#bigots don't get to have the satisfaction of seeing me give up hope.

[secretgamergirl]

To everyone who keeps writing these posts about weird marginalized infighting crap and especially to the people who keep reblogging them onto my feed: Please quit falling for the number one play in the nazi handbook.

So this is my experience with Tumblr, I don't know if it's true for everyone else. I sit down, I load up my feed, I see a couple weird/cute nerdy things maybe, and then within the first 3 or 4 posts, there's something that reads like this:

"So check this out, I look in my inbox today and there's this anonymous post from a three-headed five-legged slumf who is just randomly laying into me about how their life is made of pain and suffering thanks to all the special privileges they for some baffling reason believe I have as a two-headed nine-legged slumf. It's so weird and creepy and wrong! Obviously all slumfs are seriously oppressed, I don't get why I keep seeing so many three-headed five-legged ones coming after us two-headed nine-legged ones. It's some real serious 2-9-slumf-phobia within the community though and we need to address it."

It would really mean a lot to me if you would all just stop posting and sharing those sort of things, if you'd be so kind, and ideally pass this post along to others. The reason for this should be obvious if you look at the title I slapped on this, but you know me, I'm going to keep rambling below the fold.

As documented in articles like this one, and this one, hardcore bigots have been completely obsessed with "false flag" operations for... at LEAST the past 20 years or so. The way they do it is pretty simple. Pick two broad groups you hate and want dead. Make some social media accounts (or better, re-do the profiles for the one you used the last time you did this, older ones look more legit) where you pretend you're a member of the one group, and speaking broadly on their behalf, and just vomit a ton of hate at the other group with that disguise. For best results, use some other accounts to pretend to be the second group and vomit hate at the first.

Aside from the immediate satisfaction of hurling hate at the target, there's this general hope that it will cause real strife between the target and the group being impersonated. And there's even some benefit in just getting people venting about it so people who aren't affected see commentary on this crap and just come off thinking "damn, look at all those crazy slumfs and their weird factionalizing and infighting. I don't want anything to do with that."

Now maybe you're thinking, "OK, but I'm pretty sure this creep harassing me really was a three-headed five-legged slumf, and even if this one wasn't, I've definitely encountered such in real life." We could go back and forth on this all day about whether people are who they say they are and how being a gross bigot and being a target of gross bigotry aren't mutually exclusive at all, but at the end of the day, I don't care in the slightest if someone spreading this kind of crap is just stirring crap or legitimately personally what they claim and bent out of shape. Getting real people on board is explicitly part of the goal. If it's working that doesn't make things better. The point is you are sharing something which doesn't really serve any purpose beyond encouraging animosity between two groups (or hell, two individuals even) that bigots are out to get, and people's exposure to it are going to be advancing those bigots' goals.

You could also argue, hey, no, it's important to share this stuff to educate people. Educate them about what, though? That random creeps give marginalized people are hard time? That's pretty common knowledge. Some members of marginalized groups are huge bigoted creeps? Also goes without saying, there's bigoted creeps all over.

Or maybe we're just sharing this yarn because dealing with creeps sucks and it helps to vent about it. That's totally valid, we all need to vent about stuff that sucks. I'm doing it right now! But like... you can talk about how lame stuff is personally affecting you without vaguely insinuating whole groups suck by association. Just tell me you've been dealing with BS from some bigoted creep, I'll sympathize. You don't need to quote all the awful gibberish and personal identification. Consider something more like this:

So hey. I'm a trans woman, and I had this total creep start messaging me out of the blue one day, blaming me for all the problems in the world from like famous bigots existing to having abusive parents, being part of some huge conspiracy with a bunch of other people apparently selected at random, something about sexual favors with a long time stalker of mine, and a bunch of other random crap, and then proceeded on this weird crusade to get my patreon shut down and failing that harass anyone supporting me there until they stopped.

I'm not bringing up any of the axes of marginalization this weird creep may have been on and giving anyone any ammo that way, just pointing out the sort of weird freaking crap people like me have to deal with regularly. Also hey fun fact, the above example is a real thing that happened to me, it really did have a serious impact on my income from which I've never recovered, and once my landlord cashes this month's check it's gonna leave me with something like $39. So uh... have a link to said patreon? Point is, like... try and focus your highlighting of the plight of the marginalized on actionable stuff and important information to be shared, not pointing at other people who are/claim to be marginalized who are being complete creeps.