Okay, so, I may not actually be talking to you, anon. I don’t know that you’re in a place to hear this, since you didn’t even read the post carefully enough to see that my grandmother doesn’t have cancer, and you almost certainly don’t follow my blog. You specifically may be lost to trolldom for the moment. But I am writing this with love to anyone who can hear, because I want to say things to anyone who is sometimes tempted to publicly judge others:

You can train your own brain to be happier! You have the power to make others happier along the way. Fandom & imagination give us some particular superpowers. I can attest to all of this personally.

Unpacking that…

I, too, sometimes feel a desire to tell someone they are being super cringe or behaving unacceptably in cases where they aren’t harming anyone I have wondered why and where that comes from. For me, I think a lot of it comes from being bullied in school for being weird. I desperately wanted friends, but I was frequently told I was too weird to deserve them (not directly, but via laughing, mocking, exclusion, and occasionally physical intimidation & attacks). As a result of my struggle to fit in, I felt fearful whenever others around me were doing something that I thought the popular crowd would not approve of. I wanted to tell them to stop. I wanted to show the world that I was judging them as part of seeking approval from all the other people that I wanted to like me. (I didn’t always follow through on that impulse, but I did publicly judge/shun other people at times as a response to having been bullied.)

I am still afraid sometimes of being shunned by others, even after a lot of years and a lot of healing. I still occasionally feel that pull to publicly say, “That’s gross! You should be ashamed!” toward someone else who is objectively not hurting anyone. The current swing into purity culture we’re all living through right now amplifies all of this.

(And even when I get anon mail telling me I’m cringe, some small, young, ridiculous part of me is still thinking, “Is that what people think of me – does everyone think I’m a jerk/weirdo who is trying to ‘profit’ off my grandmother in the currency of Tumblr notes? Am I about to lose all my friends and be alone again? Is there anyone else that I can performatively judge for their worse clout-chasing behavior in order to reassure everyone that I’m not like that?” Even though, to be clear, I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with labeling the number of notes on a post, and anon is being ridiculous.)

Is any of my experience relevant to where this anonymous mail is coming from? No idea. But I do think that many of us have real, painful reasons for our instincts to publicly pass judgment on others.

But! Your life can actually get much better and happier if you don’t give into that impulse as often. You can train yourself to have happier impulses over time, and it will even help your interactions with others. There are things I have done that have helped me a lot:

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