Sotiris wrote:Yeah, I feel the same about my old posts. But I think that's a good thing. It means you grow and evolve as a person.
TheSequelOfDisney wrote:I do from time to time. Some of it was just ludicrous, but I still stand by most of it. At least those posts provide a good chuckle.
Those two things I've underlined sum up my views. I think my overall views on life and the world haven't changed (especially from a socio-political perspective), but I realise how far my social/critical thinking skills have improved, and how I've become more culturally aware and independent. Then again, I think that would be expected, since I had just turned 16 when I joined the forum, and I turned 28 two months ago. Since then, I've finished school, worked full-time in various jobs, been to university at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, have lived in various new places (including parts of France and Germany), lost/found love, met new friends, ditched old/new friends and have been to places I'd never imagined visiting. That's all against a relatively turbulent time period with various social and technological changes. If I hadn't changed as a person, I think there'd be an issue.
Regarding my old posts, I started making very short, snappy replies (though mostly in full sentences), and went through a phase at one point of bumping old threads before it became the norm (I'm a trend-setter, it seems). I soon moved out of that phase, but some of the stuff I used to ask/discuss was just so downright random (including
this post on tea drinking habits which makes me look like the ultimate British stereotype - and I've since become a huge coffee snob and hardly drink tea anymore!). Yet despite some of the cringe-worthy stuff, I kinda like my old posts. Pre-Internet, I think records of what people were thinking/doing at a given point were harder to source, but with Internet forums and social media sites, it's a far easier task. And given that I have very few RL friends who are into Disney as much as I am (aside from just liking the films), I'm glad I've been able to have an outlet of sorts. I think the reason for my weird and wonderful posts, especially in the earlier years, was probably a means of validating my likes and dislikes given that relatively few people I was associated with seemed to like some of the things I loved.
God the stuff I used to write in an attempt to be "funny". At best it was lame. At worst it was cringe-inducing. Alas it's not really practical to go through all my old posts one by one to destupidise/censor/sanitise.
