Troll's Remorse is an internet slang term used to describe a person who grew famous due to their edgy or mean-spirited personality but eventually transformed themselves due to social pressures. This "troll's remorse" leads the ex-troll to devote themselves to expressing guilt and overzealously trying to atone for their past misdeeds
There is SOME truth in that definition, to transformative views I've been dealing with. There is no social pressure on me, per se, but mor so, social consequences.
I have really carried water, for bad people, made jokes that were probably not taken as jokes. I think Portland broke me in a lot of ways, and the edgy humor was out of spite. I have never been a conservative of any stripe. My voting record, both on elections and ballot measures reflect that. But I naively thought that America would never elect that criminal, authoritarian, moron, of a president again. I never thought I would live to see the extremity and cruelty happening in the United States.
I've made jokes like "me ne frego," being my favorite pasta dish, with the hopes of me being who I am, the irony in the joke being understood (I don't think it was). The era of irony/parody is over. We've reached that peak where things have escalated. "Just a joke," has become "the new reality." Vice signaling is the norm, cruelty, anti-intellectualism, cruel stoicism, is the new norm as well.
People like Dylan Mulvaney annoyed and embarrassed me, and I probably have given a lot of really hateful people the okay to push the views that they did (some of them now run a rightwing Goth FB group), because I didn't express that they're annoying, but shouldn't be attacked for her IDENTITY.
I've made excuses for people and musicians I've met. One of the most eye-opening things is someone expressing to me that they'd want to hurt a trans woman if "HE used the same restroom as his daughter," and that "I don't support putting girls in harm's way, just for the sake of someone's comfort." This person knows nothing about me obviously, because I don't express that part of me, because there's a lot of shame/embarrassment that comes along with it (I'll get into it in a second).
Seeing club owners get their nights cancelled due to being the leader of a fascist chapter in CA/FLA, the other having a criminal record for roofie-ing women, the constant barrage of sex pest behavior, and the realization that a lot of these clubs aren't counter-cultural third places. They're run by wealthy L.A. gooner men who don't understand subculture, the music, any semblance of consent, and they're always about the (boring) male gaze. It's gross.
Back to the gender thing. I've been very quiet, while people said awful things around me about trans people; again, several of these people are in the rightwing anti-cancel-culture "goth" group. Transphobia is their modus operandi, and main wedge issue they hard focus on.
Why didn't I speak up? Because of fear. I didn't want the crosshairs placed on me. I didn't want to be forced into a 'third' category, treated different, be rejected in femme spaces like I don't belong there, have nasty fetishistic stereotypes hoisted onto me, as well as Reddit/TTT board stereotypes as well ("programmer socks" "Blahaj" "Puppy girl," you get the idea). Me protecting MYSELF and staying SILENT gave the okay to hurt a lot of other people, some probably with less confidence than myself. But I felt like that 'reveal' would make people treat me different, make me feel less than, like it's impossible to be/feel beautiful in my own skin, because "that's the ugliest, cringiest, thing you can be," so says the ANTs in my head - Automatic Negative Thoughts.
I supported bands like Nachtmahr, whose vocalist follows accounts on Twitter/X like "Konservativ und Frei," and "LGB without the T,' archetypes. I believed that the fascist aesthetic was just some kind of kink/perversion of the uniform, and that made it okay. But hey, the tshirt makes a great shirt for bleaching hair now.
I've made my bed with people that f*cking HATE me or would hate me if they "found out."
Israel - I know of one person that lives there, who is openly gay, I also follow shop owners, progressive/alt vegan, shop owners. I don't want anything bad to happen to them. I despise Sharia Law. With that, I was probably as you would call a "Zionist Liberal." I never considered that Leftist organizations actually want to push for a unified secular state; no more ethnostate, no more Israel vs Palestine. It would thwart the fascist that is Netanyahu, allow the Palestinian people to safely return, and prevent Hamas from seizing control.
Gamergate 2 - I hated the backlash against games like Stellar Blade. Because I didn't want Progressivism to be some kind of rainbow-coated Reagan-era neo-puritanism. I misinterpreted that game devs wanted diversity of female body types, and with Eve from Stellar Blade, they wanted her to have a personality like 2B from NieR, not just an empty doll meant to ogle over. Many of the so-called moderate content creators have gone from that moderate stance to wearing MAGA hats and collabing with far-right Vtubers. I should have seen that coming.
I've hurt a lot of people and myself. I don't know where to go with this self-reflection.
Where did all the Luls get me? I certainly didn't make friends from this. I was a tool used, by awful people, a permission slip for their shitty behavior. In the end, these people would stab me in the back.