This is gonna be somewhat personal because I guess it has to be to explain where I'm coming from, but I'm also going to try to limit how much detail I get into given it's the internet and all. And also because I don't want people trying to make my political views about what else I am in life, so they can be more dismissive of them somehow. Not that I expect most of you would, but people can view post history and all.

But I am sharing it here because it's something some of you may understand that others may not. I have felt, for most of my life, like some form of outcast or outsider. Or at times like a hipster, but in the meaning of someone who shirks the mainstream not to wear beanies and thick beards or whatever but just sort of because they never connected to the mainstream and maybe never quite understood its pull or felt welcome in it.

There are various reasons I could go into as to why (which gets personal with my history fast), but at this point, it feels sometimes like I'm a magnet for it. One of my favorite hobbies from a young-ish age was video games. This later become a source of insecurity when I found out how stereotyped it was as "angry video game fan" (and some of those stereotypes are true and make everyone into video games look bad). It happened with religion; my family was Catholic and when I became an old enough teen, I moved toward atheism. Later on, it happened with political beliefs. Today, I've never felt more confident and informed and just grounded in my political views, but the closest people in my life? They feel like strangers in this regard. They can agree on "being nice to others" (which was something they taught me) but it's hard to get through to them beyond that.

To top it off, in the last couple years, I got into AI as a hobby. Now prior to that, I'd had some interest here and there in the concept of it, but it wasn't at the stage where it was really a thing unless you were going to be a researcher or read articles about it. Generative AI made it viable as a hobby. And I've talked about that before here, the way I approached it, trying to be ethical about it, but it sucks that it is also a commonly hated and stigmatized thing. It feels like video games all over again, but even worse.

I look at this pattern and I go, it's no wonder I feel directionless sometimes. The stuff I actually enjoy doing most chronically gets looked down upon, which makes me feel bad for being into it, which makes me question being into things at all. And with the political stuff, I don't even feel safe. In my home, I do, don't get me wrong, but overall as a person with these kind of beliefs living in the US.

I don't understand people who are able to just "be themselves" about what they're into and not worry about what others think. I can stand my ground on ideological stuff, strongly held beliefs, like politics. But shrugging off some of the other stuff is hard. I've felt for much of my life like I'm doing something wrong and missing something others "get" and the being into stuff that is looked down on / hated I'm sure makes it worse, if not is the cause.

If anyone gets this far, thanks for reading. If you have advice to give or sympathy, I'm open to either. Though I expect some of it is an emotional thing, not a matter of acting much differently. There's something profoundly lonely about feeling like an outsider. It doesn't make me cool. I wish I could feel safe to "conform" to society and know it'd be to mutual benefit.