Monday, March 2, 2009 . 4:32 AM

I see that I've made a few people unhappy over the past few days, driving them to hate me. Well, it's a horrible, horrible feeling to be hated by more and more people each day, and this is primarily caused by my love for arguing and my ability to go on as if everything is normal after a particularly heated and vehement one. But apparently, they don't... and try, rather bewilderingly, to hide that fact.

This, people, is the dance of masks. Where the opposing side tries by all means and all ways to keep the mask on, even to the extent of lying for the sake of keeping up pretenses. This is bad, but we all do it sometimes, even me, for the sake of avoiding conflict and being more or less happy. Many a times, I have to supress my views and try not to impose them on other people to still be friends with them, for example... the problem of this approach is that sooner or later, very obvious signs will come through that will make them realize your fascade in time, as you have to vent your frustration, anger, sadness, others... some way or another. Masks are far less genuine than the real thing after all... and after awhile, things get pretty dumb.

My pet peeve here is the masks worn by people who actually are annoyed with me to some extent already. In this case, unlike the opposite where people wear those masks out of a genuine want to keep a friendship or so on, these misguided people decide to wear masks so as to not spark anything big, and yet distance themselves away from people as far as possible without being too obvious. Signs include, say, constant excuses to drive people away, refusal to be called on the pretense of business, conversations where the opposing side might as well be using chatting macros, etc. all of these slowly but surely contribute to a very very uncomfortable feeling that will accumulate over time, and will lead to a lot of things.

Of course, when you dance with masks on, your sense of vision is severely impeded at times, and that makes you trip over yourself rather clumsily a good number of times. Evidences can be obvious contradictions of interest, stupid, not-thought-out reasons to drive people away (a.k.a I'm studying and I can't comment to your post even though I commented to people who posted later than you did it makes perfect sense go away darnit), and this is usually the final straw for the dancing partner. They demand to know the truth, the opposing party manages to tie themselves in more and more knots (e.g they are closer to me than you will ever be, omg you don't believe don't believe lah), and when you press forward as hard as you can, they break down and in the heat of impassioned fervor spill out everything; every single point of discontentness being thrown at you, throwing the mask down as angrily as possible and taking a deep breath in order to seem bigger than usual while shouting at you. Blinded by rage, they tend not to see the obvious too, and that makes them look silly. This is followed by a long period of silence.

Of course, there are some who take advantage of the missteps the one not wearing the mask makes, and see that as a perfect excuse to walk away with a dignified expression.

The above, as you can see from my portrayal, is absolutely silly and foolish and has no plausible explanation that I can think of. It is silly to try and avoid conflict by wearing a mask and minimizing contact, because those exact same things will lead to an even bigger blowup than usual. People don't like to be caught red-handed, and are really rather angry when they are discovered, so in order to try and win you, they tend to exaggerate everything (e.g I won't apologize you fag i didn't do anything wrong). They also tend to forget everything you have done for them in the process, the reviews made, the encouragment given, the good conversations had and gifts exchanged, and emphasize the bad to such a large extent that it makes you out to be a really really horrible person when you're in fact not totally so. Also they tend to forget that you're a person with feelings too, and unlike theirs up to this point, yours are genuine. Really superficial outburst that is quite banal and that can be easily countered if one bothers to.

Even the idea of using masks to save time and energy is silly. You're going to waste your time blowing up things anyways. So what do I suggest here? Simple. Instead of throwing down the mask and breaking it into pieces when the peak of anger comes, why not be natural and tell the other party what you don't want from him and 'argue' out with him in a sensible way? Or if he doesn't seem sensible, then simply tell him, that you're annoyed with him and such, and that you disagree with everything he says. Or if you really hate him, just kill him (but make sure to say something of course. Don't ignore, that's blatant barbarism). It can't be anymore painful than now, for example, and it certainly cannot expend more time and energy than the peak I have described above, becomes it comes sooner than later, and probably at less magnitude than the long periods of silence and the sensationsalism that comes as things get pent up. There's also some chance that you guys as friends can continue dancing without the masks on, and stay as friends and strengthen that friendship.

So in short, using fascades to cover up the fact that you're annoyed at someone is really short-sighted and rather retarded. If it's, however, a genuine attempt to keep the friendship, than that is better, because you're still being natural about your feelings on the whole, and is less freaking obvious than the many spiked barbs that you're going to dance into blind and unprepared.