Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Seeing is Not Believing for Some People

One day, my friend asked me this: "Have you ever felt so annoyed you feel like stabbing someone?"

Boy, you have no idea

I told him I'd just write it off whenever that kind of thing happens, since I could rant however I want without actually hurting anyone. Although most of the times I would just go on a virtual killing spree to ease that bloodlust.

I'm sure some of you guys have experienced this before; someone comes up to you and accuse you of doing something which you did not, and refuses to believe nor willing to hear your explanation about it. Psychologically, this comes in line of 'Cognitive Dissonance', a phenomenon when you learn about something that completely contradicts your current belief. Response on such phenomenon may vary, some would accept the new facts, some would defy them to the very end.

The more you know

This kind of thing has been happening for a long while, but usually I just suck it up and let it go. But this one from my uncle was just pure ignorance on his part. He claimed to have been following my posts on my Facebook, and commented about my blog post shares. Here's the summary of the exchange we had.

Him: "Yes, I've seen most of your posts, it's just about video games right?" *with a condescending sneer*

Me: "No, they're not, I haven't even posted one that is entirely about one. Did you even read any of them?"

Him: "I did, but I don't understand a word of it, so they got to be about video games. Why don't you write something useful, like a compliation of the hadists about marriage or something. That would probably help you to get hitched"

Alright, but first just let me do some maintenance on this device I have

At which point, I made my best non-offensive 'what the actual fuck' face, while my cousins properly commented that if I ever do that, my friends would start asking if anything is wrong with me, fearing that I have lost all faith in my life or I'm joining/starting a brand new terrorist cell. I mean, seriously, when I've been writing personal disagreements about my own religion (hell, I even commented that porn is not that bad) and then suddenly I go all religious and post enlightening stuffs that are way too serious, people will know that something is wrong.

Pictured above: Something is mildly wrong

And I'm not saying that posting about video games is shameful, dear God, no. You will never going to hear about that from someone like me who spent years in total playing video games (I'm looking at you, Bethesda and BioWare). It's a completely okay topic to discuss, especially now that the eSports era is starting to bloom beautifully. Problem is, most of the older stuck-up generations still see it as a useless time wasting activity.

While it's true that my GPA from my early college years were destroyed because I played video games way too much (at least 12 hours a day), that doesn't mean I'm still doing it the same way now. Besides, that's what you get when you isolate your kid from the outside world and still prevent them from having fun in their own goddamn house.

And my main form of entertainment back then is no longer recognizable by this generation

These days, I prefer to read and write stupid stuffs like this instead of replaying every single campaign from Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 like I used to do, even Watch Dogs failed to keep me up at night because I'd rather sleep than going for another mission. And before you ask, yes, I enjoyed Watch Dogs very much. The point is that I now have a different priorities compared to 10 years ago, it's just not the same anymore.

Yet the stereotype lives on until today. For some reason any efforts I put up to be a better person just goes by under that image of me in their eyes. Even in my own house I can practically do drugs in my room and my family would still think I'm only playing video games in there. Sometimes I thought, why bother then? If that's what they think I'm doing while refusing to believe otherwise, then that's what I'm going to do.

It's not that they're completely wrong, after all

See, that's what could happen when you keep denying other people's attempt to do good things. There are people who commit crimes because of that very thing, because since trying to be a good person only gives them more harm than good, they might as well go down the path of the dark side instead.

Another example is when my friend once got busted for having a porn video in his flashdisk by the rest of the class, and that event stuck with him ever since as a joke material. Sure, it seem to be a harmless joke, since none of us actually mean it to be offensive, but sometimes he does get irritated by it.

He told me once that he actually didn't like the way the rest of the class keep associating the incident to him, saying that it's not that big of a deal and wonder why does everyone else keeps remembering it. And it's true, when you think about it, is there even any one of us here who never carried around porn in their flash drive anyway?

I know that these guys never did. Right guys?

So let's not keep our stereotypes for other people for too long, unless they are totally okay with it. Like for instance you can claim that I'm a pervert and I'll just laugh it off with you while we masturbate together (just kidding, I'm okay on my own). If they show any sign of being annoyed, please hold back on the claims, even if it's meant to be a joke. Then again, if they were only hiding their annoyance, you should at least get the idea by putting yourself in their position.

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