Protect Thyself (The Renown Margin)

So I'm trying something a little different here.

I'm writing two posts about the same thing. Not a two-part post (I do those all the time), but rather a two-facet analysis of the same event. One is this one: a pitfall of attention which those on the margins of fame (or further in) should navigate carefully, and the other: a NOT Writing About Writing "navel gazing" post about the same situation and how I'm dealing with it.

Remember, I'm not famous, but parts of my life have juuuuuuust started to bend that way, and so I write about it.

I've written before about the intense attention that can come from maintaining a high public profile. Sometimes that attention is even sexual or romantic. But it can also be extremely mercurial. People don't like me because they like ME. They like me because they have projected things onto me. (They also sometimes DON'T like me because they have projected negative things onto me, but that's a whole other foxhunt.) And that affection and attention can disappear instantly for any number of reasons.

I can't tell other people how to be moral agents with whatever fame (or in my case vestiges of proto-fame) the universe has bestowed them. I've heard of famous actors and musicians who treat their enamored fans like absolute shit––demanding "nudes or GTFO" or other tactics to "haze" them. That just seems like a particularly craven way of looking at the complexity of that power dynamic.

For me, it's very important to protect people who might be approaching me as if I'm on a pedestal or may have a harder time with boundaries because of the power differential. Which is a complicated way of saying I try really hard not to take advantage of fans. (The "groupie threesome" jokes were fine and well when I was profoundly unknown and they were patently absurd, but you'll notice a dramatic phasing out once it was less of a joke.) From their point of view, they're taking the entire chance of rejection to do the reaching out in the first place. I try to keep that in mind.

They may be in a vulnerable position and reaching out to someone they have sort of created in their mind. They may be trying to ameliorate some sort of pain with someone they think is kind of "safe." They may be caught in a feedback loop with finding polite-but-non-flirty attention wonderful and feel that they need to "up the stakes" to keep it going. There are a lot of reasons to be careful and not exploit that power dynamic. It's important to get to know people for a good long while and let a human rapport develop independently of some sort of fan/artist-entertainer dynamic.

It's been a learning curve dealing with the beginnings of quasi proto-fame, but I've started to realize that there's another set of feelings I wasn't taking into account.

Mine.

One of the frailties I have as a writer is an inkling of understanding of just how powerful words are, and a sadly insufficient skill to wield that power quite the way I want to. I'm fairly certain we only need to take off one sock to count those writers who ever REALLY could (at least in any given language). The rest of us are forever apprentices and never masters. But the power of words is undeniable––the sheer force they are capable of exerting. And a skilled wordsmith can forge and bend and shape ideas until they are nearly perfect.

There's more to crafting a kind of enduring cultural narrative than a perfect wording, of course, or Jonathan Edwards would have successfully caused many more to give up The Great Awakening and returned to 18th-century Protestant ethics after reading Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God. Repetition is important. Cultural reinforcement is important. Seeing it everywhere is important. 

But there's still this part of me that does believe, at least in theory, that I if could just word things...perfectly, I could change the world. Alter perceptions. And of course change people's perceptions about me and affect their emotions profoundly. This alone can make me particularly vulnerable to people who say, "I love your writing," and PARTICULARLY, ESPECIALLY vulnerable to people who say, "Your writing has made me love YOU."  

Because that's sort of the dream, isn't it. To be like, a not-creepy, good-guy version of Wormtongue. (Maybe named Adroittongue––which could be awesome in more than one way.)

And you have to be very, very careful when someone cute as fuck with goo-goo eyes walks up to you saying just exactly, precisely what you want to hear about your writing. Even "Maybe we should get to know each other first," might not be quite enough protection.

I think all artists and entertainers and people in the public eye with a higher profile have to be a little extra careful when they get exactly that kind of adulation and uncritical attention. It feels good. But we're not just protecting the other person from power differentials and their perfunctory impressions of our faults and the sometimes unexamined wants and needs. 

We're also protecting ourselves. 

These folks might be crushing badly, but have a life that just can't handle you in it, and they really just want the validation of knowing they COULD. They aren't going to bother to stop and think if they SHOULD, until they reach a point where the issue is forced. They might want to know they're still desirable because it's been a dry spell, or their partner is distant. They may find you beguiling until you start to move and talk like an actual flaw-ridden human instead of the paragon they imagined you were. They may find you enchanting in a fantasy way, but there is someone "real" who they'd rather be with, and the minute that is a possibility, they turn away. They might just be extra thirsty because your selfie game is totally on point, but the chemistry test goes badly. They may even simply get distracted (or perhaps YOU were the distraction) and fade away because they never completely saw you as a human being with feelings that little ol' THEY could hurt. 

They may be using YOU. 

Things like this happen to everyone. It's life. You move on. Sometimes they're just not that into you. Sometimes you're the "safety crush," and they get accepted by their "reach crush." Sometimes things change. Sometimes someone doesn't look in the mirror and tell themselves, "This is a bad idea" until they're right on the edge of not being able to take it back. And I've had relationships that started exactly this way go on for years (and are still going) and that ended in a way completely unrelated to pedestals, and fame and whatever else.

But if you're managing some level of fame, you might find this sort of interaction happening not so much as a "Hey, that's life," pace, but more like a couple of times a month. That's just because you are in a position of high exposure (and possibly vulnerability) to it. And you're going to have to learn to deal with it if you don't want to shrivel up and hate everyone who ever sends you an e-mail that they think you're great, with an offer to maybe get a cup of coffee some day. 

I came up with my own way to navigate these moments, but whatever you do, be sure and consider your own feelings in these interactions as well as the other person's. 

11 Reasons Fame Probably Doesn't Look Like You Think (The Renown Margin) Part 3

Link Back to Part 2

or 

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8- It can actually be a little lonely sometimes.  

If you have this idea that fame means people are swimming in friends and always have a jet-setting plan, it's probably wrong. If anything, I've found I have fewer people who are close. Some of that is on me. I'm not healthy about my work/life balance, and I go up to eleven in being introverted, but these things have been true for most of my adult life. What I've noticed is that I kind of grow apart from people at a pretty normal pace, but it has gotten even harder to make new connections. Many of the folks I meet through my work or my online persona are flightier and flakier. (More prone to bail on the entire friendship over a single issue of disagreement or simply tethered so much to social media that something like a "break from Facebook" means we never really see each other again.) Which, of course, makes me more cynical and guarded for my own protection and well-being, which can lead to MORE flighty and flaky people. And the end result is that I actually trusted people more (and trusted MORE people) before I started to make a public name for myself.

The longer I'm "famous" (god, I hate using that word for whatever the heck quasi, proto, not-really famous it is that I am *scratches teeth some more*).

There's this weird phenomenon that happens when people enter my orbit. MOST people don't want to bother me. They are acutely aware of my space and time, are worried that they're being an imposition into it, and leave me alone out of respect. They are kind, polite, and considerate, and assume I'm constantly too busy. Which of course, I generally am if I'm writing, but definitely not all the time, and more so because most people don't want to bother me....

Then there's this other group. People who have far less regard for my time, are impolite, inconsiderate, maybe a little entitled but always disrespectful. They kind of demand time and energy from me ("Hey, I know you just told me that you're doing your writing from 8-12, but just one quick question...."). They show up like Columbo. ("If I could just have one more moment of your time....") They fill my chat with mammothian paragraphs about childhood traumas or ongoing life events. They ask me REALLY personal questions. They jump past "Hey, can we flirt a bit online" and jump right to an explicit fantasy or skip the part where they get my consent before sending me an unsolicited sexual photo. More than a few (probably thinking they are being complimentary and cute) tell me that I am adorable and they are going to marry me. (Can we start with dinner, please?) Unless I'm rude as fuck, they don't get the hint. Sometimes when I finally am rude, they get pissed off and call me names, threatening to use their considerable social clout to destroy me. It's all very unpleasant.

And therein lies one of the shittiest parts of the whole thing. "Fame" (such as it is) creates a paradox in the world of folks who are willing to approach me. I get a lot of attention from exactly the wrong kind of people, and I am left at a respectful distance by exactly the sort of people I would love to be closer to. It becomes harder and requires more effort to nurture the seeds of good relationships and see that they aren't crowded out by folks I'm less interested in.

There are, of course, some remarkable exceptions. They approach timidly, check in early and often, and are respectful, but are also clear that they want into my world. My cynicism shields are worn down. We find a rapport. I have made some wonderful friendships this way, and in one case an editor who spins my straw into gold.

I mean, as with any of these examples, I can't really speak for anyone with the kind of fame that makes a glamorous six-figure evening a feasible expense, but I have my suspicions. I very much doubt that the upper crust of famous folks wants to go out with the sorts of people who are willing to crowd them, treat them like they are consumables, and ask invasive questions. Probably they'd rather have their real peeps there, and those get harder and harder to find.

Sure, their lives look a little glitzy if you check out their Instagram feeds. But that can be a lot of smoke and mirrors. You know, I get invited to things too. I have talks and trips and end up at a rave once in a blue moon or on a boat dressed up and surrounded by people who are looking mighty dapper. I have clients that have me driving for sixteen hours and changing diapers all over Disneyland so that they can enjoy a little mini-vacation with their kids, but if I just post the pictures of me on Hyperspace Mountain, it looks like I'm frolicking off for yet another weekend of merriment. Multiply my income by a factor of ten (and toss in some extroversion) and I'd probably have a pretty jumping Instagram feed too. But it's just the highlight reel. Plucking out the parts where I'm changing a diaper while a five-year-old cries that the Fast Pass on Splash Mountain has another hour or when I'm feeling sick in the hotel from dehydration makes me look like I have a pretty exciting life. But don't be fooled! My day-to-day existence is quiet and I watch a lot of Netflix in bed alone at 8pm on weekend nights. So I'm not sure a rockabilly Instagram really proves that fame means friends or partners or anything.


9- The people that become truly fascinated by me are usually not what you might imagine.

This one's going to be long because it's actually like FIVE bullet points in one.

Do you know this scene? The statuesque brunette approaches confidently. Eye contact never wavers. "I like your work. This may seem forward, Mr. Famousdude, but this is my room key. If you want no questions, no strings, no attachments, come in twenty minutes and I'll show you JUST how much I really....(a dramatic pause)...appreciate your work."

Ha. Yeah, I saw that movie too. That bullshit is right up there with "Nice shoes...."

I mean, I'm not Jon Scalzi, so maybe he and Stephen King have to sift through all the goddamned room keys that have been shoved into their pockets to find the one for their OWN room every time they want to take a fucking nap, but somehow I kind of doubt it.

There definitely are people who get fixated on me, but that's really not what they act like. It does happen that suddenly I'm getting lots of attention. But it's probably not what you think. Usually it's a little dehumanizing and a lot of projection.

They tend to fall into a few different categories:

Category 1- My nemeses.

So there was this guy I knew, about twenty years ago. And I guess he felt like we were in competition about a lot of stuff because we both wanted to be writers. He got really upset that I was going to be the prince in a vampire game instead of him. Anyway he sort of said, "We shall never be friends again!" all official like, after I implied that I thought the US intelligence community knew more about 9-11 than it had let on (which turned out to be exactly the case). And I didn't think much about him after that, until he approached me––well beelined towards me as soon as he saw me is really more like it––at a mutual friend's wake to ask how my writing was going. I told him that after an unsatisfying attempt to clean up a novel, I was doing an undergrad writing program and was about 2/3 through it. He quickly made sure I knew HE was much more successful than me and that HE had been making money writing for quite some time. He even scoffed. Like, the honest-to-god throat noise people make on TV when closed captioning reads, "(scoffs)". And then he was off again. Having fulfilled whatever fantasy he replayed over and over in the shower, he immediately left and spent the rest of the wake ignoring me. His "neener neener" moment was done, so he had no more use for protracted contact. I realized then that he had been thinking about me a LOT more than I ever did about him (and honestly, I hope he found some kind of catharsis in trying to rub my face in his writing career because it's not good to bottle that shit in). Since then, what few times our paths have crossed, he's done that power move "I-do-not-see-you" thing, so I guess I'm still his nemesis.

That was before I was quasi-famous, but I think a lot about that wake and how I realized he was obsessing about me way more than I even remembered he existed. I sort of discover this happens from time to time. ("Do you remember me Mister The Writing About Writing Guy???" "Um....no.")

Some people who fixate on me do so because they have this idea that I represent something, or that have slighted them, or that I am a paragon of the left (or that I am a paragon of watered-down white-dude liberalism if they're to MY left), or that I need to be more neoliberal or more socialist or that I need to be more sensitive to the nuance of boomer white Christians who are not oppressive jerkwads. Or maybe they think that if they take me down a peg or three, they will elevate themselves, so they're constantly trying. Or maybe they think I am in desperate need of their contrary opinion. Or perhaps they took umbrage once (with whatever), and now everything I do now sucks. ("Look at this asshole! Putting milk on TOP of cereal like a fucking shitstain. Instead of pouring the cereal into the milk. Jesus fucking Christ, what a choadmonkey.") In a couple of cases, these were people trying to build their own social media reach and they just got so unbelievably pissed that I was gaining an audience with greater speed and success than they were (ironically, despite ignoring my advice when I gave it). In some way, I become kind of a symbol to them. And it's not a good symbol.

As you can imagine, this is not a great kind of attention to get. It may be obsessive and fixating like the statuesque brunette in the movies, but it is seldom pleasant. I remove such folks from my life whenever I find them, but it always rattles me to know that someone takes the time and energy to think I'm worth considering their archenemy. And I don't exactly get to debrief these folks, so I seldom know what their problem is. I just notice that suddenly they seem to have a lot of energy to give to hating me.

Category 2- The temporary balm.

Here's one that has happened a SHOCKING number of times, and gone down each time in almost exactly the same way: Someone pops into my life to say, "HEY THERE!" They've found me through my work and reach out at first for any number of reasons. They aren't rude or pushy. They treat consent as a vital ingredient instead of an afterthought. Something clicks somewhere along the line and there is some flirting or sometimes some much more direct intention declaration. They are exciting, engaging, attractive, and I'm a pretty normal person who likes being appreciated. I let them get to know me over a little bit of time (for reasons I'll talk about in Category 4). I learn a bit about them, they about me. There are some deeper conversations (often heavy on the emotional labor for me as they talk through some big stuff). Flirting becomes steamy. Feelings are admitted to. Intentions are exchanged. Perhaps a rendezvous is even planned.

Then they suddenly disappear from my life. Poof! Often, it's not a true ghosting*. They're still there. They will still say hi and tell me how their day went if I ask. But all talk of what was building is conspicuously avoided.

*Though sometimes it is.

It is usually a little while later that I connect the dots. Sometimes they just reached out because they were a little lonely or feeling a little insecure. Sometimes they're going through a breakup. Then a couple of weeks after the silent treatment started, I see a post where they've checked in with the person they were breaking up with. ("Third anniversary!") The little conflict with their husband they frequently talked about when we first met is suddenly going "Oh So Much Better" right before all the discussions of a meet-up go silent and all talk of being in a non-monogamous arrangement stops. Or I discover that they weren't quite as open and polyamorous as they first assured me they were, and their "actually-quite-jealous" boyfriend has discovered our correspondence. Or maybe they stop chatting with me all of a sudden, and then a month later let it slip that they've been in a relationship with someone local for about a month now....so, right around the time they stopped chatting with me.

The clues show up.

I realize what happened––that I was the source of a lot of self-esteem repair and emotional labor and that once things were better (perhaps even because of that self-esteem repair and emotional labor), I was kind of expendable. There wasn't a lot of honesty about what was really going on––and to be fair, in some cases it's entirely possible that the lacking honesty was SELF-honesty or that the buzzkill development really could not have been foreseen. Though certainly in some situations, there was conscious, willful deception. Of course, nobody "owes" me anything, and there's no single person I would ever point to and screech, "Hey, what about MEEEEEEEEEEE!" When this happens once in a while it isn't anyone's fault. It's just life. However, as a pattern that happens over and over, it hurts my feelings to just be the self-esteem spackle paste and emotional labor engine until someone is feeling better, and then be cast aside. I developed feelings for these people, got my heart a little broken, and it makes me that much more jaded and cynical about the next person who says, "HEY THERE!!"

Category 3- People who are frightening.

I'm not here to decide who is unwell and especially not why, but sometimes people step outside of the social contract so far that they frighten me. As someone with a higher profile than normal, I think that sometimes I'm the person who someone fixates on when they were going to fixate on something. But whatever happens, it can be alarming. Maybe I get an email from someone, with whom I've been quite casual until that moment, that has a shockingly explicit description of how much they want to have sex with me and what they would do, complete with unsolicited pictures. Or a friend on my Facebook suddenly starts chatting with me one day and talks about a marriage proposal that is "ha ha not real," but then the next message salvo talks about the dresses and the guest list and where we're going to live, and then I get thirty paragraphs of chat while I'm asleep and one of them is about how a post I wrote about semicolons (or something) was clearly a secret message in code that I was ambivalent about the marriage, and that they are calling off the wedding and washing their hands of our relationship completely. 

There have been death threats. One Muslim guy issued a fatwa on me.

These things frighten me. Whether it's high-key ignoring consent (which does not bode well for a "marriage" if one is keeping score, just FYI) or the thought that maybe I have an actual not-funny stalker, these things make me double-check the locks on the door and wonder if that green Civic is following me.

Category 4- Stars in the eyes

A lot of the people who think they like me actually like the fantasy image of me. They have a sense of some brush strokes because of my writing and sort of....fill in the blanks with stuff they want to see. It's not really me. And I have to be very careful when it seems like I'm dealing with someone who thinks I'm really great and have no flaws or is just gushing.

I'm just a person. I'm riddled with flaws just like everyone else. And I sometimes have to make sure these folks stay at arm's length for a bit while they learn that I can be a testy, delicate little shitweasel at the end of a long day, I suck at getting to sleep at a consistent time, I have worked hard to overcome poor boundaries but sometimes I slide back into bad habits and have a hard time saying no (but get resentful if I'm steamrolled instead of checked-in with), and I probably land on the wrong side of at least one thing they would mark as "Very Important" on a dating profile. Plus I'd be late to my own funeral, and when I'm tired and not paying attention, I leave my dirty socks wherever I was when I decided I was done wearing them.

Get me off of this pedestal, please.

A couple of years back I shelved my "groupie threesome jokes" here at Writing About Writing. Not because I lost interest in threesomes (oh PERISH the thought), but because the "groupie" thing that had been a complete absurd joke was becoming not-entirely-absurd, and there's a big ethical question in taking advantage of a power differential like that. I know some famous people do. (One of my friends has a story about being approached by Mike Myers's assistant––she refused but....damn.) And I'm not here to infantilize the agency of anyone with genuine, enthusiastic consent, but a lot of the time there's a little bit of squicky pressure being applied to someone who is so excited to be there that they might not feel comfortable saying no.

It can be a weird paradox to be on a pedestal. Such positive attention has a compelling side, but it also feels strange and uncomfortable and it gets old faster than you might think. It's not just for these folks' sake that I wait until they kind of KNOW me to let them in. It's for me as well. One of the worst things you can do to someone is fail to live up to their expectations, and if someone is projecting everything they like onto you, the real, unvarnished you is very likely to let them down eventually. And there can be all kinds of bad fallout when that rebounds onto the person being pedestaled just for being who they always were.

Category 5- Think of what he could do for me!

I've only seen this a couple of times, but I imagine it starts to get more and more common as numbers grow. People start to fixate on me because they think I am a gateway to something they want. I can get them followers or promote their work or they will raise their station by having a *COUGH* famous boyfriend or something. In some cases, it has been so explicit that people have sent me multiple requests a day to share something from their wall or provided me the exact wording they wanted for me to promote something. Sometimes this is coupled with intense personal interaction as well, as they try to sidle into my "ingratiated zone" as fast as they can. In one case someone all but explicitly asked me how far they would have to go to quid-pro-quo get some sort of regular promotion slot on my page. ("Whatever has a girl got to do to be your pet promotion project on your page?" was, I believe, the exact wording. Not exactly subtle.)


When people find me through my work and instigate some kind of friendship (even if it eventually goes further), most of the time it blooms like any other relationship. We "meet" (even if online). Though my work is the catalyst, there's no presumption of intimacy. At first we're mostly strangers, maybe we realize we like the cut of each other's respective jibs, there is some kind of connection. Eventually there are side conversations away from the public interactions (this works online or in person). Friendship ensues. It is all very organic and takes time as a rapport is built.

If someone suddenly jumps ahead five or six steps in that process because they're fixating on me, it's usually not good. It's usually because they're not really seeing a PERSON there, or at least not an entire person. I am a stand in for something. And if it isn't explicitly bad, it can be at least dangerous for me not to insulate myself from the harm they might do, however unintentional.

I can't imagine any of these not being exponentially worse in both quantity and scope for anyone with any real level of fame, and I'm absolutely sure that's the reason that people either make themselves incredibly hard to contact directly and/or are extremely circumspect about how they handle strangers.


10- The reason that I am "famous" is its own social barrier.

Most people who are famous are so because of something they do. A few are just so stinking rich that they are also famous, but even then, those people are not usually quietly rich. They're like CEO of a major company or get really involved in funding political super PACs that undermine democracy....or, you know.....something.

Most famous people DO something that puts them into the spotlight. Maybe they play a sport really well. Or they are a musician who rocks a currently en vogue sound and has millions of fans. Perhaps they act in mainstream movies or television. They are an artist of some renown.

And the chances are pretty good that they got there through no small amount of work. [And yes, there may be other factors that matter more like nepotism or being a cis white dude, but the work is also essential.] I don't mean a couple of hours on weekends or even a few hours a day. Like, have you ever seen the training regimens for professional athletes? There is a certain level of maybe-not-so-healthy obsession with which people, who are famous for what they do, work at that thing to get better. Usually it is their life's obsession. They spend more time on That One Thing™ than most people do on a full time job and a reasonably passionate hobby.....combined.

That sort of idée fixe can get in the way of normal, healthy relationships, be they friendships or romantic.

I spend 40-50 hours a week writing (and that's after I pull a 30-hour week being a nanny for side gig money). My writing puts the kibosh on a lot of social activities. If I'm not skipping parties because I'm actually writing, I'm skipping them because I am completely wiped out from the schedule I maintain in order to keep writing. When people say, "Hey we should get together," no matter how much I like them and WANT to hang out, I'm probably going to never feel like I have time unless they invite me to something specific, I block it off on my calendar, and then do my writing work around knowing that it's there and planning for it.

And that's just the getting out and being social. Sometimes my loved ones who are already in my life and close to me have to deal with the gobs of time I shovel at writing. What little vestige of looks-like-fame-under-a-microscope that I've achieved is the result of a lot of evenings and weekends spent writing the next post, and saying no to being social. My peeps would like more time from me for this plan or that week away or just this evening, but I'm rationing my non-writing time and I have to say no. And when I did cohabit with a partner, that sometimes included saying that I couldn't come downstairs and watch Netflix or just hang out until I wrapped up another hour of work.

I have said, "I can't right now. I'm writing," to more plans that I would like to have partaken in than I can really count. Thousands for sure over the years. Some days it feels like millions.

As writing starts to pay bills, there is a little more discretionary time since you don't necessarily have to come home FROM work to get your writing work done, but most people still don't have a very good sense of how much work (reading and writing in my case––plus posting all those memes) goes into being renowned enough at something to achieve a level of notoriety.

It's not weekend-warrior effort.

It's not something a typical friendship (or courtship) fits into easily.


11-There's no line out the door

Okay, this one is pretty much just about dating and romance.

Add all these things up, and you get no line out the door. Once you factor in that the "room" where I'm "famous" (nominally?) is a niche, online place with only a smattering of folks who exist in any physical, geographic local, and once you deal with the paradox that the kinds of folks who would jump into a relationship sight unseen are probably not filling out the healthiest of dating pools, and that that most of my friends from before I started blogging are pretty blasé about my writing career, and that my writing itself creates a barrier to having lots of time to pursue relationships and date....you start to see how these factors can actually limit the field.

And even after all of that, there are still a lot of other factors that end up coming into play.

I might be personally ambiamorous, but I'm deeply involved with two people who are polyamorous, so everyone who is monogamous is out. Even here in the wild and free Bay Area, that is MOST people––monogamy is still the default relationship model for almost everyone. And within the non-monogamous community, there are still a lot of different needs and wants. I've got nothing against someone who wants a weekly playdate with a friend (actually that sounds pretty fucking awesome, Tee Bee Haitch), but what I'm actually willing to seek out and expend time and energy looking for is different.

Star Trek transporters have not been invented. The people who I've definitely got a "Fuck yes" rapport with exist, but they are not all living in my apartment complex. They are scattered to the winds of fate. Yes, there are fifteen or so cities in the world where if I were to visit, I'm not saying I'm definitely getting laid, but I really like my chances. Those folks might be "at my door" if one of us lived in the other's home town, but we don't. [It is a sad and lamentable story; do not even attempt to contain your tears.] Unless someone is willing to move* (I can't because of The Contrarian), we are tragically torn apart by destiny. Honestly, things start to get pretty dicey around 20 miles unless someone is really comfortable only getting together once a week or so, and now we're back to what each person is really even looking for.

(*Chasing a "maybe" with an Internet romantic interest would be its own sort of "Danger, Will Robinson" move.)

And there is the matter of the chemistry test. (Oh mine gets much easier when I know someone and like them, easier still if I trust them, and if they bring some unbridled enthusiasm to the table, there's not even any stoichiometry equations, but there is STILL a Chemistry test.)

So when it comes to people close enough to date, who want the same thing OUT of dating, aren't displaying stars-in-their-eyes in a way that I need to be worried about a power differential, and I would want to date them (and they me).....my "fame" doesn't really mean much.

It turns out it's more likely to make me insulate myself a bit from the world, be a little over-cautious, jaded, and cynical until I really know people's motives and intentions are on the level, and between that and the work make a more typical-looking social life much more difficult to engineer.

While I can't speak for every outrageously famous actor or musician (certainly not the ones more willing to exploit their fame to cozy up to a smokin hot fan), I can tell you that I suspect the law of large numbers mean that it's definitely not all it's cracked up to be.



As a parting thought, it is worth noting that unsolicited nudes and cyber harassment and stalkers are the everyday experiences of non-men with little or no "fame" to speak of. As a dude-shaped human with a million followers, readers in every continent, and actual honest-to-goodness "fans," after seven years of building up an audience and gaining more and more notoriety, my experience has begun to look like that of many women and gender-variant folks for having the audacity to simply exist.

11 Reasons Fame Probably Doesn't Look Like You Think (The Renown Margin) Part 2

Continuing straight on FROM PART ONE

2a- People apologize to me a lot for their grammar.

This one is mostly just weird to me because have you SEEN my grammar on a post I get up at the last minute and haven't had the time to edit?

But it seriously happens ALL. THE. TIME. The world has a big ol' complex about the potential imperfection of its grammar, and I find that both culturally interesting and a little sad. (I'm told it's not exclusive to English.)

I'm guessing people don't apologize to musicians for their grammar, but maybe apologize if they catch themselves absentmindedly humming a tune. ("I'm sorry. That's probably NOT the secret chord that David played, is it? I have profaned your ears with my amateur vocalizations.") It's pretty normal to feel self-conscious when doing something casually around someone who does that thing professionally. When I massage Cap (who is a massage therapist), I always imagine a very Alan Rickman judgement of my ministrations. ("Direct pressure along the third intercostal? Sloppy, Potter. Very sloppy.")

I'm pretty sure it's basically the same phenomenon, but amplified. I have had people straight up tell me, "I was going to write you an email, but my grammar is terrible." Or they say, "I'm afraid to talk to him. I'm going to use infer when I obviously mean imply."

You're famous?
Well then, let's crank this self-consciousness ALL THE WAY UP!

The weird thing is, if they knew my work instead of just the fact of my dim levels of notoriety, they would be well aware that I care less about grammar than most people who aren't writers. I'm close enough in the linguistic trenches to be pretty descriptivist and totally forgiving. We all didn't know what a dangling modifier was...until we did. It's not really a matter of intelligence.

It's the peeps needing everything to be RIGHT or WRONG who get all incensed if someone uses decimate to mean totally destroy (instead of reduce by 10%) or talk about someone who drops an apostrophe where it doesn't belong like they're evil human beings or belong in zoos or some shit. As long as I know what someone meant, my knickers remain refreshingly twist-free. As soon as you get all linguistical up in that shit, you start to realize that grammar is like clothes––you wear your Sunday best for the people who are going to judge you (if and when you care what they think), but with your loved ones and with folks who realize that they're dealing with a fairly arbitrary set of signals that mostly serve to tip someone off to your class, you avoid pants as much as possible.

Metaphorical grammar pants, in this case.

Now, if you write me a thirty-page email which happens to have a character arc that turns out to be unsatisfying and anticlimactic, then I'll judge.


2b- But no one ever gives me credit for knowing what I'm talking about.

Most people just worry that their email's commas are in the wrong places (don't we all?), that they're casually using the wrong word (maybe, but I don't care), or that if they hand me something that isn't the fucking Magna Carta, I'm sneering at it (have you SEEN what I publish most days?)

But oddly, when people want the specific answer to a grammar question, they don't trust me. I make mistakes on the fly, but I really do know the difference between an adverbial and a subordinating conjunction, and I can tell you why sometimes you might want to put the question mark on the outside of the quotation marks, even in American English. I answer technically, maybe even with a style guide, but then tell them that language is a skittish little shithead, and in fact it is only us making random sounds with our air holes (or random marks) that we've essentially agreed as a society have meaning, so the important thing is that a native speaker will know what you're on about.

But no. They need a definitive answer. They don't want, "Well SOME style guides say...." Their eyes get big like an anime that's about to cry and they say, "NO! No, that can't BE!!! WHAT DO THE SACRED SCROLLS SAY?????"

"Okay. Frand. There actually aren't any sacred scrolls. We don't even have a language academy on this side of the pond, but if you just do it THIS way and stick with it, you'll have MLA and Hacker on your side and everyone will know what you me––"

"I demand pedantry! I demand prescriptivism. Language must be codified and never-changing. There must be a RIGHT way. I need you to tell me a goddamned rule and that I'm a troglodyte if I do it any other way. Somebody get rid of this hack and get me a real answer."

"Okay...bye. It's not like I fucking get PAID for this or anything.... Have a nice day!"

These streets meet at one intersection,
but they actually go in two different directions.

3- Fame doesn't equal money. At all.

There's a relationship between fame and money but it is not linear. (May I make a joke about how it's a ball of wibbly wobbly famey wamey? It was overused there for a while, but I'm hoping we're now in the pathetically anachronistic and retro phase. That's where I do my best work!)

I'm guessing that a LOT of fame could be leveraged against a Kickstarter or a Patreon in the same way A-list celebrities get money for endorsing toothpaste and underwear (if Jason Momoa wrote poetry about love for a $1 a poem buy in––and I mean literally no matter HOW shitty these poems were––, his Patreon would kick My Patreon's ass), but there's a very distorted perception of how these two things affect each other at the lower end of "the fame scale," and a reason that a lot of B-list actors wind up working night security or selling used cars in Woodland Hills. It's not that no one knows who they are. They probably get asked for autographs even. But it is the relevant WORK that generates attention and regard that can be monetized.

Obviously star power is a thing or Kirk Cameron wouldn't be worth $22 million for a career largely predicated on publicly demonstrating that he fundamentally doesn't understand how science works, but star power (and certainly not Q-list celebrity power) is not a "Press Button for Cash" machine. Ol' Kirk still has to get up and go to work and make those cinematic masterpieces like Left Behind III: World at War.

People have been BLOWN AWAY to learn how little I make on Patreon. "But you're so famous!", they say. They think I make an appeal post and instantly grab another $100-$200 a month in patrons. Or that with a word, I can get several hundred dollars in Paypal donations.

Are you That '70s Show before Topher Grace left? For you are making me laugh.

It's just not like that. Turns out there's kind of a gulf between "Oh, I know you!" and "Oh, I know you! Have ten dollars."


4- People have a lot of different reasons for being in your orbit. And some of them are shitty.

When an artist's or entertainer's work starts to be well known, some people show up because they like the work. Some people show up because they find they like the artist/entertainer and want to subscribe to their newsletter. Some people show up because that artist/entertainer is kind of cute. Some people show up because they want to see what the fuss is about. Some people get stars in their eyes and maybe fire up a little bit of projection. Some people show up because they want to connect with a "hub" through which they can promote themselves or their own work. Some people want to collect well-known "friends" like trading cards. ("Do you have Brecheen?" "No, he thought I was a bot." "Well, I've got Brecheen, Jim Wright, AND James Fell!") Some people get close because they kinda want to be there when you fall. (I don't know this, of course, but it's a working theory when I notice someone only really interacts with me when it involves discouraging commentary after I've suffered a setback.)

And, I hate to say it because I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but there are a few people who really seem to be in my orbit because they kind of hate-watch me. Again, I don't know this. I haven't slipped truth serum to any of them during an interrogation. But the only time they ever communicate with me at all is to disagree vehemently with the places they perceive our views as divergent. I'm not talking about toes I've stepped on (because I try really hard to be careful about that), but just folks who constantly go out of their way as antagonistically as possible to make sure I know they think I'm wrong about something. They don't ever chime in that they agree with something or work to have a relationship rapport infrastructure that can withstand occasional full-force negativity. It's like they only make withdrawals at the bank of our relationship. Maybe it's not their intention, but it seems like they're just there to complain.

When you're relatively unknown, there is a certain benefit of anonymity. Once your profile starts to get higher, you become a target for all kinds of less-than-good-faith bullshittery.


5- It's my old friends who are the least impressed.

When I think of who is unimpressed with my work, doesn't care that I'm #scarequotesfamous, and sort of wishes I would shut up and make their Facebook feed an easier place, I don't imagine some rando who has never heard of me or a dudebro who hates my thoughts on social issues. Almost universally, those folks seem to react to me and/or my work with some level of engagement. Like, it takes SOME level of effort and energy to hate me with a passion. And even the folks who project blasé still kind of size up the work first so they know how much indifference to whip up. (It requires MUCH more blasé to be unimpressed with Shakespeare or even Stephen King than it does me.) It's tricky to explain this, but in their own way, even negative reactions and performative nonchalance require a certain level of "impressed."

It's my old friends who don't give a flip. "Oh it's just Chris." "Oh he's going off again." "Oh he's been gnawing on that bone since 2005." "A million followers, huh? Yeah, I was in a threesome with him once." "He did a great Han Solo in my LARP." "I haven't read that blog since he did that post about gender, but I only read that because he's my friend." "Chris? Chris?  Is that the guy that full-on carries a purse?"

Some of my friends are my biggest fans (sans the eye stars). But when we meet, a lot of my peeps sheepishly apologize to me for not keeping up with the blog (it's really okay––neither writing, nor I, am everyone's cup of tea), or ask,"How's that writing thing going?" and I just smile and say, "Not bad. I'm paying the bills with it now." "Oh how lovely! *quick subject change*"


6- It DOES become weird when someone doesn't know your work at all.

Confession time.

Let me admit something. We're going deep now. To places I don't talk about at parties (but only blog about publicly to literally everyone). OKCupid is one of those "rooms" where no one knows me. I've gotten a couple dozen messages at this point and only one person recognized me. But here's the thing, and I was as surprised to discover it as anyone: it's weird when people aren't at least passingly familiar with my work.

I don't know if I like it.

Okay....stop. Hang on. That sounds a lot worse than it really is. Shades of "Do you know who I am?!?!?!?" I'm not talking about everyone ever. I mean I can buy groceries or order a sandwich without name-dropping. ("Yeah, I'll have a Veggie Delight with extra mustard. And no, your eyes are not deceiving you. I'm the Writing About Writing guy.") I don't need my dentist to have liked one of the memes I shared. My doctor knows I'm a writer because she asked for a questionnaire, but I don't think she has read anything I've written. I don't even care if I go to my vampire LARP and someone I've never met says, "Writing About Writing? Never heard of it."

This also isn't me, hand stapled to forehead, wishing for the "refreshing change" of just getting to know someone who likes me for me. "Oh if only I weren't so DAMNED famous. Curse all this horrible fame. No one knows the REAL me. Woe."

Pffffft.

What I mean is this: My personal and professional life have intersection points anywhere I haven't excoriated them. Anyone who finds me on social media will see my work prominently. Many of my social connections began through my work. ALL of my friends know what I do (even if they have little interest). I am constantly writing on something or another, and much of it that is about social issues goes out into the world with as much online "volume" and verve as I can muster. My writing is very important to who I am, and people don't have to like it or even read that much of it, but it is virtually impossible to get close to me and not be aware of it. And when someone is in my world who has NO sense of who I am and what I'm about, it feels a little bit like having the most important parts of myself conspicuously ignored.

It gets even weirder with online dating, which creates this "tunnel" through those usual approaches. It burrows a shaft past most of the normal ways people get to know me (certainly well enough to go on a date). It's not that they don't care or are nonchalant or haven't bothered to figure out what I care about. It's that they literally don't KNOW. And suddenly I'm sitting across from someone who has no idea about this huge and important part of me––and wondering if I should have ordered onions because maybe they might want to see how my tongue ring works.

And that's......weird.

7- I get introduced as the Writing About Writing guy.

On the other end of the scale....sometimes I get introduced as the Writing About Writing guy, that blogger you like, the Creepy Dude writer, or The Writing Memelord.

Okay I made that last one up.

There was this period in like 2003 where everyone I knew in the Bay Area mostly just introduced themselves and their friends by their Livejournal handles.  ("Oh, I'm Dicedork, and this is my friend Mouseontheplane. It's so good to meet you, Fishstixandbile.") Because that's how you were likely to have been seen interacting in the world and where someone was mostly likely to recognize you from.

These days I'm the Writing About Writing guy. If it's a formal introduction, I might get something more like, "This is Chris. He IS the Writing About Writing guy," but just as often as not, they skip that pesky first name and go right for the pièce de résistance.

I can't quite decide how I feel about this. Of course, it feels a little impersonal and like I'm nothing more than a blogging machine, but at the same time it is like a metonymy for saying, "you are more likely to be familiar with Chris's work than Chris himself." And that's not so bad. I'm definitely not out there selling the Chris!™ brand. I promote my writing and rarely myself. So I vacillate between "Hey, I have a name, you know?" and "That's MISTER The Writing About Writing Guy to you!"

I suppose the next step is to come back around to name recognition. (I doubt Stephen King often gets introduced as "that Evil Clown author guy.") Some day perhaps no one will need to be told I'm the Writing About Writing guy.  It'll just be "This is Chris Brecheen. You've heard of him, of course."

**fantasizes a little harder**

The third, and final, part

11 Reasons Fame Probably Doesn't Look Like You Think It Does (The Renown Margin) Part 1

Reminder: I'm not famous. You probably haven't seen me on TV. (Particularly since I've never been there.)

But there are a few places where the edges of my life experience have begun to crinkle in that direction. I'm closing in on a million Facebook followers and though most of those people are there for the puns, and wouldn't know me if I were standing next to them comparison-shopping Skippy vs. Kirkland peanut butter at Costco, I've been recognized on the street, had my work recognized by fellow passengers on trains and planes (and technically automobiles, but usually those were my friends), had weird offers of marriage from strangers, have been sent unsolicited sex pictures, had people I've never met talk to me like we were old friends, had people who were not mentally well fixate on me and frighten me, and turned down an awful lot of offers to use my platform to promote someone else's work.

I'm going to say this now. I have a hard time calling myself "famous." Because A) I'm really not what you would call FAMOUS––more like English-speaking Q list Internet celebrity, and B) it just feels SO FUCKING PRETENTIOUS MY TEETH ITCH AND I CAN'T EVEN STAND IT!!!


Story time:

I went on an OKCupid date on Friday (one week ago). This was a first meeting with someone who messaged me, which one of my friends calls the "actually-more-like-an-interview" date. Fortunately the clipboard and the "where do you see yourself in five years?" questions never came out, but I have to admit that description is probably more accurate than "date," when it comes to that very first meeting of someone you've only "met" briefly online. Trying to find out what people are into, what their plans are, if you can fit into those plans...or if you want to. And of course, the chemistry test. It may not be based upon any traditional bellwethers of attractiveness, and may be more about "connection," but it's happening just the same.

My "interview" didn't go well. I'd had a very tough week, was very tired, and the only reason I didn't flake is the fear that that would seem even worse. I was disengaged and I can't even count the number of Hagrid-esque "I shouldn't a' said that. I should NOT have said that," moments. (I kind of vacillate between thinking that I maybe just seemed a bit quiet and subdued, to being absolutely sure that I wasn't asking enough engaging questions, let her do all the conversation's heavy lifting, and clearly came across like a total narcissist.) And the less said about the half swallow of soda that decided to be brave, bold, contrarian, and venture off on its own direction exactly at one of those she's-looking-right-at-me moments, the better. At the end I dropped her off at the BART and she thanked me politely and slipped out of the car without another word.

So...yeah. Not so great.

A few of my friends are outright confused that I would ever put time and energy into online dating. Why would I take the time to fill out a profile when I can just wave my hand and summon attractive partners from all over the planet like a 1st edition 12th level Barbarian summoning a horde or something? ("Come to me HOTTIES!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAH!!!") Can't I just put out the word that I'm accepting applications and watch the resumes come pouring in? Can't I just flip the sign to "OPEN," spread my arms out and suggestively say, "Who wants in on all this?" Don't I just walk into social clubs and say "Do you know who I am?" and the maître d claps and two incredibly attractive people appear, as if from nowhere, and each take one of my arms.

Excuse me. Excuse me. Friend here. Sorry to bust in on this post. I know it's highly unorthodox, but I need to set this record straight. I never said any of this shit. I just said I didn't think Chris would have any trouble finding a date on a Friday night.

Thank you and carry on.

It occurs to me that most people don't really know how things do and don't change as some level of notoriety begins to take hold. People do recognize me and some clearly let who I am affect how they treat me. But it's NOT a consistent upgrade (like the VIP room of life or some shit) and it's often just as likely to alienate me as be a point of instant connection.

I don't know what it's like when you're the lead singer in an eighties hair band, but I'm pretty sure at lesser levels of "fame," it doesn't look anything like most people think it does. So here are a few things (not all of them necessarily about dating or romance) that I'm learning. Things I didn't know (and maybe you didn't either) about fame:

1- Being "famous" (*scratches teeth*) has a lot to do with the room one is in.

I've been in rooms where everyone is there to see me. That's fun! Let me just say that right away. It's a LOT of fun! They ask questions. They nod. They take notes better than my students, even when it absolutely was going to be on the test. I have to be present in the moment, of course, but I don't have to "drive" the interaction. I don't have to worry about if I was talking too much or wonder if the lull in the conversation was enough that I should definitely be the one to ask the next question about their pets or hobbies. If the thought of public speaking doesn't make you melt into a puddle of goo like that dude from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and have never had the experience of a room full of people asking you really informed questions about your work, I highly recommend it.

I've also been in rooms where absolutely no one knows who I am. At all. Even a little. They have no clue. At one point during Worldcon last year, I listened to someone near me reference something that the Writing About Writing Facebook Page had posted. They were talking about how well "that page" pulled in an audience, and I was just sitting five feet away chewing on my turkey sandwich with not-quite-enough-mayo (and wondering if the people who went everywhere with G.R.R. Martin who was NO SHIT sitting across the table from me were like friends who run interference when he just wants to eat his lunch in peace, handlers, or outright bodyguards). No one turned and looked at me. There were no knowing glances. Except for a couple of friends who I ran into, no one at the entire Worldcon knew who I was. And most of them probably wouldn't have known if I had introduced myself with a list of accolades like I was Daenerys Targaryen.

("Hello, I am Chris of the House Brecheen, the Seventy-Eighth of my name....that I know of from Facebook, The Poorly Slept, Admin of the Writing About Writing page, writer of the blog and there's an Instagram too....technically, Peon of Working Writers, Bard of the Social Justice classes, Protector of my client's kids, Regent of the Seven––"

"Look, dude, do you want one of my custom-made pens or not?")

The crinkly edge of fame means that I've only been recognized once or twice when I'm not walking into a place where my reputation might precede me, and I think most people who are only-a-little-famous have a similar experience. Not until they reach that top-level, A-list strata of fame will they be unable to go eat a bowl of fucking noodles without a "sighting." I'm not talking about Patrick Stewart not knowing who Sting is (which is a great story), but that unless you're in the RIGHT room, with VERY few and rare exceptions for the über-recognizable folks who work in front of cameras, most people still won't recognize you.

CONTINUE TO PART 2...

The Armor I Wish I Didn't Need (The Renown Margin)

Reminder: I'm not famous. You probably haven't seen me on TV.

But there are a few places where the edges of my experience have begun to crinkle in that direction. I'm closing in on a million Facebook followers and though most of those people are there for the puns, and wouldn't know me if I were standing next to them comparison shopping for Bugles vs. generic "corn chip horns" at Safeway, I've been recognized on the street, had my work recognized by fellow passengers on trains and planes (and technically automobiles, but usually those were my friends), had weird offers of marriage from strangers, been sent unsolicited sex pictures, had people I've never met talk to me like we were old friends, had people who were not mentally well fixate on me and frighten me, and even recently been like gushingly insisted upon by a fan who recognized my picture and happened upon my on OKCupid profile that Oh my god will I ever be swamped [I have not been] because the line is out the door and down the block [it's not even AT the door]. 

(And don't think it hasn't escaped my notice that becoming "famous" as a guy means that my experience has begun to resemble that of basically any woman who dares to exist on the internet.) 

This is the latest in a series of articles examines both how my life and perceptions have changed with the approach of something resembling fame and also maybe once in a while something I see that famous people (the actually famous kind) do that starts to make sense to me. 

I'm starting to notice that I have armor.

Not the personal leather that fits close to the surface and cushions the unintentional blows or a coat of mail that writers need to cultivate to get peer review and withstand criticism.

I'm talking about the big honking plate shit that deflects intentional blows from swords meant to take off my head. The kind that won't let you feel a human touch unless you've retired to someplace safe and are willing to spend minutes deciding to be vulnerable by taking it off.

The thing is, I don't want it. I wish I didn't need it. I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be the person who isn't listening because someone isn't already my friend or hasn't sufficiently blandished themselves into a position where I don't feel threatened.

But I need it to survive. And I don't think a lot of people who don't need it realize how impossible it would be to be in the public eye without it. Especially in these days where we're still finding our cultural footing with the privacy of the internet.

There's a thing I've noticed over the years: celebrities and artists on social media no matter how cool they seem on some issues and how genuine and how willing to help and how sincere and maybe even how genuinely kind and possibly even be philanthropic they are, when they get hit with some criticism about something from a LOT of people, it's like teflon. They peel open their chests and put their organs and souls on display and seem to have nothing but love for the world, but if someone comes at then from a place of anger, it's like they hit the invisible shields in a campy sci-fi movie. The criticism, if they register it at all, doesn't even seem to cause an eyebrow to twitch, even as it piles up.

These aren't the arrogant, cocky assholes who you would expect to ignore criticism either. I mean big surprise that the writer who weaves Objectivism into high fantasy turned out to be kind of a snotglob about collective effort. Or that the guy who plays nothing but assholes is kind of an asshole. Shocker.

And I'm sure there's a lot of continuums and complexity and nuance on everyone else. Life is messy and even most activists don't get intersectionality right. Some celebrities have clearly bent a certain direction in some sort of raging controversy where they believe they ARE moral actors. If a celebrity has decided that trans women are "men trying to colonize women's spaces" or that "prostitution is always about the subjugation of women for profit" and that holding that line IS "fighting the good fight" for feminism to them, a trans person or sex worker probably isn't going to convince them they're being hurtful unless they're already pretty close. Certainly not by showing up and yelling––even though I must stress that the celebrity is not OWED a reasonable, calm tone.

But for me, it's a place of particular self-contradicting, multitude-containing, messiness. I need to have this armor more and more and I also hate it. So I imagine with people more famous more scrutinized, and more challenged, it has probably probably become exo-power armor with hydraulic servos even as they hold multiple truths and checkmarks in a lot of ticky boxes. Which is why so many folks in the spotlight can at once be simply spilling over with compassion and be paragons of empathy but then suddenly, surprisingly snap into brick wall mode.

I'm not even actually famous yet. But what happens if I don't wear my armor is worse than what happens if I do.

The law of large numbers and the instant gratification of the internet affects people who are online in the public eye in some chilling ways.

Thought experiment!   

Imagine having a hundred people you interact with on a regular basis, and having to deal once every week and a half or so with ONE person who took something wrong or didn't give you the benefit of the doubt or assumed your motivation about something to be kind of shitty when it wasn't and skipped ahead to the part where they tore you a new one. Just .1 percent per day. One person every ten days.

That's life right? People overreact. They bring their bad day with them and hit you in the face with it. They don't read or react to something in good faith. They project something you didn't say into an interaction. They wonder "what you meant by THAT"? They're hangry. They need a nap. They just had a brutal therapy session and are touchy as fuck. What they heard is more about the last thing that upset them than what you actually said. It's annoying but you cope. You clarify. You talk to them if you're friends or loved ones. Maybe it depends on how much energy it takes to ask what they're talking about or if they meant to be so hostile. Perhaps if you've had many more negative interactions than positive ones, you decide that's the last straw and you walk away if it's a more casual relationship, but that is rare and a decision made with great gravitas and in the name of self care..

Okay now imagine we're talking about the Internet;

and people don't have to see your face react to what they're saying or deal with you interrupting them if they're way out of line (they basically get to do the text version of the speech they worked on in the shower because there's no one to stop them from writing it all out before hitting "Send");

and you've never had ANY interactions with them before that are positive and which set the stage for relating to each other as two humans;

and the current trend is towards ever more hyperbolic descriptions of how much something angers/enrages/upsets/devastates them;

AND the gratification from impulse to "Send" is only as long as it takes to fire off a comment (long gone are the days of having to hand-write out a letter and maybe think about whether or not one is possibly being rash for a few hours first and then a couple more days until the postmaster comes) and click a couple of buttons;

AND they get to project on you all manner of unkind things as regard to your character and motivations that are typically callous and cruel because they don't have that face-to-face interaction or any sort of feedback to realize that if you made a mistake it was probably either misinformed or unintentional;

AND you are a high profile and convenient target for any amount of preexisting emotions, mental or psychic baggage, misunderstandings, propensity for seeing you as The Issue™that they think you're on the wrong side of, and treatment of as an allegory for all the bad rather than a complex person, as well as any other bad faith they've brought to the table.....

And......you have a thousand followers, so SOMETHING like this––maybe not quite so bad every time, but SOMEthing like this––is just about a daily occurence. 

Not so bad yet. Once a day you have to deal with someone who requires a little extra time and energy and a little bit more TLC to talk down. Usually it's not that bad. If you're me, you probably read things carefully, consider your actions, evaluate how you might have been misunderstood. Try to make things right. Apologize if it was your fault––even just a little. Try to find a connection with them as a human and see where the disconnection happened. Tell them how you're feeling if they're really bringing some bad shit to the table or putting something on you that you don't deserve and maybe talk a bit and walk away, both feeling more understood at least. You open up a dialogue. You proceed carefully, being very nuanced with your explanation. And only if that person seems to bring their own shit to the table over and over again in toxic ways would you consider ignoring them or just walking away.

Okay, now let's kick in the law of large numbers....

Imagine you have a million followers, and no matter how careful you are, no matter how you proceed, no matter what you do, no matter what you say, just based on the sheer chance that you are (virtually) in the same room when someone is having a terrible moment or just based on other people's mercurial natures and human failings (possibly including your own), something like what I described above will happen, on average, a hundred or so times a day.

You're too this for some people. You're too that for other people. Too liberal. Too leftist. Too capitalist. Too communist. Too conservative. Too moderate. Too gentle. Too harsh. Too antifa. Too bootlicker. Too prescriptive. Too descriptive. Too nuanced. Too activist. Too academic. Too anti-academia. Too much like the conversation they just had with someone they aren't in a position to argue with. Too political. Too apathetic. Too basic and 101 with concepts. Too esoteric and not educational enough of the fundamentals. Too much like someone who just made them feel bad that they couldn't give what for. Too long in banning people who needed it to keep the space safe and clear of their bullshit. Too short in banning someone instead of trying to reach them.

They will demand you engage them even though they're not making sense or they clearly read something wrong or they are enraged about something THEY'RE bringing to the table. They will read something you never said into something you posted. They will fill in the blanks when tongues are in cheeks with the worst possible interpretation. Jokes lacking pages of nuance go awry not because most people don't get what you're saying (or not saying) but because one person needs to get in an aggressive "Well, actually..." They are projecting a personality onto you that isn't really you. They're just having a bad day and you're there. They are a ticking time bomb of fury who forgot their squeezy ball and taking it out on you because that's better than yelling at the kids. They just spent two hours dealing with shitty, not-nuanced versions of the same argument and they can't really "hear" your disclaimers and exceptions. They just walked out of a meeting where their hours were just cranked up to 65 a week and they're never going to have weekend to themselves or free time again, and see a "You should be writing" meme, take it personally, and go off. They have read ten articles already this morning, see one of your posts, slide past the nuance, maybe don't even make it all the way to the bullet points, and go on a tear about the title.

Someone out there––someone––is going to bring the worst possible faith to everything you ever say.

How many of that million skipped lunch? Didn’t get a good night’s sleep? (Both?) Just had a fight? Are not managing their mental illness? Are in an activated hypothalamic state? Are bringing their unresolved trauma to your issue? Are just “edgy assholes”? Have a hypersensitivity to one TYPE of oppression and have determined that calling out everything they see, no matter how slight, is the way they make a difference? Are under the influence? Are distracted? Are rolling the shit downhill? Just don't like you, never really have, and want you to misstep? Are abusive and have simply learned a way to justify ignoring boundaries in their online interactions that isn't typically CLOCKED as "abusive."

They will examine your every word. They will scrutinize each turn of phrase for fallibility. They will yell at you for posting a Calvin and Hobbes comic that makes fun of academia because how dare you encourage anti-intellectualism. They will yell at you for posting pro-academic articles because how dare you espouse an institution so rife with systemic racism and sexism. They will yell at you for being pro or anti NaNoWriMo (even if you're both and neither). They will demand your retractions and your apologies. They will demand you do as they say––post exactly what they want you to post in exactly the way they want you to post it because they assume you do not really know what you are doing.  If you do what they want, you did it too late and/or only to "save face." If you don't, you are Satan. If you apologize for something, it is not good enough. If you apologize with all the markers of a good apology, you're just offering a scripted reply. It's never enough. If it is enough for most, you only did for the optics of your public image, and they know you didn't really feel it. Because if there's one thing they definitely know, it's how you FEEL. And even if almost everyone thinks you were absolutely sincere about an apology, someone out there won't because the person they REALLY need to hear the apology from......isn't you. And that is if you owe anyone an apology––if you weren't just doing your thing and someone decided that pissed them off.

And if you reply with anything other than obsequious contrition, most will see it as escalation. If you point out they misread something.... If you suggest they don't seem to be getting you.... If you simply disagree.... If you agree but offer nuance....  You're off to the races.

A Hundred. Times. A Day.

(I'm not there quite yet. I don't have a million "fans." I have close to 900,000 followers on Facebook, (roughly 890,000 of whom are filtered out from any one post because of the FB algorithm), and most of them are just there for puns and memes and have little interest in anything else I post. I'd say on an average day I see twenty to thirty people try to pick a fight with me of SOME stripe or another––usually in the comments. Often it's pretty low key. They just want to say their piece and if I ignore their comment, it's over. But we're getting there. A little more every month.)

I've already written about every reason someone might unfriend me. I can't really let that ebb and flow get to me or it would tear me apart as a person who imprints on Roombas and wants everyone to love him. People pick fights with me for almost all of the same reasons, but if I got into twenty fights a day, even if I could find that human touchpoint and make peace with 95% of them, I would A) only be conflict resolving and never writing, and B) be a hollowed out husk of a desiccated human being who knows only empty sorrow and frustration.

There are only a few ways to deal with it. If you hold absolutely, perfectly still, people will get bored and go somewhere else. If you say only absolutely, perfectly innocuous things, (most) people will not have any reason to complain. If you completely ignore your comment sections, probably only 1/50ish of those angry people end up contacting you directly in some manner (but then your comment section is a troll-haven cesspool).

Or you put on your armor.

You ignore the shitty comments. You delete things said in bad faith. You ban/block people who clearly want a fight. When they start out with "Oh so you think...", you don't even finish reading the comment/message before clicking the little trash can icon. "I demand an apology" becomes the insta-off switch to your listening lobe. You hide comments when people are clearly reacting only to the title. You ban people who come in with phasers locked and shields up before opening hailing frequencies and trying diplomacy. You assume that people will round up their friends and that subsequent floods of comments about how you haven't addressed X are more about loyalty, online cliques, piling on, and performativity than any sincere call for accountability. You assume that someone who is going to have a problem with your politics is going to be an ass in every subsequent post and just show them the door to save yourself the ongoing headache. You pretend when they share your shit and their emcee comment is "This asshole is wrong about everything" that you didn't ever see it. You walk past those fights and act like you can't hear the people proverbially screaming your name for a throwdown. You assume someone who can't be bothered with civility is a bad actor (or having a bad day, but doesn't deserve a reply in any case).

You learn to deflect it all. All of it. Except for a trusted inner circle (a few dozen, tops) or maybe someone who takes the time to really connect with you as a person first, you deflect it ALL. Because you have to. Because long behind you are the days when you could spend an hour of back and forth seeing if someone was arguing in good faith instead of presuming they weren't or asking someone "Hey, are you okay? What just happened?" Now, even if you literally had the time (you don't), you couldn't handle it. You can't deal with every flash of anger. With every person who comes at you to show they're better than you. With every fucking howler monkey who has no self-control. You have to protect yourself.

And here's the worst part. In deflecting everyone, you deflect the people who are being sincere. You deflect the people who might have a point or who might be kind if you just validate their anger. Or who might see they're being unfair if you had a conversation instead of ignoring them. You deflect the people who are right. You deflect the people you really DO owe an apology. When your armor is on, they can't reach you either. Outside of your own group of friends, family, and close acquaintances, you become this person you never wanted to be.

At least, it's not anyone I ever wanted to be.

I'm not saying that I can read the minds of all these celebrities who seem to be teflon, but I think that's half the reason they get called out by swaths of big communities to no avail, but then come back a week later and say "So I talked to my friend last night, and I owe you all an apology.... " Their friend (or loved one) was someone who treated them first like a person, and thus got to see them without their armor.

I'm sure some of them are just SWERFs, TERFs, or herding Nerfs. I'm not saying they're right not to soften their hearts. I'm not saying they "deserve" to be approached diplomatically or entitled to a calm tone and a conversation about something pleasant first. However, I'm beginning to understand JUST how many people they had to walk past who wanted to tear them down and tear them apart in order to be get where they are today, and how they would lose their sense of self to treat every person upset with them online like a reclamation project. Everyone thinks that people have some way to tell the difference between the teeming millions mercurically upset by not-really-anything, possibly projecting, probably overreacting, and possibly deliberately trolling, and THEY who are sincere and legitimate about a very important issue.

We don't.

My experience is that most folks thinks fame wouldn't change them. THEY would still be totally chill and cool.

Oh my sweet summer children.....

If fame didn't change you, you would die of a broken heart from a billion cuts, and that would be around 2pm on day two. More than anything, you want someone to see you as a human and talk to you as a person––not a projection of what they think you are (bad OR good). You want them to just see another person who can be connected with. But not everyone ever will, and if you don't protect yourself, you will be eaten alive by those people who feel entitled to the most personal parts of you, yet who will never take the time or energy of trying to get to know or understand such parts before demanding them. You would doubt yourself into a little green globule on the end of a drumstick and you wouldn't be able to do the work that was making you famous in the first place.

I've already got a mental map in my head of people who I respect and whose criticism I'll let in. With them I still have the same rejection sensitive dysphoria and need-to-please so acute that I'm in therapy to help me with boundaries.

But with everyone else....I already notice that self-care involves walking away from most conflicts and thinking very very carefully about the ones I choose to try to resolve.  I'm "done" faster. I ban people like whack-a-mole. I simply ignore things. I don't have time for that. I leave comments in moderation if they missed the point. Those twenty potential fights have begun to push up towards thirty. And I end up thinking of more and more ways to protect my outward-facing self from being pulled down into that quagmire of anger and eviscerated.

And perhaps worst of all, I lose less sleep worrying about it. Because the armor works. It protects me well––sometimes even from the friends I've noticed are quick on the draw or drag their bad days to the table. I put it on and I am safe. And I hate it the whole, self-cared-for, safe, uneviscerated time.

The Vagaries of Experience (The Renown Margin)

Reminder: I'm not famous. But because of having such a big Facebook page, and several viral articles, my life is starting to bend towards some level of kinda, sorta Internet fame, and (as this blog exists in part to share in real time my experiences of writing with the very deliberate attempt to find an audience and make a living) one of the experiences I will share with you is my foray into the liminal space between complete unknown and some Q-list celebrity status. 

One of the most interesting experiences, as I push against this membrane of quasi-fame, is having a dawning realization of why actually famous people do (or don't do) certain things. ("OH. THAT'S WHY!") I realize why they don't open themselves up to random criticism from strangers (there's way too much of it), why they accept a revolving door of their fans (too many to try to please), and why they compartmentalize their private lives (some people's obsession can be harmful).

I've stumbled on another one: the reason people in a spotlight so rarely mention products by name unless they are getting paid endorsement. They often speak in vague terms of A store or A restaurant or AN online company run by the richest human on Earth, even when they're being quite specific about some level of criticism or some level of enjoyment. It's not that they never name names, but it's much more calculated. Usually they describe their experiences with carefully curated vagaries.

I started noticing it innocuously enough, but even at my not-quite-Q-list status, it's gotten to the point where I want to back off on the casual. If I'm going to drop a name, it needs to be worth it. I'm ticking off too many people just by telling them how my day was at that level of specificity.

See, the good words are basically low-key commercials. Point at something and gush, it's basically unpaid advertising, and folks who have begun to understand what their social capital can command may not wish to do this over something trivial or to essentially use that social capital to lift up capitalism and be a commercial.

But where it really gets hairy is the less than stellar thoughts. That's where the shit really goes down. I have enough friends, followers, fans, and people generally watching "The Show™" that if I talk even casually about my experience with some company or product that has let me down, I'm going to make SOMEONE's head itch. Maybe they work for that company, have a lot of brand loyalty, or just generally have some vested interest in not letting it stand, and suddenly you feel like you're arguing over whether how and why you're not really having a good customer experiences with someone.

And I get it. I do. Personally I find memes about how teachers never teach anything important annoying because I'm a teacher. And it's just not that simple. We are teaching you that the blue curtains represent sadness for a reason (often several reasons). So if I've eaten my Wheaties and I see someone post about how teachers never teach anything useful, I try to add some informative nuance about being pinioned between district curriculum and rising class sizes and so sorry that you were personally reading two years beyond the rest of the class and this wasn't a useful lesson.....blah blah blah (you get the idea). So when you realize that someone in your audience probably works for or loves to bits the company or thing you are about to share a not-so-hot story of (and may have had THEIR Wheaties), you begin to question whether you need to actually include the product name. Is it really that important that it be Cold Stone™ and not just "we went out for ice cream...." Is it vital in the story you want to share, that you name the phone you are frustrated with (and thereby invoking the Apple vs. Android battle royale in the comments of your post.

I've even had people who MADE something grief me before. I was MORTIFIED.

I have this friend. This friend works for and owns a significant chunk of stock in a company. Let's call this company Quince. If I complain about something that Quince has done (no matter how many I statements I use or how personal my experience was), my friend is always right there complaining that I don't know the whole story––that I'm attacking poor, innocent Quince (who has ne'er done anything untoward) and that I simply have completely unrealistic expectations and an illogical grasp of what any company can provide. And while, as a general rule, I'm pretty much here to bathe in nuance, I could not help but notice that many of the points my friend makes––sometimes including STRINGS OF IDENTICAL WORDS––came right off of Quince's public relations page––the end result of millions of dollars Quince pays to control the narrative that anything unethical that ever happened with regard to Quince was always everyone else's fault but theirs. My friend is offended when I suggest that they might not be, in a manner of speaking, the most unbiased person ever to speak on the subject of Quince, and so they end up in this cloud of fuming anger. This is the same friend who will ALWAYS jump in if I say "companies should treat their customers better" and has even AGREED WITH ME when I shared stories about Quince, but left out Quince's name. So every time I have a problem with Quince, I sort of spend at least a little time considering if it's worth it to name names.

You can kind of see how this would telescope out as fame levels rise. Chances go way up something's going to get back to someone who cares about what you've said. Add in the perception of an attack to a peripheral issue--say if you didn't enjoy your day at Disneyland, a bunch of Disneyfans quickly start telling you that you clearly should have gone on Tuesday and used a counterclockwise motion to get the important fast pases first as you used the line tracker app to maximize.....and it wasn't DISNEY'S fault they regularly let more people into the park than can conceivably enjoy it simultaneously! Quickly you wonder if naming names is even worth it. Particularly the more specificity the story has. Even speaking out against something like Amazon not paying taxes can result in an Amazon employee making sure I know how happy they are at their job, and will I please leave Jeff Bezos alone? LEAVE HIM ALONE!

It's not that I won't still say these things or call out some shitty company for a bad decision, but I've come to understand that it is a trade off. This is directly launching a bee into SOME bonnet and the more bonnets are out there, the bigger the chances that a bee grenade will have some unintended side effects. You have to weigh your interest in having that caliber of encounter, and if you just weren't that happy but "whatever" it's not worth it to bring up that level of specificity.

I'm just a little guy with a little following, but suddenly I understand why so many celebrities speak in such vague terms and often project a bit of this "above it all" vibe. It's because of what happens if they're not.

Unfriended (The Renown Margin)

Didn't they make a horror movie out of this?
Image description: Facebook "Unfriended."

The law of big numbers really starts to work against someone who curates and cares about their friends on social media. It can be incredibly helpful to those within the public eye have a public and a private persona.

See, for me public/private has a very literal expression seeing as I have so much of an online presence. I literally have a public account and I have a private account and about 90% of the people in the latter are the folks I would say are included in my "private life" in some way.

But here is the part that isn't about me. Perhaps the most fundamental part of your PUBLIC PERSONA™ is going to have to be a certain level of acceptance that this public facing self has a revolving door on its "friendships."

Me. Oh so very me.
cagle.com
Image description: man chained to a computer monitor
with the Facebook F logo on it.

Folks will sweep into your orbit because of your work or your fame or your mystique or because they like the show you're putting on or just to see what all the fuss is about or even in hopes that it will benefit them somehow, and they will woosh out just as easily.

And if you're going to be in a situation where you have fans, you really have to be able to not let that get to you.

This is true in all of life, of course. Friendships run the gamut from mercurial to stronger than family to Guy-You-Really-Like-But-Really-Only-See-At-Chet's-Annual-"Everyone"-Barbecue. We like chatting with people we hang out with at work at lunch, but most of us don't keep in touch after we quit. These relationships come and go.

Intern: I found a "busy revolving door" gif.
Me: Post it.
Intern: It might not frame your fans in quite the light that you see them or that they would particularly apprec-
Me: Look we're running behind, just post it.

Folks find they don't get on with someone that well and kind of start working around them, only being cordial if they get cornered near the to-die-for shrimp puffs at the annual Arbor Day party having been abandoned by their bestie who went to go sing Weird Al's Spiderman Song with the guy who knows how to play Piano Man on Aunt Gertrude's 1970's organ. ("Oh hey! How's it going? Oh yeah.....I did. I did. Yes. We're so happy. But...you know....I hope you don't feel bad. I had to limit myself to like 600 invites because of the fondue fountain, so....yeah....nothing personal.")

And in a certain respect this dynamic that has been around since the days of yore has only gotten weird with the advent of social media where clicking a button makes everything official. (Does anyone doubt that snidely declaring you are unfollowing someone instead of just doing it is just about the equivalent of "I'm ignoring you now! La La La La!") I mean some friends "break up," but usually the relationship just kind of falls into torpor. Social media has made things strangely officious including the weird high-school-like con-fabs where one person declares they have unfriended [Person X] and then everyone chimes in with why they never really liked them anyway.

And there are apps that send you a notification within seconds. Good luck just trying to slip away and hope no one notices.

Okay, okay. Just bear with me.

I'm not saying that your online friends aren't "real." I'm saying that they they accurately reflect a continuum of meaningful to casual and that if you're pushing in on that "famous" edge, there will be a lot more casual and superficial types––just like your meatspace relationships.

I'm talking about social media here because that creates a very literalized action for what I'm mostly trying to explain on a theoretical level, and not in any way because I'm totally addicted to social media and can't entirely conceive of a world without it.

I'm not. I'm not I'm not I'm not!

For those who have begun to experience fame (or who think they might), and have split their lives into private and public spheres, unless they are a true Salingian misanthrope and have no friends, physical, handwritten, or online, they will have to confront the fact that their "public level friends" will come and go very capriciously. More so than an "average" number of friends or someone might who doesn't have random people really wanting to get near them. It is important artists and entertainers beginning to touch that spark of fame keep themselves protected by not assuming (initially) that those relationships are bear resemblance to true friendships, no matter how much adulation or seeming intimacy pours out from them.

Let me say that again: these are not real friendships. They may BECOME real friendships, but that's not what they are to start.

People will come and go, and that's where it can get tricky–and a little painful–if you're treating those friendships like they are fully reticulated relationships. The going part hurts if you assume all friendships are founded on an equal foundation.

Again....folks, I'm telling you this because Writing About Writing is (among other things) a real-time transparent look into trying to develop the trajectory to a successful writing career. This is one of those things I wish someone had told me. I had to learn it the hard way and there were a lot of tearful nights before I realized that people unfriending wasn't really a rejection of me as a person.

People unfriend me (metaphorically and literally) all the time and for all kinds of reasons. And a very important thing to stress is that is okay–everyone gets to make the decisions for themselves about who they hang around with and what will make them safe and comfortable in this world. Nobody owes anyone else a friendship or even an explanation for walking away from a situation they view as toxic.

Many of these are social media specific, but they would have versions for people who didn't have a strong social media presence as well.

I'm too radical. Some people want to vote Democrat and call it a day on being "liberal enough." I dip my toe into criticism (particularly of our current administration) often enough that they think I'll never say anything more tough to agree with than "Trump is a bucket of unwiped anal sphincters." Then they bring some privilege denying bullshit or straight up maybe-they-deserve-it level bigotry to my wall, I point out that something they're saying is having an impact they probably didn't intend, and they go full SQD on me. Or maybe I defend certain circumstances of punching Nazis. Or point out that the stroke of a lawmaker's pen can be a violent act. Or tell them their favorite book had some pretty non-trivial problematica. Or....

I'm not radical enough. And for some I'm just not radical enough. I don't cheer torture so long as I personally deem someone unworthy of the eighth amendment. I'm not okay with extrajudicial murder so long as it's the "right" sort of people, or of lone agents opening fire on civilians so long as one of the bullets happens to hit a Republican politician. My empathy doesn't end at "those people" even if that would make me fit in a lot better with certain groups. And while I recognize a wide gulf between cheering and "it's really hard to summon much sympathy," sometimes that nuance gets lost when effigies are burning and the takes and blood are hot.

Disagreeable amounts of nuance. I often bring nuance to a situation that someone desperately wants to paint as cut and dry and doesn't feel is as complex as I think it is. Conversely, sometimes I point out that bigotry, top down violence, and systematic discrimination is a fair bit simpler and requires a more direct response than the endless, ever-deeper nuanced framing of privileged narratives and silencing of those harmed.

I'm too political. I obviously post a LOT about social issues, particularly when there's a bee in my bonnet and some people can't deal with that. It's not even always that they disagree with me; they just don't want to have someone on their feed bringing it up every day.

Not political enough.  Some people came for the social justice and did NOT stay for the selfies and nerdery.

The political/apolitical phase. Maybe they cared about politics for a while, but then it really got intense and was hard on their mental health. Or they just decided that Facebook is a place for friends and kitten memes and their done with heavy shit.

Enjoy your echo chamber! Okay, unlike most of the others, these guys really are jerkwads. They make some racist or sexist or transphobic point and then when they experience the slightest push back, they stomp off and invite me to enjoy the "echo chamber" of my wall, which is funny because the political spectrum in here leads to some pretty....robust conversations and you would have to be be very far off to the right to see us as a monolith.

Ironically, they say such things while leaving forever a conversation they don't like.

YOU'RE not my doppelganger! Some people really do need everyone around them to agree with them all the time. And when you're an opinionated writer like I am, you find out really quickly where the areas of non-overlap are. And as soon as I disagree on one thing, they're out like trout.

What are these intersections of which you speak? Often when something goes viral about issue [X], I get a lot of people into issue [X] sending me friend requests. Sometimes they get a little shocked when I care just as much about issue [Y], which they either do not or not nearly as much as the issue that first brought me to their attention.

The Wedge Issue. It's important to them that everyone agree with them (perhaps exactly) about one particular issue, and they don't want anyone who doesn't agree in their space. Though true of almost everything on this list, this one is worthy of particular mention that this isn't necessarily unreasonable. Often this issue is people's own experiences of oppression and everyone is absolutely entitled to feel safe in their own spaces.

Done with you. Some people aren't here to give folks they don't know a bunch of chances and if they perceive that I've handled enough situations badly or need more emotional labor than I'm worth to correct me, they no longer consider me safe.

Too much/not enough calling out. I often let things slide when I'm too mentally exhausted to have a fight, assume the best faith, or don't unleash force majeure on folks who are still working on 101 level issues. But I also don't run interference for those who step in it nor will I tone police anyone who would like a word. So people unfriend me because I'm not hard enough about their social issue, or because I "let" them get smacked around when they step in it.

Unhealed trauma. Sometimes people bring their unhealed trauma into a situation and their reactions to things become much more about them than what is going on. Enraged unfriendings are not uncommon.

Meanwhile in the comments. Like pretty much all of online, people bring a spectrum of patience and resilience to my wall.  Many of my friends are mostly strangers to each other, and things can get pretty heated when non-verbal communication and good faith are removed. Not everyone wants a friend whose posts they feel like they're getting into a fight to comment on. As much as I try to avoid topics I know are going to cause fallout between my social justice literate friends and everybody else (like the word "Sapiosexual," Trevor Noah, George Takei,  or whether Seth MacFarlane shows are socially pretty shitty), someone inevitably says "I don't have a problem with that," and then we're off to the fucking races–bring out the steam rollers with spikes. Shoulda stuck to agreeable topics like which way the toilet paper roll goes, pineapple on pizza, and how to say GIF.

Usually I do okay. Some days I don't.

Image description: Tombstone with Chris Brecheen '74-'18
Text: "Well that was more controversial than I thought it would be."

The purity scourges. At this point my friend list has been rocked by at least twenty major fallouts between multiple and shifting alliances of coteries that I can't even keep track of. These range from unapologetic transantagonism and antisemitism and sexual assault survivors not wanting to even have mutuals with a person actively victim blaming them, to a person unfriending everyone who had mutuals with someone starting a call out campaign against them to misinterpreted comments that were Ship of Theseus'ed in the worst possible faith. And people go through and unfriend folks and demand their friends (who maybe don't even know what's going on) make Sophie's choice. And it's all their prerogative of course because everyone is entitled to feel safe, even by proxy. But it does mean I might (and have) get (gotten) purged without even knowing what is (was) actually going on.

SWERF and TERF Every once in a while a trans exclusionary radical feminist or sex worker exclusionary radical feminist manages to slip through the defense grid and get onto my friend lists and one of us realizes what the other is about. It is basically a race to the unfriend button like the beginning of a round of The Family Feud.

The life cycle of many a fan.

• This guy is great. I'm going to follow him on every social media.
• This guy is so great. I love everything he writes. He never sells out to anyone demanding he be different. He just does his thing and screw the haters.
• This guy is so great. I love everything he writes.....except maybe that one thing.
• Boy I really wish he wouldn't write about that one thing.
• There's that one thing again. I mean he does other stuff but he does that enough that I can't enjoy it.
• Man, is he on about that one thing again. I can't stand it anymore!
• "Dear Chris. As a long time fan, I am entitled to give you feedback about how to shape your creative life more for my personal tastes and desires. Talking about 'The Thing' once a week is far too often for everyone's tastes. You should stop doing it because you're driving all your fans away. I'm totally not projecting my own desires into your entire fanbase. Plz change. Kthxbai."
• HE DIDN'T LISTEN TO MY DEMAND!! HE IS SO INTRACTABLE!
• I hate this guy. Get bent. He's no artist--UNFRIENDED!
• Perhaps some years later: "He's okay. I read most of his stuff....still on about that one thing though."

Do as I say! Some people see my outreach and sort of wish it was their outreach. They have a cause or just a timber that they feel is their moral imperative, and the ends justify the means. Soon I'm dealing with people demanding I frame every issue exactly as they would, care about every aspect and facet of an issue with exactly the same amount of force majeure with which they would, and absolutely, positively NEVER use levity or nuance in a way they have deemed inappropriate. Sometimes they even tell me directly what my next post should be. This is how you treat an employee, not a friend, and when I react badly, that's usually not when they reevaluate how pushy they've become, but rather (because the ends justify the means) when they end the friendship.

Nothing to do with me. In the world of social media this might mean someone left the medium (Facebook or whatever). But all kinds of things happen in someone's life that could make them suddenly scarce. They have a new lover, new job, new social life. They want to put their fervor into multi-level marketing. They move to Antarctica. They went to live in a yurt.  Whatever. It doesn't have anything to do with me. Months later I notice they're gone.

The jealous partner. Oh yeah. This is it's whole thing. People flirt with me (sometimes pretty hard) because I'm polyamorous and I fill some validation or something that they're not getting in their lives. Then their possessive jealous partner (usually, but not always, a boyfriend or husband) who I either didn't know about or was told wouldn't care, turns out to care a lot and the person is in less of an "open relationship" than was first advertised. He demands I be unfriended immediately.

The Legions Miscelanea. Recently a friend unfriended me because they made a sweeping statement that they were going to unfriend anyone who took FB quizzes due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Having listened to perhaps 50 hours of congressional testimony and breakdown on NPR, I offered up how they were factually inaccurate about how this data mining actually worked. Locked information stays locked on a profile, and Cambridge Analytica involved an ACTUAL political test to get its information. I was very clear in this response that I didn't actually TAKE those quizzes (about which Game of Thrones character I am, or whatever), but if they weren't going to trust FB to be honest about how an outside app would access their information, they shouldn't be trusting Facebook at ALL. BAM unfriended. Ostensibly because I'm a security risk (even though, as I said, I was clear that I didn't take those quizzes), but really it was probably to punish me for being "wrong." I challenged their narrative that a single "What Kind of Burrito are You?" quiz on an entertainment website was infodumping everything about a person's whole friend list to some shady megacorp. (Data mining is scary, but that's not how it works.) They didn't like that.

One guy blocked me when I pointed out that he could have linked and/or credited a tweet instead of copy and pasting it as one of his own. One gal was sure I was the one that left some message on her Saharah that she didn't appreciate. (I never even used Saharah.) I'm pretty sure a couple of people have unfriended me because they'd like to fuck the woman who still drags me from time to time for not choosing her when she defended a sexual assaulter and blamed the victim. I know I've been on the bad side of one of the feuds. One person unfriended me because I wouldn't meet up with her in Salt Lake City later that day–Later. That. DAY.  I mean there are so many stories and the fewer people that see you as a real person and project who you are onto you instead of bothering to get to know you for real, the more they treat you as disposable when things get even slightly weird.

Who even knows? A lot of people just fucking ghost. They talk about me, but not too me. And maybe that's what feels safer and less confrontational to them. I'm certainly not entitled to an explanation. But it also means I never really know. And if I tried, I'd probably just hurt my soul. I thought we were friends, but I guess not so much on their end.

Now imagine....just imagine for a moment....what a quibbling mess I'd be if I let my personal demons tear me apart Every. Single. Time. one of these things happened. I'd never get ANYTHING done. My life would be a miasma of anxiety, self doubt and loathing, abandonment triggers, and the surety that my imposter syndrome was right all along and they just realized I'm faking it*. 

*Well...okay....like more than it already is.

Being written out by friends you love and trust is hard enough that you don't want to sign on for it with folks who have a different "frequency" of friendship with you. That's just asking for trouble. And as I said while not everyone is going to have these dynamics play out so literally as they do on social media, everyone who is starting to find some kind of "fame" around what they do is going to have to deal with the fact that they are going to have "friends" come and go like they are a little bit disposable.

Hopefully if your life is bending that way you separate your public and private life, protect yourself (and them) by managing your expectations, and don't have to learn these lessons the hard way like Chris did.