Nice thread here. I'm not as well-known as most of the people who have posted in this thread, but I'll sling some words while I'm in the neighborhood. If you've ever wondered "who the shit is this soaper guy", now's a good chance to learn a thing or two. Note that this is more about the school/social aspect and less about the gender aspect, which doesn't apply enough to me for me to say anything on the matter that hasn't been said already. Alright, so it's less of
that and more of a quick "life story"... read it, skip it, put it in an email and forward it to your folks, it's all good.
Grade school was a pretty miserable experience for me. I was an academic genius compared to everyone around me, but the outsidership that came with that left me with a hefty helping of social ineptitude. Being gifted early on also gave me quite the ego, and that ended up hurting me big throughout the years. While children aren't renowned for their empathy, I was particularly deficient. I just couldn't fathom that people wouldn't want to be friends with a self-centered prick who thinks he's better than everyone else and whines when he doesn't get his way! I did manage to get a friendship going once in a while, but most of those got wrecked because my family moved a lot.
Between my freshman and sophomore years, two things happened. One is that we moved, and the other is that I got my own computer with internet access (before that, I'd used the family computer for my internet needs). Reading websites for my favorite games led me to various forums, where I got a golden opportunity to witness social interactions between people from around the world. You'd be amazed at how much someone can be helped by getting some insight into how others think. I saw people getting mocked, and then I saw myself in those people. It was like a big "how to be liked/not be liked" tutorial and I was taking notes as hard as I could.
After I thought I had the hang of things, I decided to start participating in a forum. That forum was at starmen.net, an Earthbound website that's still around today, though I no longer post there. Things went smoothly and it wasn't long before I was starting to get friendly with a few people. After a while, someone from the site started an IRC channel to discuss the still hot new game Super Smash Bros. Melee. Seeing the thread about, I decided to join this #melee and give it a try. #melee also still exists today, and I am currently the owner of that channel.
On the realer side of things, school was going... alright. I wasn't really ridiculed at this new school but I didn't blend in with any groups either. I sat at one of several lunch tables without a real pattern to it. I was "just there". Hey, that's an improvement over before! Some of my newly-acquired social acumen from the internet ended up being transferrable to real life, too, and I found myself starting to actually somewhat get along with people. Though I never got away from feeling like an outsider, I picked up a hat I can wear when I need to work the "respectable human being" job.
While real life was going alright, life online was going great. #melee slowly grew to a rather active small channel and I befriended just about everyone in there. We also had a healthy supply of trolls to keep things lively. Having been promoted to an operator pretty quickly after the channel was founded, I got some real experience in dealing with people here.
High school was nearing an end, and I was looking into colleges. My ambitions were high at first. However, I ended up settling for a smaller school. See, I was lucky enough to read about the cost of attending college before attending college, and to have a decent enough grasp on the value of money to know that spending so much on college is an idea that can turn out very, very bad. Anyway, time passed and so did I. High school was over with.
I graduated high school almost a decade ago. Today, I remain in regular contact with a grand total of
one person I knew before then. I'm still friends with maybe two or three of them (i.e. have their phone number or some way of contacting them). Everyone else is gone and/or forgotten.
Most of us in #melee at the time were fairly close in age. A few others among us had also graduated high school. We got the most brilliant idea: why not do a road trip and meet each other? What could possibly go wrong? After maybe a couple weeks of planning and scrounging up of money, a friend of mine (who I had invited to #melee some time before. same friend I'm still in touch with today btw) and I got in his truck and embarked on a trip around the eastern US to meet people we knew online. Nobody's parents were thrilled at the idea but we did it anyway. This turned out to be a magical experience. So many injokes were born that week. More importantly, I found out I could be the cool dude in real life that I was online and actually be fun to be with.
College went nicely. Most of the people I went to high school with either went to other colleges or went to the same one but took no classes with me, so it was as good as a totally new environment for me. Being in a dorm got me my first taste of living on my own, and being in classes with people who actually were somewhat like me gave me the launch pad I needed to blast off. Especially after the first year or so of "core classes" that everyone has to take, things got nice. While I'm not in contact with many of the people I went to college with, either (I do work with one, though), the experience was much better.
I have maintained friendships with the majority of people I met in #melee and visited on the road trip. We're still varying distances apart physically, but these are people I could be out of touch with for years and still be good friends with when we meet again by chance down the road. We've all become better people because of each other.
The self-centered prick is dead. He doesn't exist anymore. While there are still faint traces of the original design in the new model, the change has been nothing short of revolutionary and the world is glad it upgraded to the newer, better me.
I guess what I want to say to you through all of this is that you, too, shall die and be reborn as a new model with kung-fu action, adventuring in a world that has undergone a similar transformation. Nobody knows when it'll happen or how instant or gradual it will be. But you are not the same person you will be in a few years, and you're
even notter the same person you'll be after that.
Shit's still going to suck while you're in high school. Endure it. Things will get better. Part of what drove me to write this is that I see some of myself in you, and I know how I came out. If things go even halfway as well for you as they did for me, you'll be sitting pretty soon enough. Sitting pretty in your own chair, on your own terms.
Just remember to put on your hat before walking into the rain.
yyyyyyyyyep, this post is every bit as messy as any other longish post I make. If things seem messy or out of order, sorry about that. My stream of consciousness is less a stream and more one of those
vortex fountain things. There's surely stuff I could edit into this post to make it flow better but it's long enough already.