would have it, I watched a tv show with my dad and fell in love with Nirvana. I then had what my so-called friends used to call an “emo phase” (another thing I might have to unpack more one day). I even started to love a bit of screaming in songs. Nowadays, my absolute favourite band is a rock band. And luckily for me… I have absolutely no shame about it.

Lastly, F1. To be fully honest with you, there’s not a lot to say about it. I used to judge my sister for liking it and I absolutely didn’t get how anyone would want to watch rich men going in circles. Less than a month into watching it occassionally with her, I was hooked. And I still am years later. I even spent way too much money on going to a grand prix. The reason I judged F1 probably stemmed from stupid things I heard some family members say about it. I’m still rolling my eyes thinking about it. But also from the stupid, sexist comments people make online.

In the cases were I initially judged my sister for liking F1 or my friend for liking Kpop, I was - let’s all say it together - PROJECTING: Projecting my own insecurities and shame around finding something interesting onto others. What we like and why we like it is so heavily loaded with societal prejudices and some people, sadly, can never break free from them. But there’s this one quote my sister told me about once, that I have to look up real quick:

“I don’t think you should ever have to apologize for your excitement. Just because it’s something cliche doesn’t mean that it’s not something that’s awesome. The worst kind of person is someone who makes someone feel bad, dumb or stupid for, like, being excited about something” - Taylor Swift

I try to remember this quote whenever I initially don’t like something or find myself judging somebody or something. Because, in most cases, I end up loving it anyway a few months or years later.

X

Over the past year, I have been wanting to cancel this so-called subscription, however, due to the fact that the people working there are extremely annoying, I refrained from doing so. I knew that as soon as they would start trying to lure me back in, I would probably give up. And sadly, I am not fully done with this subscription yet. I have only sent the first email and soon, someone will try to annoy me and keep me stuck in this spider web. As long as I don’t move – I am safe. But as soon as I am slightly wiggling a limb – giving them an opportunity to contact me for further sales or stuff – the spider will try to kill me. Metaphorically speaking.

Hopefully, I will actually call it quits. However, I can already imagine how annoying all of my interactions until that point are going to be. This brings me to the topic of today: People just want to annoy you. I know, I know… in most cases, they don’t want to actually be annoying. But especially in sales, that’s kind of what they live off. It’s their job to occasionally annoy someone until they buy something.

But what I find especially irritating is when people ignore social cues. I am not talking about, for example, neurodivergent people who struggle with understanding cues in social situations. I’m talking about the people where you try to be nice to them, only minorly hinting at your discomfort and you can kind of tell that they understand what you mean but they still ignore it to their benefit. I don’t think that the guy harassing the girl in the club after she repeatedly walked away from him doesn’t understand her social cues. He simply ignores them. And that’s exactly what I find irritating as hell. Same situation with the salesman I’ve been dealing with.

So, I made it my mission to make it absolutely clear that I want to quit my contract. I even said that I don’t want to be called. Still, I know that he’ll probably ignore it and continue to try to keep me stuck with the company.

Anyways. I am quite proud of myself. I tried to clearly communicate what I mean. Even if it’s less polite to not say “Oh, sorry, I am not fully happy, could we maybe …”.

Maybe you can take something away from this. Maybe…. if you’re in a situation where you can safely try to speak your mind, you’ll think of this short text and speak up.

Xx

© The Office