The struggle of authenticity between two twitter accounts

[28-09-2024]

I was a very self conscious teenager. I wasn't heavily bullied, compared to many in my situation I was pretty lucky, but I always faced some mockery for being a chubby, awkward guy that often tried too hard to be liked and was easily flustered. I became increasingly reserved and hesitant to share my interests with others because if there's nothing there, there's nothing to feel embarrassed about. The realisation I was queer came only at age 17, just when I was about to finish school less than a year later. Neither in my last months of school nor afterwards in my small group of friends that was rapidly crumbling apart I brought it up.

Eventually I made an account on tumblr, where I was exposed to queer communities for the first time. I found friends across the furry and Sonic fandoms on the site and I used this space to really genuinely express myself for the first time as a young queer person who was figuring himself out. In my initial time on tumblr, I was dumb, horny, longing for purpose and connection. I was absolutely unhinged, both working through mental illness and very openly shitposting about my sexuality and desires, as well as expanding my emotional range (for lack of a better word) by getting very invested in Sonic media and the fandom around it. Not too far in, I also expanded the same posting habits to twitter. This was a very freeing time that I credit for a lot of groundwork I had to lay out to know who I am.

During this time, fueled by my interest in Sonic games, I also started to speedrun. I owe the speedrunning community a lot of great experiences over the years, but when I got into it, began to navigate their spaces and started streaming on twitch, I increasingly felt like I had eyes on me from outside my queer furry tumblr bubble and I got scared. I made a second twitter account, one with a clean, neutral image, used exclusively to interact with other speedrunners and post about speedrunning. The two accounts weren't interlinked, my prior online presence was hidden from speedrunners. My tumblr was still as before, because as far as I knew, there were no other speedrunners on tumblr that I had to hide my shenanigans from. But I had to be careful on twitter, I thought. I can't let them know that I'm a queer weirdo. I was essentially leading a double life online. This peaked especially when I ended up in moderating positions and people watched me regularly. It felt good to have responsibility and be respected in a community that I was now part of that just a year or two prior I was looking up to like celebrities. But I increasingly felt like I had to keep up a facade of neutral professionalism or else I would fall from grace. I never had a large following or was anything resembling a public figure, but I still felt the pressure to be liked by the peers I was admiring, that knew me basically as a neutral blank slate of a personality. All my prior unhingedness was still unresolved, but I carried it around with me, locked away in private.

I eventually learned that the speedrunning community was itself very queer and largely very accepting, at least it had become that throughout the latter half of the 2010s, but by that point, it was too late and I had gotten too used to being cool, detached and impersonal. If you get deeper and deeper into relationships under a fake personality, it gets weirder and weirder to reveal who you really are. I eventually realised that I didn't like this, but I didn't know how to get out of it. Lots of people, people I appreciated and even considered friends, knew me, but they didn't know me. It took me a lot of courage to do something as insignificant as sharing that I had a personal account on my speedrun account. Very few took notice, and the separation lasted for a couple more years. When I finally decided to shut down the speedrun account and redirect everyone to my personal one, the physical barrier was broken. This helped. But at this point I had hidden who I was for years, and even the personal side of things had become more curated, more presentable, out of habit. The carefree unhingedness was gone, replaced by self-doubt and overthinking.

Fast forward to today. Still, none of this is resolved. I think my early tumblr development should have led me to something, some sort of accumulation of experiences that allowed me to know how to be me, but it was cut short, because I thought I had to hide before I could get anywhere with it. I no longer make an active effort to hide who I am to friends and acquaintances online, but at the same time, I also don't really know how to express my feelings and desires anymore. I feel a lot inside of me, but I don't know how to get it out in a way that is both productive and true to myself. I am truly sick of being cool and detached, I want nothing more than to be open, genuine and personal, but it's very difficult to get away from. The last few weeks I have been in an especially weird, volatile emotional state that makes this feel especially urgent. There's a strong sense that I can't keep living like this. I've been making an effort to be more open about my sexuality and desires. I've been, consciously, posting cringe. Which is good, "kill the part of you that cringes", as they say. I think that'll help. But the fear still lingers. Every time I make a post expressing vulnerability, horniness, emotional needs, I fear I'll overstep boundaries and creep people out and ruin relationships. I still have a long way to go.

I guess the lesson here is, don't make a second twitter account.