#given that we are trying to “deplatform” him

[priffi]

they're both assholes, can we acknowledge that? he did some shit but he also doesn't deserve the extra shit she's doing. she's allowed to speak out but she's not allowed to bring that extra pain. there's a reason he's coming back and it's not because he wants to but because he has to my god

[dwtdog]

i obviously hope george is reflecting on his actions but the reaction ccs are having seems "extreme"? just heard nolan edited cut him out of a video and he got edited out a Mr beast post, i honestly feel like i have nevee seen this crazy of a reaction from content creators themselves, even with worse accusations? Like am I crazy?

I cant help but feel terrible for george even tho he did something wrong, stuff like this will impact ur mental health so baldly and u never recover from this. idk what to say, yes he deserves being called out and def not praise but all these ppl wishing him to khs and his friends abandoning him and making him out to be a monster will not help the situation. feeling conflicted rn

i get feeling conflicted anon trust me, i feel like my opinion shifts constantly, but i do know this;

george made a mistake. he should be given the space to reflect on that and learn how to be better. from what we've seen, with him watching tina's stream, and with his twitter apology, and even from the stream he did even though it wasn't perfect, as far as we as the audience can see, he's actively trying to do just that

caiti was hurt by his actions. she was affected by his carelessness, and it fucked with her motivation to create content and her mental well-being. currently, she is being subjected to everyone on twitter going after george, with shockingly few people sending her support, with her friends going on tirades about him, and i can't imagine this is what she wanted.

the current reaction of calls for deplatforming, for deportation, for him to fucking kill himself, are so disproportionate to the actual situation at hand that they're having the opposite effect; people feel bad for george, understandably. and it shouldn't be like this. at all.

[randomyounglady]

I will use the Chuggaaconroy situation to say that, despite the wrongdoing, we should not hold this against him until the end of time. The Completionist and Illuminaughtii situations of the past year have shown us the type of deplorable people that truly deserve to be deplatformed forever, and this just isn't one of them.

This is to say, for the comparatively (key word comparatively) minor issues like this, given time and clear genuine regret, we should give these creators another chance to create. This doesn't just go for Chugga, but past controversies like Mini Ladd and Nappy. Let them build themselves back up again, and if they even so much as send another bad message, send them back to the brig.

This post is not to downplay those hurt in any way by these creators. The things they did were terrible in their own right even if they're not as bad as the bigger bads on the internet. We just risk a worse spiral in these people if we don't leave room for rehabilitation.

We also can't see a change from them if we don't allow them the chance to do so. And if they don't decide to come back, I hope we all can wish them the best of luck on the road to recovery. There is something inherently wrong happening in these cases to lead down paths like pedophilia, so we should at least stay sympathetic and positive toward people who are actually trying to better themselves. Perhaps a "good job getting help, but don't push it" type approach could fit well here.

This post is also not here to cover for or condone Chugga's actions; I'm just using him to express a thought I've had for a while. If you disagree, that's fine too. I understand that this is a radical thought on a difficult topic.

[cupcraft]

im sorry for sounding stupid but are we trying to get dream to talk about the situation or to just leave the platform/community? i only ask bc I’m not sure abt the how the legal stuff works and if amanda or him or anyone who’s involved is allowed to say anything

dont apologize anon! and i cant speak for everyone but i personally want dream to not be platformed any longer and for hopefully cc's to distance themselves and or speak out about what they can on the situation (like even a verbal i am distancing myself due to recent events). I also would like news style cc's to maybe cover the story if they can. Dream's already given his response, for me that and the situation was enough to want him deplatformed.

[bizarrequazar]

05-12 (CST) Bluebird, QuelleVous, and Flora Space Notes

This was an impromptu space focused on the topic of the Instagram’s reactivation. [Recording]

These notes are in order of discussion. Please let me know of any mistakes or major things I missed.

Reiteration that accounts cannot be shut down because of mass reporting. At most they can be locked, but that's if it's in conjunction with community guidelines being broken

Meta specifically has extra external consultants for fringe cases regarding account deactivation

Accounts have thirty days to appeal a deactivation, the appeal takes seven days to be reviewed

An appeal requires photo ID (does not have to be Zhang Zhehan’s) and the phone number/email of the account, ie. showing that you are a real person with access to it

Impersonation cases are difficult to report due to ID verification not being necessary to register the account + it’s difficult to classify fraudulent behaviour unless specific links asking for money exist on the account

The Instagram account has never been a blue V, ie. it’s never been verified as him

Given the seven days between deactivation and reactivation, it’s likely the case that Zhang Zhehan reported it then the people behind the account appealed it

No chance that it's a bug

Impersonation intent is more important to Meta than impersonation itself, ie. whether it’s malicious / asking for money. Plenty of accounts exist impersonating other people that are not taken down, including one of Mark Zuckerberg. It’s a matter of free speech / freedom of expression

Be aware of how things like this are trying to take advantage of your emotions

The relentlessness of the photo leaks have caused people to build up an emotional immunity—we aren’t reacting strongly to new ones anymore. They have to escalate and go for other things instead

The fact that they missed his birthday indicates that this was probably not a choice by Xie Yihua and co.

We have seen no cohesive narrative from Xie on the deactivation; the narrative of him being incompetent isn’t very flattering lol

They’re now going to be worried about the account being deactivated again

Meta will not tell third parties why an account was deactivated, as it breaks user trust. It will result in lawsuits and people being fired if it happens

For Instagram, once your account is suspended, it’s permanent. If you’ve been deplatformed (banned), making a new account is considered ban evasion. The new account will be deleted and your IP will be blocked

It takes up to 90 days for account data to be deleted after deactivation

If the account IS Zhang Zhehan, there’s no logical explanation for the deactivation. Reiteration that no community guidelines were broken except for impersonation, which must be reported by the person themself

Artists are rarely the ones managing / solely managing their own social media, they have a social media manager. Public persona is very important and the amount of interaction is very emotionally taxing

In order for a company in China to legally use a VPN (for companies doing business overseas), they have to apply to the government for a permit. This sometimes also applies to celebrities

[rainbowramsalt]

Tw Antisemitism Tw White Supremacy Tw Homophobia

Ohhh boy Wilbur Soot.

So to start this off I am not Jewish, and I'm not a person of color. I'm just writing my own thoughts, do not take this for anything as I am not a member of the affected groups. I am also not linking the thread as it was made by a member of leaktwt (a subtwt dedicated to digging up personal info of content creators).

(in case you don't know what's going on a thread on Twitter was posted exposing a lot of antisemitic, white supremacy, and homophobic things that Wilbur and his friend's from his group channel Soothouse had engaged with when he was 19/20. So 2016ish)

Sorry if this is messy. I'm writing this at 4:45am, running on 30 mins of sleep, on my phone, and I have ADHD.

I think the thing that confuses me the most is why people brought it up. Wilbur has been very transparent with us that he was a shitty person years ago. He never went into specifics, I can't say I blame him now knowing the actual content, but he has been extremely transparent. Now I can't say the same for the rest of Soothouse given I don't watch them but I know Wilbur has been transparent.

I'm not defending him! Not even close, this shit is disgusting and literally awful, and Wilbur does need to talk about it and properly apologize.

But all this does is expose his audience, especially people effected by the rhetoric Wilbur was engaging with. Something he has stated time and time again he no longer engages with, and that he's extremely embarrassed he engaged with. To the type of person he USED to be.

That's going to be in their minds everytime they watch a stream, video, listen to his music, see him on someone else's stream, or even just see his name.

This happened to me with a (former) content creator I watched. He was deplatformed but every time I see his first name I associate it with that person. I can't even watch his friends (all good people and I wish the best for them) anymore because of that association.

So even though he's clearly changed, those people are going to always have what he said/did/promoted 6 to 7 years ago in the back of their minds. And due to that they may stop watching him, which they are entirely entitled to do so, again I'm not a member of the group effected.

And the people who dug up the information are Stranger Things stans which has its own antisemitic problem (the best word I could think of sorry), so pot calling the kettle black much? As well as literally going through Steam's code to find this information.

And it was 2016. They were young white men in Britain during the height of neo-nazism and fascism humor and groups on the internet. Particularly in predominately white-cishet-male gaming environments. I myself am found guilty of finding a few of the "jokes" during that time funny (I was 13 growing up in the conservative Midwest. And do not reflect how I feel now.) And while this isn't an excuse for that, it was the humor for that group at the time.

Again, I'm not defending Wilbur at all. And I definitely don't want to speak over Jewish people or people of color. I'm just saying something that may help to quell the sense of immediate panic people may be going through. As well as bringing up some points I'm too scared to post on Twitter.

Jewish people and people of color feel free to add anything you'd like to add! I'm not trying to take away from what you guys need to say! And I'm definitely not trying to tell you how to feel or anything of that sort.

Edit: Would also like to say he wasn't like actively promoting anything. He was making incredibly antisemitic "jokes", and interacting with sootJacks when he had the f slur in his username.

As far for the "jokes" we have proof of him naming a factory Auchwitz in Factorio which is a factory building game, making a swastika in ultimate chicken horse, and interacting with people who had pepe (yes the frog, it used to be a nazi dogwhistle. And I'm not sure if it still is) pfps.

[cupidlakes]

are you fucking happy now

anon what?? manatreed has essentially been deplatformed that’s exactly what i wanted if it came to light that everything was true - which from the likes of it it is and if you’re still on the fence about that, if you’re still in denial i don’t know what to tell you genuinely. manatreed is justin, you can’t fake legal court documents you can dig all that stuff up but you can’t fabricate them you can’t fabricate the fact video evidence exists of them interacting and talking and that his skype name is justin in them, that their families know eachother, that they have pics together, that manatreeds mother followed no other mcyter/mcyt adjacent person other than mana on ig, that mana and justin were both homeless at one point and living in their car etc etc etc. there are connections and he’s not on the dsmp anymore, he doesn’t have access to an audience (twt deactivated) this is what’s for the best

i’m inferring that you’re mad that dream had to go through an extremely stressful situation to get this point and have traumas be resurfaced, yeah, i won’t deny that. i think manatreed is a coward for not cleaning up part of his own mess and i think anyone who’s ever hurt dream should crash and burn, should die a million times over :( but that’s exactly why abusers don’t deserve sympathy and why people had the concern they did. try to see that perspective and i hope dream heals i hope he is telling the truth that he didn’t know - i understand him not going into specifics so i’ll leave everything at that. and i am glad we got a response because i don’t want dream to be “over” i always want to see him grow and spread the special type of joy he does, if this was all just a mistake on his behalf well, i’ll take his word for it.

it makes sense given he’d never consider to hand over a career to someone who has criminal records would be found in 2 second flat, who DOES that? /especially/ ESPECIALLY when you’re dream. he could’ve been spun a tall tale, he could’ve just seen an old friend in need so i choose to believe him i choose to see where he goes from here - but no one is at fault for maintaining criticism in this here situation, no one wanted it to blow over because that would’ve been terrible, please understand

[korracrat]

I don't know who needs to hear this, but if you m&ss report an account on tiktok or direct your followers to do so and tiktok gets so many in a certain amount of time, it doesnt matter if they are actually valid, they will s×spend the reported account.

Idk if y'all are keeping up with Creeativeness/creeative_ness on TikTok, but Native TikTok just let's the man actively chase off Native women/nonbinary/Twospirit folks off the platform because he either doesn't view them as valid or demands them to prove their dis×bility if he thinks they are faking WEEKLY. And he still has a platform? Excuse me?

How many people will you actively allow him to chase off the platform before we as a community stand up against him?

He literally took MY VIDEOS, MY LEGAL NAME, AND MADE A FAKE ACCOUNT SPOUTING A BUNCH OF SHIT THAT I DO NOT BELIEVE UNDER MY NAME AND AS WELL AS BOUGHT ME FAKE FOLLOWERS TO TRY TO GET ME DEPLATFORMED THAG WAY AS WELL, BUT Y'ALL ARE STILL BABYING HIM?

I haven't given a crap about Native TikTok drama but he just deplatformed his fourth person....in a month. For totally bs reasons. Why is he still allowed a platform? Why is he still here since he hates it so much?

[fluffycloudtemple]

r/Yogscast Sjin Megathread highlighted comments, part 2

Posting some great comments from the r/Yogscast Sjin Megathread for emphasis. There were lots of good comments (mixed in with too many bad ones), but I thought these encapsulated the situation the best.

[Image descriptions below jump]

Image 1: Reddit comment from EternalGanghi:

"It's kinda sickening. Similar thing happened to Achievement Hunter and the company and fans damn near totally denounced Ryan Haywood. He tried to get back on twitch after a couple months and everyone reported him and got him deplatformed. "The amount of people here who are just 'Eh, don't subscribe if you don't like him' is horrible. There hasn't been a single scrap of evidence showing his trying to get better. Even so, it's known he used his old channel to connect with his victims. At minimum that channel needs to be shut down so he doesn't get all the free subs from people who never unsubbed."

Image 2: Reddit comment from rpgamer987, followed by a comment from JazzBoatman:

Comment 1: "I'm not sure I'd even be comfortable with a redirect video, personally. Dude deserves absolutely none of the audience he built, after clearly demonstrating abusive behavior. "A small reminder as well that there were plenty of 'second chances' as accusations were trickling in for years prior. He could've at any point made an effort to be better, to not continue that behavior, and chose his path. "It's honestly just a little bit mind boggling to think how every step of the way he's made, and continues to make, some pretty awful choices. "As you said, 'no signs of change.'"

Comment 2: "Dude deserves no audience full stop. Ever.

Image 3: Reddit comment from Krankelibrankelfnatt:

"I think that there's a lot of people who are unaware just like you were, and I think that it's sadly because of how the whole issue was handled by the Yogscast. They should have been a lot more candid and cleared the air as it happened, but instead we only got a few vague messages from a few people and then Sjin quietly disappeared. "They are using much harsher words now, but it's too late. The fact that he wasn't properly denounced and his actions made public two years ago, means that loads and loads of people who looked up to Sjin just didn't know why he was let go, and are now eagerly awaiting his next videos. His channel still has tons of subscribers and I would guess that the majority of them will watch his new content not knowing what he did. The Yogscast should have tried their hardest to take away his platform, but they did essentially nothing, and now his platform remains for him to just hop on to again."

Image 4: Reddit comment from Krankelibrankelfnatt, replying to an unknown person, followed by a comment from GroundbreakingRow402:

Comment 1:

"If they don't want exactly what happened to them and the likely very personal details of their own trauma on full display, then that's their call.

"Sorry but you are missing my point. By 'actions made public' I obviously don't mean that that every single person's dealings with Sjin should be publicly exposed with detailed descriptions of what he did. I am saying that they should have made it clear how serious, and of what nature, his transgressions were, no names or specifics given, and made it clear that he was kicked out of the Yogscast due to it. "As it was handled, it sounded like he didn't really do anything wrong in particular, and that he mostly left of his own free will because of bad vibes and was a casualty by proxy of the 'big cleansing' that led to Turps and Caff being kicked out, because he did something mildly inappropriate that was blown out of proportion. The whole thing was handled with silk gloves when it really should have been met with a clear statement that made it obvious that he was kicked out due to his disgusting behaviour."

Comment 2: "Absolutely. I still cannot believe the statement Lewis made about his departure, and of course the infamous 'fuck you' stream is the worst thing that's happened in the Yogscast. Similarly, this subreddit not allowing any comments whatsoever about Sjin has been very damaging."

[aceys]

so what’s ur beef with cancel culture? 👀 most ppl I see dislike it are just homophobic/racist/etc and trying to dodge consequences so I’m curious!

at some point, maybe in its early stages, i supported cancel culture. i mean, on one hand, it makes sense that when someone does something wrong, they should be called out for it and should apologize.

however, what cancel culture is today is nowhere near that. cancel culture today is overblown, hypercritical, and gives no chance for growth.

people’s histories are dug into, the smallest things are brought up and twisted into controversies. careers are ruined, people’s images are tainted, and sometimes, not even an apology or a reform can fix that. i’m sorry, but i don’t think that someone saying a slur 10 years ago and apologizing for it and never saying it again means that their entire life should come crashing down around them.

are there some people that deserve to be, in some way, “canceled”? yes-- or rather, deplatformed. i think that’s a better way of looking at it. there are absolutely people online who do not deserve their platform because of things they have said or done. there are some things that an apology cannot fix. there are some cases where people deserve to have their platform stripped from them and cease to have attention on them. an obvious example: onision. he’s beyond repair anyway, but even if he were to suddenly shape up and apologize, it wouldn’t do much. he has done so much and been so awful and predatory that he doesn’t deserve an online presence where people can look up to him.

however. the majority of people who are “canceled” don’t deserve that. by canceling anyone who steps out of line, we create an atmosphere where one mistake will plunge you into public ridicule. it eliminates any want for personal growth because, well, you’re “canceled” already, so what is the point?

listen. people should absolutely be called out for their mistakes. but if a 14 year old white girl on tiktok dresses up in a kimono because she thinks they’re pretty, she shouldn’t be canceled. if a celebrity makes an offensive joke and apologizes on twitter because they didn’t realize the extent of their words, they shouldn’t be canceled. if someone accidentally, god forbid, lipsyncs a slur in a song on tiktok-- this one is the most ridiculous to me. there is no harm that comes from this, yet people dogpile on anyone who does this. they destroy these people’s mental health. lipsyncing a word hurts no one. personally, unless a slur is directed at someone, i don’t agree that saying it is a cancelable offense, but i may be in the minority on this. 

in any case: we should not cancel people except for in extreme cases. we should make room for mistakes and allow people to grow. you can do wrong and learn from it. it’s infinitely better than doing wrong, being attacked from twenty different sides, and doubling down on your position. that’s a human response, unfortunately, to double down when attacked. and that doesn’t help anyone. 

in short: educate. be kind. realize that not everyone knows what you do. we are all human and we all mistakes, but we can also all grow and change into better people, but only if we are given the opportunity to. 

[naliya]

the thing is the western left thinks only people raised in islam or in countries where it is a majority can criticize it because white people don't understand it enough to be able to criticize it and that most of the time it's an excuse to be racist, and that criticizing openly is dangerous since they're oppressed in the west and it could lead to a rise in hate crimes/discrimination

That’s… simplistic.

I’m not going to go into details about internal vs external criticisms, because frankly I have been over that so many times, I don’t really have the energy to repeat myself once more. But in short: I think abandoning the middle ground to the extremes is dangerous, cowardly and has been shown not to work in the past decade. I believe that it would be more productive to let people have this important conversation rather than shutting it down, because at term, this approach only ensure that the only voices heard aren’t yours. 

At the moment, the only people that are appearing to defend the values that we hold dear are those who really shouldn’t be given such a platform on a silver platter to soar on: namely fascists on both sides who usually don’t care, but will do a good job pretending that they do to gain ground. And what do you think people do when nobody aside from them seem to be defending them? What do you think is the risk for a teenage girl like Mila, who’s brain isn’t fully formed yet, if the only people who seem to be defending her are right wing extremists? Ask yourself this question and figure out whatever or not you like the answer. 

The alternative to that is accepting that ideas are not people, that ideas cannot be hurt, that ideas don’t have rights and ought to be opened to be criticized, lampooned and scrutinized, and since I fail to see how that’s hateful in itself, I also fail to see why we can’t collectively decide to try it. 

That being said; the idea that western leftists are accepting of internal criticism just… isn’t remotely true. I wish it was because then at least we’d have a template to work with, and someone’s voice would be heard, but we really don’t and so here we are. You cannot claim that western leftists let Muslims be critical of the doctrines they grew up with when Ayaan Hirsi Ali is routinely called a racist for criticizing the culture she grew up under, when Maryam Namazie was deplatformed and bared from talking on college campuses, when Maajid Nawaz constantly has to fight against people calling him alt-right with no evidence to back it up…. etc… And god forbid you are Zineb El Rhazoui (the most protected woman in France, who cannot even live at the same place for more than few months at a time) and tell people that the veil is not just this cute cultural item but also an instrument of control in the country she was born in, because then you’d be too busy sorting through insults to find people even interested in hearing you, let alone finding any support. And what of Raif Badawi, the blogger, still being jailed for the crime of criticizing islam, all of that in complete indifference from the woke crowd. Does his life matters? Does his freedom? Or only just ours?

I’m not saying there is no discrimination against Muslims in the west, because it’s obvious that there is, but, firstly I do not think acting like there is only one islam and that all Muslims are some sort of hive-mind that all think the same and are all offended by the same things is going to do a lot to humanise anyone. Because when people act like criticizing the Quran is the same thing as criticizing Muslims that’s pretty much what they are implying (and how that’s not racist, I’m not entirely sure). And secondly, it’s not a good reason to rob people who suffer in other parts of the world, from the tools they need to defend themselves; just because you do not see their tears, does not make them matter any less.

Show me one example, just one, of an eastern atheist, a reformist of islam, an apostats (etc… etc…),who’s ideas are celebrated and given visibility by social justice twitterers, instead of being called Uncle Toms and Native informants, and then maybe I’ll give it to you.

But until then, I’m not buying it. 

[rotationalsymmetry]

Why it’s bad — not just not helpful, but actively harmful — to go out on your way to shit on* people who might not vote Biden:

(Premises: truth is good and important, kindness is good and important, my audience is generally left of center and does not like Biden’s opposition, anybody reading this basically wants to do the right thing, the idea that the means justify the ends is kind of situational: sometimes how important your end goal is does actually affect what methods of getting there are appropriate (pushing someone away from you is excessive if they said something you didn’t like but appropriate as defense against assault), but also some things are always just wrong. Also, that climate change is a global existential threat, covid-19 is real, imperialism is bad, Black lives matter, there is no moral justification for the US to restrict immigration at all let alone anything about how undocumented immigrants are being treated, the prison system is extremely racist in practice and not actually a good idea in theory either, etc.)

People are stubborn cusses who don’t like being told what to do. Personally I’m not going to hold up “be nice to me or I might do the opposite of what you want just to spite you” as a threat because fuck I’ve got more self control than that and I know the stakes are sky high. But realistically: some people really are contrary enough to do that. So, demanding rather than asking or arguing for a thing is always a risk. (Demanding often feels safer. But that’s an illusion.)

People are stubborn cusses who don’t like being told what to do. And especially certain kinds of people — people with a history of being bullied or abused — tend to be very sensitive to being pressured, manipulated, or coerced into doing what other people want them to do. So it can harm relationships between people and between factions of the Left when some people/factions are demanding that others act a certain way, especially when the demands come attached to negging-like statements. (I get there’s a place for eg just shutting down terfs or Nazis. This isn’t that kind of thing; no one’s argument is based on the idea that other people aren’t really people here. At least not on the “don’t tell me what to do” side of this. Also, it’s possible to deplatform people without telling them they don’t really believe what they say they believe.)

It’s not polite and is not really ethical either. Consider: “if you cared about me you’d wash the dishes”, vs “hey, it’s your turn to wash the dishes.” “If you really held progressive values, you would vote Biden (and by implication, not criticize him until after the election)” follows the same pattern. “The fewer people vote Biden, the more likely it is that (the Republican candidate) will win the election” is a neutral statement of fact, and not one of the things I’m objecting to. It’s also not something I’ve actually heard anyone say this election cycle.

It’s not constructive, because getting people who are already likely to vote Democrat to actually vote is a better use of everyone’s time than trying to persuade someone who has already decided not to.

It’s not constructive, because if you want to change someone’s mind this is not how you do it. See point 1.

It’s not necessary: it’s possible to express support for Biden as a candidate and encourage people to vote for him without mentioning the existence of people who might not vote for him at all. Even if in the moment you feel motivated to express support for Biden because you read a post by someone expressing a lack of inclination to vote for him.

If you’re not sure about that claim that it’s not constructive (fair — you should be suspecting me of motivated reasoning), look at what people who actually run campaigns do. Is Biden insulting people who don’t want to vote for him on Twitter? Is the Democratic Party asking volunteers to insult people who don’t want to vote Democrat, as a way or contributing to the campaign? Is it paying people to do that? No? I wonder why that is? Maybe that’s because insulting people who don’t want to vote for a candidate doesn’t actually win campaigns?

Put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Remember a time when someone insulted you for not agreeing with them. How did you feel? Conversely, think of a time when you changed your mind about something. How did that happen?

Why it’s actually OK to talk about being unenthusiastic about voting Biden (even if you really want him and not his opposition to win the election):

Well, fuck, look for another post on the subject I guess.

Some notes on impulse control:

Sometimes, another person says something on tumblr and you’re like “fuck yeah” and it just feels right to you and you reblog it. Maybe that’s where some of this is coming from: people who’ve decided to definitely vote for and fully support Biden (reservations notwithstanding) see a post, feel frustrated, go “yeah that’s right,” and reblog without really thinking about how it’s going to come across. That’s understandable. People tend to use social media to relax and unwind; we don’t necessarily bring our full game to it.

If that’s going on, maybe learn to recognize this pattern (recognize when a post that’s a feel-good vent to you is really hurtful to someone else, because it’s manipulative af) and think twice before clicking post? Maybe in general get in the habit of taking a breath/five seconds before posting or reblogging something? I realize for many of us that’s easier said than done, and it can be a work in progress. I’m not proud of everything I’ve hit post on even after I’ve given it some thought.

Maybe some people have an attitude of “well, if anyone is hurt by this, I don’t want them on my blog anyways.” I’d suggest, as an in between measure, tagging this stuff. “Biden” or “us politics” or “election 2020” or something. Explanation for why people who might have this kind of reaction might still be people who share your values either right before this post or right after, depending on what order I decide they’re done in.

Now, I messed up here. My first five or six reactions to this sort of post was not a positive one, but I wasn’t sure whether I had a good reason to not like them or was just...reacting. I have mental health issues and sometimes have much stronger reactions to things than the things warrant. So I just...didn’t say anything or do anything until it got to be too much and I lost my shit. Not ideal. If I had to do it over again, I’d send politely worded messages to people I wanted to keep following who were posting this stuff, asking them to not do that and briefly explaining why. But, I’m at a point where I can’t do the politely worded thing, which makes actually directly addressing the people who are doing this a much trickier proposition. So. Here we are. And I’m blogging to whoever the fuck reads my blog (other than my husband, who really doesn’t deserve any of this) like that’s actually going to help.

At least it’s making me feel better.

* “shit on”: this isn’t about the sort of posts that are all “vote for Biden!” Or “vote for Biden because ... ” or “I’m voting for Biden because...” or “here’s some non-straw-man arguments for not voting Biden that I’m going to disagree with in a way that basically respects that someone can make one of those arguments and be a fundamentally decent person also.” This is about the posts that are all “if you’re considering not voting Biden you are a tentacle monster from the dimension of non-Euclidean geometry, and also incredibly stupid because the only reason someone might do this is this tissue-thin straw-man argument.” And it’s certainly not about the posts that are “you might want to deliver your mail in ballot in person if that’s possible where you live” or “check to make sure you haven’t been dropped from the voter registry” or other posts that actively address barriers to voting or getting one’s vote counted. Those are good, keep doing those.

[cometcrystal]

i took notes on the new contrapoints video as i watched it so i can have a proper take on it and nobody can bitch at me for not watching the video/playing into exactly what nat’s talking about

note that this isn’t me trying to speak over trans people as a cis person. this is what i took away from this video

brings up the james charles case to show how cancel culture evolves from criticizing a person’s actions to equating those actions with the kind of person they are. that doesn’t really hold up to me because it’s usually like. consistent and repeated patterns of behavior that get called out, not just random fuckups

“a collage of problematic tweets does not define a person” is a weird take when it shows a pattern of bigoted behavior

defending buck angel because he’s a product of his time and saying we should talk to him and try to help him understand instead of actually talking to him and trying to help him understand. you have the power, nat. reach out to him and talk to him about this shit 

she brings up the tweets she’s made that have been called nonbinaryphobic and doesn’t really apologize for some? she argues that just because something she made hurt someone doesn’t mean it was bad content, and yeah, that’s true on the surface. just bc something contains triggering content doesn’t mean it’s bad. but like as a figurehead you need to be mindful of the message your work is sending. you’re still a human but your content reaches countless countless people

she apologizes for two (2) situations but it’s kinda treated flippantly with a “ding” after each one. so at least there’s sort of apologies for those two things

i agree that “cancelling” is often used as just an excuse to attack people, or as an excuse to finally deplatform a marginalized person. take the recent john boyega thing, for example. and i think some people take it way too far in some cases

i DO want contrapoints to improve and be better. this video seems to be a step in the right direction, and i don’t think her spirit should have been utterly fucking broken. that was shitty. and people under the public eye ARE under more scrutiny by twitter, and the hurt that “””cancel culture””” can cause primarily falls on small content creators in marginalized groups. but i don’t know. it’s just like, celebrities have every right to speak out and be angry, and so does everyone else. some celebs that get targeted are targeted for bigoted reasons eg. john boyega and racism. and there’s no doubt that some of contrapoints’s detractors were transphobes. but nonbinary 14 year olds being angry on twitter over a nonbinaryphobic thing you said isn’t quite the same

yes nat should be given a chance to improve. yes i think the reach of the hate she’s gotten is bad. no i don’t think people should have kept their mouths shut and reacted with total and complete civility in 100% of cases. people AREN’T just good or evil. people are gray. it’s not just one thing or the other. it’s easy to “””cancel””” someone by just writing them off as evil.

but “””cancel culture isn’t black and white””” either

i guess i don’t 100% disagree with the video, and i don’t think causing the mental downfall of a trans woman was the solution to this situation. but there’s many parts of the video that could have been handled better, and i think it’s because nat now has to not give a fuck about what anyone says, just like she ends the video with. and i don’t blame nonbinary people one damn bit for not wanting to watch an hour and 40 minutes of an unperfect video called “canceling”

but the video basically says what we all know. don’t be evil to people. talk to people and explain why they fucked up. but nat’s not doing that with buck angel so SHRUGS

[dgcatanisiri]

I think the better term is “outrage culture.”

It’s the cultivated attitude of both the accessibility by way of social media to other people - particularly people with high profiles or celebrity status - and the fact that social media records everything that leads to little things being held in the back pocket for the next fuck up and mistake and then gets used as ammunition.

Some people are bad. Some people are misinformed. Some people are ignorant. Some people will change when exposed to new thoughts and new ideas. Some people change their mind and viewpoint over time. Some things are unforgivable. Some things are said and done without awareness of what’s wrong. All of these things are not a binary black/white situation, because if someone is willing to listen and learn, odds are, more often than not, they will understand what happened, what’s wrong, and why it was a mistake.

BUT... With social media, particularly social media like Twitter, where there’s a character limit, imposing a sense of brevity on any interaction, there’s a tendency to take a specific thing and condense it down to a broad bad thing. And often, by the time the original context is cleared up, the outrage will remain, even if it’s undeserved.

Now the hurt and pain inflicted by a bad thing being said, even if in ignorance, is valid, I’m not going to get into that particular subjective matter, if you’re hurt, you’re hurt, I won’t try to say that you shouldn’t be hurt. But we (broad sense societally) do have a very real tendency to jump to the worst possible conclusions AND frequently take them in isolation.

Someone saying a transphobic remark said five, ten years ago should not be held up as the person being transphobic today. I came of age in the time the phrase “that’s so gay” was used by most everyone, but that doesn’t mean anyone who used it is homophobic. The thing about “lizard people” is, to my understanding now, based on antisemitism, but I didn’t know this until like a year or two ago, because the concept was presented separate of that initial context.

Hell, dig around my blog, or, god, dig out old LiveJournal posts of mine, you’ll probably find things that are transphobic or misogynistic, or worse. That doesn’t mean that they represent my thoughts now, years later.

But it is human nature to get defensive when attacked. And that’s why I go with “outrage culture.” Because when it becomes a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, etc. total strangers hitting you with “thing is bad!” then a human response is to push back against it or disengage entirely, and, with the outrage machine going, both are taken as proof that the person was always bad and have just shown their “true colors,” when it’s really more like they wanted to step back and parse through the emotions stirred up.

This isn’t helped by a lot of those swept up in the outrage often going to extremes - social media, in all its forms, has opened the floodgates when it comes to strangers dropping into your inbox and telling you to kill yourself because you said/did [thing].

There’s also the fact that “cancelling” only seems to really stick and deplatform marginalized voices, rather than, say, white male comedians who expose their penises in public. Not saying that marginalization prevents fuck ups, of course not. But marginalized people seem less likely to be given a second chance after a fuck up.

So look. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t feel angry or upset in seeing someone fuck up. But the outrage that gets generated often seems to go over board. Hell, I’m afraid that I’M going to see calls of me talking out of my ass, for excusing and apologizing for [insert name here] when I haven’t named any names and am just commenting on a trend.

Like... I just think we need a little more in terms of critical reasoning. It’s not that I don’t understand empassioned anger and rage. But... Here’s a naming of names: James Gunn. Someone dig up a decade old tweet, which had long since stopped being reflective of his views, got him fired from GotG. As it turned out, the person who dug it up was trying to get that result BECAUSE it would cause people to tear him down, and this was a right-wing troll, out to attack him for his “SJW beliefs,” things like that. Now, he bounced back from it. But others don’t get that option, that opportunity.

It’s easy to tear people down. But if this is how every mistake, every bit of bad history gets treated, eventually, ALL of us will be torn to shreds. Again, I do acknowledge there are lines, and being hurt by those statements is valid. But... I think we kinda allow ourselves, as a society and culture, to fracture too easily, and, as a result of that, bad faith actors have an easy in to drive us apart, rather than allow us to come together, to heal, to learn, to grow.

I don’t think the way things are is tenable, not just for social causes and justice, but even just basic discourse and dialogue.

[soulvomit]

80s/90s professional culture and recent self-help/"personal development" culture actually encouraged distancing from people whose lives were "too complicated." Too messy. "Don't associate with that person. They will ruin your life." About anyone who did not have the perfectly curated "I have it together, and am NOT NEEDY" image. Being seen as "together" was probably a proxy for social capital as well as "adulthood."

This probably started with people trying to enter the professional world in the mid-70s and still dealing with half of their social world living the poor young person crash pad lifestyle (because I argue that the cracks in the wall of the middle class may have already been appearing in the 1970s; people appearing to reject the "American Dream" may need to be analyzed as canaries and Cassandras) and the other half being on drugs.

For some people, like my parents, that's what it definitely was about. They had a baby/toddler and eventually they came to see their hippie and old school stoner friends as part of the instability they were experiencing. Some of these people eventually settled into full time jobs, but as of the mid-70s, plenty hadn't.

My parents couldn't live in hippie crash pads anymore. Not with a kid. They were running into too many issues with their equally unstable friends, and their financial situation trapped them in these spaces for years.

They drifted around to whomever would give them guidance - Amway (which had mainstream square culture values), a couple of attempts at religion.

They were typical.

At first this was just about trying to figure out how to live in an adult world still largely run on Silent Generation mainstream values.

For white, culturally middle class to affluent men, this was relatively straightforward: use the college degree or whatever existing skills and social capital you had, to get a traditional job. Male work culture of the 20th century very much assumed a wife was at home handling things. "Leave your personal problems at home" totally assumed someone else was carrying that bucket. It meant in the 70s and 80s as it had in the 50s, that a man's wife was handling all of the personal relationships and interactions that didn't have to do with his workday. His wife would be the stage manager of his non-work life from behind the scenes. That's what it REALLY meant to "leave your personal life at home."

But women were now working full time, middle class corporate jobs, too. And that same mentality was still the rule.

Codependency talk and a new re-embrace of corporate work culture, found their way into the same conversations, much the same way that government conspiracy theories, aliens, and New Age became bedfellows: because they shared the same shelves of the bookstore.

At around this same time you also started to see the growth of codependency ideas and later, a popular book called "Women Who Love Too Much." (A solid book, but needs an intersectional update.) WWLTM became a network of support groups in the 80s (...that helped my mom leave my dad.) But so many of the stories in WWLTM are of 30something women (often, ex-hippie) who had been exploited as the Giving Tree in 60s/70s culture, a specific gendered toxic dynamic.

But you know how we have all seen good memes go bad? Like, cultural appropriation being a solid analysis and real thing, but in the last 5 years, it's devolved into a set of arguments that in no way resemble the original thing? For that matter, remember when MRA culture was specifically about the legal rights of divorced men?

Yeah.

That.

That same thing is what happened to the growing 70s/80s culture of post-hippie "getting it together."

That very same thing.

In 1976, "getting it together" was relatively benign.

But by the 80s, it began to separate the people who'd played at the counterculture lifestyle from the people who had been trapped in it. Not everyone could "get it together." Because deindustrialization was already starting to be underway as the party was ending, and in many cases, because the American Dream simply had not been on offer to begin with.

If your only means of doing so was via a factory job or via even the shrinking number of nondegreed female-dominated non-care/nonservice jobs (how many career secretaries do you know now?) then you had way fewer options than did someone who could enter the computer field or become a professional. And fewer options than did someone who could fall back on fields that got to be the last dominos to fall (pro sales people could shift from industrial to tech or real estate), instead of the first.

What's happened is that the ONLY visible middle class narratives of the mid 70s and beyond, until the 21st, were yuppies. Everyone else was deplatformed.

The "getting it together" meme came to be a proxy for your very fitness as a human being. It now included a backlash against the sharing and mutual aid culture of counterculture spaces, because many white, middle class Boomers didn't really know how to navigate the social world outside of the Hayea Code curated world of their suburban childhood. They were the first generation to try to figure out how that worked, and many failed. They were navigating drastic changes in social norms. It became a commonly repeated meme that your problem was the people in your life. (Because it often was. But this went the way many culture memes do.) Fuck em, focus on your job and only the people who support your getting it together. But the milepost kept getting shifted. "Getting it together" in the early to mid 70s might mean just getting a job and a stable place to live. That's how it started for my parents. As of the mid 1970s, it started to become apparent to a lot of people that holding a corporate job and raising a school age child were both often totally incompatible with having your burnout friends stay up until 2am playing folk music (this was a real thing my family did before my dad got a middle class job) on a weekday, let alone traipse a variety of lost souls through your living room on any given day of the week.

But the mileposts for "getting it together" kept changing up (just as "getting it together" of the 70s turned into "early yuppie" of the 80s) and probably because corporate standards were always about curation and appearances, "getting it together" came to mean that you did NOT have a hippie crashing on your couch, you did NOT have complicated personal life in *any way*, you did NOT socialize in a space where everyone openly slept with the same people or had complicated breakups, you did NOT ever have complicated caregiving arrangements... basically, either you were heterosexually married or you were a very, very cool-as-a-cucumber, self-contained single who never, ever felt heartbreak.

This is the sociopathic core of yuppie culture.

My analysis will hit the 90s at some point, but we wouldn't have had the 90s without the 70s and 80s.

I'm sure lots of the Divorce Boom of the 80s followed on 70s people marrying for all the wrong reasons, because they were trying to "get it together." And sometimes "getting it together" meant different things to the two people.

My dad became an early techie and stayed relatively close to left wing and liberal culture. After he and my mom split up, he married the hippie of his dreams. And he made good incomes off and on, but also struggled off and on and retired in a trailer; he *would* have been much more successful if indeed he had played the yuppie social games, because he willingly took on dependencies that yuppies shunned. There was a strong meme in yuppie culture, fueled by codependency discourse and a warping of Women Who Love Too Much but also "positivity," of not ever helping people, of not being close to people who could potentially financially rely on you or take time away from your work. "They've all made their own bed."

If my dad had followed that lead - he might have become stable, he might even have become rich. But he married a precariat class ex-hippie who had multiple poor dependents, and formed some "found family" around their mutual friendships. And as the person in the group with the most money, he was often relied upon for help.

That's exactly what late-stage Getting It Together non-neediness discourse was supposed to prevent.

For my mom, "getting it together" meant doubling down on respectability politics and traditionalism, putting herself in rich circles, and marrying a professional man with square values. She scrupulously avoided anyone who could "take her down with them." Which is good advice in many cases but in yuppie parlance, effectively meant distancing from any person who was not in your aspirational social class, and distancing from any person in any situation you have left behind (she dumped her single friends once remarried, as instructed by this culture meme.)

The difference between the outcomes for my mom and dad:

My dad lives in a trailer with his wife and their cats, but he has a huge extended family of family and found-family. Lots of people care about him. He's not going to have the problem of being alone in old age.

My mom really does risk being alone in old age because her whole social world was oriented around social capital pissing contests and that only works as long as you actually have the money to purchase a substitute support net.

[anopenlettertomikeboudet]

Meme Context, Rabia, Aaron and the end of Wondery’s relationship with Mike.

It was International Women’s day when Mike posted this. This sparked outrage, understandably. 

This “meme” was the straw that broke the camels back. Wondery finally decided that the risk of having him as part of their network was a lot greater than whatever money he was bringing in.

To my knowledge, they washed their hands completely of Mike and S&S

Wondery decided to part ways with Sword and Scale. 

Mike decides to shut down his podcast for good. No more free episodes... At least according to him. This changes later on when he hires someone to host the free episodes. 

 "I just got off the phone with Wondery, and I am very sad to announce that we are no longer a Wondery show. 

In fact, without advertising, we're no longer a show at all. After this recording, I have a call with my staff to let most of them know they are being laid off today. That means no season 2 of Monstruo, no more This Is War, no more Sword and Scale Rewind, and, as it stands right now, no more Sword and Scale. That's it. Censorship actually works. You get a mob to rally against you, intimidate those around you, anyone who associates with you, because you've been deemed "a bad person" who says "bad words." The mob can censor you through intimidation, through boycotts, and other tactics just because they don't like what you say, how you said it, what tone you used, what words you used. 

I've been saying that for years. There is a culture war going on right now in the United States, and pretty much all over the world. It's not enough for this particular group of people to scroll past something they don't like, to unsubscribe from it. No, that's not the point at all. It's not about controlling what they hear as individuals. It's about controlling what YOU hear. What all of you, all of us, hear, or see, or say, or think. Your words are no longer your words, whether you think they are or not. They're the words of the mob, of the state. Your individual liberties have been given up for the sake of pretending that you're more virtuous than you are, for the sake of appearances. 

Right now, as it stands, this is the end. We will keep putting out PLUS episodes on Patreon until we move to our own platform, and then continue putting out episodes behind that paywall. But Sword and Scale, the free show, and all of the other Incongruity Media shows, are coming to an end. Anything that was ad supported is over now. Because of Aaron Mahnke from Lore, and Rabia Chaudry from Undisclosed, who led this boycott against me and my company 'cause they didn't like certain things I said. There have been many accusations against me over the years, because I believe in independent thought and independent speech. I don't talk like them. I don't say things in the pre-approved way they want me to say it. And when someone tries to tell me what to say, I tell them to fuck off. Well they don't like that. They don't like having their power challenged, so they attack your character. They use things that are out of context, especially screenshots, to prove what a misogynist pig you are. Never mind context, nevermind telling the actual series of events or circumstances behind these screenshots. No. Just collect 'em all and put 'em in a place where you can point people to. A public forum, such as Reddit, for example, where you can show people that "it's on the internet, it must be true!" That's what they do, and they do it to public figure after public figure, that doesn't toe their line. So they went after my advertisers and scared enough of them to drop me. But that wasn't enough. Then they went after Wondery, not just the company as a whole, but individuals IN that company. And guess what? It worked. And I don't blame them. There's only so much you can take, so much pressure you can take. I know other podcasters that have been attacked just because they're friends with me. They've been personally attacked just because of their association to me as an individual because I've been deemed a bad person. 

I don't fall in line with their bullshit. I make inappropriate jokes sometimes. I repost memes that some people might find offensive. Everyone takes everything SO seriously and loves to virtue-signal about it online. Even a fucking joke meme that I didn't even create. It takes a particularly special individual to try to get a podcaster fired because they didn't like a reposted joke meme, but that's what people like Aaron Mahnke and Rabia Chaudry are all about: virtue signaling online. Pretending they're better than everyone else, acting like they're more moral, more enlightened. Well there you go, maybe they are. Maybe I am an asshole. And I'm an asshole that you will no longer be able to hear because of these virtuous people. 

Now right now I don't know what's going to happen. I wanted to come on here and tell you why we're not going to be putting out shows anymore and also to let you know that there's still a way for you to support us. Again right now it's still on Patreon, we're moving off that platform because of this very reason. We don't want someone pressuring Patreon somehow to drop us because they've been offended by something. And that can very well happen. It could very well happen that we're dropped off of Patreon, kicked off of Twitter, kicked off of every platform out there, Facebook, YouTube, you name it. Because again, we don't fall in line with this common, modern day thinking that you have to say things a certain way, that you have to keep repeating the party line. That's just how I am. I don't let anyone else control my words. And so here we are, where my words have now been silenced. Censorship works. You go after someone online, you get a mob behind you, you can take 'em down. Just like Aaron Mahnke and Rabia Chaudry did to 

me. So that's it. Congratulations. You've silenced another free thinker. Good job. Now you can go get offended by someone else and silence them too. Your work is never done, is it? Enjoy your little battle. I'll see everyone else on Patreon, and thank you to those of you still listening."

Ya’ll ready to dissect a few choice parts of this?

Let’s do this. 

Aaron and Rabia merely called him out, both are very, very busy individuals and don’t have the time to lead any boycotts or mass take down of Mike Boudet, they just called it as they saw it. 

The reason why he was deemed a “bad person” who says “bad words” is because he is. I’ve never seen him once take a step back and think “Well fuck, I sure fucked up. I’ll try and do better”

As for firing his staff. Let me let you in on a secret. Let’s say that his 15k supporters on Patreon give him the *lowest* donation a month... That’s $75k a month. He still has plenty of money to throw around. He didn’t end up firing anyone. 

He got deplatformed, and he still doesn’t get why he is the problem. 

He did bring in a new host, Tricia Griffith owner of Websleuths and her story is a whole new blog post. She reads for the “free episodes” and Mike reads for the “paid episodes”