Fletcher.... thanks. That was a great post.
Connie.... it's exactly the same with me, only possibly more so. I resist it as best I can, but what I saw in a character or show will get muted or go away completely because of those negative opinions from others. It's not because I believe what they're saying. It's subconscious pressure. My feelings and conscious opinions get split off from each other. I end up not being able to believe in what I'm seeing with my own eyes. A show will be "bad" even though I know better.
I don't understand supremely confident people, who go around proclaiming their opinions, and who just tell people they don't agree with that they just don't know what the f they're talking about. I can't in my wildest dreams imagine being that self-contained and invulnerable. I don't want to be like that. But I'd kill to have half that confidence and self-belief, enough to be my real self for the first time.
There's a mob mentality among most people, on most subjects, that people just automatically go with, without stopping to think. (I hope this won't offend people here. I think we need to start to see it, to start fighting it. Every human being is vulnerable to this.) It's part of the comformist urge that leads people to try so hard to "fit in"--- we mold beliefs to fit what the majority seems to think, subconsciously, sometimes in a small way, sometimes totally. Then we tell kids to "be themselves", confusing the hell out of them, but that's another subject for another time.
Anyway, it really seems to be possible for an idea to be repeated so often and so loudly by so many people, that it becomes "true", that is, it becomes next to impossible to see it as not being true. I think half the ideas that go around in this society are like that. Repetiti on TV equals truth. If you're immersed in fandom, that's almost as overwhelming as TV. This or that actor is crap... it's treated as obvious and self-evident, and eventually you can't stand the strain anymore, of internally fighting the idea (because you feel as if your perceptions must be crazy if you do)... and if the subject is just one actor you don't think much about anyway, you're not going to be trying too hard.
I lost my sister, the person I felt closest to in the world, the only person who seemed remotely in synch with me, partly because I got to like Elton John and Bernie Taupin, almost as much as the Beatles. This would be trivial for any other two people, I know. It only matters because of the consequences, plus how young I was then. Don't tell me it's silly... I know it is, and that's my point.
We'd shared musical tastes untril then. I got contempt from her over this, suddenly, unexpectedly, and things gradually fell apart from that point on. that was the beginning of the snowball. Ayway, I've had to struggle to validate internally my own beliefs, likes, and perceptions because of that and other pressures from an early age, to feel just about everything I think and feel and believe and experience is "wrong"-- not morally but factually.
So, yes, Connie, it happens. I hope your version is milder than mine.
Buzz---
I've decided that some insecurities I have are those performers' anxieties you hear them talking about sometimes, that make them go on stage and be comedians, only I'm not in a situation that allows me to do anything like that, so it's bottled up and festers. I hit upon that idea to feel better about things actually. We're all flawed, as Fletcher talked about above.
