"Wow. You really like that stuff?..."

Yes. Yes I do.

A lot of times people that I interact with on an ongoing basis who don’t know me well personally don’t initially know I’m into horror. Often, if they find out they seem very surprised.

Admittedly, I don’t encapsulate the picture of what I imagine most people expect a big horror fan to look like. I don’t have any tattoos or piercings, I’m generally pretty clean cut (ehhh… depends on the day), and I wear a button up shirt and tie with slacks or a suit more days of the week than anything else. I guess I can understand people being a little perplexed upon first discovery that I run the Orange Ulster Horror Club and am into a bunch of movies where people are slaughtered left and right by maniacs, or cryptic rituals bring ancient evils upon the world.

Fair.

Everyone makes assumptions of people based on the contexts they see them in and upon past experiences. It’s human nature, and I do it all the time myself too.

That isn’t what upsets me.

What gets to me is when people find out that horror is a huge hobby and pastime of mine and then say something or act in a way that communicates “Oh… I didn’t know you were like THAT.” You know, an attitude that assumes that other things about my ethos, my personality, or my skill set that they previously may have admired are now in some way defunct upon the realization that I advocate for this dark, unworthy little passion.

I can’t speak for everyone else, but in general I have known a ton of horrorheads and I would say at least 95% of them have been what I consider good, intelligent, and passionate people, so these kinds of attitudes are really insulting to me. We are by and far NOT stupid, NOT violent, and NOT shallow. We simply have a passion for a more deviant art.

I’ve gone through a number of different phases in my life over how I feel about this and in coming to grip with myself and others around me as to how to interpret and deal with it.

Realizations of having myself being defined negatively in some way in many people’s eyes over my love of horror has caused me a great deal of hurt and frustration over the years. For anyone else who has been through the same thing, I’d like to share something I have found to be useful. It’s a great way to think about and internalize the mindset to take towards these people.

Ready?

“Fuck you :)”

Now, the smiley face here is extremely important.

It’s a big part of what makes this mindset VERY different from the following mindset:

“Fuck you! You don’t know anything about me! I don’t even care what you fucking think. You don’t know shit and you’re just a conformist asshole.”

While SOME parts of that later statement may indeed be true at times, I now find that there is hardly ever a time when all parts of it are true at once. More important than that, I find that almost always the person saying that or something similar is blurting out of defense and insecurity. That’s not necessarily a bad thing - I felt that way for years. Though, through looking at myself and focusing on some hard realizations (which took literally years) I found a number of reasons why this doesn’t work for me anymore now. The biggest of which being because I have a very strong personal belief that before I have the right to say anything about anyone else I should have a firm foothold on my own personal emotions and whether or not they’re in check.

And I want to preface this by saying that I don’t want this to be misconstrued. Just like with my view on “Scenes” I’m gonna pick at this one a little tough-loved. That’s because I LOVE horror people and I’m not afraid to say I have had a lot of hard times with this myself in the past (and sometimes continue to). I hope it can be of use to someone else. I DON’T think a lot of horror fans are viewed fairly, but I also think it’s more important to get a hold of our own outlooks than to harp on other people’s perceptions of us as much as some of us do.

Allow me to explain by breaking down the parts of that insecure statement individually:

“Fuck you! You don’t know anything about me” – Ok. This pertains to people you either just met or haven’t gotten familiar with. What if that’s true and the person you’re directing this towards really DOESN’T know you. Well, then all they have to go on is what you present yourself like or act like in the moment. You can’t blame someone simply for not knowing all the info – I guarantee you do it too, because we all do. Are you as a person more than just a mindless, horror junkie with no other dimensions to your life? Probably. Then, if YOU know that, either show people those other parts of yourself if you want them to see you differently, or don’t place so much emphasis on what they think if you know they don’t have all the info. People will go with their preconceptions when that's all they have. It doesn’t make them right. It’s up to you to redirect them or determine what importance it plays in your life.

“I don’t even care what you fucking think” – Yes you do. You can tell yourself you don’t (I’ve been reeeeally good at this sometimes) but that’s not making things harder for anyone else but you. Accept it – you’re not a lone wolf that is above the need for acceptance and understanding of other people. You may want to be, but you’re not. That doesn’t make you weak. It doesn’t mean you need everyone’s approval for everything or that your differences and uniqueness doesn’t matter. That’s a different extreme. Still, it HURTS when people look down on you for one of the very things that is extremely important to you. Start from acknowledging hurt, not claiming indifference.

“You don’t know shit and you’re just a conformist asshole” – This took me a long time to fully get. I’ve always been a fan of some things that are outlying from the norm like horror and metal, so it took a while to understand that other people can like things that are inside of mainstream culture for other reasons than just going with the pack, and even if they do, it’s not your business. People have varying life experiences and histories and it’s no more okay for you to shit on theirs than it is for them to shit on yours. The difference is that a lot of times people who have passions and tastes in more “non-traditional” things have had to deal with more backlash about them simply due to their nature. Just how it is, not fair, but in the long run dealing with it appropriately will make you more resilient than many others get the chance to learn how to be. Accept it as your responsibility and become stronger. Don’t use it as an excuse to make it okay to judge someone else the same why you don’t want to be. Who does that make the asshole?

Eventually after working on these types of things for quite a while I came to this instead:

“Fuck you :)”

To sum up what this means to mnvolved making the understanding of all of the above a part of how I really feel with continued realization through time. Then I took that and applied it in a modified way to think about people who react with the “Oh… I didn’t know you were like THAT” attitude to my horror love. Here’s an HONEST example of how my feelings, and sometimes words, end up looking like:

“That’s kinda fucked up that you see me differently now because of this, but guess what? I can be a bunch of different things all at once and one of them is a HUGE horror fan. I know you may not know ALL those things still about me, but still not cool to look down on me for this though, and it hurts. I get that you don’t have the same experiences and passions as me, so I’m gonna try not to take this too personally. All in all, now you don’t seem like someone I’m going to want to be around if I don’t have to though, so hey, honestly, fuck you :)”

The combination of being able to not let people being unfair to me slow me down or impede me while still not hating them and while trying to let go of passive aggression has been a challenging journey for me. I just wanted to share and hope that something I have learned so far may give someone else either some reassurance or possibly something to think about.

Man, I didn’t know some of these blog entries were going to get so deep…

If you don’t like it

Fuck you :)