I'm doing a bit of writing about the experience I had growing into (and out of ) a gatekeep-y mentality toward more attractive/sociable people enjoying things that I like. I was wondering if anyone has had a similar experience at all.
When I was younger I'd watch anime as means of distracting myself from things that would otherwise make me feel miserable 80% of the time. When I grew up and and saw that some of the "popular kids" actually liked the same things as me my initial reaction was to just write them off. "They aren't real fans because they don't consider anime their passion in life!" "What an asshole, he claims to like things that I got bullied for watching in middle school but still has a girlfriend and amazing social skills". That kind of mentality. Before I grew out of that kind of thinking it felt as though any stranger who wasn't like me was somehow trespassing in my territory, and it made me a little bitter.
I still use anime to cope with things that make me unhappy (if I even have the motivation to put something on nowadays) but I no longer base as much of my entire persona around being "that quirky white guy who justLOOOOOOVES anime!" and I sure as hell don't think it's okay to delegitimize people's enjoyment of something because they're more extroverted than I am or don't wear as many graphic t-shirts as I do. Again, I was just curious to see how common this kind of thing is among people in my kind of situation.
