#every time I log on to this app and see queer discourse I feel like I’m being gaslit

[supersonicgrandma]

This is making me feel so insane. You people realize that even allo sapphics can just have purely platonic friendships, right? Sometimes they really are Just Roommates! Sometimes friends take pictures of each other! I’m ace so I definitely have a bias here, but do none of you just have regular platonic relationships with people that don’t involve sex in the slightest?

okay maybe this is overly harsh but I genuinely think that if you say this shit you're probably not actually gay. SORRY

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

He's getting dragged for the "things like this don't happen to people like me" part of the speech. He's getting called a queerbaiter again for pretending to be queer and playing a victim and a priviledged white male for not understanding that awards and glory do happen to people like him and not black artists. I need to find ways to not care so much because it makes me so mad when I read things like this. I just want to gatekeep him from the general public who don't see him the way we as fans see him. I almost wish he didn't win aoty which is so crazy because I'm so proud of him and that album is so great.

Oh anon - I'm sorry you're finding it so hard.

You can't gatekeep Harry from other people seeing him - other people are going to see him and have opinions about him. He doesn't belong to fans.

One of the tasks of growing up is coming to accept that other people are whole and real and can be very different from you. It's really important to accept the messiness of the world and to do that you need to create your own boundaries.

It's very hard not to care (although I did find myself repeating in a meeting today 'it's OK if coworker is upset - coworker is allowed to have feelings - I don't have to pick them up'. I'm not saying it worked, but it was better than not trying). But you don't have to know what other people think about Harry.

Imagine it was 30 years ago and the only way that you could find out what other people thought about celebrities was talking to them, overhearing their conversations on the bus, or logging into dial-up and reading news groups. Our brains are not equipped to hear thousands and thousands of people's opinions about things we care about and are important to us.

And you can turn the opinions off. It may seem hard, but there are lots of ways that you can limit what you see, at least for now. There are so many ways you can control what you read. You can log out of apps and take them off your phone, but you don't need to be that drastic. If you're using twitter you can set it to only see who you want to see. You can block and unfollow people who you don't want to read and mute people who are putting people you don't want to read onto your feed. Don't let algorithims put that distress you onto your feed. If you don't want to read discourse about Harry discourse - unfollow blogs who are doing that (including me).

Can you set up some Harry content you really like (maybe the livestream of One Night Only?) and every time you're tempted to read discourse watch that and connect with the joy Harry's music brings you instead.

There are lots of times when it's a good idea to sit with you feelings, name them, let them be. But there are also times when you can make your life much better by turning off the tap of other people's dumbass opinions.