Oh help

[dreamer_easy]

Having a moment of premenstrual social phobia panic about Gally. After cocking up at Chicago TARDIS year before last I'll be on rather better behaviour, but I'll still need to do the Chicks Dig Time Lords panel, and there and elsewhere I'm going to be surrounded by people I've clashed with online. My perception, in fact, is that wherever I go at the con, the crowd will be thinking "Oh noes, it's that overentitled racist misogynist wank magnet."

No, OK, Kate, think this through. IRL people almost never act the way they do in cyberspace, including you. It's very rare for someone to make a personal attack during a panel. For that matter, you've changed your online style, partly due to the hard lesson of that bad panel in Chicago - bit more relaxed, bit more gentle. Surely that's going to translate to the real world. Plus, like everyone online, you overestimate the number of people who hold a given opinion - whether about the show or about you. And that bad panel didn't stop you from having a blast at other panels.

So. One corner of online politics is not the whole of fandom. I'm not likely to end up in an actual confrontation. If a discussion becomes heated, I know to step back and chill out and shut up :). It'll all be good anxiety therapy. It'll be fine, like it almost always is.

I'm still never going to WisCon, though.

(You know, I really really ought to flock this posting, but fandom's full of people with social phobia, some of whom are probably thinking similar aaaaargh thoughts about the con. We ought to form a club. Hermits United. And wear a badge, a smiley or something, which indicates "I'm shy too.")

Comments

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I'll probably resort to my usual strategy of lurking in the hotel room. :D

[murasaki-1966.livejournal.com]

Hide in the hotel room from time to time, but go out occassionaly and blow their cotton pickin' socks off. You can do it.