It's NOT Skyrim.
I did a lot of thinking tonight and a lot of talking with my little brother (a furry who stays silent on the internet). We got down to talking about things and I eventually stumbled onto WHY I hate Skyrim...
or Minecraft...or My Little Ponies.
It has NOTHING to do with the media and everything to do with my youth in high school. See, in rural Buttfuck, Nebraska, there's not a whole lot to do outside of school so TV and media played a big social aspect in my peers. The cable TV I wasn't allowed to have but they could, the movies I had no money for, so on and so forth. I was constantly shunned because I either didn't understand their references or had no context for what they were talking about due to the fact that I had little exposure to the topic or, more likely, little reason to really like it at all (see Tommy Boy or any other SNL movie that came out around the late 90s really).
Because they shunned me, I grew to hate it. As I became more of a music nerd and strove to better myself at that, the exclusion grew more visceral and real. To this day, I *still* have no drive to ever attend a high school reunion because I would go there and likely start fistfights. It continued during early college until I found a true set of friends who DIDN'T judge me over things...and would, instead, help expose me to them. Believe it or not, I wasn't sure WHAT to think of the original Xbox until a friend sat me down and played Halo with me.
Fast forward to present day.
Minecraft and MLP have been constant topics in my circles of friends. Skyrim to a lesser extent. Now imagine yourself wanting to hate someone because they constantly like something that you have little interest in (because that's how it's always been in your world). But those people you want to hate are your dear and beloved friends. Hating them is utterly out of the question to you...so what's left to express your hate towards?
The topic itself.
To reiterate, I've never really had a problem against Skyrim or MLP or Minecraft or anything else I have no interest in but is still popular anyhow. But this latent "hate it because it's popular and you'll therefore be shunned' feeling has been buried inside my psyche for so very long that I had no idea it was even there to begin with. It's only after LONG talks with people who, instead of telling me to just shut up about it, told me to talk through it and challenged me to look deeper. That maybe there was a deeper reasoning to my irritations.
And there is. It's not the topic, it's me. Or rather, it's my childhood screaming at me to hate because that's how it always was and that child is convinced that this was how it always *would be*.
It isn't. Skyrim's not a bad game. It just doesn't interest me at all. I'd rather play Sonic Generations or any of the other games coming down the pipe that I *am* looking forward to. Minecraft never interested me because I saw little point, but that didn't make it a bad game either. My Little Ponies...
...okay, I still have a bit of a weirded-out sensation when it comes to bronies and some of their insufferable antics, but that's an actual solid reason against THEM, not against the show itself. But I've felt left out because of it all. Felt like I should feel sad because I don't take part in it all or, if I do, not as big as others.
I understand myself now. This feeling I have is the best I've felt about discovering myself in...geez, I don't even KNOW how long. I am not making any claims to instantly being an un-angry person, but now I know better than to direct hatred towards something JUST because it is popular and I'm not interested. And I know that if I'm to grow, my friends will likely need to know this. Not to change them, but to help them be aware to not let me do this kind of angry behavior anymore. To put it in my face that I'm hating based on a long-standing bias rather than factual evidence.
Too many people hate because they have been trained to. Look at radical evangelicals or even most Catholics. Fighting against it is near impossible because they were trained to. I was trained to hate against popularity because it was painful. That, at least, is workable. I *can* conquer it, though it's likely to take time.
But understanding yourself is always the first part of bettering yourself.
So no, I don't hate Skyrim. I think that the advertising could've been dialed down about a zillion notches. I think it's about the same as any other Fallout-like thing that exists. But it's not a bad game.
Just doesn't interest me. Now to work on tuning out the loudness of everyone else who does and who doesn't mean to rub it in. Whoof...that's gonna be hard.
<<<EDIT>>>
I've just read something in a fantasy book that's kind of poignant and very very true. It kind of needs to be here, where everyone else can see it. I'll quote the author instead of the character.
"Until a person learns to laugh at himself, his life will be a tragedy --- at least, that's the way he'll see it." - David Eddings
Ask yourself how many people *coughfurriescough* you know that are like this.
Are you?
About time I stopped, isn't it?
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12 years, 5 months ago
15 Nov 2011 09:24 CET
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