Amaros
Posts: 1363
Joined: 7/25/2005
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quote:
ORIGINAL: toservez
"Real", "not real", "fake" are all terms thrown around so much in cyber and real world that they cannot be taken seriously. Pretty much any people who use them are generally using them for mostly two reasons.
1) I am judging you not as good as me because my self esteem needs to judge people instead of letting them be them and me be me.
2) People who cannot handle rejection, differences of opinions or choices. Then the terms are just use as a generic put down.
If you are true to yourself and honest to others then nobody is better then you. You are just different from them and that is perfectly fine. In the end all these terms and definitions, like real, sub, bottom, etc. are just nothing more then helping form a common language within a specific social circle. They are not meant to judge and people who use them like that are not worth the time to argue with. Are you happy with who you are and what you do and the person(s) happy to be with you. Being true to yourself and treating others with class is what "real" is to me. It has nothing to do with how others judge or opinion of me.
Lin
Well said.
I'd add that in my experience with the syndrome, it often boils down to a confusion of fashion over style, and/or, style over substance - you are basically not reinforcing their fantasy, and you are, therefore, "not real" - it means they can't handle social intercourse between equals and they need an excuse to flake.
I have to remind them at this point that fashion is a form of ugliness so offensive that we have to change it every six months. Unfortunately, we live in a materialistic, fashion conscious society, where identity is associated with consumption, and fashion fuels consumption - if you don't buy into this particular fantasy, you are "not real", and must be some kind of commie or loser, no?
Other times I have to ask, a real what?
This consumption culture tends to filter down into subcultures - you can be hip-hop, but if you don't have a car, you can walk, or ride a skateboard, but not ride a bike (past a certain age) - and you can still be real, but not as real as if you sink Sixty grand into pimping out your Honda Civic - cultural commodification that leads to a clash of fantasies, and some, of course, are more fun, and less expensive than others.
The irony here, is of course, that should you buy into this, you have largely ceased to be a real human yourself, and most likely have become merely a walking advertisement, and paying for the privilage. The thing is, I find that kind of demeaning, I don't care if other people have their fantasies, but I don't feel obligated to finance them.
Politically, this is taken to extremes, a conservative ommentator asked what he thought about polls going against their team, responded that the polls were positive - what he meant of course, was that the polls were positive among the people that mattered - likely republican voters, the core constituancy. The "others" were, for him, "not real" to the degree that that their very existence was an afterthought.
Culture wars are really fantasy wars, some fantasies just happen to reflect objective reality better than other ones - the other day Rush Limbaugh did about a half hour trying to discredit the concept of empirical evidence and scientific method itself, leaving... what?
Why, the opinion of Rush Limbaugh, of course. So it goes.
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