Contextual References & Wrong Opinions

My life has reached the point where after I introduce myself with my name, my age, and my hobbies, I also add 'replying to comments on YouTube' as a favorite pastime. 

I don't know why I bother commenting though, because sometimes I look at a trail of comments and exchanges and think to myself, I shouldn't have started. And sometimes, I chuckle because, somewhere on the globe, an adult white male with strong opinions and undermining statements types furious replies to a teenage girl on some other place on the globe, completely unaware of what he is dealing with and stubborn to the last exclamation point. 

This has become such a routine act, I am considering opening YouTube account where the only thing I will do is film myself while I rant about why a comment made me lose faith in humanity. It's hard to imagine what I put myself through each time I scroll down a page (against my better judgement) to check out how people reacted to a video. And by the time I am done reading people's wrong opinions (which do exists), I want to smash my beautiful Mac with a hammer and hope that the internet ceases to exist, which of course, doesn't happen. 

You don't understand, I guarantee it. I am a very emotionally invested person both in things I like and dislike, and thus my passions reflect on my physical being. When I am happy, I can feel my blood rushing through my veins and my brain sending neurons of exhilaration to my nerve endings, but when I am sad I can also feel this hollow drop internally and my bones constricting, and drawing together in shame and disparity. It happens. And at those times, I want turn to the people around me, to inanimate objects, or air particles that surround me and shout a long Doctor Who soliloquy as follows:

"Take my experiences. Take my memories. Take all these comments I have seen. I've lived a fairly short life but I've seen a few things. I walked away from terrorist jokes. I have marked the passing of the apocalyptic Femen movements. I saw the birth of cyber-bullying culture and watched as humanity ran out, trait by trait, until nothing remained. No humanity, no nothing. Just me! I typed in chat rooms where the laws of ethics were devised by the minds of a madman! And I watched faces freeze and emotions burn! I have seen things you wouldn't believe! I have lost things you will never understand! And I know things, secrets that must never be told, knowledge that must never be spoken! So come on then! Take it! Take it all, baby! Have it! You have it all!"

And yes, I have heard that people don't care, and I have read that nobody cares, but isn't that why we are standing where we are? Our ignorance drives us down and dehumanizes us, and we can still stand up tall and say we don't care. We never cared.

Well, then, should we be proud? Proud that serious problems like equality and representation and environmental issues go unnoticed to us, and we don't give a damn. Proud that we don't see the reason to learn, to listen, or to accept that we don't know everything. Should we really be proud?

Because the last time I checked, I still have to read, I still have to write, I still have to listen and be open-minded, and I have a long way before I can assess all the issues on Earth and decide that I don't care. Because if I do not care and I do not know, then am I really, truly, human?

Lots of differential equations,
~Belle

The Nerd Identity

“HA NERD!” yells the conventional part of me to the nerd, shoving her into the back confines of my personality that the outer world sees. 

“At least I am knowledgeable and do work that requires brainpower,” says the nerd part of me, shooting a sideways glance at the artist and enunciating each word with contempt. 

The artist slouches a little bit, sighs loudly into the blackness, and dips her brush in the palette in front of her, thinking yet another day in which my artistic abilities, skills, and efforts are devalued and invalidated. How inspiring. 

Although, I do not have dissociative personality disorder or struggle with a split personality, this inner struggle has been gnawing at my mind for a while. 

The cliché is between the nerds and the jocks. The jocks tease the nerds for their extensive understanding of various topics, or for their passions about certain subjects while the nerds grumble about the barbaric and crude nature of the jocks. We have witnessed and publicized only to this extent of the age-old battle, but we have ignored the shameless mirroring of this bullying reflected onto artists. 

Here is what I have observed: in a way to defend themselves, nerd will attack the artists so that they aren’t at the bottom of the food chain, but in putting the artists down, they acquire the same moral ground as the jocks. According to the nerds, artists are know-nothing-do-nothings. They splatter some paint; write a few unrhymed lines of poetry, try to create new genres of music, and act out plays with absurd names like Urinetown. And let’s be honest. Artists are all hippies aren’t they? They don’t care what we think. They don’t care when we insult their new way of writing or their abstract collages. They don’t take it to heart when we say that theater isn’t intensive, and they don’t mind when we take fine arts lightly. I mean, why should they? Artists probably aren’t even human, right? They probably don’t feel things. I mean, why else would they choose such visual and sensory mediums of self-expression? That just would have made it ironic. 

But research shows that artists are human. They are of the Homo sapien species. And they do feel things. Like sadness, and regret, and disappointment. And just as the nerds pursue careers in oceanography and nanotechnology out of their passions, artists try their luck in graphic design and directing for the same reason. They put everything they have into their work, they chase down their muses, they track down mentors, and they work, at times, more than theoretical physicists and statisticians, to remain off the streets and not be labeled as starving artists. 

And the problem boils down to our inherent insecurity. We try to defend our own passions and likes by discrediting others’ passions and likes and that really doesn’t take us anywhere. So the question is: how should the system change in order for those who feel a special connection to baseball, those who feel a special connection to science, and those who feel a special connection to drawing, all get along?

Lots of texture sets,
~Belle