I Apologize for My Existence

This time, I mean it slightly differently - bear with me.

I hate birds, but this one is purple — image via DALL-E by the author

I published an article last night in which I begged people for compliments. I asked shamelessly for the reasons people like me. I was hurting — struggling to feel valuable — and I hoped I could feel better by asking people for kind comments. It made no difference to me whether the stories were real or imagined.

Frankly, I was embarrassed when I published the article. I typically post links to a new article on Mastodon, my website, and the Discord server I manage.

But not this article. Instead, I fell asleep worrying about how frivolous my article felt. I woke up intending to delete the article or print a retraction.

The primary aspect of social media I dislike is its tendency to devolve into a popularity contest. I find it distasteful to engage in false self-promotion. If people like me, I figure they will tell me without my prompting them.

In the back of my mind, however, there is always another nagging question, one that has plagued me since grammar school:

What if I lose the popularity contest?