You likely hold many such superficial judgements, we all do about something or other. I don’t think I would frame it as “mental illness” without expecting a lot of pushback from such an inflammatory statement. Normal, healthy people make judgements all day long based on the most superficial of ideas and perceptions, the question is how much you personally care.

If it’s strangers on the internet you’re just bullshitting with, I can’t imagine caring about how some stranger perceives you. But these things can become self-harmful if you’re genuinely trying to be heard and understood about something that’s important to you. If you’ve spent any amount of time on social media (including forums like this) I’m sure you’ve seen this play out over and over, where people end up deeply stressed because they’re talking past each other and dismissing each other’s actual feelings about things that are important to each other.

This is what I decry, the lack of effort to be heard about important ideas, even if subjectively important, we’re all collectively really neglecting effort and embracing anti-intellectual catchphrases (just put the X in the bag, the curtains were just blue, I ain’t readin all that, etc.) and making our lack of effort to communicate other people’s problem when it goes wrong.

If you think none of this matters, end up in a role of responsibility and have to spend a month interviewing people for a role of great responsibility and sifting through the masses of young people who make zero effort and feel entitled to rewards for it.

It absolutely makes my day that you think this is a fight. Have fun out there.

You don’t have to agree with me, the topic is about people generally and their perceptions, if this wasn’t something shared by a number of people this wouldn’t be a post. You can disagree with me all you want, you will still encounter people who will judge in different ways depending on how you present yourself online. If you don’t like it, go change the world.

Sure, and I do, but anime profile pics come with extra baggage and we all know it.

Do you think this is a shouting match?

Then congratulations, now instead of engaging and interacting it’s just an immature schoolyard shouting match which could have been avoided by taking more care in how you present yourself.

But I am gathering that there are a lot of people who really enjoy schoolyard shouting matches and invite them because it makes them feel superior to fight others over trivial nonsense.

The topic is about the perceptions of others, it’s not deep to you but someone else might read into, particularly if you find yourself having a serious (deep) conversation and don’t want to be judged unfairly. If you don’t care about your self-presentation or how to manage the impressions others have of you, then great, no need to even comment here.

If you do care, and yes you do, then think about it from someone else’s perspective.

This “the curtains were just blue” or the “just put the X in the bag” anti-thinking mentality is eroding our whole world. Try to avoid doing that.

Yah but we quickly all learn to just avoid tankie communities.

I used to shake my fist at how many people had really shitty hand-drawn furry profile pics and often made the judgement that they drew furry shit just because it’s harder to draw people’s faces.

Now I instantly praise anyone who has any kind of low-quality but obviously non-AI made imagery on display to the world. I don’t care if it’s ball-point pen on lined notebook paper. You rock on with that artistic bravery king or queen.

If you witness that kind of exchange taking place, you can probably toss the entire convo out.

Although, I would lean more towards the furry pic than the anime pic, at least furries are largely autistic adults who consume a ton of information and may have more educated opinions on some topics. At least from my experience working adjacent to the tech sector.

Whereas a suspiciously large percentage of people who choose anime profile pics are just saying “this is a cartoon girl I want to bang” while also being a raging nazi online.

I love that you’re getting downvoted for this accurate assessment of how adults engage with each other.

Honestly, I realized a while back that Lemmy is largely kids. Like, to me at least if you’re under 25 you’re a kid, and I think most users here are even younger. Maybe across the social internet broadly we have massively misjudged how many adults actually shape our global conversations.

Counterpoint: sometimes it’s just a funny picture I like,

Fully fair, likewise it’s also fully fair for someone to make judgements on you based on that funny picture if you choose to engage in different kinds of conversations outside of the space where people joke about funny pictures.

Fully agree, you choose profile pictures based on how you want to present yourself to the world. It does communicate a message. A message that if not chosen with some level of care will signal different things to different people.

If you come to a party wearing a stained shirt and haven’t showered I will assume you don’t actually care. Likewise, if you are arguing politics or mature topics and your profile pic is some obscure, underage anime girl, I will also make assumptions about how much actual media exposure you have that you choose to present yourself to the world with that image.

This isn’t persecution or discrimination, this is just how people relate to each other, particularly in an information world where we can’t judge the rest of you.

edit: based on the replies and threads in this post, it’s wild how many people do not give a shit how they are perceived by others in any regard and are angry at the idea that someone might judge them for how they present themselves. And then we wonder why everyone is so lonely and angry and cynical. These are related concepts guys, you HAVE to learn to socialize better. Seriously, this avoidance of accountability is eroding the whole fucking world.

This but also unironically.

Yah at this point I do associate anime identity association with immaturity, and I’ve enjoyed a great many animes.

I just cannot imagine connecting so much that I want others to see me and think it’s part of my own identity. It feels like the hallmark of someone with very limited media exposure.

I grudgingly have to upvote you for being accurate even though the information is creating great discussions.

Before traveling to California, I had people in my neighborhood plead with me not to go because the whole state is a “disaster area” and that the cities are burning and that there are “drug needles everywhere you walk” and that I was putting my life and those of my loved ones in serious danger. They thought with 100% certainty that Los Angeles was completely on fire from looting and I was going to some kind of Mad Max hellscape. Without exaggeration. They wouldn’t listen to reassurance and were genuinely worried.

Granted some of these people were older, they weren’t suffering dementia and could still drive. They just park in front of FOX news all day, every day, 24-hours a day swallowing conservative propaganda. They also have algorithmic filtering on their facebook and twitter.

Our perspectives of each others worlds has been damaged beyond repair because of this filtering. We have it on the left/progressive side too, showing us a different reflection of a pandering, emotionally validating worldview. Not as malicious maybe, but we are all trapped.

Yah i don’t care, it’s not worth the hate. It feels pretty fucking bourgeoisie to organize around hating someone who just doesn’t live up to what you want in a creator while we have actual democracy falling across the world. Just don’t look at the comics.

If that’s not working, that means she’s living in your head and you need to figure out why.

I was an artist online for years and eventually quit because of all the drama, and you don’t escape it, if you’re not constantly, aggressively preserving your IP, it WILL get used by others for whatever they want. I can dump boatloads of stories and links to artists who had their work used by everyone from other artists who painted over their art and claimed it, all the way to major corporations just plain stealing designs and characters.

Out of all the “toxic” creators, maybe we should bandwagon against actual shitty people and shitty artists. Ya’ll have Stonetoss’s twitter and socials, why not focus some of this smarmy better-than-thou armchair art-snobbery on an actual toxic nazi? Literally, the same site here broadly, Lemmy, that has on it’s top trending posts, a “punching nazis” meme, does almost NOTHING to actually challenge real threats to our way of life when it’s as easy as a targeted social media campaign. I guess that takes scaaary organizing though.

Also, you’re blocked, you’re not even remotely equipped to have a real discussion if you call any of what what said here “pivoting” just keep letting herd-mentality guide you, I’m sure it will always serve you well.