/culture/ - arts & literature

hello.

when I was a young child, I loved youtube. I subscribed to many channels. Most were comedy, some were news. smosh, fred, a lot of the big guys. some more esoteric people who I can't entirely remember, like this woman who sat at her desk and worked for a media company as a youtuber. eventually the company shut her channel down.

I stumbled upon one creator who I remember a great deal. her name was allofthetrash. I enjoyed her bizzare, low-res letsplays of unheard of cartridge games from the 70s and 80s. at some point I stopped watching the videos, and she eventually deleted her channel.

I still look for those videos, but have yet to find any.

as I grew older, I would find my way into internet communities. a chatroom in kingdom of loathing. the official forum for a web-based video game about forum trolls.

my favorite was the /r9k/ room in a mouse-themed multiplayer platforming game. edbye, oldliquids. lexie. funny people and a funny game.

but I always ended up getting banned or exiled from these communities. always eschewed. this pattern held strong through my teens. I don't think I was in control. It was autonomous.

I didn't go to high school. I went to community college. I had friends, and that let me think I was socially well-adjusted. But eventually I would use extreme political views would as a way of pushing them away.

at 20, I begin to attend a real university. one of my first nights there, I end up in a room full of freshmen. I think that maybe I am making friends, but retrospectively, I was a weird gay neckbeard. one mentions he's going to make pancakes in the morning and everyone in the room is invited. I give my number to him and I never hear from him again.

I do make some friends. what's worse, I begin to mean things to people and I don't even catch it. I assume I am unlovable, that people don't pay me much mind. This has an effect on my behavior. I am not mindful of my behavior because I assume no one thinks about me.

This isn't true.

I rush a fraternity, and get a bid. I am a pledge. I'm dropped two weeks later.

I move to another city and transfer to a different university. I rush the local chapter of the same fraternity. This time, I make it in.

I am happier, but I still don't understand that people actually want to get close to me. I do not let them in, because I am afraid to do so, and I assume they don't care anyway.

I fall in love. kind of. I'm hooking up with a guy in my fraternity. It is a bad idea. I develop romantic attachments to him, and I see this as a reason that we have to stop. because I assume he doesn't reciprocate them. but he does.

It was still a mistake. our relationship transitions from friends to something beyond friends. but we are never a thing. never official.

I search for allofthetrash. She's gone. She had a much wider body of work than I was ever aware of. I post on reddit looking for her. she sends me a message and tells me she is trying to stay gone. I delete my posts.


he says he loves me.

he wants to take me to a rave. He loves raves. I am very poor, and I get no help from my parents. he helps pay for the expenses for a new year's rave. days before the rave, I travel to his family home. he picks me up from the train stop and takes me to an outdoor mall. he holds my hand. kisses me, and he looks very happy with himself for doing so.

I enjoyed the rave.

A few months later, I push him away. I cannot handle my feelings, and I am constantly plagued with feelings of inadequacy.

Things get messy. He pulls me back in, and then he pushes me away. Things get messy.