Back Row Hooligan

A blog fiction writer, by the time he is middle aged, comes to find the importance of community. Writers are satellites when they are young. Some are angry and use that energy to fuel their creativity, or their lack of it. The one to himself, postulating, summarizing, mistaking his vitriol for identity laughs at the world around him by tearing down its ideas. The grandiosity makes HIM feel better but doesn’t endear him to others.

He usually doesn’t complete a higher education because he lacks the mental toughness for critique. He spends most of his young adult life hacking away at others while trying to establish his own creative identity; afraid to present his own creations because he knows he lacks the toughness to hear what others think. He tells himself he doesn’t care what others think but he knows it is a lie. After all, we are social animals. We have needs.

He gets tired of lying to himself that others just don’t understand him and finally comes to the conclusion that everyone makes fun of everyone for their own amusement, and doing it in writing, no matter how literary you sound is just not as creative as you once thought. But relating to a writer takes a little scholarship, a little education, dignity and manners. Nobody wants to hear someone shitting on the things they see, or think they see. Just because you can write a cute encapsulation of a work in a satirical way for your own amusement does not mean you have made a critical study.

I like to read real works of fiction by others who are actively engaged in the craft of writing, and show respect for the industry with manners and equanimity; not mistreating others with vitriolic or vague pronouncements which don’t offer anything in the way of creativity. The creator of fiction is left blind, naked and vulnerable, a situation the back row hooligan finds intolerable . The back row hooligan, for the most part hides behind a fictive name while making offensive comments “just trying to be real and truthful,” and more than likely has hundreds of posts with zero or 1-2 likes because they are simply playground taunts hurled from an unknown observer at those whom he imagines is worthy of his contempt who have no idea he is speaking directly to them, nor do they think to imagine who the narcissist hooligan is referring to. Most educated people recognize the post of the narcissist hooligan trying to get attention for some reason in order to serve his grandiosity.

As a writer, you are going to always run across the back row hooligan. And he always thinks he’s fresh. This is the person who, when he runs into a professor who is snottier and more sarcastic, decides that academics is not for him. Don’t pay him the attention he craves until he starts asking for the right reason. Your work is what you are living for. There is community that wants to share your experience with you. But no one wants to share themselves with a narcissist except in some cases another narcissist who takes it as a challenge.