I recently had a falling out with an online gaming acquaintance. I know. I hate using the word "friend" because, well, after a while, it's hard to associate that word to anyone when it becomes synonymous to a lot of negative emotions. So yes, I always think of my gaming contacts as "acquaintances". Often times, some people seemed to showcase such promising attributes only to suddenly show me who they really are. It's no secret that I am anti-social. I have always been this way. I never see it as a problem because I am content having myself as my only companion. But of course, things just can't stay the same. As time goes on, life gets more and more complicated. From falling in love to getting to know someone through social gaming, I have experienced the beauty of human connections, though these occurrences are mostly short-lived. It's easy to let go when acquaintanceships go awry but they still disturb me just the same.
When it comes to the online gaming world, I have learned over the years that correspondence speed and ego boosting are very important. When you get a private message, if you don't respond within 5 minutes, it's pretty much over. It doesn't matter if you simply missed the message or that you were actually away from the keyboard: you snooze, you lose. The ego boosting is truly something else as most people seem to value flattery over sincerity. You catch more flies with sugar than vinegar as they say but only in the sense that you are the fly who are freely landing on the sugar bait when getting caught is not a good thing.
Don't let people tell you that Christmas, Buddha, and animal friendship don't mix.
The problem with me and online relationships sometimes is that I am apparently just too honest with people. If I want to keep people happy with their perceived connection with me, apparently, I should never be my real self. If I see you stepping in poop, I will tell you that you stepped in poop, even though you are high on drugs and you think you just buried your foot in the sand at a tropical beach. I also have to recognize that people are unwilling to share with me their true thoughts just the way they didn't like to be told the truth. When they have a problem with me, they usually don't tell me until the very end. The problems they have usually ended up being either delusions or assumptions. One time, this one person told me that he/she wanted me to stop stealing his/her Twitch viewers. This is after me, liking the person, chatted a lot in that person's channel and that channel mostly had me as the solo viewer. Also, I mostly stream to a 0-viewer count, so I really don't know where that came from.
Yoshi + Gary = Ultima Pet 2022
Another thing that gets problematic with me is my dry humor. I recently changed my Twitch name to Phee Nhies, pronounced fē-nis or fē-nēs if you are playful, which is a funny reference to the human anatomy - so I thought - while honoring a lady bard character I created for my ongoing playthrough of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous on the Personal Computer. What I didn't see coming however is the way that those who were supposed to be good acquaintances would react to this. Suffice to say that I lost connections to several people because of the name change, including the person I mentioned in the opening, who didn't have that dignified of a Twitch name to begin with. I didn't know that Twitch was supposed to be Facebook until this happened. Those who have had me chatting on their channels know that I like to have silly fun but apparently, that silly fun is not the same anymore when it comes out of a Phee Nhies. I understand that at the end of the day, I can't expect everyone to get me. But it's also another eye-opening experience that truly showcased the second point from the second paragraph. If it is not flattering to them, then it shall be ignored. Note that none of these individuals even bothered asking me about the origin of the name change. Phee Nhies just tasted bad in their mouths I suppose and it's just too sensitive a subject for one to touch on.
Told her it was going to be a boring trip but noooo... She still wanted to go!
I hope I am not giving off the impression that I don't like all people. I am just saying that online "friendship" is hard because mostly, they are seemingly built on fakery. There are still plenty of online acquaintances in my life and I do appreciate their companionships but whenever something like this happens, it makes me question a lot of things. And time is just too short to ponder about this part of the human experience, but life is weird, and I still continue to pursue friendships. In my attempt to be more social, I don't have a choice but to navigate through all of this the best that I possibly can.
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