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For the longest time, I thought my life's purpose was to educate. This notion has since flopped multiple times.

In the "mundane" world, I grew up wanting to become a teacher. A standard grade-school teacher in a public school, since that was really all I'd been exposed to growing up. At first I thought I wanted to teach something like English or History, but as time went on it became abundantly clear that I was going to have to get into something related to art. So that's what I did. By the time my junior year of high school had rolled around, I started looking into Art Education programs at local universities, asking questions, seeking advice from my educators.

It didn't take long for me to realize, though, that what I really wanted was to spend time in the studio. Most Art Education programs do involve that in their curriculum, naturally, but to a lesser degree than what I was hoping for. Obviously, this was so that students could also take classes about the education part of Art Education, but y'know. It was pretty disheartening to 17-year-old me. So I decided to take my interests in a different direction and settled on a major which involved much more time in the studio, and ended up settling on the degree I eventually graduated with.

Well, it also didn't help that my teachers overwhelmingly advised me against going into teaching. And this was only a couple of years before the outbreak of COVID, so I can only imagine how much more insistent their responses would be now. I've seen enough shit online from practicing educators, particularly within the public education system, that reaffirm to me that I made the correct decision in absolutely not doing what they do. All the more power to them, because I am simply not tough enough to put up with what they put up with on a daily basis.

Then, my aspirations to become an educator flopped again out in the metaphysical world. This time, though, it took a lot longer than an academic year or two for it to really hit me.

As I've mentioned probably sixteen billion times in the short lifespan of this blog, I was active within pagan spaces on Tumblr for nearly a decade. I mostly just started so that I'd have a space to save ideas--both mine and others'--for future reference, and to reflect on later down the line. But once I actually got active within the community, I realized that there was so much more that could be done. Everyone was sharing their ideas, offering advice to each other, and spreading knowledge for the benefit of newcomers. It was great, at first.

I eventually began to realize how repetitive everything was. Not only because there were lots of new people joining every day who were looking for help and advice (which is completely fine), but because suddenly everyone felt some sort of need to write educational content. It was just the same shit over and over again, constantly retreading ground that had already been tread a million times before. For some reason, a ton of people simply wanted to cover the same material again (usually in a very surface-level way) so that they could have their name fixed to the top of the post. And of course, I fell for the monkey-see-monkey-do impulse and started doing the same thing. I liked to think I was striking out into slightly more obscure territory, but really I was just doing the same thing as everyone else and acting superior because it felt different to me.

Then I got into Discord, and during the lockdown period of 2020-21, I became very active in a lot of magical and pagan Discord servers. This was before Tumblr and Discord pagan spaces had really turned into the feedback loop that they are now, though the process was already well underway between Discord and Tiktok, so it was really only a matter of time. There was something different about sharing information on an instant-messaging platform like Discord as opposed to a blogging platform like Tumblr. Not only did people seem more demanding, but the demands would be coming from all directions at all hours of the day, and on top of wanting to help people with your problems you had to reckon with a lot of random bystanders ready to jump in and "um, actually" you. Not that this didn't happen on Tumblr, it absolutely did and still does, but at least on a blogging platform there's usually the facade of wanting to look like you put a little bit of effort into your rebuttal.

What the two platforms absoutely had in common, however, was the tendency to put the people who answered the most questions on a pedestal, and to collectively decide that these people were teachers now, and that you could go to them with anything and they would help you. Subsequently, people who didn't really know what they were talking about but talked really confidently began to grow their platforms, while people who were better-read or more experienced but more selective about the knowledge they shared mostly bitched about the constant flow of misinformation, without really doing much about it or questioning the greater mechanisms at play that were causing this. Because being spiteful and sarcastic to acheive some semblance of a moral high ground is more fun, I guess.

The problem with both of these situations (though obviously one is a much more Online problem than the other)--which is what prompted me to write this in the first place--is that it wasn't really the position of educator itself that pushed me away from pursuing either of these paths. It was the environment surrounding the position that was completely inhospitable to what I actually wanted to do: help people. Or at least try my best to do so.

Sure, maybe I'd still like to teach, or at least share my knowledge and experience when people have questions that are related to my practice, but I've been extremely disincentivized from doing so, and I'm not entirely sure when change will come.

I was originally planning on this being more of a rant than anything else, but considering I've kinda already outlined the issues which I was going to rant about, continuing that kinda feels like it would just be boring and high-horse-y, especially considering I've entirely abandoned one of the platforms I'm bitching about and have absolutely zero interest in ever going back to it, ever. However, I know that people who are still active in those spaces read my blog, and they're almost all just as in the weeds as I was before I left (this is not a moral judgement--it is an observation).

So I guess the following list is more so a set of boundaries, or a list of terms of engagement, which I wish would be better enforced in educational spaces of any kind, but especially those that I left for the above reasons.

So You Have Some Questions About Your Practice

Obviously I don't want to discourage people from asking questions. That'd be ridiculous. It's okay to not know things, and everyone has to start somewhere. But I think the shifts in general internet culture during and "post"-COVID have kinda-sorta severely fucked with our online manners. But this can be rectified!

• Someone being active, even very active, on a given platform does not mean that they are willing/able to teach you. Blogging platforms in particular are for blogging. So be cool with the idea of not everyone being keen on answering everything for you, especially if you've never even had a conversation before with the person you're requesting help from.
• You're gonna have to do your own research sometimes. Probably most of the time. That's why a lot of people like to share resources when folks ask easily-researchable questions. Consider that people who offer you lists of resources are trying to help you by way of offering you material from which you can form your own opinions and make your own decisions. I know. Slogging through academic writing about something you feel very strongly about in a spiritual way can be a pain in the ass. But it's helpful, and it will allow you to become better at making your own decisions and answering your own questions.
• Consider the possibility that you are doing a disservice, both to yourself and to the person you're offloading all your questions to, when you are effectively asking someone else to do your research for you.

So Strangers On The Internet Keep Asking Questions About Your Practice

• It's okay to not have an answer for the question you were asked. It's completely fine and even preferable to defer to others with the necessary knowledge or offer relevant resources rather than to try to come up with an answer off the dome and/or just pull something out of your ass.
• You are under no obligation to answer every single question you receive.
• Farming answers from other people for your content is weird.
• You can also simply say no, even if you do know about the topic.
• Especially if they're a total stranger. Double especially if they're asking anonymously.
• Consider why you feel such a strong need for you to be the one to give answers to these questions, especially if they're extremely common ones.