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+--- Thread: I just wanted to say something (/showthread.php?tid=26954)
I just wanted to say something - Jiggly_333 - 10-26-2020
I do this too much, but whatever. Instead of trying to pass it off as media, I'm just gonna do this directly here on "discussion" so I don't have a media team person saying it's not media and won't get graded or whatever.
So tonight, I got a bit indignant about the stock market and casino shit in the league and how far away the league seems to be from its roots. I wanted to make a media post about it and how it "Avoids the real issues like harassment." But after a real long "Depressed Jiggly" rant, I just came to the point that I just still feel like shit over what happened back in March. And not just that, but how I felt treated in general for the course of about two years at that point across multiple leagues.
I wanted to write an indictment on people who I felt wronged by and still feel wronged by, but that's just dumb. It's gonna get memed to shit again and again. This will get memed to shit. But I still feel like I need to just explain how I feel, how I've felt, and I guess I'm going to name names at points when it feels appropriate at least. I don't know how this will be received and every single cell in my body says it will be received poorly, but I just feel like I should at least drop off all of these emotional weights at once so I can try to move on from that shit.
So, I know that I'm an annoying little shit. I've been annoying my entire life. When I was 10 or something like that I was diagnosed with high-functioning aspergers, which was later changed as an official definition to just "on the autism spectrum". Normally when people think of autism, they think of some kid who's abnormally quiet, but that's not really the actual picture of a lack of communication and social skill. I was a loud kid, I was annoying, I just did not understand any social cues from anyone because my brain just wasn't wired to that. I never made any real friends because I didn't know what "making friends" meant, I just knew that I hadn't done it. I would be put in classes all throughout junior high and high school that were specifically for "learning social skills" and I didn't even make friends within those groups. Either I'm incapable of making human connections with people or I am incapable of recognizing that I have. More likely, I just overstay my welcome, get annoying, and eventually my training of "negative social cues" kick in and I feel unwanted.
This feeling unwanted has just sort of developed over the years into depression, probably. It hasn't been diagnosed. I first thought that I had some sort of issue back in senior year of high school. I gathered up my courage to ask my parents if I could speak to a doctor or someone about it, but the only thing the doctor could really do was tell me to see a therapist. And I just never have because my parents said that if I needed help, I needed to be proactive about it. So that didn't help, since somehow my feelings of isolation started to become a self-fulfilling prophecy of me just not wanting to deal with new people. Except through the internet.
After this whole thing, I was brought into the brand fucking new NSFL. I immediately made internet friends with people. Because I had experience at high school where I could somehow have the visage of being friends with people while at school, but the moment I left I didn't have those people anymore. I didn't even have anyone's number that I could text. I had "friends" only from when the bus dropped me off to when I walked home. But with internet, I could be in that state of "psuedo-friends" all the time. It's constantly available to me, feeding some sort of para-social void that I have. Guys like JBear, TC, and the rest of the S1 Otters were amazing people. I felt like I had a place. That came incredibly in handy when I ended up going to community college later in the year and found myself now physically alone, wandering the halls on campus to pass the time because I had nowhere to be and no one to talk to.
Without the NSFL, I don't think I would've survived that first winter. I had lost a job that I really cared about, I had no real life friends that I could talk to and just hang out with, and I ended up starting to just stop going to some classes. That winter/spring semester I only ended up finishing a single class without dropping it and is the reason it took me three years to get a two year degree. It's not even like the NSFL as an entity was helpful, I was embroiled in the middle of the Chicago Blues bullshit and I think the darkest point of that incredibly dark period was after I got a message from slm telling me that I was fired from the Coyotes because "your players expressed concerns over your ability to be a GM".
But despite that, the NSFL introduced me to sim leagues in general. So while I was dealing with my life feeling incredibly bleak and in the NSFL I was getting beaten down (yes, by my own mistakes), I got some amount of comfort from the SHL where I was with the San Francisco Pride. And even in the NSFL, I felt comforted by Spector listening to me learn how to play guitar over discord VC. I hope I told him enough times how much that meant to me.
Sim leagues, despite my complete and utter lack of ability in them, became a welcoming and safe place for me. Even when we dealt with that shit with Archon, whenever I'd slip up, I never wanted to leave. I cared about the place and thought of it as my home, especially the NSFL. It was still my first league and I still thought of it as my main league. I wrote this big article called "Year One" where I talked about all the struggle I went through and how I felt better about everything and how much I loved the place. Then, I kinda just went into a bit of a radio silence period.
I remember that I wanted to write a "Year Two" article, but I didn't because just not enough happened that really mattered. I think that I'd just found a sort of groove and stuck with it. Like, the only significant thing I can really think of is that in either December of 2018 or January of 2019, TB introduced me to Bunny Girl Senpai and I had this sort of religious experience about anime, but that's not what I'm getting into. Or maybe it is. I think that it sorta proves just how much of an effect on my life sim leagues have had. I got into one of my favorite musicians of all time because of some off-handed comment about St Vincent and I found this massive passion for anime that I don't think I could've found on my own without the push and help of TB and Raven who gave me the greatest lead-in to anime (Bunny Girl, then Toradora, then Darling in the FranXX).
But things started to go south around that time. Maybe they did beforehand, but I think that I started getting worse and worse vibes after that. I remember that I had been pushed out of my PBE locker room because kolbe and slm didn't like that I retired my player when I'd given a full season's notice that I wasn't having fun and wanted to try something new. It went further than just simple "joking around" and just felt like genuine hate. Sure, that may not be the intent, but there's nothing in the rulebook about "intent" when it comes to a foul. I'd eventually message slm and put that issue to rest with him, but kolbe was an entirely different story.
After that, I started noticing more and more of people who just didn't like me. It's normal for people not to like me. As I said, I'm annoying and have no idea how to properly talk to people. I remember hearing multiple times from slm in gen chat that there were "some women in the league that don't like that you play as female characters." I knew of three women in the league at the time and I was pretty sure two of them were okay with me, since I worked close enough with them that it would've been a problem if they didn't like me. It sorta just left juosu as the odd one out and it made sense since she and slm are fairly close in terms of how often they're on teams together or in HO chat stuff together.
I constantly have to talk about my "female characters" thing and every time I have a different answer. At this point, I've started to just refer to myself as "gender fluid". I identify with the gender of the body I was born into, but if I don't have to be in my own body, then I don't have to identify as that gender. So whenever I'm able to create a persona to inhabit, I create one that is explicitly not myself and that almost always leads to just being a woman character. Maybe this comes out of body image issues, maybe it's something deeper. But I've always been up front about how willing I am to accept criticism about the way I portray my characters. And hearing that people had issues with it, but refused to tell me made me feel like shit.
To me, there's not much worse than having people hate me and refuse to give their reason. I was born with shitty social skills that were only made worse by social isolation at a young age. It's actually hard for me to figure out when I do something wrong, not because I believe that I'm perfect, but because I just have a dumb, under-developed brain that doesn't recognize this shit. And when I see that sort of resentment held by another person, I just feel like shit because it means that there's something wrong with me that I can't fix. And at some point that self-hatred gets twisted into hating others. To be honest, when I was first in the Otter's FO with Juosu, I had no problem with her and she didn't seem like she had a problem with me; but I've held onto this anger and hate against her for two years now after hearing the insinuation that she hated me without giving a good reason. And if she never had an issue with me, I just want to apologize. And if she did have a genuine issue with me, then I guess I'm justified but it doesn't make me feel any better.
Anyway, it's late, I don't have time to write all night and I still have a whole lot more to say about the Chicago Butchers shit. I call it the "Soviet Yunyun", but at this point I can't just joke about it anymore. I said it already, but I thought I was going to die back in March. If you remember the part in Guardians of the Galaxy (released six years ago, so whatever on spoilers) where Quill grabs the infinity stone and starts to essentially look like he's about to explode with all of the energy and pressure from holding the gem, that's how it felt. Just this pit of darkness that felt like it was sucking me in. All of my darkest emotions were running fucking wild. And all the while, I had to juggle everything myself. While we made decisions by consensus, I was the one doing the leg-work for the front office. So while I was having about a 72 hour continuous panic attack, I had to be a spokesperson to the rest of the league (didn't have to, but I wanted to make sure everyone understand what was happening), I had to communicate with the team itself who were going to be voting on this decision, I had to focus enough to readjust everything to the new guidelines that HO had given me to actually contact possible GMs, and then use my legendarily shitty negotiations skills to bring those GMs in under those new guidelines.
This is gonna be awkward to talk about, but I'm airing as much as I can right now, so I'll just get through it. Throughout the entire first half of the process, I tried to be in constant contact with Bex. I saw her as at least an internet friend. I don't hang out and talk in DMs with really anyone, but she seemed like a nice enough person that I tried talking to her. I'm annoying. I overstay my welcome all the time. But I thought she was cool with me. I never saw what she said about me in that major leak because apparently it was so vile that the worst person in world at that moment decided to take some time out to try to protect me from seeing what she said about me. But the moment I saw that she was dealing with shit, I didn't even know it had anything to do with me. I DMd her to see if she was okay and did my best to try to help her through what was obviously a really shit time for her. And even when she lied to me about whether or not she said anything about me, I told her that I forgave her out of principle because she at least came clean about it. I want to forgive people. But there are things that come to a certain point where I can't forgive people.
So while I was going through hell, all of this concentrated shit, what did she do? She told another HO member to tell me that I shouldn't talk to her anymore about the issue. It's a matter of integrity to stand up for those who stand up for you and if you can't, be up front about it. Explain the issue. After it was all over, almost a month after it happened, I DMd Bex an apology for how everything went down. I saw that I leaned too hard on her during the process and put her in a horribly awkward position and I apologized. I haven't heard anything from her since. Even in the draft streams that I was selected in, she seemed to avoid saying anything other than my name. No, "he's been around for a long time" or anything else that she said about everyone else. I sound like some sort of "nice guy", but it just goes back to the thing that I've said before. I can't handle having someone dislike me without giving me a plan of action to be better than that. That feeling of isolation from people just grows in me and further fuels any anxiety and self-hatred I have because I know something is wrong with me and I will never be a good enough person where I won't feel alone all the time.
But I guess to the original idea that I was going to write for media, I have no fucking clue how harassment gets enforced. I think that throughout the time of Bex rising to power, I constantly told her how important I thought cracking down on harassment was. She seemed to agree and honestly, my LR set me straight tonight by showing a couple of examples of how seriously her HO has taken harassment. I guess that my tired call for punishment just comes from a place of a personal feeling of injustice. I had felt this weird growing of just random insults being thrown at the Butchers, steelsound, and myself. Constant recycling of the same jokes. The thing with the internet and meme culture is that if you ask for the internet to stop doing a thing, they just do it more. And I expressed those concerns to Bex and when I pointed out how much shit I got, she went and even posted a thing in announcements about how everyone needed to be nice to eachother. I tried to put together a complete report of as much offensive shit I could find that people said about me, but then steelsound quit due to the insults that were getting thrown around and the whole incident happened. When I finally sent a finished report, updated with all of the shit that was said about me during the incident, nothing came of it. Not even someone telling me that they talked to those in the report or even just telling me to go away. Just nothing.
I guess that's why I'm so fucking belligerent about cracking down on harassment, because I believed that I was a victim. And who fucking cares if I am one or not, right? But I just want to hear something. I want to feel something. Something has to happen. Because my anxiety is the only thing keeping me awake right now. My anxiety is built on all the things that people don't say to me because either they're too polite or they think I should already have taken the hint. And this anxiety creates paranoia. And paranoia just makes me feel even more alone and isolated from everyone.
I don't want to hate anymore, but I just do. It's all I feel like I can do when I just feel this useless and hopeless.
The NSFL was my home. It "was". Now, I'm just a stranger. Walking through the halls of a school I left a long time ago, where the hallways seem smaller than they used to be and even the teachers I once knew have left. I'm not good with change, maybe that's another autism thing, maybe that's just a human thing. I update out of habit. I should leave. But I can't let go of a place that saved my life. I don't want it to be tainted beyond repair.
I don't think I have anything else left to say. I know that whenever I write some big emotional thing, like I always do way too often, that there's always people in the comments telling me that if I "need someone to talk to, I can talk to them." I already talk too much. I am constantly way too open about myself, my life, my emotional state. I don't need your sympathy. I just want you to know my feelings and sit with them. I just want people who hurt people to think about how they hurt them. I just want to find a way to reconcile with people that I might never otherwise get the courage to reconcile with. I already have people I talk to on the internet. TB can tell you about how often I just flood his DMs with scantily-clad anime girls attached to my constant anxieties about how I'll never do anything ever. I need real friends out in the real world at some point. I need to fix myself.
Anyway, that's all I have to say. I'm sorry I'm always like this.
RE: I just wanted to say something - Opera_Phantom - 10-26-2020
Jiggly, you really gotta start leaving things behind.
If you want to talk, hit me up on discord and i can trash the Fire for a good amount of time because everyone knows US football sucks. But you need to look forward instead of always thinking about what happened, and who said what, and who's the bad guy. The Chicago stuff is now a meme because it was an "exciting and strange" situation on the league and that's it. No need to keep coming back and explaining things over and over again.
About the harassment, if you feel wronged about anything, bring it up to HO every time. The fact that you feel Bex might be uninvolved with stuff does not mean that first, she really is and second that everyone else in HO is.
Just take this as nothing more than it is, a sim game where occasionally you go to discord and trash some people for in game related stuff.
RE: I just wanted to say something - Duilio05 - 10-26-2020
First this is very well written.
Second I am glad you feel comfortable in the team LR to voice ideas and feelings and interacting with us on the daily, sorry if I don't reply every time, but I do read everything in #hawk-nest.
For me personally, and for most people, after college it is has been harder to make friends, especially since I move to a new location every six months. Realizing that and accepting it is a hard scary reality thinking no one wants to spend time with you. Which I actually imagine is a major reason so many players stay with one team their entire career. Like irl sports, the team you're on feels like a type of family that no one wants to leave.
For some silly reason I still have ban & kick powers in Baltimore LR and I'm not afraid to use them if anyone is harassing you.
Cheers.