3:26pm September 13, 2014

Harry Potter and “fame”

One of the most important themes (well, important to me personally; ymmv) I got from the Harry Potter books is that of recognizing that:

(1) It’s possible for people to become widely well-known because of something that happened to them rather than something they did.

(2) Being “famous” is a liability moreso than an advantage, especially for children.

(3) It’s annoying when everyone knows your name and recognizes you before you even have a chance to wonder who *they* are.

(4) When a person becomes well-known initially due to something that happened to them in childhood, people tend to interpret everything they do in public) or even other things that happen to them through none of their own doing!) as a bid for more fame or attention. This is unfair.

(5) Bullying of well-known people is commonly done out of jealousy and insecurity in combination with a false belief that there are no downsides to being well-known.

My ex-boyfriend, from college (you know, that place I don’t talk about ever having gone, the ~elite gifted program~ that actually isn’t elite or only for gifted people but who cares about the truth when you’re a gossip-mongering asshole… oh yeah and I never mention I had friends, either, which is why I’m mentioning my ex, and why I wrote a poem about that other friend recently… sorry I’m being really snarky about the asshole who showed up on my blog recently, returning you to your regularly scheduled post now) told me that when he saw the kind of bullying I was getting over my “fame”, he immediately thought of Rita Skeeter.

Which is also why my favorite response to my bullies is “Flobberworms don’t have teeth!” Because that encapsulates everything about what they say about me, pretty much.

(For those who don’t know, there’s a scene where an unscrupulous reporter reporter gets someone to tell her that Hagrid’s class is dangerous because someone got a bad bite off a flobberworm, and Harry’s response is to turn to the guy who supposedly got the bite and say “Flobberworms don’t have teeth!” or something like that.)

Anyway, pretty much everyone who knows me well and saw what happened to me has compared it to Rita Skeeter/Malfoy/et al. It’s that weird. And it’s weird to me that it can happen with the kind of fame I got, because I’m not famous. I’m really not. Harry Potter is famous. I just got on the news a couple times. There’s a huge difference. Yet the way I get treated for it is just about the same, it’s only different in terms of magnitude.

The Harry Potter books helped get me through the worst of those years. They really did. Because hearing over and over that you’re an attention-seeking fraud does have an effect on a person even when you know you’re not. I’m still not convinced that it’s a coincidence that my health hit crisis-level bad, and the adrenal insufficiency came out really really strongly, right when I was being stalked and defamed as heavily as I was.

And I remember trying to hide how sick I was, getting on the computer every day and forcing myself to type things into web forums, because I was afraid if they knew I was too weak to get out of bed, they’d come and hurt me. (This was right after they’d posted my address and suggested that someone come and kill me.)

And yes, Harry Potter stuff is a lot like what happened, and it helped me a lot.

Notes: