This was originally a tweet, but I'm elevating it into an article, because I think it's useful.
Sort of, though I'm not sure why. But I voted "No".
I'm not surprised 75% of respondents voted "Yes", yet I'm not sure why that is, either. 🤔
— Mindlevel Zero (@mindlevelzero) November 14, 2021
Thinking about it some more, and seeing some other people's replies to the same poll I'm replying to here, a couple thoughts... Summon: Thread!
Part of why we feel alienated from the "scene" comes from using a platform like twitter as our social space.
Online social platforms are not equivalent to IRL social interaction—they are simulacra of it, and they have weird knock-on effects we aren't always aware of.
What I mean in practice is: we spend most of our time on twitter performing and witnessing performance.
That isn't to say we're all narcissistic poseurs, it's just that the platform gives incentives for that behaviour...
...and it affords few other ways to behave.
I feel pushed to post my little "You are getting sleepy" tweets, both because I genuinely enjoy it, but ALSO because I crave the "social interaction" of likes and replies, and I know those tweets will yield such a response.
But likes and replies, fun and mildly satisfying as they are, aren't much of an interaction.
We don't really have conversations with each other here so much as we witness and respond to each other's performances... and we are sensitive to what we lack.
So someone who struggles to have the hypnosis experiences they want perceive an endless stream of other people having such experiences.
How do they feel? Here's the word that kicked this thread off:
Alienated.
And likewise those who wish they had in-person hypnokink partners almost certainly follow and like (and therefore see more of) lots of tweets from the people who do have those partners.
It's fun and hot to see other people indulging in the play you want to indulge in...
But how does it leave you feeling?
Alienated, perhaps?
After all, you're not really having a relationship with that person, you're just watching what they share online and clapping.
You feel like you don't belong to the "community", because you aren't happily living out hypno fantasies, while "they" ARE.
And they feel like they don't belong to the "community", either, because they're just up on a virtual stage, dancing for nickels.
I'm not saying the way we all interact is 100% bad, but I'm also not surprised what I've described leaves a lot of us with feelings of alienation a lot of the time.
Because it seems like there's a "community", but each of us also doesn't seem to belong to it.
We do belong, though, all of us—in the sense that we're bound together by a common passion.
And the opportunity to rise above all the performance and have a real interaction with another human IS there. And when it happens, it's wonderful.
Our online community comes with all the problems of being online—and of being a community, for that matter; everything has its tradeoffs.
But I'll take Hypnokink World 2021 over Hypnokink World 2000 any day—and I was around for both.
Being on tumblr and twitter these past few years, I've met and had relationships with more wonderful, kinky people than I ever met, or could conceive of meeting, in the preceding 20 years.
I'm not saying YOU shouldn't feel alienated, or should feel bad if you do...
But having just poured out a few hundred words on this topic, I want to conclude on an upbeat note:
You're not alone in your feelings. If you feel "alienated from the scene", it isn't something wrong with you.
Thanks for reading. ❤️