Originally Posted by SoylentOrange
The worst thing any of us here can do when someone makes fun of being furry/expansionist/etc. is to try and make some lame attempt to justify it. I mean, let's take off the rose-tinted glasses for a moment and realize a few simple facts:
1) Anything posted on these forums, any of the interests contained therein, are weird, full stop. They just are. Things like BE, TF, GTS, etc. are all *Far* outside the mainstream, some more than others, but it's like arguing who's going to hit first when two people fall out of a plane. It might be different, but it doesn't matter.
2) When people not in our little circles (And it is a LITTLE circle) see this stuff, their first reaction is going to be either confusion, revulsion, or ridicule, and there's nothing strange or wrong about that. All the people saying the trolls are "Jealous" of Blitza are completely deluding themselves. They're not jealous of anything, they think he (and by extension almost all furries/expansionists/etc.) is somehow broken or deficient. You say they could never get ona project like that- they would never, *ever* want to, so there's nothing to be jealous of.
3) Arguing against 2) is a fruitless endeavor. The more you try to justify or rationalize things that are inherently irrational the more you appear broken. I've seen furries survive at SomethingAwful and expansionists at lulz by the simple virtue of admitting they're messed up. The ones who survive just shrug their shoulders, say "Yeah it's messed up, but lots of people have weird kinks so whatever", and then don't spend another second talking about it. Given a little time, people just forget and move on.
4) No other fact about your life will mitigate your kink. BLitza bringing up his car or his girlfriend or his disposable income makes no difference. You could be a millionaire and date a supermodel and it wouldn't change the fact that in their eyes, you're a freak. It sounds like desperate excuse-making, that since the rest of your life is normal and successful you're allowed your perversions, and that reeks of 3). If anything, it just gives them more targets to shoot for, like when Blitza bragged about his car and then someone found a picture of it and made fun of that, since it was an old 1988 Opel, which, let's face it, isn't exactly a porsche.
5) There is no victory so long as you bring it/them up, since it's exactly what they're looking for. Making a journal saying "I'm ignoring the trolls!" is like standing in the middle of the desert saying how cold you are. No you're not. Anyone can see by looking that you're not. You're giving them exactly what they want, over and over and over again, so long as you keep responding. You can respond with tears, or with rage, or anything in-between, and the effect is the same: you're responding to them, and thus, you lose.
I don't mean to pick on Blitza here, but this has all happened before, right down to the dramatic threats to leave, and it's unfortunately going to *keep* happening so long as he doesn't know how to deal with trolls. Something like this needs to be on the front page of FA or something, because the amount of thin-skinned artists on there who will just completely melt down the first time something penetrates their protective social coccoon is just staggering.
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