#since were in the audhd website this is honestly to be expected

[scarletiswailing347]

sometimes i see ppl praise nds for being passionate about their interests and just feel bad :/

[merlions]

The mundane everyday reality that never fails to totally fucking floor me is how much the world has changed over the last ~15 years, specifically re: the bleed of (formerly) niche internet into irl culture.

Like it's so fucking weird seeing these obscure and unpopular little interests I had during middle and high school - ones I couldn't talk about to my irl friends because I was weird for even knowing they existed, much less acknowledge that they were all I interacted with during any moment I wasn't at school - become so well known in the years since that they're just thoroughly and casually embedded in everyday culture now.

Like to the point where NOW it would be weird to talk about how into them I used to be, in the same way it would come across really weird to say "I used to be obsessed with textbooks, I would spend at least 8 hours a day reading them, I met the guy who owns MacMillan, I used to be caught up with literally everything they published."

(I know that doesn't come across as THAT strange of a statement on the AuDHD website, but trust me that if I said any of this to a classmate they wouldn't even be able to respond out of fear my weird freak nerd behavior might be contagious. In retrospect that's pretty specifically ironic given the rest of this. I guess we really didn't DFTBA huh)

Anyways my old grumpy terminally-not-online bio professor posts a link on Canvas to a supplemental video on DNA and genetic inheritance in advance of our next class. I click on it, not really paying attention, expecting a boring grainy 00's video with the worst CGI youve ever seen, narrated by someone with a Jersey accent so thick you can barely understand it. Like usual. Instead, Hank fucking Green's voice (circa 2012!) starts blasting out of my computer saying, "So, I have this brother John. You may have heard of him."

Honestly it fucking jumpscared me, I forgot is Crash Course like the new Bill Nye for teachers now. Because that information won't put itself into my brain. Because "Nerdfighteria Island" still occasionally pops into my head when I'm not paying attention.

Tbh I'm just thinking about how I'm gonna sit quietly in class while he talks about this video and pretend that this is a totally neutral medium of information transfer to me, one which illicits no emotional reaction whatsoever. As if one of the top three best days of my little nerd 16yo self's life wasn't freaking it silly style to Hank playing nerd songs on his acoustic ukulele to a dance floor of like 40 people at midnight when I went to vidcon. TWICE.

Plus, like, I probably watched this video the day it was posted. And it's extra weird that THAT would be extra weird to my classmates, most of whom were around 7 years old at that time. Christ

It's not that weird but it's WEIRD to me. Like if I was saying earlier that to everyone else, telling them how crazy I was about the vlogbrothers in 2011 would be like saying I was obsessed with textbooks; then to ME, casually discussing a 2012 Crash Course video with my bio classmates is like traveling halfway across the world and running into someone who has a picture of your favorite stuffed animal from your childhood, taken from inside your personal house, as their phone background. Haha why do you have that photo? You ask. How do have that? And they're like what do you mean this is the standard phone background that comes with all phones now