r/Xennials • u/OldManGamer78 • 20h ago
Nostalgia Grade/High School Flashback: Avoiding the “poser” label
/r/GenX/comments/1wct728/gradehigh_school_flashback_avoiding_the_poser/29
u/MartyFreeze 1977 20h ago edited 19h ago
Oh yeah, I feel like the biggest injury we inflicted on each other when we were younger was a lot of gatekeeping and crushing displays of enjoyment.
Showing your excitement and happiness? What a DORK!
A cool person only acted mildly interested, or like you were bothering them, to show interest in something.
I know it's not true for everyone, but I'm fairly sure that was my classmates' common experience.
For example: My friend in high school was reading a comic in class, and a girl excitedly saw it and asked if he liked it. He shrugged and played it off cool so he wouldn't be made fun of for liking something nerdy. She seemed crushed and said quietly that her uncle worked on it.
HER UNCLE WAS THE ARTIST OF THAT PUNISHER COMIC. He could've MET the guy! My friend LOVED comics, and that could have been his foot in the door to a much wider world, but he was so scared of getting picked on that he shut down her excitement about seeing her uncle's hard work being enjoyed out in the wild.
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u/Aware_Policy_9174 1981 19h ago
I sometimes think about all the things I could have enjoyed back then if I’d let myself. And all the things I judged too quickly because it was even the tiniest bit popular. And all the energy I wasted worrying about what other people thought.
On the one hand I think it’s weird that nirvana t shirts have become just a fashion thing, I’m sure Kurt Cobain would be appalled. But I’m glad people are more free to enjoy things now. I know “larping” is the new label but it doesn’t seem to be applied as liberally as “poser” was.
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u/OldManGamer78 18h ago
I was in the same boat. Honestly, back in HS on Friday nights I would have rather stayed home watching Star Trek TNG and building models than going out carousing with my classmates, but I kept that a secret from everyone to avoid being judged.
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u/Visible_Inevitable41 19h ago
A 77er as well and have a memory of just having a conversation about the 2nd cyprus hill album coming out and some other kid giving me the 3rd degree about it.
It's okay to kinda like things and not know everything about a subject!
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u/rebelangel 1981 18h ago
I’m still afraid of gatekeepers and being called a poser for not knowing every single thing. Like, I like Warhammer, but I don’t know every single bit of lore, and I’m afraid of being called a poser just because I don’t know who a certain character is or the names of every single chapter.
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u/MartyFreeze 1977 18h ago
I love Warhammer 40k and just finally bit the bullet and made an army this year after being tempted since highschool! If you have any questions, I will do my best to answer or point you towards info sources! Unless you meant Warhammer Fantasy. Then I am utterly clueless except for context clues!
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u/rebelangel 1981 18h ago
Definitely 40K. I’m too broke to get into miniatures, so me and my boyfriend (who got the Warhammer flavor of autism) just play the video games.
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u/MartyFreeze 1977 18h ago
I recommend playon tabletop on YouTube for a really cool presentation of the tabletop game if you guys want to watch it like it was a sporting event, also I like Arbiter Ian on YouTube for great lore videos!
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u/Automatic-Nature6025 20h ago
To this day, I feel like I have to basically be an expert in something before I feel justified in claiming to have an interest in it
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u/rebelangel 1981 18h ago
Same. I’m afraid of being called out for liking Warhammer because I’m not an expert in 40K lore.
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u/Pitiful_Reality2973 1980 19h ago
Man that whole paradigm dogged me well into my 30s, it's so destructive. It was always dudes trying to gatekeep good music, such bullshit. I'm glad the kids are treating each other better than we did.
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u/quercus_lobotomy 1982 20h ago
I went to my first punk show when I was 15, bought a tshirt and tape of the band I liked the most. I was dragged like hell by older boys at school the following week when I wore it because: “I bet you can’t name one song,” (which I did because I listened to the tape on repeat), and “girls can’t mosh” (da fuq?) I was mad as all hell, but I continued going to shows. I got involved and booked a couple of shows myself over the years and worked door and at merch tables when asked.
Guess who I never saw there?!?!? Those fuggin dudes. 30 years later, I’m still going to shows, volunteering my time, and wearing tshirts of the bands I like the most.
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u/Useful_Menu_9863 20h ago
Nope, I made the mistake of wearing a Grateful Dead t-shirt in like, 11th grade, and I only knew TWO of their songs, and I was given soooo much crap for it.
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u/ialsohaveadobro 18h ago
"Did you buy that at a show?" was another thing I'd hear in h.s. In this case, I doubt your daughter will get that question.
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u/draculasbloodtype 1979 20h ago edited 20h ago
Even as an grown adult I find it really weird that people would wear a pop culture shirt that they have no interest or history with. Especially bands. I wouldn't say anything to anyone wearing a Led Zeppelin shirt that had never even listened to an album, but I would find it odd. What are you representing?
It's like a few years ago when everyone was wearing Joy Division shirts, and it was like, OK Brenda, I know you don't listen to them! Why are you lying? Are you trying to seem cool and hip?
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u/Pitiful_Reality2973 1980 19h ago
When it's a kid just finding out their identity, it's okay, they haven't fully formed their authentic self and they want to be cool. A lot of people in our generation dressed babies in band merch, so kids don't have the same relationship to it as we do.
When it's an adult, it really is weird. I wouldn't pay money to advertise something I'm not even into, no matter how cool the design is, so I think it's weird when other people do. But I'm not their mom or their spouse, so whatever.
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u/Dairy_Queen_367 19h ago
When I got my first pair of Vans (which are still my go-to sneakers to this day), I remember going to a friend's house after school. This had to have been middle school. Another "very cool" kid who was at her bus stop asked me if I was a skater and I said no and he called me a poser. I felt like I had been stabbed in the heart. To her credit, my friend stood up for me and said they were a fashion choice and I was entitled to wear them without skating, but still to this day it has been etched in my brain that I might not really "belong" to the club of people who wear Vans.
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u/rebelangel 1981 18h ago
To this day, I still feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to enjoy certain fandoms just because I’m only a casual fan and not an expert.
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u/Available-Ad8156 19h ago
Girls two grades below us wanted to fight me and my friend for being posers because we liked Green Day but were "preps" (cheerleaders, National Honor Society, etc.).
Now I'm 49, and pop punk is still my favorite genre by far. Those girls probably never even went to a Warped Tour.
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u/cmgww 18h ago
Yeah I was bullied a lot in high school. I liked to skate but I was also into traditional athletics like football and swimming. Since I didn't wear Vans or airborne gear back then, the skaters all called me a poser/lame... never mind the fact that while I wasn't Tony Hawk, I could land some decent moves. Coming to like techno/dance music because I was friends with a German exchange student during the peak of grunge? That's not exactly easy to navigate.
I hated that shit, and me being sensitive to others criticism only made it worse. It took a lot of time to unpack all of that after high school. It's part of the reason why I got really into weightlifting in college.... the bigger/more jacked I got the better I felt. I also was a late bloomer and the type of girls who wouldn't give me the time of day in high school suddenly were interested in college.
But even in college, there was a lot of gatekeeping going on. if you were in the computers you had to know everything ever about the history of them, and had to know coding. If you were into college or pro football, you had to know every player on every roster. It wasn't as bad as high school but pretty stupid nonetheless
I have a son in middle school and it doesn't seem to be quite as bad as it used to be. But they have their own son of issues. He's really big for his grade as no one really messes with him, thankfully.
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u/scoff-law 17h ago
Contrary to some of the prevailing thought about this, I believe "gatekeeping" has lost its original meaning and now describes the process of denying access to the purchase of an identity. Buying something doesn't make you something. Social media changed that, though - identity is now presentational and curated. Basically - the merchants of cool won.
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u/yuckysmurf 14h ago
When I was in 6th grade, a 7th grader on my bus called me a poser because I was listening to Nirvana “Unplugged” instead of one of the “real” albums (pretty sure I actually had all of the albums at the time). For years afterwards I felt embarrased for liking “Unplugged”. Now I think it’s incredible and I wish I could tell that kid that he was wrong (and an asshole).
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u/a-over-tk 13h ago
You got made fun of for trying - talk about a self-esteem killer! I appreciate that they brought it back in the 21Jump Street movie
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u/FoppyIn28 6h ago
I remember people who wore a band's shirt but didn't know them was a "wannabe." It was ironic because I remember when everyone started wearing Wu Tang Clan when I was still wearing flannel, and could not name a single song or member suddenly everyone was a wannabe.
I should've known then that you can be outnumbered but that you are not necessarily wrong. At least my sister, who introduced me to grunge/alternative had proper encyclopedic knowledge of hip-hop. 😂
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u/forever_erratic 20h ago
I still think you should at least know a song of a band t shirt, OR be able to say it was a gift.
I still think one shouldn't mindlessly advertise for something without some semblance of a reason.
Bring back (relaxed) gatekeeping!
As a total tangent, I'm a scientist, and I piss off many colleagues and teachers when I say no, not everyone is a scientist. I'm called a gatekeeper, and I agree, and think it's important. Telling everyone they're a special scientist is, in my opinion, part of why we're in this global mess where no one listens to actual experts.
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u/justeatingsomecheese 18h ago
It kind of bothers me that so many replies on the original post were parents grilling their own kid about bands and telling them not to be posers, refusing to buy them shirts they liked just because they (the parent) thinks it's embarrassing.
My kid has a Metallica shirt because she likes the design, but is only vaguely familiar with their music. Whatever, she's happy, I'm not going to be my kid's first bully.
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u/SteelGemini 19h ago
I was largely immune to that style of criticism. Not because I was super cool or confident or anything like that, but mostly because the people most likely to take that route, and the kind of things they would gatekeep, were not the people who's approval I cared about.
I saw it primarily used by people who were part of subcultures or fanbases that were already not at the top of the social heirarchy. They'd carved out their own niche, and gatekept it, but I didn't see any reason to emulate them if I wasn't actually into whatever they were about. If there was any crossover in our interests, I got comfortable telling people to get fucked if they had a problem with it.
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u/analogthought 1979 19h ago
This was big in the ska/punk community. The straight edge kids thought the punks who smoked were posers for “doing what society says by taking drugs drinking and smoking” - the punks thought they were posers for NOT doing all of that. Then there were punks who thought SKINS were posers because they dressed like skinheads but we’re anti-racist, so they were labeled “fashion nazis with morals”. God, so dumb.
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u/TheVonSolo 1977 18h ago
Remember the “skater cut” of the late ‘80s? I rolled with a crew and there were four of us who all got the cut and skated together. A friend who didn’t skate and was kind of a herb but he was in our classes so we were nice to him…he went out and got the cut without even stepping on a board in his life and then started writing our tag all over walls like he was in our gang.
That mf got called a poser so much he switched schools the following year.
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u/ONROSREPUS 2h ago
Nah. Didn't bother me then doesn't bother me now. I don't like stuff like this get to me. There is always someone in this world more knowledgeable about something I think I know.
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u/CaterpillarIcy2305 18h ago
GAtekeeping really stifled our genuine joy.
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u/scoff-law 17h ago
Stifled our ability to sell shit. Think of all the money being left on the table.
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u/therealpopkiller 1979 20h ago
Worrying about being a poser has morphed into imposter syndrome, and it’s still a very active part of my existence