(no subject)
Oct. 18th, 2015 01:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adimlittleplanetI don't know what to write God twitter feels like so much of a limit yet give me none and I blank. Tbh I have this problem on tumblr too.
But atleast I don't feel a weird pressure to just be as generic as possible because strong feelings might lead to miswording, being taken out of context n harassed etc.
I think one reason tumblr has pushed things so far is when you're in a highly visible space on the internet you attract trolls. And I'm using the super gross definition of troll here, the ones who harass n try to coerce suicide. This isn't the only reason tumblr has evolved its weird authoritarian "follow all new discourse" culture, but I think it added to the very accepting push.
People getting harassed over making their venting posts by straight up trolls, or people harassed for trans headcanons etc? This has a lot to do with the set up of the site, things have so much reach that even if ur making posts for ur friends n Smoll community of lgbt Ppl etc, your posts reach further than that via a person who follows someone u know, or an asshole tag searching to find Ppl to ridicule, mixed in are young people who might be sincere but are knee deep in the cisheternormative real world.
What this lead to was a whole lot of disdain for dissent on things. A whole lot more posts of varying degrees of universally applicable no one would discuss other than to affirm them.
Slowly and subconsciously we began to spread things we maybe didn't fully understand or have a lot of insight into. Sometimes we even spread things that didn't ring true but proved our own biases, like callouts of shows we hated based on criteria we accepted for other stuff all the time, other times we spread things we didn't feels good about but felt we needed to. The latter being like a lot of MYC's trans discourse that said trans men are not men (or shouldn't want to be).
A lot of the time part of it is a need to feel like we're doing good, that all our feelings are good. We justify dislike of a show via finding the problematic parts, so we can shout down detractors like "LOOK!!!LOOK AT WHY ITS BAD!!!" and if we're feeling particularly vindictive, then we can call them out as someone who likes (bad thing). We ignore how there are also bad things in stuff we like, its only important to crusade against stuff that made us feel bad. Us as individuals. And its not important that someone who maybe had similar experiences to us and deals with trauma differently gets something from such media. Its definitley not important if someone different from us likes it for their own reasons. We feel bad about it, so its bad.
We spread things we didn't understand, because other people we trusted seemed to agree (or pretended to for similar reasons). We spread things that made us feel bad for that same reason of saving face. We spread posts like " You’d be surprised how much you can get done in an hour if you actually sit down and focus" with the comment "how neurotypical" not knowing op was a person with ADHD making a personal post about meds.
We reblogged sj posts that contradict ones we reblogged before. We allowed Ppl to be hrassed based on things we only learned last week. Thank God we thought, thank God no one thought this way when I made those mistakes. Thank God people hadn't thought up that criteria for being a good human when I used to talk about that.
Another things is I feel like young people on tumblr think that because they learn something, that means everyone older than them must have already been told that rule. Despite all this stuff only really being shared rn. Only being thought about rn and often even contradicting old rules and guides.
An example is "don't call someone " it" that's dehumanising" this one springs from old as hell trans discourse and is often aimed at cis people. Why? Cis people have a tendency to call trans people, especially trans women "it" because of transphobia and transmisogyny. In general its a fucking good rule you never call someone it when you don't know them or their pronouns, you're probs being the world's biggest fuck if you do this.
However.
Some nb people got up in arms about this one, I saw so many scathing comments and posts about how "people can use it as a pronoun if they want, stop telling people it is dehumanising, people are allowed to have it as a pronoun" totally ignoring the function of that old bit of discourse, or loose rule, in a ton of irl and even conservative web comment, situations.
Its not that u can't have it as a pronoun, its that it is often used to dehumanise trans women IRL and in published papers and non progressive webspaces etc.
But instead we got this new discourse where u can't ever say "don't use it as a general rule (implied speaking to strangers) its dehumanising" and people got called out for making this point in any capacity.
Instead of understanding why both things are important and applicable we were forced to strike down the old discourse. Destroy it. Never bring it up or you're maligning nb trans Ppl who use it as a pronoun,despite how cis Ppl to this day still use it as a weapon.
And this is probably the smallest most benign example I can think of.
OK I'm not good at organising thoughts. Who the hell knows if this was constant at all? I'll publish it public because I love to die and be killed but also. I am thankful for the ever enduring meme applied to LJ style sites "no one cares about ur blog"
But atleast I don't feel a weird pressure to just be as generic as possible because strong feelings might lead to miswording, being taken out of context n harassed etc.
I think one reason tumblr has pushed things so far is when you're in a highly visible space on the internet you attract trolls. And I'm using the super gross definition of troll here, the ones who harass n try to coerce suicide. This isn't the only reason tumblr has evolved its weird authoritarian "follow all new discourse" culture, but I think it added to the very accepting push.
People getting harassed over making their venting posts by straight up trolls, or people harassed for trans headcanons etc? This has a lot to do with the set up of the site, things have so much reach that even if ur making posts for ur friends n Smoll community of lgbt Ppl etc, your posts reach further than that via a person who follows someone u know, or an asshole tag searching to find Ppl to ridicule, mixed in are young people who might be sincere but are knee deep in the cisheternormative real world.
What this lead to was a whole lot of disdain for dissent on things. A whole lot more posts of varying degrees of universally applicable no one would discuss other than to affirm them.
Slowly and subconsciously we began to spread things we maybe didn't fully understand or have a lot of insight into. Sometimes we even spread things that didn't ring true but proved our own biases, like callouts of shows we hated based on criteria we accepted for other stuff all the time, other times we spread things we didn't feels good about but felt we needed to. The latter being like a lot of MYC's trans discourse that said trans men are not men (or shouldn't want to be).
A lot of the time part of it is a need to feel like we're doing good, that all our feelings are good. We justify dislike of a show via finding the problematic parts, so we can shout down detractors like "LOOK!!!LOOK AT WHY ITS BAD!!!" and if we're feeling particularly vindictive, then we can call them out as someone who likes (bad thing). We ignore how there are also bad things in stuff we like, its only important to crusade against stuff that made us feel bad. Us as individuals. And its not important that someone who maybe had similar experiences to us and deals with trauma differently gets something from such media. Its definitley not important if someone different from us likes it for their own reasons. We feel bad about it, so its bad.
We spread things we didn't understand, because other people we trusted seemed to agree (or pretended to for similar reasons). We spread things that made us feel bad for that same reason of saving face. We spread posts like " You’d be surprised how much you can get done in an hour if you actually sit down and focus" with the comment "how neurotypical" not knowing op was a person with ADHD making a personal post about meds.
We reblogged sj posts that contradict ones we reblogged before. We allowed Ppl to be hrassed based on things we only learned last week. Thank God we thought, thank God no one thought this way when I made those mistakes. Thank God people hadn't thought up that criteria for being a good human when I used to talk about that.
Another things is I feel like young people on tumblr think that because they learn something, that means everyone older than them must have already been told that rule. Despite all this stuff only really being shared rn. Only being thought about rn and often even contradicting old rules and guides.
An example is "don't call someone " it" that's dehumanising" this one springs from old as hell trans discourse and is often aimed at cis people. Why? Cis people have a tendency to call trans people, especially trans women "it" because of transphobia and transmisogyny. In general its a fucking good rule you never call someone it when you don't know them or their pronouns, you're probs being the world's biggest fuck if you do this.
However.
Some nb people got up in arms about this one, I saw so many scathing comments and posts about how "people can use it as a pronoun if they want, stop telling people it is dehumanising, people are allowed to have it as a pronoun" totally ignoring the function of that old bit of discourse, or loose rule, in a ton of irl and even conservative web comment, situations.
Its not that u can't have it as a pronoun, its that it is often used to dehumanise trans women IRL and in published papers and non progressive webspaces etc.
But instead we got this new discourse where u can't ever say "don't use it as a general rule (implied speaking to strangers) its dehumanising" and people got called out for making this point in any capacity.
Instead of understanding why both things are important and applicable we were forced to strike down the old discourse. Destroy it. Never bring it up or you're maligning nb trans Ppl who use it as a pronoun,despite how cis Ppl to this day still use it as a weapon.
And this is probably the smallest most benign example I can think of.
OK I'm not good at organising thoughts. Who the hell knows if this was constant at all? I'll publish it public because I love to die and be killed but also. I am thankful for the ever enduring meme applied to LJ style sites "no one cares about ur blog"
no subject
Date: 2015-10-19 01:41 pm (UTC)its sort of obvious i guess that calling out would become big... if it was as much of a thing on LJ IMAGINE THE FIELD DAY W THE BNFs! imagine how much little fans would love to take down BNFs and get some cred that way n like... control fandom hierarchy by something other than what you're producing... hoo wee
no subject
Date: 2015-10-19 02:42 pm (UTC)Smaller one not a bnf situation but I saw a post going around making reactionary but vague accusations of someone's like, tone? This person had made a positivity post for lesbian and bi girls and the post was being criticized cuz "it says lesbian and bi girls but I feel like op only cares about lesbians"???? So I went to the person who made that post (the complaint one) and they'd written 2 huge apology posts because they said they were way outta line?
But Ppl reblogging their complaint post were refusing to reblog the apology n correction posts because they didint like the person who wrote the positivity post for completely unrelated reasons. U hate someone for a) so you'll reblog baseless accusations of b) and never reblog corrections.
I saw someone point blank tell an anon they wouldnt reblog a correction cuz "that person is acephobic' despite the post being entirely about weird perceived preference of lesbians over bi girls having zero to do with ace people at all?
If someone holds a position u don't like on a) feel free to try and destroy them on b c d e f g h etc and never spread corrections cuz that'd go against ur destroy effort.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-19 03:34 pm (UTC)n then you get people only publishing responses that are decidedly inflammatory/impolite to go 'lol look at my opposition, they're all harassing me' when however many other people are trying to have a polite discussion but being shut out, and the lack of SEEING the kinder discourse means people are being gaslit into thinking an entire group is... irrational.