I think the biggest impression that a fangirl like me gives off is just that. A fangirl. Someone whose life revolves around the bands she loves, the shows she watches, the books she reads. Someone only capable of squealing and being an annoying screaming teenage girl over fictional characters/people she may never meet. Someone incapable of wittiness, of doing anything clever, of thinking about issues beyond fandoms.
Except that it isn’t true. It’s a big part, yes, but it’s not all there is. Most of the time, people overlook other aspects. I feel like, in ~real life~, many of us fangirls have to keep what we love to ourselves, to be quiet and unassuming. It protects me, at least.
Online, or around fellow fans irl, we get to be more ourselves. We get to share in the excitement and joy and sense of family belonging that being part of a fandom (or multiple ones) gives us. We get to be happy, to feel things we might usually have to suppress.
But there are many, many other things we care about, too. I could discuss discrimination, politics, literature, anything I care about that goes beyond fandom. I could be as clever as some people want. I don’t show it because I don’t feel it’s necessary in certain spaces. I don’t feel the need to act like I’m witty and mature in the eyes of certain people while I’m trying to enjoy the things that make me happy.
Everyone enjoys what they love in different ways. For some, sure, they could be snarky and clever and that’s cool. For many others, we could just scream and keyboard-smash incoherently while livetweeting or chatting to friends or whatever. It’s not like it could hurt anyone.
So when people tell us to shut up, to stop spamming or to be less immature, it can hurt. We’re just enjoying the things we love in the way that we want to. And to tell us to be quiet or whatever - that’s telling us to again put on the mask we use to guard ourselves in front of other people, to not be ourselves, to not be happy in the way that we want to. If they find it annoying, must they be snide and hurtful? Can’t they simply close the window, go offline, unfollow, whatever? No one ever forced them to read things they don’t like.
I hear you. It’s not easy being one, because you can be an outcast in the real world if the people you associate with cant understand you, or they wont even try a tiny bit to do so. I agree with you totally especially the part where we can still talk maturely about other things despite spazzing on our networking sites.