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Contemptful Condescension
2 years ago
I've been speaking my mind here more often, trying to share more of my experiences and reflections on my time as a furry toon & kink artist, and in general reveal more about who and what I am or believe myself to be. And I've started making this effort to hopefully connect with my audience better and nurture within myself a better relationship with my audience.
Because I have frustratingly always had a great deal of contempt for my followers. I'm ashamed to say. And I couldn't even ever give anybody a good reason why I've found myself regularly feeling that way, but I've begun to believe that my personal perceptions of my relationship with my audience combined with my tendency to not communicate much of anything about myself have muddied my judgement. So I hope that by talking about this it will help expand my understanding. And even more hopefully, maybe it might help someone else sort their thoughts and feelings out? Big wishes.
A few days ago I mentioned being mentally ill, though I wasn't exactly clear what I mean by that; I have Depression and Anxiety. But I mean, who doesn't nowadays, am I right? I might be Manic Depressive, though in all of my times being diagnosed and working with professionals, Depression, Anxiety, and High Functioning Autism are what I've been judged to be. (Not counting HFA as a mental illness, to be clear!)
Naturally having these mental qualities has made navigating social experiences confusing, frustrating, and in the past often at times: volatile. Like so very many people in the digital era, I struggled mightily with communicating and understanding online relationships, let alone being somewhat of a public figure as an artist. Not having terribly many friendships with people in person wasn't a great combination with those complex concepts.
Often times I found myself feeling terribly lonely, deeply untrusting of the security in relationships with people online, and the security of my place as an artist. At times I often confused the two, and hurt myself and others in the chaotic stream of negative emotions and complex experiences I could scarcely comprehend most of the time.But I wasn't alone, at least not as much as I thought, and not all of my relationships were as insecure as I'd convinced myself to believe. Though, that self-deception lead to destroying stability in relationships, if not the relationships themselves, in the past expressed as rebranding myself with different names, or just deleting my entire galleries.
So, as I've aged and experienced more, but continued to do mostly the same things, I've discovered that I'd created a nasty coping mechanism: Contemptful Condescension. I started to devalue the very people who interacted with me and my art if they didn't fit exactly what I'd wanted. And as a self-isolating, anxious and depressed idiot, "exactly what I'd wanted" was almost always going to be unreasonable in some manner, and more importantly it would be enforced in an unreasonable manner. And that enforcement created a positive feedback loop of negative, contemptful and condescending thoughts and feelings towards the very people who celebrated the art I created.
I would describe the experience as...surrounding myself with extremely thick, warped glass all around me, and being upset and mad at ANYBODY outside of my glass walls who didn't "Look right to me." Naturally, as the loner loser I'd lived most of my life as, I was an incredibly apt and discerning judge of character. Nah, I lie, I sucked at it completely, and I lied to myself all of the time about my judgements of others because I was that self-interested in defending myself and my feelings.
The coping mechanism had fully circled around into something akin to a hugbox mentality, where I was so self-absorbed with believing the lies I would tell myself to "protect myself" that I'd developed an obsession with my image and how I wanted people to treat and see me. Instead of focusing on what I want to do to create and entertain, I was investing my energy into feeding an illness I'd created for myself. Then, at some point I noticed I'd lost a tremendous sense of my appreciation for my audience, and observed that I was beginning to believe that just about everyone sucked and wasn't good for me.
And that's....that's just not right, it isn't how I should look at people who have given my life so much goodness; all because I shared my silly little pictures and wanted to draw things for folks every now and then. Treating and viewing my audience that way has made me terribly incompetent at taking myself seriously as an online artist, and it's long overdue that I shatter that mental glass cage I put myself in and started truly acknowledging that I've been surrounded by goodness all along, even in all of the weird forms goodness comes in. So thank you, everyone.
Thank you for reading this.
If you've had a a personal experience with becoming contemptful towards your audience, I'd like it if you shared it here. Because I believe everybody is vulnerable to this type of mental trap, some more than others. And I really do hope that by talking about this that I, and hopefully others, will have an easier time overcoming it.
Because I have frustratingly always had a great deal of contempt for my followers. I'm ashamed to say. And I couldn't even ever give anybody a good reason why I've found myself regularly feeling that way, but I've begun to believe that my personal perceptions of my relationship with my audience combined with my tendency to not communicate much of anything about myself have muddied my judgement. So I hope that by talking about this it will help expand my understanding. And even more hopefully, maybe it might help someone else sort their thoughts and feelings out? Big wishes.
A few days ago I mentioned being mentally ill, though I wasn't exactly clear what I mean by that; I have Depression and Anxiety. But I mean, who doesn't nowadays, am I right? I might be Manic Depressive, though in all of my times being diagnosed and working with professionals, Depression, Anxiety, and High Functioning Autism are what I've been judged to be. (Not counting HFA as a mental illness, to be clear!)
Naturally having these mental qualities has made navigating social experiences confusing, frustrating, and in the past often at times: volatile. Like so very many people in the digital era, I struggled mightily with communicating and understanding online relationships, let alone being somewhat of a public figure as an artist. Not having terribly many friendships with people in person wasn't a great combination with those complex concepts.
Often times I found myself feeling terribly lonely, deeply untrusting of the security in relationships with people online, and the security of my place as an artist. At times I often confused the two, and hurt myself and others in the chaotic stream of negative emotions and complex experiences I could scarcely comprehend most of the time.But I wasn't alone, at least not as much as I thought, and not all of my relationships were as insecure as I'd convinced myself to believe. Though, that self-deception lead to destroying stability in relationships, if not the relationships themselves, in the past expressed as rebranding myself with different names, or just deleting my entire galleries.
So, as I've aged and experienced more, but continued to do mostly the same things, I've discovered that I'd created a nasty coping mechanism: Contemptful Condescension. I started to devalue the very people who interacted with me and my art if they didn't fit exactly what I'd wanted. And as a self-isolating, anxious and depressed idiot, "exactly what I'd wanted" was almost always going to be unreasonable in some manner, and more importantly it would be enforced in an unreasonable manner. And that enforcement created a positive feedback loop of negative, contemptful and condescending thoughts and feelings towards the very people who celebrated the art I created.
I would describe the experience as...surrounding myself with extremely thick, warped glass all around me, and being upset and mad at ANYBODY outside of my glass walls who didn't "Look right to me." Naturally, as the loner loser I'd lived most of my life as, I was an incredibly apt and discerning judge of character. Nah, I lie, I sucked at it completely, and I lied to myself all of the time about my judgements of others because I was that self-interested in defending myself and my feelings.
The coping mechanism had fully circled around into something akin to a hugbox mentality, where I was so self-absorbed with believing the lies I would tell myself to "protect myself" that I'd developed an obsession with my image and how I wanted people to treat and see me. Instead of focusing on what I want to do to create and entertain, I was investing my energy into feeding an illness I'd created for myself. Then, at some point I noticed I'd lost a tremendous sense of my appreciation for my audience, and observed that I was beginning to believe that just about everyone sucked and wasn't good for me.
And that's....that's just not right, it isn't how I should look at people who have given my life so much goodness; all because I shared my silly little pictures and wanted to draw things for folks every now and then. Treating and viewing my audience that way has made me terribly incompetent at taking myself seriously as an online artist, and it's long overdue that I shatter that mental glass cage I put myself in and started truly acknowledging that I've been surrounded by goodness all along, even in all of the weird forms goodness comes in. So thank you, everyone.
Thank you for reading this.
If you've had a a personal experience with becoming contemptful towards your audience, I'd like it if you shared it here. Because I believe everybody is vulnerable to this type of mental trap, some more than others. And I really do hope that by talking about this that I, and hopefully others, will have an easier time overcoming it.
I know that for me, I viewed the gesture as having little value, but others could still find value and give weight to the gestures, they can be tremendously meaningful. And to be honest, I personally had a tough time beginning to understand just how overwhelming it can be for someone to be given so much energy. All this is to say, the simple fact that the relationships I'd established with that kind of mindset were so innately slanted because of my attitude that interacting with each other became a guessing game in some cases of just how valued my interactions were with others, both from my side and theirs. How much of me was I giving to a person, and how much did they want? How much did they care for or value? How much did I? It was all up in the air because I neglected to attempt to acknowledge the true nature and value of my actions.
Even if I never managed to articulate those questions and feelings into words in my mind, I certainly felt the weight of them bearing on me, trying to get out and tearing me apart from the inside of they couldn't. And the practice of neglecting them only silenced them further. It took help from alot of good people, and alot of stupid mistakes on my part, to even begin salvaging the right attitude after several years of dragging myself around like I was garbage.
I still struggle with truly valuing myself as an artist when I seem to always try to position myself at the mercy of my audience, like some desperate clown trying to beg to be let on stage in his own theatre. It's pretty ridiculous, don't ya think?
The best we can do is try our best to push forward, learn how to manage these emotions and feelings, and to find that balance between caring for ourselves and our audience.
It's not fun and not fair for everyone. But it's a reoccurring feeling for some folks to have. All we can do it recognize it and neutralize it the best we can.
But, I tend to believe that because I've often completely lacked that kind of attitude. ^^; So I have a bias perspective, perhaps. I don't believe skill and ability mean much of anything at all when viewing art once an artist becomes proficient in the bare basics. Skill and ability are merely tools, I believe.
I think I'm a greatly skilled artist, but I don't believe that has much value when it comes to being an artist and maintaining a growing relationship with an audience, unless you're lucky or talented as heck, or both. I've personally found that because they are tools, as someone who once singularly prided myself around my skill and ability, I often found myself being exactly nothing but that: a tool. A valued tool, but a tool for purposes only. And....Maybe that made me continue to have a bad attitude about things, which could've contributed to alot of the awful, terrible decisions and mistakes I've made in my time in the fandom. Because I leaned into the role, beginning to believe it was the only hope for value I had left, back in 2017~2018 when I started my first patreon surrounding kink porn. It wasn't the dream, or the wish I'd made for myself when I chose art as my path. I'd lost my way in choosing to be a fetish tool, and allowed myself to be molded and re-oriented throughout time. I'd hated what I'd done to myself, who I chose to become, and even worse: I especially hated the people I'd encountered in my life, who did nothing but encourage me, believing me to have had it together when I was just terribly lost, trying to find my way.
And when I felt like that, it became terribly easy to obsessively gaze at the peers who'd soared far above me, despite my perceived sense of skill, that I couldn't see I was drowning in myself, having left so much about what I was really doing with myself unorganized, un-assimilated, misunderstood like a tangled mess I dragged around everywhere. And I believe everybody I ever met could feel it, even if they couldn't say so. And I think that just...comes out in subtle ways.
Skill isn't enough. The right attitude really matters. And sometimes, some people are born and grow into shining stars, because they're lucky, and learned how to get it right with the opportunities their luck got them. And I never got the right attitude for so long, because I neglected to even take a serious look at what I was doing, why, and what I truly could reasonably expect from it, and what I genuinely wanted from it.
People with the right spirit who simply want to create good experiences for others and share them with people tend to go celebrated, is what I believe. Because that spirit resonates in every single tiny action. That's just me, though.
- Comes over to yours and sees this journal.
- Reads the whole thing and the relevant comments. (which took me a while in my current state of being.)
I'M the one who's been on a journey? :/
Yeah I been through some stuff, still definitely am not out of the wonderland rabbit hole yet, but it probably sounds like a cakewalk if you've been having these feelings. I've tried doing a write-up a few times today and threw it all out, it just doesn't feel right venting all this crap in someone else's journal.
The short: Yes I've been there. I'm trying my best to get rid of these "contempt" feelings towards certain members of my audience or friend groups and I don't quite think I'm succeeding yet. I'm trying to convince myself that I'm working for ME, making the decisions for what I want to do, and I can't escape the feeling that everyone I know hates my guts for it or wished I would do their stuff instead or just do things differently. And I'm starting to hate back.
(Btw, I genuinely do not remember the comment you were talking about on my page or if it had any relevance here. Despite what I just said I wouldn't have any hard feelings about it anyway. I was more egotist then I let onto people back then, I probably deserved it.)
I feel like I've been in a similar place, where focusing on myself and feeling convinced that I was finally focusing on myself was also simultaneously placing me in a position of being hated or disliked by my friends/audience. It's a tragic place to find oneself, torn between expectations(real and imagined) and self-affirming action. I think I had the worst experience with that feeling when I swapped from a toony art style to mangaka/anime inspired for half a year and then got mad at everyone who stopped liking my art, not understanding that not everyone who talked to me about my art was what I believed to be a good friend.
I still struggle with that feeling, knowing I'm changing my direction quite willfully, changing what my audience should come to expect from me and changing what I'm inspired to draw at the core of my being.
Honestly, the only thing I've found that has repeatedly kept me hopeful and optimistic about truly focusing on changing myself for the betterment of myself and only myself and the absolute most trusted friends is the acknowledgement that, despite all the awful experiences I've accrued in my life, most of the goodness in it came from me sharing my art anyway. So I just try to have faith that the people who will like my art, and who I will like, will come to me. But...I also believe that sometimes I just won't like, or understand the form in which "people who like my work" come to me. And I've found out...that's okay. I can just pay attention to the ones who feel more akin to my interests and flavor of expression.
I think dwelling on acknowledged contemptful interactions is a useful, but aggravating process, the feeling has its purposes after all. I certainly wouldn't trust anybody who seemingly lacked the ability to even acknowledge a hint of disdain within themselves. But likewise, some few folks shouldn't trust me, because I'm so vulnerable to such feelings, which is ok.
I certainly have an ingrained sense of contempt for a type of people, after encountering many boxes others(and select ex-commissioners) have tried to nudge or push me into, as well as willingly parading into others' boxes with fanfare and flair, only to realize that I now had an equal or greater deal of contempt to deal towards myself for having done that whole song and dance into their boxes, both real and imagined. The willful abandonment of self in hopes to achieve that feeling of belonging is a cripplingly contemptful experience for all involved when done with all the wrong people.
Anything more I want to say about this would be better left to a comic involving a pathetic goat, though.
It was a delightful surprise to receive your feedback, thank you.