jackofallgeeks | Jul. 29th, 2004

So, Ms. Vixen Posted about these 'stamping' communities... I tried to make a little quip-comment, but truthfully, I feel really bad for them... I mean, I donno. The idea that people could feel the need to do that to themselves, and base who they are on something as transient and pointless as what others think... And when the rules include shit like "accepted members are encouraged to be bitchy & show favoritism, so deal" and when they label themselves things like "Vanity_Whore"... Add to the fact that they wouldn't care that (or necessarily understand why) I feel so bad about it all, and it just makes me feel worse for it.

I'm afraid I sound patronizing, but that's not the intent. The whole thing just bothers me.

Ms. Vixen said it was "genuinely tragic and touching" that they would try to bring their social currency here, to a place where it's mostly-meaningless. Perhapse the fact becomes less and less as more people use their own image as their avatar, but... I don't know, I've always seen it as more a place where people can be themselves as themselves, and strip off a few of the masks and defenses we all always have up. Or something. I think it's kind of a nice place around here, generally. But now I'm rambling.

It just saddens me that people actually do that sort of thing to themselves.

Tangentially, this sort of thing always makes me think of my little cousins. They're all beautiful girls with a lot of emotional and intellectual potential to them. I worry a lot that they might fall into something like this, and it really frightens me -- particularly because I'm not sure there's anything I could do to prevent it from happening, or to help them out of it after the fact...