isthishowyoumakeathrowaway - Tumblr blog

isthishowyoumakeathrowaway · 2 years ago

Text

Hello Joy and others.

This posts and the ones related to it brought up a lot for me.

It was comforting to see how many other people were angered by what went down on Discord. I’m angered by it as well.

It brought me peace to hear you had made your own discord, and that you stood up for someone else.

I’ve spent literally an entire day writing this, and then sat on it. But it’s still bothering me. The thought that maybe some on out there could see my lingering pain and say, ‘that’s awful’, ‘that’s disturbing’, to hear that sentiment coming from somewhere besides my own head, is so appealing.

It’s been years, with conversations with two different therapists. I’ll go ahead and send what I’ve written to her, but we don’t meet for two weeks.

Clearly, I don’t know how to heal from this.

So...

Possibly the worst thing I ever witnessed go down on the internet:

Content Warning for: rape, institutionalization, disbelieving survivors, incest, and suicide

On an Ask A Manager Weekend Open Thread.

Oh my god, it’s Ask A Manager. It’s Ask A Manager. What the fuck?

As I remember the nicknames the two individuals went by I went back and googled for the Ask a Manager comment sections they were involved in. Unfortunately, the person I'm going to call "the Sister" has an extremely generic noun as a nickname so it was hard to sift through to find their comments. They also commented prolifically and casually (nothing wrong with that).

The person I'm going to call "the Survivor", on the other hand, responded infrequently, and often to share specific difficult incidents that were happening in their life. In revisiting their contributions to the Ask A Manager comment, they at one point refer to themself as, "not a she". I couldn't find what pronouns they do use, so I'm going to go with "they / their / them". I've gone back and done the best I could to edit what I've written to align with this new information, I'm sorry if I missed anything.

The inciting incident was the Sister asking why people got upset when she mentioned her brother was institutionalized in casual conversation.

The Survivor responded with:

Their experience

That many people are aware of the history of abuse in institutions even if they themselves have not been institutionalized

That someone she is speaking with may have been institutionalized, and even if they weren’t forcibly admitted or abused while there it could still bring up unpleasant memories for them

It is unexpected and unpleasant to hear of institutions in casual conversation

I think there was also more, specific advice around how to dodge casual questions about family if that’s more comfortable, and how to broach the topic with friends if it’s important to receive support for this aspect of her life. This was not out of line with other comment responses. It was more detailed, instead of a vague, 'institutionalization makes people uncomfortable' their comment described why it makes other people uncomfortable while also acknowledging there are circumstances where it is necessary, and validating the discomfort of feeling pressured to disclose the details of why it is necessary in the sister's specific case with her brother.

This reply triggered the sister. She insisted that rape doesn’t happen 'like that' anymore and went on to accuse the Survivor of implying her brother was being raped in the institution.

I can not express how unhinged and out of left field this response was.

The Survivor explained they didn’t imply that and used the phrase, “don’t put words in my mouth.”

The sister then responded with, “He put other things in my mouth” and went on an EXTREMELY graphic rant about being sexually abused by her brother.

She ended her comment by goading the Survivor into sharing details of their rape 'or else it didn't happen'.

After someone else expressed that reading the graphic rant was triggering, Alison then stepped in to edit in a trigger warning to the top of the sister's comment.

Aside from a bystander being triggered, I can’t remember if there was push back from others against the trauma dumping, manipulation, and outright stating the survivor was lying. I remember wanting to comment but having absolutely no idea what to say. If there was any push back, it was weak, ineffective, and probably more concerned with comforting the sister than reasserting civility.

The survivor asserted the boundary that they wweren't going to share details of her rape. They stated they were 'getting upset' by the direction the conversation had turned, and that just because they weren't expressing their trauma in the same way the sister was doesn't mean it didn't happen to them. They also said they weren't in a head space where they could read the entirety of the sister's comment, but that they were very sorry that happened to her and that it was horrible.

The sister replied that the survivor couldn't be sorry for her if she hadn't read the graphic details.

I believe others called the survivor's response manipulative???

I don't know if the word 'bully' was used, but that was the direction of the unkind comments (which was all of them) against the survivor. The survivor asked for clarification, that they were confused and saddened. I think someone expressed doubt that they could really be triggered if they were still so composed. They said they didn't say they were triggered, and that while they were upset at someone else reading words into their comment they didn't actually say, they did agree at this point they probably were triggered, and stated they would log off for the day. Which to the best of my knowledge, they did.

This response was called manipulative or attention seeking, something like that. I thought it was a perfectly fine response that could end the conversation but others dunked on it, and dunked on it hard.

The vibes from MULTIPLE PEOPLE, including Alison, was that the sister 'needed to be coddled' (not in those words, I think it was 'prioritized') as she had been the one to reached out and asked for help.

I thought it was extremely clear the sister's question had already been asked and answered. If the only comment with specific advice was responded to in this way then I thought it was obviouse nothing good could come of the conversation, but this comment thread went on assuring the sister that the survivor was just a big, big meanie, until late Saturday evening.

Alison and the commenters thought the sister's emotions and needs came first. (I believe something close to those exact words were used.) But the sister wasn't encouraged to take a break and self care while multiple people told the survivor, in the harshest of terms, to log off. One person responded to every comment the survivor had already made with sentiments to that effect.

I don't remember the details about this next bit well. There was the one conversation I outlined above, they were getting upset, they would log off, and they did. But while that conversation, which was the most coherent, and also wasn't edited by Alison later, was going down, there were at least four other people not including Alison or the sister who were going back and forth with the survivor. Those people then proceeded to chime in to each other's back and forth which made it the hugest biggest mess on the planet.

Dog. Piling.

I was just overwhelmed with how unanimous and harsh the responses I could see were. (And oh boy, I was glad I hadn't chimed in earlier.)

From what I saw, the survivor remained composed and compassionate throughout. It was so sickening to see people call that 'bullying', 'manipulative', 'inappropriate', and 'selfish and self-centered'. When pressed they mentioned viewing other's behavior through the lens of "trauma responses" and that's what helped them stay calm. I think that reply was called dismissive.

At the same time, it seemed clear to me there were hurt and confused and were just reaching out to the people on the form they'd been friendly with for four years at that point. I just kept hearing, 'I don't understand, I don't understand'.

Eventually, Alison ""banned"" the survivor from commenting. Instead of responding to any of the survivor's comments to let them know this, Alison went in and deleted the contents of her comment and replaced it with a ban notice.

Now, I don't know about you, but when I read forum comments I don't reread ones I've already read, and certainly not ones I have posted. I read the comments highlighted as new. I already was shocked and appalled by Alison's choices as moderator of that comment section, but the fact that this was how she handled ""banning"" someone from commenting was atrocious. Alison's comments, as the moderator of the thread, always show up completely highlighted in pale blue so they can't be missed. I still can't understand why Alison didn't use this tool to notify the Survivor of the ban.

Eventually someone told Alison she should actually respond directly to the person she was trying to ban and or just ban the survivors IP. When Alison did, the survivor had already stopped responding.

Later, the sister then went in and responded to just about every single comment in the comment tangle, even ones which were not directly about her, including the comments just telling the survivor she was a big, big meanie and needed to be silent, to thank you.

I don’t remember much of the back and forth, it was extremely repetitive and horribly messy.

I kept thinking that if the survivor was having an obvious melt down after being told, "He put other things in my mouth" the winds might have blown the other way. But at this point, if they did have an obvious break down, it would be called manipulative (just like every other reply they made), they would have been criticized for not logging off earlier, and their emotional state would be blamed entirely on them and not on the massive and disturbing backlash she had received.

When I read the survivor's comments I saw pain and that they were struggling with being triggered. It felt like everyone else saw a bully. But because they stayed composed, especially compared to the sister, I don’t think other people did. But maybe I'm just projecting?

So, the survivor had peace-d out at some point, not even noticing they had been banned. The next morning they came back to apologize with a new top level comment and share some details about their rape has had been requested, 'since it's important to you, I'm in a place to make myself vulnerable now, I'm sorry I wasn't able to earlier'. Something like that.

They got screamed at by at least three different people that they had been banned. They were so confused, 'No one told me I was banned, I don't know what you're talking about?'. People linked the comments of theirs Alison had deleted, they apologized. Again, multiple people responded to their apology for not noticing they were banned, reiterating that they were banned, now they knew they were banned, they need to just stay silent and not apologize, and how dare they not know this.

Alison deleted the text of their comments and replaced it with the same ban notice as before.

And no one cared that whether the Sister meant to or not, she weaponized graphic details of her trauma to manipulate friends to turn on someone else who was struggling.

The survivor had been active in the weekend forms off and on for at least four years at that point. I remember they were trying to sue a former employer for firing them for being disabled. They were excited to be moving to a safer neighborhood.

At the time, I checked in on the weekend threads for about three months after that name searching for her, but they never commented again. Honestly, I can’t blame them.

I think about this incident every once and a while, when it floats into my head, it's the phrase, "He puts other things in my mouth" and I cringe or feel sick. Being reminded of it is so visceral.

I look backed at the survivor's comments and people responded with them with support and kindness and advice while they struggled with their health and their unsafe apartment. At one point in the mess I outlined above, someone referenced the comments they made in the past and stated something to the effect of, 'I'm disappointed in you, this isn't the [nickname] I know.' I don't remember who that user was, had they responded with kindness in the past?

No one cared about the survivor, and no one cared about the people who might be lurking. This went down sometime in spring or summer of 2019. (Based on when the survivor stopped commenting.) It feels like it's been sitting with me, bursting forward in my brain at the most random moments, for longer than that.

I typed all this out, then wondered if I could track down the comment thread (I couldn't Alison ended up nuking it that Saturday evening, it doesn't look like the survivor commented on anything else on the thread before all this went down, and the sister's username is too generic to pull it up, as are the keywords which possibly could have been in Alison's comment announcing the complete deleting of the incident.), and went ahead and skimmed the few comments I could find.

I've had pain in my heart regarding this for a long, long time. When I first saw it go down I did my best to describe it to my therapist. I've since switched therapist, and it came up again while working with her. But never have I sat down to go over beat by beat what I can remember, as organized as I can remember it. I've always glossed over it, trying to ex-spell the specifics which I thought were bothering me, to purge my emotions in regard to this horrible thing I witnessed. After all, it didn't effect me.

When I discussed it with my therapist, it was in the context of combating loneliness and building relationships as I struggle with my own disabilities which limit my ability to leave my house. The way Alison went about banning the survivor, then how other responded when the next morning when they tried to take accountability, apologize, make amends, and offer details of their rape to make peace, and the way that one person referenced the survivor's past participation in the community were all things I was trying to learn from and protect myself from.

Because I just couldn't imagine if that were me. I couldn't imagine being raped like that.

It wasn't until revisiting all this, just now, in full, that I had the thought, "what was that like for them"? I was so, so horrified for them, I knew it was wrong, I stopped reading Ask A Manager and have the keywords blacklisted. But it never went deeper than that.

I can't remember, in the thread, if they had mentioned being hospitalized for suicidality of if my brain is just filling that in. I'm so upset for them. It's been years, I've had a handful of conversations about these incidents, and I'm so upset for them. I've never wondered until just now if maybe they aren't alive anymore, maybe because of this.

I get added to so many Discords with good intentions, but I always let people know I'm a disaster at keeping up because my time and energy are severely limited due to my health + ADHD.

I'm a chronic discord lurker. I'm always around, even if all I'm doing is reading. Unfortunately, I happened to read that one Discord tonight and felt compelled to interact. Like a moth to the flame lmao.

451 notes · View notes