Bias (Patreon)

People have so much going on that they always try to find that little extra shortcut to make their lives a bit easier. No matter how much you try to fight it, there is always that part in the back of your head that tries to profile everyone you meet. How can I make this interaction as easy as possible? From the large,  such as if this person is deaf or this person doesn’t know English, to the smaller things.

Right after the transformation, once I managed clothing that fit and walking without slamming door frames, I tried to behave as I had before when meeting people. It was jarring how differently I was treated. There are a few things going on. First of all, no matter what I do I’m an imposing figure. Always will be. While a few are swooning as I approach them, most feel insecure, unsafe and threatened on a primal level. There is no way to reason around that. Most women try to avoid me, cut their interactions as short as possible. Some men becomes outright aggressive.

The second thing is people know you can’t get a body like this without an hour a day of gym time. Another hour to travel, change clothes, shower, gainer and recovery, and on top of that whatever you need for meal planning etc. They know you are spending a large part of your free time on yourself. Some see it as commendable, but many as vanity. That whatever time you spend there is neglected time elsewhere, making you shallow and possibly dumb. It happens to not be true in my case. I spend zero time on my body and still can’t get rid of the damn biceps, but long before I’ve managed to convince them of that, if at all possible, they have already made up their mind. If you look dishonest there is no way to talk people out of thinking that.

Just one look and they’ve set a baseline for you. Dumb, vain and possibly violent. It takes effort to climb up from that, to move away from the cut out they have for you to fit in. I just didn’t have the energy to do that over and over, so I played along more and more often. Let them assume I’m dumb. Let them assume I’m a narcissist. Let them assume I’m short tempered, self centered and arrogant. And for every time I do it, it gets easier to play that role. When you try to be yourself instead, people think you fake it, pretend and deceive.

It happened by a thousand cuts. Step by tiny step I was pushed closer and closer to what people expected from me, which wasn’t very much. It just became so much easier to act like an asshole from the start. People expected that.