Fan Page - Part 1

Sometimes I wish I had discovered Ren later. When he and the leaders of the Renegade community were already well-established---kind of like the Twenty-One Pilots community. Maybe then I wouldn’t feel so much pressure when engaging with other Renegades.

I never intended to run a fan page for Ren. Never intended for “Crabs” to become such an important part of me. Honestly? I just started making Ren memes early on when “Hi Ren” started taking off, and three years later I’ve somehow found myself so ingrained within the community that sometimes it feels like I can’t just sit back and enjoy the music.

Don’t get me wrong; this is strictly a “me” problem. It’s a feeling driven by my desire to feel like I “matter” and that I’m “good enough.” Arbitrary terms I would never force on anyone else, but somehow my brain can’t seem to grasp that I shouldn’t levy these expectations on myself, either.

Buckle up, this is going to be a long one.

A little over three years ago I first heard “Hi Ren.” Now, I’ve always been one to hyper-fixate on music when it resonates with me. That hyper-fixation is increased tenfold when I’m depressed or my mental health is otherwise negatively impacted. In 2018 I found myself clinging to the album Trench by Twenty-One Pilots while pushed through a particularly nasty and lengthy depression. I even got some tattoos and went to see the band on tour three times in two years. I’d already been a fan for a few years, but the obsession didn’t really hit until a few years later.

But “Hi Ren” was different. The circumstances were similar: I was really depressed and feeling isolated in the last couple months of my deployment. But unlike Twenty-One Pilots, Ren was just breaking out of the local music scene onto a global stage. He was far more accessible and often replied to messages. I remember recording a video of myself listening to Losing It (with the song playing on my tablet while I recorded on my phone because I didn’t know how to overlay music at the time). I don’t think I’d ever posted a story to Instagram before, but I posted that one and tagged Ren. Ren shared my video to his story, and from then I found myself falling deeper down the Rabbit Hole.

First, I joined Rencord. I’d never used Discord before, but at the time it was the heart of the Ren fan community. It was a gloriously unhinged group of Piss Goblins (the term “Renegade” hadn’t caught on yet), where people could be who they wanted and set aside the stuffy masks they donned to navigate the tediously mundane facets of “real life.” There were a few members who shared wonderfully niche memes, and one day I tried my hand at the art. It went well, and so I started sharing some memes to my Instagram (which was already called nastycrabcakes, by the way). I tagged Ren in some of my memes and he shared some of them to his story, which inspired me to keep creating.

Around the same time, I started writing poetry again. I hadn’t written a poem since...high school, I think, but the words just spilled out of me. I was still deep in my depression, but I started finding joy in the Renegade community. Sharing my memes and poems in Rencord helped me feel less alone as my deployment came to a close, but things really took a turn when the Ren’s Rabbit Hole Fans Facebook group was created.

I joined the Rabbit Hole in its infancy, and like Rencord and Instagram, I shared my memes and some of my poetry to the group. I was a lot more open about certain details about myself at the time because I was just one nobody in a cozy group of like-minded fans. After a little while, though, I was asked to be a moderator in the group. Keeley (who is almost certainly superhuman) invited me to join the team, but I initially turned her down because I didn’t think I could commit to the group and I didn’t think I had the experience to succeed in the role. But Keeley assured me the group was small and there were few issues. After a little convincing, I agreed to be a moderator.

Well, it wasn’t long after taking on the role that the group began really taking off. Between engaging with group members and getting to know the other members of my team (who all turned out to be amazing humans), I found more and more of my time dedicated to growing the group. But as the group grew, so too did the problems.

99.99999% of Renegades I’ve interacted with online have been amazing. But that tiny percentage of negative exchanges weighs on me far more than it should. Again, that’s a “me” problem. I’m not diagnosed, but I meet all the criteria for rejection sensitivity dysphoria. When I think I’ve done something wrong, or when I feel betrayed by someone, it deeply affects me in a negative way. Any hint that I’ve upset someone, such as a text that I read as “short,” can send me spiraling.

So let’s talk about the first big conflict I found myself wrapped up in.