A couple of years ago, at my high school, I was very curious about politics. It was a constant topic of discussion at school. The school itself was composed almost entirely of liberals, so partially out of curiosity and boredom from the constant stream of sameness I decided to look up conservative commentators in an effort to make debates more interesting. But, once I started debating those talking points students, teachers, and my own goddamn parents started horrifically clutching their pearls. My school was supposed to be one of the highest achieving in academics in my state and yet the students and teachers could barely hold their own against Steven Crowder talking points. They resorted to constant dogpiling in order to have any victories, but even then sometimes I won. Eventually this behavior lead to my friends leaving me and the student body and some teachers growing really sour and passive aggressive. After seeing this behavior I decided to research a little about the school only to find its run by a bunch of corporate defense lawyers very rich. But the experience of constantly being dogpiled again and again by the mob has taken its toll on me. For one left-wing politics are hard to get into now because of the association. The only reason that stops me from discarding it entirely is fear. Fear that either the mob will come back or I'll be apart of the mob. I also have a huge fear of talking to other people in general for the same reasons. The experience has left me REALLY pessimistic towards others almost subconsciously. The only upside for me was I got really good at debate. For now I'm just trying to develop more positive associations with people in an effort to quell the fear a little. Funnily enough, whenever I get nervous now I bring up politics although I've been cutting back on that. Anyone else have experiences with the mob? How has it effected you and how do you cope?