#i think we should kill callout culture for good. this sucks.

[coyotejone-s]

me when i say i'll get better about avoiding participating in callout culture and then i don't 🤪

[lilnasxvevo]

Also just on the topic of “cancel culture,” I do think we need to talk about the fact that everyone acts like “cancel culture” actually successfully cancels things and people when this is very rarely true (and usually only happens to small-potatoes creators who are driven off the internet). Like, there were trending hashtags on Twitter a few months ago to cancel Jimmy Fallon and I think also Jimmy Kimmel for each having done blackface ~20 years ago and I’m...yeah, I’m pretty sure they both still host popular TV shows with their names on them.

I want to talk about the one member of Congress who consistently brings up “cancel culture” as if it’s actually a real threat to society. His name is Jim Jordan. He is a representative from Ohio. He is always so, so, so worried about cancel culture and often even brings it up at times that seem inappropriate or at least incongruous. Oh my god, according to Jim Jordan, people are getting canceled left and right for the tiniest little things. Except...except Jim Jordan, who used to be a college wrestling coach, has been credibly accused of helping to cover up years and years of sexual harassment and sexual abuse within that wrestling program, and is still inexplicably not-canceled to the extent that he is a goddamn representative in goddamn Congress.

Some things about “cancel culture” do suck. I’m sure we’ve all seen people get dogpiled over things we feel to be not that serious. Cancel culture can sometimes cause us to think of the people who are the targets of our anger as not quite human, as someone who is able to endure the vitriol of hundreds or thousands of random internet people, or who at the very least deserves it. That’s unkind, and it is not justice. We also all know content creators who are afraid to post their work or even to MAKE things because they are so afraid they’ll misstep in some unseen way and get dogpiled, and that sucks too.

But when it comes to, like, a TV show, or a goddamn motherfucking SEA SHANTY...Like...you can’t hurt a sea shanty’s feelings by calling for its cancellation. You can’t dogpile the writer on Twitter because whoever first started singing that song has been dead for a long fucking time. All you’re doing is being a little bit of a party pooper to tiktokkers who wanted to have a bit of fun, and that shouldn’t be treated like you stood up and said, “Hey everyone, today we should kill puppies for sport!”

Basically I think that “cancel culture” is too wide of an umbrella and is used to span everything from “we should definitely no longer enjoy the works of like, people who are in jail for rape,” to “this celebrity said a slur so don’t go see their new movie,” to “I’m PRETTY SURE this fic writer who wrote a fic about sexual assault must be glorifying and sexualizing rape so let’s all send them hate mail and make callout posts,” to “hey we are all having lots of fun but just so we are all aware, here’s the historical context to this thing from the 1800s, and spoiler alert, it’s some pretty awful stuff.” And those are all very different things with very different effects. Canceling a celebrity feels good but rarely does anything to affect their bottom line or popularity or status, while canceling someone in your fandom can drive someone off of a website forever if you get enough momentum going, which feels like a win to some frustrated people out there.

I don’t even get how you can cancel a song or a book or a poem or a movie, though. Like to me, “cancel” in the sense of “cancel culture” is something that can only really be done to a person as a result of how people feel about their actions. You can’t cancel an idea...can you?

[maesterkenobi]

how I run my blog

Tagged by: as usual I’ve stolen it from @mynameisanakin  Tagging: no one, i am too lazy and i follow like 14 people so. just do it if you want to.

SPEED: is not my forte. I try my best, but there are several factors that work against me in this aspect: 1) I’m a chronic procrastinator 2) I’m scatterbrained 3) I have more than one blog 4) I almost never write replies that are less than two paragraphs and I want it to make sense and be good and be enjoyable for my partner, so it takes time. I almost never reply the same day (MAYBE on discord, because there my replies are way shorter and it’s mostly to my best friend), and you’re lucky if I reply within a week. I really try to be faster on this blog because I made a promise to myself (and I was doing okay until the whole virus thing happened and I ran into a bunch of personal problems) AND I am keeping a low profile on this blog so it doesn’t get overwhelming. Long story short, if you are looking for a super active daily replies partner, I am not it for you. If you’re okay with waiting for a while but getting more developed stories and longer replies in turn, then we should talk :)

REPLIES: Are on the longer side on this blog. I don’t really have the patience for one liners because they tend to go nowhere and then feel like bread crumbs of randomness all over my blog. They’re okay sometimes, but more often than not they feel like crack. Writing replies is really exhausting for me sometimes, but I try to force myself because I WANT to do it, I’m just having issues concentrating on one thing at a time so it takes me forever.

STARTERS: I don’t write welcoming starters because 8 out of 10 times they get ignored or are so random that they lead nowhere. If someone writes me a welcoming starter, it depends on the content but usually I’ll try to make it work for me and reply. I don’t often like starter calls because most people write absolutely pointless starters. For example they’ll write a paragraph of explaining what their muse did all day (unrelated to my muse), then walk into some random place they’ve never been to (e.g. a shady bar) and suddenly get surprised by my muse being there, and/or, my personal favorite, say something like “what the hell do you want from me”? Which I struggle with for several reasons. One, if you create a setting but don’t bother explaining why we’re there, you put the entire weight of explaining that (aka creating the actual setting) on ME, but you add an additional complication by making it something that I didn’t come up with, so now I have to introduce a world YOU invented with 0 idea of why you chose that particular location in the first place. Second, you put my muse in a situation that makes no sense for them and again force me to explain that, without even giving me a good reason to. And third, I play very different muses, but most of them are going to lose interest in the conversation immediately if the first thing you say to them is rude af. So, yeah, I actually really struggle with most random starters. Please just plot with me and then I will love you forever for writing me a plotted starter that I know will not create 400 questions in my head that I then have to bother you with, which makes me feel like a nuisance. (Or at least keep the setting neutral? Or try to come up with something that seems reasonable for my muse? I always try to do that and when I am unsure, I message the person who liked my starter calls.) Speaking of which, I rarely post starter calls, because.. well, like I just kind of explained, it’s comes with responsibility and work. And I’m lazy.

INBOX: is open for memes at all times, and questions of any kind. I often don’t get notified, so I sometimes see certain messages months later - when that happens, I usually don’t reply anymore if they’re anon because I’ll assume that person forgot or isn’t even around anymore. Sorry about that! It’s an issue I’ve had on several blogs and I don’t know how to fix it. Anon hate is deleted without comment, unless I feel there’s a point in replying to it publicly, or if it’s entertaining. I don’t roleplay via inbox and therefore any “ic” questions or interactions posted in there will be treated as a one-time meme, if I can reply to them at all. Asks of sexual nature from complete strangers will usually be ignored because Obi-Wan isn’t the muse for that at all. As I’ve stated in my rules I only roleplay with mutuals and therefore won’t roleplay with someone I don’t follow, even if they ignore that rule and start rping with me via inbox. I don’t mean to be dismissive, but I have these rules for a reason and I ask that people read and respect them.

SELECTIVITY: I am selective with whom I follow because I have limited time and energy for this blog (and all my blogs) and therefore find it irresponsible and pointless to accept 600 followers and threads when I know I can’t possibly reply to even 10% of them. Before I follow someone (back) I look at their blogs; in particular at their writing (to see if I like their style and their portrayal), their rules (to see what they like/dislike and if our general understanding of the RPC, roleplay, and in a way social interactions in general go well together), and sometimes their OOC posts to get a feeling of how the other person is. (Obviously I also sometimes don’t follow back when I don’t know the muse or fandom at all.) Blog rules and ooc posts can say A LOT about a person, and there are plenty of people in the RPC (in any fandom) that quickly rose to tumblr fame with shiny graphics and fancy formatting and dozens of well-developed verses and headcanons, but they straight up suck as people outside of writing. My rules state very clearly that I discourage hateful comments, mob mentality and callout culture, and unfortunately many “popular” blogs use exactly these tools to execute their power (which comes from being admired for all the wrong reasons). So, I know many people think being selective means you only pick partners with fancy graphics and poetic writing, but for me it actually means I want decent human beings as partners. I don’t give a shit if you format your posts (as long as you cut them) or if you have a blog with a fancy theme, or just a rules google doc, or if you use icons or not. If I like your writing and you seem like a nice and reasonable person, I’m good to go. If you talk to me about dogs I’m even better to go.

WISHLIST: I always try to have one because I find it very helpful when looking for plot ideas with new partners. I will look at yours if you like a plotting call or something too, but I know not everyone has a wishlist~

HONEST NOTE: I’m not a teenager anymore and I’ve been rping for over 14 years. I work with lots of strangers, I study for a job with lots of strangers. I think about philosophical concepts a lot, about morality and human behavior and I’ve come to the conclusion that kindness, empathy and compassion are some of the core values every single person should focus on to make the world a better place. I have no patience and no interest in engaging in the absolute toxic and harmful hate movement that’s taken over this website (and other social media platforms) in whatsoever way. Occasionally I’ll make a salty comment about it, but only because I’ve had it up to here. I am here to enjoy fandom the way I used to, and the way it used to be meant to be enjoyed - not to completely ignore real issues like world politics, economical and environmental crises, in order to entertain witch hunts on people who happen to enjoy a fictional ship that isn’t 300% approved by puritan statutes of the 1600s. I am responsible for the content I seek out online, and so are you. Does it suck when I see something I dislike? Sure. Is it the fault of the person who posted it? No. Especially not when I read their rules first, like I’m supposed to, and they clearly state that the thing I dislike will appear on their blog. And even if they didn’t, it was my choice to go on their blog and look at their content. If you can’t handle taking responsibility for the content you seek out online, then you are probably not old enough to use the internet unsupervised. I am free to write, read, and post on my personal blog whatever I want, as long as I am not breaking the law. Liking a fictional ship that involves an age gap? Not illegal. Liking a fictional ship that involves siblings? Not illegal. Liking a fictional ship in which one party was abusive to the other at some point? Not illegal. Liking a fictional character who killed your fave? Not illegal. It’s fictional. Get over it. And if you really think that seeing fictional characters or ships online that YOU consider “problematic” is hurting people in real life, then you should join those politicians who burn books that are “corrupting the people’s morals and minds”, who ban video games because they “make gamers violent”, and censor songs from the radio because they “present biased views on people of public importance”. Please reflect on your behavior. Destroying someone’s life because they liked something you don’t, telling them to commit suic/ide, ruining their chance of making friends who maybe share their love for a ship or character.. that’s bullying. Some of the cases I’ve seen on here were so severe, they qualify as serious cyberbullying and should be reported to the police. I don’t give a fuck if you hate Rey/lo or Damon Salva/tore, or the Joker. You don’t go and send someone messages telling them to kill themselves because they RP it. Because that is the real crime. And finally, if you feel the need to “educate” someone you consider “problematic” for whatever reason and you actually approach them - make sure you’re actually there to educate and discuss, not to throw an opinion at them and get aggressive when they don’t immediately magically agree. Because chances are they won’t. If you choose to open a dialogue, make sure it IS a fucking dialogue and not a condescending monologue. Learn how to shape an argument, find evidence to back up your claims - because not only will you become better at talking to people in any kind of situation, you’ll also maybe realize that your opinion wasn’t as well-founded as you thought.

[serenagaywaterford]

Here's the thing:

If I wanted to watch something "real" about how bad people never change and that's just how things are, I'd talk to my family, go on Facebook, walk down the street, turn on the news, pick up a history book, log onto tumblr...

Reality is chock full of depressing, awful stories of bad people who never change, never try to do better, never learn anything, and spend their whole lives fucking other people over. Like, I get it. It's everywhere.

The thing is The Handmaids Tale ain't a fucking documentary! It's a fictional TV show that draws from elements of history and current events. That doesn't mean every single character must be "real".

"Well, in real life, someone like Serena wouldn't change."

Yo.

Newsflash.

This is TV.

In reality, June would be DEAD. How about that reality check? She woulda been executed a long time ago. Janine would be dead. Emily would be dead. Rita would be dead. Nick would be dead. Aunt Lydia would be dead. Hell, Serena and Fred would probably be dead too.

In reality, if Emily even survived to 2x13, Nichole would be DEAD. They both would have died in that river.

In reality, Moira and Luke would be fucking miserable in some tent city refugee hellhole, not a beautiful spacious apartment in downtown Toronto. In reality, Canada would be a fucking mess too.

In reality, nothing past S1 would have happened.

In reality, Serena would never have done anything she did in 2x07/2x08, she wouldn’t have been affected by Eden’s death, she wouldn’t have read from the Bible, she wouldn’t have given Nichole away.

In reality, June would never think she could lead a full scale revolution. Are you fucking kidding me?

In reality, not a single Martha would give a fuck what she has to say. And Lawrence sure wouldn't.

In reality, Hannah would live and die in Gilead. So, like, why are any of you hoping she'll make it out? That's not reality!

In reality a system like Gilead would have fallen apart already (cos the world-building kinda sucks, I'm sorry.)

Do we really want to play the "but in reality" game? With a fictional TV show that is already bordering on soap opera?

Look, I am the queen of giving Serena more credit than she deserves. I know that. I'll admit it. (I actually think her motives in 3x05 are deeper than it seems but that's another story.) I also know people like her "in reality" often (usually) stay horrible forever. These are both things that generally are true.

BUT

I do not want to watch a TV show that is "real". We literally don’t need that right now. We have the real world for that. I want to watch a show like this to give me hope. That hope may be hard earned, it make come with frustration, it may even come with some anger along the way... but that's exactly it: it's a journey. There are paths where characters who are given significant prominence and screentime should follow. They should have some sort of movement. Maybe they stumble along the path, maybe they try to run back, maybe they take the long way, maybe they fuck up along the way, but they are meant to be going SOMEWHERE. Somewhere different than where they began.

That is the entire point of storytelling. Am I wrong?

The problem with Serena is precisely that as arguably the second lead character behind June, she hasn't fucking moved in 3 seasons. Main characters should have movement. But nope. None for Serena. Why? Because they keep setting her up along a path, only to fucking tear up the road in front of her for plot twists and shock and oooooh the contrived drama!!!

And yet, all these other characters are doing completely unrealistic things almost constantly (June, darling, I'm looking at you.) and that is just fine. Why is Serena the only character that were supposed to hold to some strange "but in reality!" standard?

I want a show about women that actually DESTROYS harmful stereotypes about women. I don’t want one that upholds the tools that maintain patriarchy. I don’t want the same tired tropes and cliches.

I want hope that even the worst people can change if given the tools.

I want to see women breaking down the systems of oppression that isolate them, including those of their own design. I want to see women of privilege recognizing their role in the oppression of others, understanding that, taking deliberate action to rectify and support those women they kept down. I want then to feel shame and change.

Isn't that the whole point of callout culture? Of protesting? Of education? To change people, even the shitty ones! That's the sort of thing I want in my depressing, dystopian fiction. That's inspiring.

Otherwise, what's the point in anything at all? If people can't and don't change, why not just kill all the people you don't agree with and that's that?

I want angry women, sad women, troubled women, supportive women, difficult women, but ultimately women that face down a system and destroy the motherfucker. Together.

What I don’t need is a reality check, thanks.

I don’t need to be reminded that bad people exist. There are PLENTY of those to choose from on THT. That is what my TV already does. Why can't we have one female character of privilege, one shitty woman who is a MAIN CHARACTER and thus able to be given the screen time, one awful woman go through change for the better?

"That's not real!"

Fuck "real". I'm not saying she has to become a hero. I'm not saying she should ride off into the sunset absolved of all her guilt and crimes. I'm not even saying give her a full redemption arc. I'm not saying she shouldn't suffer intensely.

I'm saying we don't need another story about a rich white woman who is horrible and never fucking changes. In a story where the system itself (and the ideology behind it) is the true villain of the story, where you have a council of men in power keeping it going, what's the issue with using Serena to explore the women that both are victims of it and benefit from it? All that dissonance!!! All the psychological shit that they dipped their toes into before! That's some juicy shit right there. Mmmm. There are more than enough bad guys to choose from.

Right now that conversation has been effectively killed. There's no complexity, there's nothing important being said. It's a cookie-cutter evil lady vs good lady soap opera fairytale. Who the fuck wants that basic shit except children?!

Ugh.

I am just so sick of this show thinking it's so progressive when it just pulls out the same worn out tropes, and sexist ones at that, over and over.

Sorry, THT, you're not saying anything of relevance anymore. You can give June all the cussword-laden voiceovers with Moss' meme-level closeup Anger Face and fade into 80s pop music all you want, but you're not inspiring anyone by not writing actual hope for change into these stories. Because you're not addressing what casual viewers want to see in their fictional TV shows.

"Tee hee! All the stupid viewers thought Serena was actually changing?! WHAT DELUSIONAL LOSERS! Let's just rehash the same shock value tricks we keep doing every season! Yes, we are doing groundbreaking TV, lads!"

And please do not give me that "but in reality!" argument when June Osborne still exists.

Telling us, "Well, people suck. You'll never be able to be allies with other women in power, because nobody every fucking changes. Don't even bother cos look what happens." is not helpful.

Bish, please.

WHAT A FUCKING WASTE OF MY TIME THIS SHOW IS.

[milkshakedoe]

what really bothered me about that four lung post was the way she feels obliged to actually -thank- people for participating in surveillance culture. that, to me, is really sad. it's a very good reflection, i think, of how in critiquing surveillance culture people often feel forced to concede to its self-image of greater moral purity in order to avoid inviting too much scrutiny to themselves. you can critique the form of surveillance culture -- as long as you quickly acknowledge its practical usefulness and good accomplishments, lest you be seen as sympathetic to molesters. this is different from simply acknowledging that most people participating in surveillance culture are probably well intentioned, because you have to explicitly thank people for perpetuating the culture itself. it's the same thing when people make these sorts of flippant posts that are like,

me: talking about how callouts can be abused and stuff some bad person / bad fandom shipper / etc: yeah! it really sucks cause i can't do bad things! me: i'm not associated with you

it's a form of, like, appeasement. it's a way of saying, "look, i accept the basic framework of your logic, that critiques of surveillance culture are more prone to encouraging predators than surveillance culture itself. i am not a predator and i don't support predators. i acknowledge that surveillance culture holds predators in check; or at least, that the general spirit of it is correct, even if the specifics are flawed. please don't kill me."

but surveillance culture really isn't better at this. the reason that a culture of widespread mutual policing held in check by guilt and fear, or any system that values law and order, can look so morally pure by comparison to anti-surveillance rhetoric is precisely because surveillance culture encourages abusive people to rise within the ranks and become a part of the loud and authoritative voices declaring the standards by which everyone else shall be measured lest they seem friendly to perpetrators. in short: it looks good because it says it is good, and if you think otherwise, there's a good chance that you're collaborating with perpetrators if you aren't one yourself. and if you repeat a lie a thousand times...

extremely stupid perpetrators may be weeded out, but then you're left with the people who've insinuated themselves into positions of power, who are very good at hiding behind charisma or by condemning the faults of others.

in fact, surveillance culture actually encourages this actively, not just as a side effect. because any bad action can be seen as a stepping stone toward monstrosity and exile [callout], every small bad action becomes an existential crisis. it encourages people to conceal their faults and bad actions and to develop themselves as a kind of celebrity to their peers, and even, again, as a culturally prioritized voice of hellfire and damnation, often using their identity as a tool to insulate themselves from criticism by well meaning fellow activist-types. surveillance culture loves building up perpetrators because the more "powerful" the abuser can be seen to be, the more emotional drama can be wrought out of tearing them down, and such powerful abusers being publicly condemned and/or exiled can even be used to prop up the mythology of surveillance culture itself while disguising the fact that this is all part of its normal and encouraged function. we shot down this powerful abuser! clearly surveillance is doing something right.

fundamentally, the problem here is disgust. people use disgust to build social capital, by vilifying people for minor microaggressions or simply disagreeing in an unfavored way. disgust is part of the everyday routine of maintaining social capital in these spaces. every day your eyes are assaulted with barrages of dozens or hundreds of reblogs condemning the latest (or often, several months or years old) trend in oppressive or abusive behavior or loudly consigning obviously bad ideologies or groups of people to the dumpster, or handwringing about another stupid fandom or what have you. disgust is woven into the fabric of these online social justice spaces; it's a big part of how you know you're in one at all. it's how you remind everyone that you are one of them, that you are not collaborating with perpetrators; it's a way of reminding everyone that you fear the law.

we treat perpetration as a mark of monstrosity and any bad action can be seen as part of a road to abuse. it's a vicious cycle because loud public disgust and vilification and alienation of the perpetrator incentivizes exactly what surveillance culture claims to be against. it's essentially removing any reason to be better at all, while completely ignoring why toxicity and abuse happens by aggressively individualizing it. despite social justice claims of structural critique and change, and sometimes acknowledging that structural harm can manifest as toxicity, only one cause can ever be ultimately indicted in an act of abuse or toxicity: the perpetrator theirself. this is not to say, of course, that victims should be obliged to interact with or "love" their abusers, nor that perpetrators should never be held to any sort of personal responsibility. but responsibility is different from damnation. a culture of disgust turns abuse from a problem to be addressed into a source of emotional drama to be exploited, and a kind of looming personal apocalypse that encourages people to hide their faults, to pretend to be perfect, to self-aggrandize and capitalize on popularity to always keep a step ahead of their moral debts. and the crowd eats it up every step of the way, right on to their final fall from grace. toxicity and abuse can never be seen as stemming from trauma or social conditions, but ultimately just an innate individual greed and selfishness which might be informed by trauma but really has nothing to do with it. there's just no fucking way to talk about any of this and that frustrates me to no end.