By Libo “Xenocider” Chang of Evil Geniuses
In the past few months, I’ve really thought a lot about how my life works, more specifically, how my high school career has been. Throughout my life I’ve always worried about being popular, respected among my class, etc. But recently, I’ve realized that dainty dreams like popularity aren’t really viable for me. My group of friends consists of people that play video games or study extremely hard (both, really).
Consequently, we reside in a minority compared to people in band, football, cheerleading, etc. People who are part of any of those groups get an automatic plus in social status. However, anyone that really cares about their education or even has just an obscure interest gets an automatic minus. My group’s interests simply do not match the majority of the class’ interests. Thus, we are viewed as the outsiders by the people in the “in” group of my school.
Recently, I decided I would go to a school gathering, a picnic for the people that go to my school program. When I went to the picnic, I just felt out of place, like I’d rather be staying up all night at a LAN with my friends or just something else. I tried to stay open minded, mostly because some of my more popular friends always tell me “don’t be a loser; if you don’t go to [insert x event here], you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life.” That’s the thing for me though, all of these “big” events in my high school life, homecoming, prom, etc. really don’t compare to MLGs, IEF, etc. In fact, they don’t even compare to me hanging out with some of my friends playing freaking star strikers. MLGs were always a way for me to meet people that I shared similar interests with. It doesn’t matter if it’s just a MLG spectator that comes to say “hi”, or a long-time online friend. The friends and people that I meet through StarCraft don’t judge me by the clothes I wear or the football games I don’t attend, they can evaluate me as a person.
I do have to say though, in my senior year I have become a lot more social, learned how to socially converse, etc. A problem I have been running into is that there are very few, if any, people in real life that share the same interests that I have. As a result, when something truly momentous happens in StarCraft for example, I don’t have many people whom I can share the experience with. Even if they do show interest they can’t really understand since they do not know eSports well. I don’t think there’s much of a solution to this problem except going out and meeting more people.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I really don’t regret the decisions I’ve made in my life. If Iām a loser and all of the stuff that I do is a waste of time, then forget it, life in its entirety is just a waste of time anyways. I’d rather waste my time doing what I want rather than worrying about what everyone else thinks.
(Ed’s note: *drops mic*)
Follow Libo on twitter @EGXeno