man i love it when my parents are around but sometimes they just microinvalidate me until there's nothing left of me. sample of things they said to me this weekend: you know your online friends aren't real, right? why are you on the computer so much? how much time a day do you spend on social networking sites? do you need to set aside the computer for a few days? are you spending hours on the internet? just an hour? a few minutes? what? how did you meet steve? how did you meet seebs? how did you meet jesse? how did you meet luka? why is that girl named spock? why do you want to meet up with people you've never met? i'm sorry, i just don't get it--how do you meet these people? why do you talk to people online and not in person? you don't tell these people about your problems, do you? you don't tell these people you're on medication, do you? you shouldn't tell people about your problems (sometimes accompanied by "it makes you look weak") i just don't get that you're friends with someone who's in his fifties i just don't get that you're friends with someone who's in her forties i just don't get that you're friends with someone who's in his thirties why would you tell people you were distressed over the bar exam? these people aren't going to be there for you when you need them how do you even meet these people? i don't get it, how do you meet people through friends of friends of friends? how did you meet the original friends? so you just join a website and tell complete strangers all about your problems? yeah, i know your hobby is writing, but why do you need people to do it with you? i'm just. i'm really worn down by playing host for five days and i'm really upset that my parents think that online friends don't real. especially since this forum is full of so many great people and i feel like i can be myself here. i guess i kind of need validation that this is all stuff that they just don't get and that's okay, but maybe i could also get advice on how to explain this to them. i tried to explain that i would meet people through common interests, or they'd like my writing and i'd talk to them, or i'd like their writing and they'd talk to me, or we'd all be on the same website and posting in the same place. they simply don't understand and so they just keep asking these questions that have the deliberate undertone of "your friends aren't real and they're not going to be there for you and you shouldn't rely on them" and ugh sorry about words, i don't think i'm wording great right now
Family does the same and it sucks. If it helps I sorta consider you frand? I mean we don't talk so much but you're like. Pixels, time traveling nonbinary cyborg lawyer huzzah
your parents are silly and dumb about this I mean I find it super hard to recognize people online as real, and I still connect super hardcore with most people on this forum. so if I can do that, then yeah, your parents have no idea how, like, friendship works /pats
Your parents are like that scene from Zoolander, except replace "files" with "friends". "The friends are IN the computer???" I have no advice, except maybe an elaborate lie about penpals.
i'm just really. misaligned internally right now? because i'm on the forum and talking to y'all and i don't want to believe y'all aren't real but now i'm starting to think about it and i don't want to. i don't think y'all could make up these stories (they're frankly outrageous, too out there to be faked). and spock's my kissmyass and i have two matesprits and they're all online and fsldkfjj. @rigorist has been a really important mentor figure for me and i value his opinion and input, even when he's being a devil's advocate :P it's important to be challenged on your beliefs! @seebs has also been a great influence because reading seebs's posts brought me back to "logic is good" but this time woven in with "compassion is just as important." seebs and @jacktrash are great role models for how to have a great functional relationship across the years, and jesse is also a great writer. @spockandawe and i are so ridiculously similar (we even bpd the same way it's fucking ridiculous) and i don't know why i wasn't friends with her before now. my polymates @Rafi and @Mystique are the two people who have been there for me during panic attacks and bpd meltdowns and i can't say enough good things about them. i don't even know what my parents would say if i told them y'all were the people who defended me and said i didn't deserve it when i got death and mutilation threats. kintsugi is so important to me and to have it this disconnected from my family-self is really not... it's just not. right now it's a whole lotta no. the gears aren't slotting together correctly right now.
one of the things about parents is sometimes they have a thing they're just persistently wrong and dumb about, and they won't listen because you're the child, even if you're an adult. my dad is a conspiracy theorist. not wacko chemtrails stuff, but 'right wing puppetmasters orchestrate assassinations of moderate politicians' stuff. and sometimes he gets into a groove and he just has to talk it through yet again. it was really stressful to me before i figured out that i don't have to pretend to agree with him, or even respect his opinion on that topic. i got so fed up one time i was like "dad, can we play illuminati grabass some other time, i really wanted to tell you about this other thing" and he was just... cool with it. and now i treat it like this kind of fond joke, like yeah mom has a big smoochy kiss on tom baker and dad thinks wall street can not only find its own ass with both hands and a map but control public opinion. and they roll with it, because what else are they gonna do? i'm an adult. so idk how uptight or prideful your parents are, but if they're just fussers, you can kind of roll your eyes and go "yes, the friends are INSIDE THE COMPUTER, they're very tiny, i push sunflower seeds through the slots to feed them" or whatever. just like "do we have to have the 'people on the intertubes aren't real' convo again because i actually wanted to talk about my apartment hunt."
their opinion is also colored by: they saw my break and they saw how much internet socializing affected it. i gave my phone number to someone who used it to harass me and had to change my number. during my recovery they banned me from the computer and while i was at home during that time they kept a strict eye on it. i totally get where they're coming from, but they're just... out of touch. like, my dad legit thinks i can find a job through linkedin. and my mom seems to think i'm twelve and don't know basic internet safety. i'm just as bothered by the underlying message here: that i'm so fragile that someone else needs to be in control of my internet consumption, that i'm not healthy enough to make my own socialization choices, and that i'm broken for only having friends in the innertubes. i'm just going to focus on the fact that i did a really fucking good job hosting them during the visit if this was the main gripe they had. C:
if an internet harrasser can be real, why can't an internet friend be real? like... where do they think the words come from? do they think i am an AI? so weird. :P
branson is an inside joke in my family, we got a phone call from a telemarketer trying to lure us there and my dad's response was "why the hell would i go to branson" before hanging up. and for some reason my brother and i have both gone to meet up with people in seattle, but his was "legit" because he was meeting up with an elementary school friend whereas mine was "fake" because i was meeting up with an internet friend, so my family will also use "seattle" as a subtle, loaded dig. i will absolutely make cookies. and be your knitting slave, although you might have to teach me some stitches.
your parents are really, really weird about the internet. the more you talk about it the weirder it sounds. kind of 'the camera will steal my soul' levels of weird. D: btw you may already know this but there are 6 kintsugijin living within 2 miles of each other here, the northfield nakama are all in each other's pockets irl, we babysit each other's cats.
yeah this is the woman who wouldn't let me go to the mall by myself until i was 18, so, after i left for college. and i totally get being protective of me, especially when there's a concern right now that i'll relapse. but i'm 26 and i think i'm entitled to make my own (bad) choices, y'know? especially with evidence this weekend that not only am i capable of taking care of myself, but i'm capable of taking care of my parents when they're visiting. (i was so proud!) also someday i'm going to drive straight up I-35 and straight to you and i'll be there for like 2 weeks and then it'll turn into 2 months and 2 years and i'll never leaaaave
Oh man, that sounds even more draining than it did when you were talking about it before D: I'm really sorry you had to deal with that! Hmm, if you're looking for some validation, I'll probably make some words all over the place, because that's how I do. First off, the biggest thing bugging me is the idea that internet friends are less valid than off-internet friends. If we were in a similar geographic location, I'd absolutely want to hang out! Am I supposed to just ignore that because we clicked together over the internet? Sorry, pixels, I can't be your friend until we can meet up for drinks, oops. Why on earth would I want to waste a potential friendship just because that friendship can only really be expressed through a technological medium? Honestly, I get the impression that there's some harrumph harrumph new things aren't as good as TRADITIONAL things happening, but even that doesn't totally explain away why they're not getting it. Penpals used to be a huge thing, and people would make friends over plain pen-and-paper, snail-mail letters. It's not something that ever worked that well for me, because attention spans are something that happen to other people, but that is a Thing that has been around for ages. An online friendship is just as valid, much faster, and a lot more flexible. I almost get the impression that your parents would think we were closer to real friends if we talked on the phone instead of on social media, but even though I can use phones, they're exhausting and vocal processing is hard for long phone conversations. If my internet friends only could talk to me by voice, uh. I'd have a whole lot fewer internet friends. And I brought up some stuff before about how the internet can be a huge help for brainweird, because it makes it so much easier connect with people who understand what you're experiencing, and there's less of a... risk(?) than trying to bring it up in real life. But it's also great for coping with brainweird. If you're out of spoons for whatever reason, you can just shut your social media or lurk, you can communicate in a much more controlled manner, all kinds of good stuff. If you're trying to do the same thing in real life, like... I want to say the stakes are higher, but that isn't quite right. If you cancel on dinner with someone, you have to reach out and actively do the social thing at least enough to cancel. If you're not answering texts, some people get really worked up over why are you ignoring me what's wrong??? ? On here, even if someone tags you in a post or whatever, if you're not up for the interaction, you can just let it sit until you're good to go. It's a lot easier to do that sort of self-care online, and it's hard to do it in real life, unless you're keeping yourself held pretty separate from other people to begin with. Or, again, unless you've got people who grok brainweird, which is harder to find irl than on the internet. And to top it off, probably the biggest reason we weren't friends before was that I've got hella social anxiety and basically never do outreach, even online (and it's much worse in real life, I come off as... very cold, I think), soooo even disregarding geography, without the internet we probably wouldn't have become friends at all, and that would have been super lame. And man, that comment about 'it makes you look weak,' that bugs me. Really bugs me. I'm talking about me (because that's what I do best! :V ) because I can only really speak for my own experiences, but in real life? I don't look weak, I go to lots of measures to avoid looking weak, I look really frigging put-together because once things start unraveling, how am I going to hold things together? What if people notice, what if they say something, what if everyone can tell what a mess I am, etc., etc. I'm the kind of person who's going to have to pre-write a paper to give my eventual therapist because otherwise I'll lie to their face about how fine I am. And given all that, it's so, so, so nice to be able to go on the internet and tell people 'haha holy shit I am completely falling apart.' I'm only pretending to be okay in real life, if I didn't have some outlet for how not-okay I am, I would just fucking snap from the tension. I can't sustain that kind of lie, but if I didn't keep the totally-healthy-no-i-swear mask on in public, I couldn't function there either. The internet has been an unbelievable outlet, seriously. Also the 'won't be there for you' business? Boo. BOOOOOOO. Like... basic human compassion is a thing, just from the start. Today I offered a person on here (who I don't know on a personal level) thermodynamics help, even though that would mean digging out old textbooks for a subject I disliked and reteaching myself the material. Because, like. They needed help. I had the ability to give help. Why would I not do that? Or when I'd just chimed in to the complaints department thread, you and I were effectively strangers still, and I went off on an internet quest for you because you asked me something and I was able to go find things out and do some research and give you some peace of mind. Again, as strangers! And now you're one of My People, so here's hoping you don't need help anytime ever again, because at heart I'm a lazy bum :B (ps i laughed out loud at 'spock's my kissmyass,' i hope you're pleased with yourself <3< )
It is not that internet friends are unreal; but they are different. What the internet has done is made a type of friendship--friendship by correspondence--much more accessible to more people. Once upon a time, people could be friends for years only through letters. Your parents probably have friends they have not seen in person for years, but through the wonder of technology, speak to regularly on the telephone. Are those friends somehow unreal? Gonna go with, "no".
all of this really helps. i think sometimes it helps to just kind of laugh, ha ha, mom's being dumb! at the same time, there are some insidious beliefs under this that i want to tackle and i don't know how. in the meantime, thanks, everyone, for chiming in. i was having some major cognitive dissonance and it's a lot better if i can just shrug it off. i knew i'd need the rest of today to emotionally realign but i didn't know recalibrating would feel like this!
Parents can be real weird about the internet thing. I think of my mom as on the more reasonable side of things and she still got very fuss-meddly when I confessed I wanted to go on an epic roadtrip through the states and meet all these people I only know from the internet! But like... that's an ocean away from where she can take care of me and I've never been on a holiday all on my lonesome lol so it's definitly EXTREME. She has much less of a problem with me potentially meeting up with for example @WinkWonk or @littlemissCodeless or some of the folks in the UK because that's a couple hundred kilometers at most. I think epic kintsugi roadtrip she was mostly opposed to on grounds of finances (lol going overseas as a student with minimal disposable income YEA RIGHT). And because I can't actually drive. There is a lot of reasons why the roadtrip cannot work rn but i really wanna go and you would be DEFINITLY someone I'd wanna visit, @pixels
