[Redway]

Originally Posted by Mystic Mock

You've made some good points tbh.

I definitely wouldn't like it if someone was being hostile to me because I remind them of someone that they don't like. How would that be my fault? Is the way that I would see it.

Half of the time it’s not your fault. It’s them, not you. The image that they have of you in their head (by association, something you said years ago, whatever) exists only in their head, not in reality, and it’s important not to let anyone gaslight you out of that. It’s one thing when a virtual stranger assumes more relevance and familiarity with you than they should but face-to-face, you can either say your piece and walk away or … just walk away. Either way, their version of you isn’t yours to carry, and it shouldn’t be theirs either. I wouldn’t give myself a headache over the sky being purple when it’s actually blue (as far as the naked human eye can see anyway). Likewise, the only truths about you that should be so pressing are the truths of yourself (you know yourself better than anyone-else, of-course) and the people who actually know you in some significant capacity. That’s the boundary you’ve got to create in your head when you haven’t done anything personally to the people who’ve chosen to have random beef with you.

If it’s dislike not based on association but vague memories from years ago (and maybe that could happen in the BB house; ’tis a small world, after-all), they’re falling into a trap there and most of the time are too self-absorbed in their own silly narrative of you to see it. Dislike for people you don’t have an overarching familiarity with in-person as a base should be less rigid than fluid, and evolve with time (whether that’s towards hating you even-more, with new examples and experiences that consolidate that perspective on you for them, or softening to you a little bit). If it’s just the same-old “you were a borderline-alcoholic 4/7 years ago,” “you remind me of the guy who cheated on my mate 11 years ago,” and it never meaningfully evolves, they’re trapped in their disdain for you and showing just-how empty and irrelevant it is. Dislike without direct personal experience should evolve given new context, for better or worse.

They can keep saying the same thing about you until they’re blue in the face or try and give you a reputation that never truly belonged to you but, again, you know yourself better than they do. They only have scraps, filtered through their own biases and likely taken out of context. You have decades’ worth of experience being … you. People who are older than you will always make out that you’re always going to be in their shadow in terms of general life-experience but where you’re your in person qualified to stand and bask in your own light (heck, get a tan in it) is when it comes to experiences unique to you and the overall experience of being you. No stranger can take that away from you or erase that, especially when all they’ve got on you is old news that was likely never taken in properly or contextualised in t’first place. People like that really aren’t worth the combat. When you’re firm in your self-knowledge, other people’s projections are like bad weather: they might rattle the windows, but they can’t alter the house. You can still defend yourself and try and close the windows as much as you can, but it doesn’t change what’s going on in the house either way, does it? They’re playing with puzzle-pieces yhey don’t know how to fit or contextualise, getting stuck on narrative-loop (almost as-if they’ve got the wrong person, which they kind of have in the first place anyway), while you’ve been living in the full picture, pieced together perfectly on a golden table, every day. No amount of “arrogant but must be playing dumb, despite you obviously being an intellectual, if I’m not important or relevant enough in your life to figure out why I’ve decided to have random beef with you,” “empty,” “borderline-raging alkie,” “you’s a nobody and Billy-no-mates, always sitting on your own, despite the fact that you work directly with people” or “condescending and abrasive” abuse can change that. It’s just pure foolishness at that point, and that’s their problem. You don’t need to hang onto negativity from people you wouldn’t know from a can of Carnation milk on the streets.

TLDR: you’re good, buddy. Don’t hang onto negativity from people who don’t know you at-all but just like to project. Let them have a tangible reason if they want to come up to your face and tell you they’ve decided they’re not gonna like you. On the web., likewise, it’s definitely not you half the time; it’s a blurry, outdated snapshot of you filtered through their own biases and hangups. And it’s important, really important, not to let anyone gaslight you into accepting their story as your truth.