The Meaning of Squeals

This year so far has contained 2 distinct "Eeeeeeeee!" moments. You know, moments that make you squeal uncontrollably due to an explosion of awesome.

1) Finding out the Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman are engaged. And are planning to follow through and actually get married. That's awesome on its own, but imagining the awesomeness at the actual event? My God. Its good that I'm not their IRL friend, because if I were invited I would be a mess of squeals and sobs of happiness/awesome overload.

2) Seeing the new ALLCAPS video (here) ... and at about 3:00 seeing Kristina and Luke kiss. Omg. Lol. I'm such a fan girl... But when I figured out that they'd finally got together I was super excited, so seeing evidence and seeing such happiness made me squeal like a tool. Again, its a good thing I'm not friends with them in real life. They would most likely back away from me as if I were a zombie.


Now all this squealing leads me to the following conclusion: I'm becoming a softy girly girl in my old age. Well, in my 23-years-old-age, which doesn't really count as old age to most, but if you ask my past teenaged self, she would say that if I'm getting mushy I must be old.

I don't really care though. I'm much more comfortable in myself now than I was then. I tried so hard when I was younger, to present a certain image of myself to others that would simultaneously make me look cool, a bit scary and intelligent. This was mostly so that people wouldn't judge me in any way inferior. I guess that's probably because I'm secretly rather judgemental, and I assume everyone else is as well.

Anywho. I don't care that much about what people think of me anymore. I mean, yes I still care a little bit - that's normal and healthy I think. And yes I still try to pull off a certain image to people who I don't know at all, or don't know that well, but nowadays I'm more happy to explore all aspects of my personality, whether they contradict what I'd like to think about myself or not.

Righto. Now I'm just going to get all fangirly about AllCaps again, and watch all their videos because they are awesome.

<3

Online "friends" ...

I feel like I've blogged about this before...

Nonetheless!

Online "friendships".

I was thinking the other day that it is a very strange phenomenon that occurs between a "fan" of someone online and that person. For example, I was trying to tell my mother about Kristina Horner from youtube/the parselmouths/italktosnakes blog, and I found myself wanting to say "my friend Kristina". Although that is not strictly true.

She actually only vaguely knows of my existence. And mostly that knowledge just places me as an anonymous number in her "subscribers" or "listeners" or "readers". But if this were offline, I am fairly sure that anyone who paid this much attention to what she had to say, and appreciated her creative outlets as much as I do (and the rest of the subscribers... I'm not the only one!), would probably be classed as a friend.

But because it is online its different. It is like a one-way friendship. I would kind of like to have a conversation with her - and anyone else that I watch/read - but I know it would be wierd because I would be at an advantage. I already know a lot about her and her life. But she would know practically nothing about me and my life. So it would be awkward probably. Or maybe I'm too selfconscious about that fact?

I think it would be similar to meeting a celebrity for the first time. Like I would really love to meet and talk to Amanda Palmer. She is my favourite artist of all time. I love her music. I love her blog. And I really admire her commitment to both music and creativity in general. She is a wonderful person. Yet if I were given the opportunity to sit down with her backstage I would feel really uncomfortable blurting out all these things because she does not know me! Sure I could think of some interesting questions to ask her and start a conversation but it is still wierd because she is the one that I know all about, and I am just fan number xy.

Anyways... Just thought I'd blog that. Its a thought that has been running around in my head for a while. :-)