ugh.

[arethinn]

I've been plagued with a lot of "bah... no one wants to hear about that; nobody gives a shit anyway" feelings lately about anything it might have occurred to me to post (both here and in treeofstars. This is one of my very most major utterly McLargehuge issues, by the way: fear not just of active rejection, but of rejection by apathy.

Which one is worse is slightly different under different conditions. I think active is worse if it's something I presented in full confidence, although depending on mood I might be able to get into a discussion, defend myself and come out feeling fine. Passive in that case isn't so bad because then I just go away feeling "well, fine, I still liked it and I don't care if no one else does." If it's something I presented in a trembling hope of acceptance, I think both are pretty close, but passive might be a bit worse; it's that silence that says "this is so dumb stupid we're not even going to bother to tell you about it, because you should have known better. what were you thinking?" If it's something I figured people wouldn't like anyway, then hm... probably active, because I'll feel put upon or annoyed. "If it sucked so much, why did you have to tell me about it?" kind of feeling.

Comments

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

Conventional wisdom says that apathy is worse than active rejection. While it's good to be leery of conventional wisdom, in this particular case, I tend to agree with convention. One would have to be incredibly bland and generic (and few humans are) not to experience, every once in a while, that "I'm the only one who seems to like or care about this!" However, never feeling any sort of connection or kinship at all, for lengthy periods, strikes me as being a pretty unpleasant prospect.