Segregation

For a long time I quite despised the idea of segregation, on whatever grounds it may be.  I used to think it was always a bad thing.  I used to think in particular when it came to LGBT issues and the Gay Community specifically that segregation was the worst thing that anyone could ever want as it promotes minoritization.  That's what I used to think, but lately I have come to question whether this is really the case.

I have been a member of several forums online, I have run several blogs in my time and I have run a few websites.  I have been a member of various social networks over the years from those that catered to "anyone and everyone", those that catered to "everyone" and had sections for groups like an LGBT section, to those that catered solely for the LGBT community or the Gay community.  Through it all I had maintained that LGBT people shouldn't have to segregate themselves from society, that they shouldn't have to back themselves into a corner - now, there will be many LGBT activists that would argue they fight for the opposite but I call them hypocrites and the reason I do so is in the name - "LGBT" Activist - these people willingly segregate themselves and specialise in the political area of LGBT activism and anything that affects LGBT people - that IS segregation in itself.  If you opposed segregation in the way you claim, you would be a pro-LGBT politician who dealt with many things, LGBT issues would not occupy the majority of your work.

I am no longer arguing that segregation is a bad thing, in fact I think the opposite is true and I have come to realise this for a number of reasons but the first would be twitter.  If the twitter box is still on this blog you should see it to the right, depending on when you read this I would not be surprised if I had deleted it by then.  The reason twitter has contributed to this change in view is down to an experiment I carried out.  I created 2 accounts, one that was just generalised and I posted anything and everything to, and the other was gay.  Everything was gay, the bio, the backgrounds, the profile picture, the lot.  I gave it one week.  The general account had 20 followers after 1 week and the gay one had almost 150.  The general one encountered a number of people who were just generally argumentative, trying to sell something, obsessing over "follow back", or purely after increasing their follower count.  I had a few conversations on the general account and a fair few more on the gay account.  The guys on the gay account were friendly, talkative, not judgemental at all despite my expectations being the contrary.

I have deleted the general account, and only have the gay account still running as a second twitter account to my main actual account [which should be in the box on the right].  The experiment served its purpose however and I tried to figure out why.  I have been trying to approach this from a Psychological viewpoint and to that end I have a theory.  One which could be tested, if I had the energy or someone else did.  My theory is that people like to belong to a group, and within a group they are more comfortable being themselves.  In general on twitter people are quite disconnected - save for celebrities who usually only follow a few people they know through their work or personally - but ordinary twitter users are just people.  They may have a few friends following them, and I question what impact that has, as it may actually cause more apprehension than ease.  Moving on, as an ordinary twitter user you connect only with people you follow or follow you when you or they tweet about something you like.  This means you form a lot of micro-relationships based on different likes and dislikes and end up with a mass of followers who are eclectic.

I think that's a bad thing, because ultimately there is no common ground among your followers or the people you follow and inevitably there will be disagreements, arguments and a lot of conflict.  People do get quite nasty towards one another on there.  So if all this implies disconnection then connection can be implied when there is a common understanding, and I believe I have proof to show for that theory.  I have already mentioned celebrities, who arguably don't count as normal twitter users as most often their tweets are a % of their own and a % of their management.  Their followers however are a good example of group mentality and this is exemplified at its strongest when you look at the likes of Lady GaGa and Justin Bieber.  Their fans are arguably a collective.  Beliebers as they call themselves will have a Bieber avatar, a Bieber bio, a Bieber background, tweet Bieber youtube videos, tweet Bieber lyrics, retweet anything Justin Bieber tweets, and retweet any tweet their Belieber friends tweet.  They are so influential they create hashtags that trend, almost every day there's a Bieber related tweet.  All this inspires hatred from the rest of twitter and why?  I'll leave that one for you to answer.

Whether you like Bieber or not his followers do twitter right, they have a common ground, they have something they all agree on, their relationships are built on it and everything else is secondary.  Every Belieber feels like part of the collective and that inclusion is what gives them a reward and propels them to the level of followers they achieve.

So what has this got to do with segregation?  Well I used to view segregation as a form of discrimination, and it is, when it's forced onto you or imposed by someone outside of your control - but it is not when you elect to segregate yourself.  When you do this, you choose to surround yourself with people that you have something in common with, even if it is something that you would argue shouldn't be the sole basis for a relationship and I agree, but you need to stop seeing it as the cornerstone and view it as part of the foundations.

Five years ago if you had told me that a gay guy could find love on a site like Gaydar I would have laughed in your face but it is possible.  I know many reading this who know of Gaydar's reputation will laugh at me and to you I simply say, as long as you see it that way you'll never be able to use it properly.  I don't think anyone who uses Gaydar expects to fall in love on Gaydar but it can be used to find someone that you might one day fall in love with. If you are fixated on the end result and skip over all the steps in between you will never get what you want.  You can't expect to jump and land a mile away at your goal, there's a road along the way you have to walk.  I'm not saying it's going to be fun all the time and I am not saying there won't be times when you will want to turn back, all I am saying is that the idea that you are going to find what you are looking for in the wider world is maybe harder than you give it credit.  If you wanted to buy a game, you would be most likely to find it in a shop that sells games or a toy store - just because a department store is massive and sells everything including the kitchen sink doesn't mean you're going to find it there.  There are so many areas in our lives where we embrace segregation and think nothing of it, we only protest when the thought of segregating ourselves is suggested.