November 23rd 2022
I'm Listening to: Are You An Echo - Asterian Synth V Demo song - nostraightanswer
I'm feeling: conflicted.
I'm playing/watching: minecraft
if you told me a few years back i was gonna revive @single-malt-scotch and not drop it in a week and enjoy it genuinely i would have never imagined it. as much as i consume "cringe" content and enjoy things like hot wheels or barbie unironically, there has been a strangely complicated relationship between me and mcyt- for those who have only followed this blog (and even the one i had before this) youd have no idea i was incredibly involved with and enjoyed the old mcyt smp, mindcrack. after my early fandoms in 2010-2012 mindcrack was my thing, for years (the url of that side blog was what i used to have).
no matter how much i try to throw out the disclaimer "if you remember my mcyt days understand i was a teen and im not a weirdo about these people", the reason i even detached further and further over time wasn't purely that i fell out of it (i did, the server started to dwindle) but the.... shame in never wanting to look back at those days came from the automatic association people gained about mcyt over time, and tumblr's rampant witch hunting culture over calling people out for liking "problematic things".
should be said im talking about this shame and callout culture in the context of 2015 tumblr- to now. i was 16 and that stuff was ingrained in my head. it ruined my consumption and joy for media for years. i liked a lot of stuff without problem but i liked them all with intense, fear filled awareness to not unknowingly be ~bad~ but just touching something people could deem problematic. the moment i registered that my behavior as a 13 year old was "bad" bc i wrote mcyt fanfics was the moment i closed off all of that past and decided it was bad, and i was bad, and i could never ever look at it the same way again.
even as i stayed subbed to some of those people out of not wanting to let go of subs i made almost ten years ago- there was no way i was every going back i thought. i looked at mcyt fandom stuff and cringed, and that increased when the distaste of dreamsmp arose-- which ever valid to dislike dream, the wave of cringe culture over dreamsmp and the general concept of mc smps only furthered my shame in the last years. i was told even more in the present now, that mcyt fandom is Bad because its all weird people shipping real people and its strange and youre obviously bad for associating in any form at all. nuance in enjoying gamers on youtube was suddenly lost. even in that period of dsmp getting popular, i couldnt imagine myself getting to this point again, it really was so engrained in me to never consider mcyt a point of joy for myself, when my inability to do so was always tied to shame.
it sounds silly-- but applying this to a broader range of interests? it doesnt matter if im talking about mcyt or something else. it was so hard for me to decide in my head that there was nothing morally egregious about watching people play fucking minecraft on youtube. even if i draw fan art. even if i indulge in the characters they in a way that isnt strange or crossing their personal boundaries. im not sure what happened to make people decide "mcyt" was a watch all for the Worst of the bad examples for people within such a large community but the moment that happened it made it so hard to feel like i was allowed to like this. i made my existing sideblog in the early summer and i didnt say anything about it. i had it for months and i said nothing.
i slide away to enjoy this in peace. and im glad i did in the sense i took away any stressors of just posting straight to my main with little time to decide my feelings. but through the last months i have on and off added it to my pinned post. added it because fuck it, took it down because anxiety. back up, i have nothing to lose.... back down because i saw some post that made me feel bad again.
i am tired of it. the effect of early tumblr culture stress hangs over me even still and it fucking sucks. ive sat here drawing stuff for months on this sideblog unable to tie it to my name for reasons that dont even make sense, out of fear of a reaction from people id never regard or listen to in the first place. that being said im keeping that blog, its on my pinned, im queueing the art to post here whenever i share it, and taking all my old DA art out of storage was a big one to covercome as it uplocked all my old mcyt art to the public again even stuff i felt the most shame for-- by no means was this fandom what it was when i enjoyed it with 30 other people on tumblr 10 years ago... but im finding joy in this again, and my heart swells for every old mutual i see again and im not denying myself that anymore.
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