I somehow ended up reading discussions about the game Class of '09: The Flipside. And holy smokes, I am so disappointed in my past self. When the game initially came out, I actually found it hilarious. Yes, even those scenes. "Oh we have to pay you $50 everytime we do it? Let me withdraw $1400 then" funniest line in that whole game for me. But everyone else HATED the game. Naturally, being the open minded pushover that I am, I immediately became skeptical of MY OWN ENJOYMENT and started to parrot whatever everyone else said when I talked to other people about the game.

"dudddeee the flipside sucked so bad. Jecka didn't even get a single good ending. And the feet stuff, ewwww grossssss" -Paraphrased comment I said in some random Spacehey DM.

Then all the "bad" stuff about SBN3 came out and people dogged on the game even more. As with everything on the internet I didn't care too much about it to actually be upset. But anytime I lurked on discussion threads on the game, I was naturally biased towards the negative rather than the positive. Because it felt that if I wanted to like Class of '09 and discuss it with other people, I had to share belief in this common consensus.

Yep, here's the reveal that I do indeed have character flaws. man it was nice when you thought that I was just "like you fr" and an idol to look up to :(. Now I'm lame and old and lame man

How do I put this…? It seems that everytime I like a "niche" thing, I also like it for a niche reason within its community. With Class of '09, it seems that I'm more likely to come across someone who finds enjoyment in shipping the characters and finding them relatable. More power to them of course, you're allowed to like what you like and all that. But when you're a guy like me, who just finds the games funny with not much emotional attachment to the characters themselves, it feels difficult to interact with other people about them.

Same thing happened with Persona. I played (well, slogged) through Persona 3 Reloaded over the course of a year. I found the social sim part pretty boring, but the vibes and atmosphere (what was left of them after Reloaded made everything hypersaturated) were so interesting to me. But then I go online and find out that most Persona fans really love playing the high school social sim where you’re the perfect man who everyone LOVES and ADORES and gets legions of high school pussy.

Obviously this sounds like a simple case of "Online fanbases suck and you should just enjoy the game without interacting with them". And I agree 100000%. I joke around but outside of getting a tiny bit pissy when I see some stupid take, I understand that people enjoy things in different ways and I don't want to get in the way of that. However, when I get the rare opportunity to discuss a niche thing I like with someone else, it's like a switch in my brain flips and I try to embody everything I usually dislike about its respective fanbase. Y'know, overused memes, surface-level understandings of characters/plots, general cringe behavior, etc.

IDK, I guess it feels that since its already so rare to find someone irl who enjoys the same lowkey media that I do, it should be automatically assumed that they like it for the mainstream reasons. And if I disagree with the common opinions the fanbase holds, they're going to HATE me forever and forget that we still both LIKE whatever it is we're talking about. So I'd rather be a bit inauthentic with a niche friend than be real with none. It's dumb and stoopid I know I know.

While there is something to be said about how some people let the media they consume define them, so they feel like you're insulting them personally when you critique it (or just differ in thought), those people only really exist online. I find that in real life, the people who share my niche interests are actually pretty chill. I talked to some dude about Persona and we had the exact same thoughts about the franchise. Rammy and I were able to just laugh at the insanity of Class of '09. I guess I shouldn't assume that chronically online interests only have chronically online people liking them, huh? For example, heh, I exist so I already proved it wrong! (why you snickering bro what's so funny). Or maybe I should just avoid people who primarily find things through TikTok…