icantthinkofaname2

Dear OO: I’ve recently developed an infatuation with a girl I found on the internet who is active on sites like Tumblr, Twitter and YouTube. I’ve never met or had any kind of contact with her, so I know I can't really be in love, but I do love everything I've seen of her online. I'm absolutely mesmirized by her looks; she's the most beautiful girl I've ever seen, and I think has the potential to be a successful model. Although I realize that it's impossible to judge her real-life personality based on what she shows of herself on the internet, what she does show exhudes an idealistic, benevolent, bubbly, funny, outgoing personality that I find very attractive as well. I refrain from communicating with her for two reasons. The first is that she’s currently too young for me (she's 15 and I’m 19). The second is that I don’t think I’m her type or that I’m good enough for her. So I decided to regard her as being like an object in a museum (to borrow an analogy from a Peikoff podcast). Even though I can’t have her, I still get enjoyment from following and admiring her. To be clear, I don't get aroused to her (I can't because I would feel guilt/shame over her age); I just get drawn in by her beauty. The problem is that I haven’t been able to keep my thoughts in check and prevent my admiration from escalating into an actual desire for her, and it’s starting to cause me serious emotional havoc. Recently some famous YouTuber, a guy in his mid-20s with over a million subscribers, saw one of her videos and “liked” it (“liking” a video on YouTube causes it to be passed along to all of one’s subscribers). The result was massive exposure and legions of horny guys of all ages being directed to her YouTube channel. Unlike me, a lot of them apparently had no reservations about complimenting/hitting on a 15 year old, and reading their comments made me rage with jealousy. It drove home the point that other men see the same things that I see in her, so she’ll probably always have her choice of men and would probably never choose me even if I had the confidence to approach her. That hurts. It also hurts to know that I would resent the fact that a lot of other people judge her as beautiful, something that is probably a good thing from her perspective and makes her feel good about herself. Does anyone have any advice on how to deal with my feelings for this person? I don’t want to completely give her up and never look at her again, but I don’t want this to escalate into a creepy, devastating obsession, either.