#i truly do not understand why people left tumblr for twitter its so fucking bad

[hey-its-isaac]

regarding september 22nd, being 21, and turning into a bad person

hey, it's isaac.

i suppose i could have made writing here a yearly thing if i had remembered to write here on the 3rd, but i did not. that's not a reason to not get introspective though, now is it? while i'm writing into the void, i suppose it's a possibility you revisit this tumblr sometime, that you read the things i'm writing. because i'm not really writing to myself, or to anybody else.

i suppose that i'm writing to you, for some unknown and foolish reason.

i turn 22 next week in the year 2024. i've gotten old, a lot older than i was when i first made this tumblr, which as i previously stated, was out of a desire to be a poet. it later became a thing i used to make you laugh. most of the things i've done in my life were to make you laugh, something i've known to be true for a long time, but i realized even more after our reconnection.

every conversation, every text, every word, i was trying to make you laugh. as was stated in the book no longer human, that i suggested to you, "i have frantically played the clown in order to disentangle myself from these painful relationships, only to wear myself out as a result."

it's a bad habit, and yet i've done it with everyone i have ever known. perhaps its a subconscious desire to be useful. if i can make you laugh, you spending time with me has been worthwhile. i have given a purpose to my existence, as i have made you laugh. i have made your week speaking to me worthwhile, because i gave you a laugh or two.

it's what i do, right?

i have gotten older, and i have gotten angrier. my worldview is worse, my politics aren't as generous, and i can't stand the majority of people. and this is why i can't solve the question of why i afforded you such a great kindness.

i can't solve why i reached out, and why i only showed you kindness. i can't shake how you told me something that hurt me, that you showed your new boyfriend "blonde boyz," and how i didn't retaliate with "i played card jitsu with another girl."

i can't shake how it bubbled up in me, and i swallowed it, and didn't say it. i can't imagine you would have minded, just as truly, i didn't mind you showed someone else blonde boyz, even though it made me sad, even if just for my past self. i just can't understand that kindness i offered. the years of hatred that built up inside of me, starting when we were together, starting maybe even in 2018, another fact i withheld out of kindness. that hatred inside of me, and i was kind. i didn't lash out. i didn't hurt you, like i'd fantasized of doing for many months. you couldn't every begin to understand the thoughts i had had that long year. i'm ashamed of the person that i was then.

and when i remembered too much bad about you, when you showed your personality too much and i was disgusted, i simply left. i didn't lash out. i wasn't cruel. i just left.

it was kind of me.

that interaction is the one proof i have that i'm still a good person deep down. that i won't always give in to the worst of myself. that deep down, i don't want to hurt others. i want to uplift others.

deep down,

i want to make people laugh.

i want to make people happy.

because if i'm not, i'm a waste of space. if i'm being cruel, i'm worse than a waste of space. i'm a detriment.

hell, i post shitty jokes on twitter 50 times a day. who fucking cares, but maybe someone will find it funny. people tell me i'm funny, and so i try to make people laugh. sometimes i feel like it's the only thing that i have ever been good for.

21 was a weird age, probably the worst of my life, but also the one with the most change. i rented my own house, i got into a big university, and i can drive now. i got laid, i kissed a girl, and i learned how to live alone. i drank a lot, but i haven't smoked yet. i've done okay for myself.

i don't remember much of my teenage years, do you? i forgot a lot of it. even when i think about disney world, i can't remember it. it's a faded memory. i remember a few things that happened, a snippet or two of a time we shared, but i can't remember it. when i think about it, i think there's a mental block. perhaps its not that i've forgotten it, but that my mind has learned to tune out memories of us as a defense mechanism, even still now, that it doesn't matter as much to me.

you would never understand what it was like to be me, how desperately i had to work to keep any mention of you out of my life, as i would spiral intensely every time. i attempted self harm, a few times. i was suicidal.

i know i've always been depressed and anxious, and ive made jokes about killing myself, but i was really suicidal back then. october of 2023 was a really bad time for me, i don't like to revisit my journal entries from that time. i wanted to hurt myself. it was a compulsion, a huge desire.

its a twist of fate that i didn't.

so i guess, at least i'm doing better than i was then.

well, that was me checking in for this year. a lot has changed since i last wrote here, i guess i treat these as confessionals. the things that i never told you, that i don't have the guts to say to your face. that i hated you, that i hated you early on. but i truly did love you.

i'll end with this, an explanation for my hate. two things that described how i felt about you the entirety of our relationship.

the first of these is from make happy. i related a lot to bo burnham, in his song can't handle this. he said, "a part of me loves you, a part me hates you, a part of me fears you, a part of me needs you." i listened to this a lot in fall of 2018, perhaps even before we were together. i loved you, but i hated you. i resented you. i feared you, what you meant for me, and i needed you. i needed you more than i wanted to or should ever need a person, and that led to the other 3 things.

i also related to a scene from bojack horseman. this was the scene of mr. peanutbutter, and hes talking to todd. he talks about diane, and her role in his life. he said he keeps having a dream where diane isn't there. he says that she isn't dead, and she hasn't left him, its as if she never existed. and he said that he feels relief.

i had similar feelings to that. i didn't want you to go, and i didn't want you to die.

but i would have been relieved if i woke up and you were all just a dream.

or, that was a thought i had. who knows how i truly would have felt, right?

okay

see you next year

-IJF

[relativelyfvcked]

.

[wannaliveattheholidayinn]

Alright, now that I've been given a few hours to stew and think and cry and have several breakdowns over the cancellation,,, let's talk about how I found this show, my relationship to it, and why I love this show

Anyone who's interacted with me in this fandom, be it over tumblr or in the discord know I started watching because my dance teacher was an extra in the Help! scene (bc I never shut the fuck up about it). But it did start a little earlier.

I had seen a few ads, on NBC and on YouTube. I thought it looked interesting, but I was in sophomore year, having breakdowns just about every other day, the homework was hard, and there were also reports of the virus. At the time it seemed so far away, but I had a feeling it would arrive soon. So it didn't seem like something I could add to my plate. I thought it would simply become another Good Girls to me (aka a show I really wanted to watch, and still kinda do, but I never really got around to it.) So, watching it kind of fell to the back of my mind. And then... that fateful day.

It was a big deal when the teacher would put on the TV in the main studio. It didn't happen often, and when it did, it always had to do with dance in some way. But my teacher was on YouTube and googling Zoey's. We sat down, I even grabbed my glasses so I could see what we were watching. We picked up at the ladies singing "Whatta Man" which the owner of my studio was howling at. I'm lucky enough that two of my teachers have been involved in Smuin Ballet in San Francisco, one still currently in the company (although she just had a baby and... y'know professional dance is hard in the pandemic.) I'm also lucky enough to have met another former Smuin dancer who was also an extra in the Help! scene. So, my teacher pointed himself and the other former Smuin dancer out, funnily enough, they were similarly dressed. So, the scene ended and we went on with our class. I went home and put on the first episode.

And then... well we all know what happened next. The US went into lockdown, and there wasn't much to do.

And yeah, I had school. I went into the two five pm history classes I had, I still had homework,,, but other than those two history classes and the occasion english class there was nothing... dance had stopped, homework, class, and the workload changed. Suddenly, I was left with a lot of free time. So, continued to watch Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist. For a while, it was Killing Eve and Zoey's Playlist, but then that went away, and it was just Zoey.

(also, yes, I'm aware this isn't linear and in chronological order, but give me a break, my memory is already shit and this pandemic just made it worse.)

In April, I wrote my first fanfiction for the show. It was this small, little piece of fluff that showed a future Zimon and their four kids (four kids, Jesus Christ, what was I onnnnnn). It's already outdated bc of my use of Eddie and not Perry but I still hold it very dear to my heart. It was posted on ao3 on Jun 13, 2020, and was my first fanfic on the site. I've posted more since then, but it's still overwhelmingly zep there, and I currently have two ongoing fanfics. My goal is to become that person in the zep fandom who is known for her works where people perceive Zimon's relationship, in a funny but wrong way (and when I say people, I (mostly) mean Tobin.)

I love Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist. It's made me laugh, made me cry, made me sing along with it, and made me actually fully enter a fandom. I've considered myself in fandom long before Zoey's, but Zoey's actually had me interacting with others. It's technically not my first fandom. I'd say that was Mighty Med, all the way back in sixth grade. But it's the first where I've actively interacted with others and even made an acquaintance (Isabella ily 💗).

Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist had moments that made it hard for me to love it the way I do. There have been some bad writing decisions. I personally don't ship cl*arkeman, even though it's clear they are endgame.

But, I still love it. It was a coping mechanism in a hard time, and I love that it helped me. And I know it helped others as well.

I know not everyone is going to understand my comparison to Cloak and Dagger. They are vastly different shows. But the cancellation... that's what gets me the most about both. They were both canceled in a way where the fandom was going to feel like crap. Both were canceled after two seasons when they had more story to tell. It was done quietly, and there was backlash. Different programs eyed them. The difference is we don't know how this one will end yet. Cloak and Dagger was canceled, and I'll never be the same. I'll never truly be over it. And while I know I'm not in the right headspace to process this cancellation, I think I may be able to find a way. It'll be really, really fucking hard. But I'm slowly getting there with Anne with an E, and I think I could with Zoey's. It was an incredible show while it lasted, and if it's its time to go... I'm glad for the time I had with it and will help keep it going along with others in the fandom. All that being said...

Save Zoey's Playlist

Start petitions (ig, idrk how change.org works), keep it trending on Twitter, let NBC know it made a mistake, and let other streaming services know we're interested in seeing the show go on. It deserves a clean resolution that's not a cliffhanger. Just let these characters be happy in the end.

This doesn't have to be another Cloak and Dagger, or Timeless, or whatever show anyone has felt never got a proper chance to tell its story and end in a satisfying way. It can be another Brooklyn Nine-Nine, or Lucifer, or Friday Night Lights (me, side-eyeing NBC for that one). This doesn't have to be the end. And maybe I'm too late to writing this, maybe it's not trending anymore and it won't trend again, and it won't get picked up. But at least we can say we tried.

This was long as fuck to write, and I could've put that time towards... idk homework ig, or writing the fanfiction I just started, or any of my ongoing two. But it felt it necessary to write this. I don't know why, maybe I just needed to get this shit off my chest. If no one in the fandom reads this... eh, I really can't blame you, it's long as all fuck.

If you did, and you got this far, I love you, I love this fandom, I don't regret my time here, and I hope you don't either. It means the world to me that you read this.

I love you all, and I'll shut up now 💖💗💖💗

[meeedeee]

Cancel Culture: The Internet Eating Itself RSS FEED OF POST WRITTEN BY FOZMEADOWS

As social media platforms enter their collective adolescence – Facebook is fifteen, YouTube fourteen, Twitter thirteen, tumblr twelve – I find myself thinking about how little we really understand their cultural implications, both ongoing and for the future. At this point, the idea that being online is completely optional in modern world ought to be absurd, and yet multiple friends, having spoken to their therapists about the impact of digital abuse on their mental health, were told straight up to just stop using the internet. Even if this was a viable option for some, the idea that we can neatly sidestep the problem of bad behaviour in any non-utilitarian sphere by telling those impacted to simply quit is baffling at best and a tacit form of victim-blaming at worst. The internet might be a liminal space, but object permanence still applies to what happens here: the trolls don’t vanish if we close our eyes, and if we vanquish one digital hydra-domain for Toxicity Crimes without caring to fathom the whys and hows of what went wrong, we merely ensure that three more will spring up in its place.

Is the internet a private space, a government space or a public space? Yes.

Is it corporate, communal or unaffiliated? Yes.

Is it truly global or bound by local legal jurisdictions? Yes.

Does the internet reflect our culture or create it? Yes.

Is what people say on the internet reflective of their true beliefs, or is it a constant shell-game of digital personas, marketing ploys, intrusive thoughts, growth-in-progress, personal speculation and fictional exploration? Yes.

The problem with the internet is that takes up all three areas on a Venn diagram depicting the overlap between speech and action, and while this has always been the case, we’re only now admitting that it’s a bug as well as a feature. Human interaction cannot be usefully monitored using an algorithm, but our current conception of What The Internet Is has been engineered specifically to shortcut existing forms of human oversight, the better to maximise both accessibility (good to neutral) and profits (neutral to bad). Uber and Lyft are cheaper, frequently more convenient alternatives to a traditional taxi service, for instance, but that’s because the apps themselves are functionally predicated on the removal of meaningful customer service and worker protections that were hard-won elsewhere. Sites like tumblr are free to use, but the lack of revenue generated by those users means that, past a certain point, profits can only hope to outstrip expenses by selling access to those users and/or their account data, which means in turn that paying to effectively monitor their content creation becomes vastly less important than monetising it.

Small wonder, then, that individual users of social media platforms have learned to place a high premium on their ability to curate what they see, how they see it, and who sees them in turn. When I first started blogging, the largely unwritten rule of the blogsphere was that, while particular webforums dedicated to specific topics could have rules about content and conduct, blogs and their comment pages should be kept Free. Monitoring comments was viewed as a sign of narrow-minded fearfulness: even if a participant was aggressive or abusive, the enlightened path was to let them speak, because anything else was Censorship. This position held out for a good long while, until the collective frustration of everyone who’d been graphically threatened with rape, torture and death, bombarded with slurs, exhausted by sealioning or simply fed up with nitpicking and bad faith arguments finally boiled over.

Particularly in progressive circles, the relief people felt at being told that actually, we were under no moral obligation to let assholes grandstand in the comments or repeatedly explain basic concepts to only theoretically invested strangers was overwhelming. Instead, you could simply delete them, or block them, or maybe even mock them, if the offence or initial point of ignorance seemed silly enough. But as with the previous system, this one-size-fits-all approach soon developed a downside. Thanks to the burnout so many of us felt after literal years of trying to treat patiently with trolls playing Devil’s Advocate, liberal internet culture shifted sharply towards immediate shows of anger, derision and flippancy to anyone who asked a 101 question, or who didn’t use the right language, or who did anything other than immediately agree with whatever position was explained to them, however simply.

I don’t exempt myself from this criticism, but knowing why I was so goddamn tired doesn’t change my conviction that, cumulatively, the end result did more harm than good. Without wanting to sidetrack into a lengthy dissertation on digital activism in the post-aughties decade, it seems evident in hindsight that the then-fledgling alliance between trolls, MRAs, PUAs, Redditors and 4channers to deliberately exhaust left-wing goodwill via sealioning and bad faith arguments was only the first part of a two-pronged attack. The second part, when the left had lost all patience with explaining its own beliefs and was snappily telling anyone who asked about feminism, racism or anything else to just fucking Google it, was to swoop in and persuade the rebuffed party that we were all irrational, screeching harridans who didn’t want to answer because we knew our answers were bad, and why not consider reading Roosh V instead?

The fallout of this period, I would argue, is still ongoing. In an ideal world, drawing a link between online culture wars about ownership of SFF and geekdom and the rise of far-right fascist, xenophobic extremism should be a bow so long that not even Odysseus himself could draw it. But this world, as we’ve all had frequent cause to notice, is far from ideal at the best of times – which these are not – and yet another featurebug of the internet is the fluid interpermeability of its various spaces. We talk, for instance – as I am talking here – about social media as a discreet concept, as though platforms like Twitter or Facebook are functionally separate from the other sites to which their users link; as though there is no relationship between or bleed-through from the viral Facebook post screencapped and shared on BuzzFeed, which is then linked and commented upon on Reddit, which thread is then linked to on Twitter, where an entirely new conversation emerges and subsequently spawns an article in The Huffington Post, which is shared again on Facebook and the replies to that shared on tumblr, and so on like some grizzly perpetual mention machine.

But I digress. The point here is that internet culture is best understood as a pattern of ripples, each new iteration a reaction to the previous one, spreading out until it dissipates and a new shape takes its place. Having learned that slamming the virtual door in everyone’s face was a bad idea, the online left tried establishing a better, calmer means of communication; the flipside was a sudden increase in tone-policing, conversations in which presentation was vaunted over substance and where, once again, particular groups were singled out as needing to conform to the comfort-levels of others. Overlapping with this was the move towards discussing things as being problematic, rather than using more fixed and strident language to decry particular faults – an attempt to acknowledge the inherent fallibility of human works while still allowing for criticism. A sensible goal, surely, but once again, attempting to apply the dictum universally proved a double-edged sword: if everything is problematic, then how to distinguish grave offences from trifling ones? How can anyone enjoy anything if we’re always expected to thumb the rosary of its failings first?

When everything is problematic and everyone has the right to say so, being online as any sort of creator or celebrity is like being nibbled to death by ducks. The well-meaning promise of various organisations, public figures or storytellers to take criticism on board – to listen to the fanbase and do right by their desires – was always going to stumble over the problem of differing tastes. No group is a hivemind: what one person considers bad representation or in poor taste, another might find enlightening, while yet a third party is more concerned with something else entirely. Even in cases with a clear majority opinion, it’s physically impossible to please everyone and a type of folly to try, but that has yet to stop the collective internet from demanding it be so. Out of this comes a new type of ironic frustration: having once rejoiced in being allowed to simply block trolls or timewasters, we now cast judgement on those who block us in turn, viewing them, as we once were viewed, as being fearful of criticism.

Are we creating echo chambers by curating what we see online, or are we acting in pragmatic acknowledgement of the fact that we neither have time to read everything nor an obligation to see all perspectives as equally valid? Yes.

Even if we did have the time and ability to wade through everything, is the signal-to-noise ratio of truth to lies on the internet beyond our individual ability to successfully measure, such that outsourcing some of our judgement to trusted sources is fundamentally necessary, or should we be expected to think critically about everything we encounter, even if it’s only intended as entertainment? Yes.

If something or someone online acts in a way that’s antithetical to our values, are we allowed to tune them out thereafter, knowing full well that there’s a nearly infinite supply of as-yet undisappointing content and content-creators waiting to take their place, or are we obliged to acknowledge that Doing A Bad doesn’t necessarily ruin a person forever? Yes.

And thus we come to cancel culture, the current – but by no means final – culmination of previous internet discourse waves. In this iteration, burnout at critical engagement dovetails with a new emphasis on collective content curation courtesies (try saying that six times fast), but ends up hamstrung once again by differences in taste. Or, to put it another way: someone fucks up and it’s the last straw for us personally, so we try to remove them from our timelines altogether – but unless our friends and mutuals, who we still want to engage with, are convinced to do likewise, then we haven’t really removed them at all, such that we’re now potentially willing to make failure to cancel on demand itself a cancellable offence.

Which brings us right back around to the problem of how the modern internet is fundamentally structured – which is to say, the way in which it’s overwhelmingly meant to rely on individual curation instead of collective moderation. Because the one thing each successive mode of social media discourse has in common with its predecessors is a central, and currently unanswerable question: what universal code of conduct exists that I, an individual on the internet, can adhere to – and expect others to adhere to – while we communicate across multiple different platforms?

In the real world, we understand about social behavioural norms: even if we don’t talk about them in those terms, we broadly recognise them when we see them. Of course, we also understand that those norms can vary from place to place and context to context, but as we can only ever be in one physical place at a time, it’s comparatively easy to adjust as appropriate.

But the internet, as stated, is a liminal space: it’s real and virtual, myriad and singular, private and public all at once. It confuses our sense of which rules might apply under which circumstances, jumbles the normal behavioural cues by obscuring the identity of our interlocutors, and even though we don’t acknowledge it nearly as often as we should, written communication – like spoken communication – is a skill that not everyone has, just as tone, whether spoken or written, isn’t always received (or executed, for that matter) in the way it was intended. And when it comes to politics, in which the internet and its doings now plays no small role, there’s the continual frustration that comes from observing, with more and more frequency, how many literal, real-world crimes and abuses go without punishment, and how that lack of consequences contributes in turn to the fostering of abuse and hostility towards vulnerable groups online.

This is what comes of occupying a transitional period in history: one in which laws are changed and proposed to reflect our changing awareness of the world, but where habit, custom, ignorance, bias and malice still routinely combine, both institutionally and more generally, to see those laws enacted only in part, or tokenistically, or not at all. To take one of the most egregious and well-publicised instances that ultimately presaged the #MeToo movement, the laughably meagre sentence handed down to Brock Turner, who was caught in the act of raping an unconscious woman, combined with the emphasis placed by both the judge and much of the media coverage on his swimming talents and family standing as a means of exonerating him, made it very clear that sexual violence against women is frequently held to be less important than the perceived ‘bright futures’ of its perpetrators.

Knowing this, then – knowing that the story was spread, discussed and argued about on social media, along with thousands of other, similar accounts; knowing that, even in this context, some people still freely spoke up in defence of rapists and issued misogynistic threats against their female interlocutors – is it any wonder that, in the absence of consistent legal justice in such cases, the internet tried, and is still trying, to fill the gap? Is it any wonder, when instances of racist police brutality are constantly filmed and posted online, only for the perpetrators to receive no discipline, that we lose patience for anyone who wants to debate the semantics of when, exactly, extrajudicial murder is “acceptable”?

We cannot control the brutality of the world from the safety of our keyboards, but when it exhausts or threatens us, we can at least click a button to mute its seeming adherents. We don’t always have the energy to decry the same person we’ve already argued against a thousand times before, but when a friend unthinkingly puts them back on our timeline for some new reason, we can tell them that person is cancelled and hope they take the hint not to do it again. Never mind that there is far too often no subtlety, no sense of scale or proportion to how the collective, viral internet reacts in each instance, until all outrage is rendered flat and the outside observer could be forgiven for worrying what’s gone wrong with us all, that using a homophobic trope in a TV show is thought to merit the same online response as an actual hate crime. So long as the war is waged with words alone, there’s only a finite number of outcomes that boycotting, blocking, blacklisting, cancelling, complaining and critiquing can achieve, and while some of those outcomes in particular are well worth fighting for, so many words are poured towards so many attempts that it’s easy to feel numbed to the process; or, conversely, easy to think that one response fits all contexts.

I’m tired of cancel culture, just as I was dully tired of everything that preceded it and will doubtless grow tired of everything that comes after it in turn, until our fundamental sense of what the internet is and how it should be managed finally changes. Like it or not, the internet both is and is of the world, and that is too much for any one person to sensibly try and curate at an individual level. Where nothing is moderated for us, everything must be moderated by us; and wherever people form communities, those communities will grow cultures, which will develop rules and customs that spill over into neighbouring communities, both digitally and offline, with mixed and ever-changing results. Cancel culture is particularly tricky in this regard, as the ease with which we block someone online can seldom be replicated offline, which makes it all the more intoxicating a power to wield when possible: we can’t do anything about the awful coworker who rants at us in the breakroom, but by God, we can block every person who reminds us of them on Twitter.

The thing about participating in internet discourse is, it’s like playing Civilisation in real-time, only it’s not a game and the world keeps progressing even when you log off. Things change so fast on the internet – memes, etiquette, slang, dominant opinions – and yet the changes spread so organically and so fast that we frequently adapt without keeping conscious track of when and why they shifted. Social media is like the Hotel California: we can check out any time we like, but we can never meaningfully leave – not when world leaders are still threatening nuclear war on Twitter, or when Facebook is using friendly memes to test facial recognition software, or when corporate accounts are creating multi-staffed humansonas to engage with artists on tumblr, or when YouTube algorithms are accidentally-on-purpose steering kids towards white nationalist propaganda because it makes them more money.

Of course we try and curate our time online into something finite, comprehensible, familiar, safe: the alternative is to embrace the near-infinite, incomprehensible, alien, dangerous gallimaufry of our fractured global mindscape. Of course we want to try and be critical, rational, moral in our convictions and choices; it’s just that we’re also tired and scared and everyone who wants to argue with us about anything can, even if they’re wrong and angry and also our relative, or else a complete stranger, and sometimes you just want to turn off your brain and enjoy a thing without thinking about it, or give yourself some respite, or exercise a tiny bit of autonomy in the only way you can.

It’s human nature to want to be the most amount of right for the least amount of effort, but unthinkingly taking our moral cues from internet culture the same way we’re accustomed to doing in offline contexts doesn’t work: digital culture shifts too fast and too asymmetrically to be relied on moment to moment as anything like a universal touchstone. Either you end up preaching to the choir, or you run a high risk of aggravation, not necessarily due to any fundamental ideological divide, but because your interlocutor is leaning on a different, false-universal jargon overlying alternate 101 and 201 concepts to the ones you’re using, and modern social media platforms – in what is perhaps the greatest irony of all – are uniquely poorly suited to coherent debate.

Purity wars in fandom, arguments about diversity in narrative and whether its proponents have crossed the line from criticism into bullying: these types of arguments are cyclical now, dying out and rekindling with each new wave of discourse. We might not yet be in a position to stop it, but I have some hope that being aware of it can mitigate the worst of the damage, if only because I’m loathe to watch yet another fandom steadily talk itself into hating its own core media for the sake of literal argument.

For all its flaws – and with all its potential – the internet is here to stay. Here’s hoping we figure out how to fix it before its ugliest aspects make us give up on ourselves.

          from shattersnipe: malcontent & rainbows https://ift.tt/2V13Qu4 via IFTTT

[freedom-of-fanfic]

an unfunny joke about antis

the funny thing about bullies - especially self-righteous bullies that travel in packs, such as antis - is that 99.8% of the time they come out on top of any conflict they get into. 

and holy hell, it’s fucking infuriating when it’s not completely exhausting. we all like to see clapback at people who don’t play fair and treat others like shit. when someone is really nasty and abusive - when they’re chronically mean and dangerous and seemingly untouchable - it’s easy to yearn for their comeuppance and want to see them know they’re beat. we want the fear and shame and guilt bullies and abusers spread around revisited on their own head so they understand how awful a person they’ve been.

but realistically: you’ll never see a bully/abuser/anti doubt or question themselves. you’ll never see them backtrack with sincerity. you’ll never successfully shame them out of their behavior or devastate their confidence with your logic and consistency, because successful bullies - by definition - will always be less empathetic, more shameless, and more self-serving than anyone they have the power to abuse.

you will never beat a bully at the shame game. bullies live that game. shaming others is the source of their social power; they know (at least subconsciously) that flinching is game over. when someone points out their behavior is something shameful, they have to excuse or deflect or dismiss it: else, they lose. They deserved it. they hurt me first. who cares what you have to say? 

and if you don’t have the direct authority to punish a bully, why should they care? abusers thrive in this world because they’ve decided the ethics and empathy that guide social rules don’t apply to them. Ethical people have lines they cannot cross without violating their sense of what’s right: abusers trample those lines, doing whatever serves them best, because they’re not obligated to care.

maybe it seems unthinkable they’d get away with it … but in general, our social networks have an inbuilt ‘get out of jail free’ card for abusers. we have to trust others are following the same social rules we are. when we don’t trust that, it’s actually worse. (we get … well, present-day tumblr, probably.) but that very trust makes society blind to behavior that crosses lines - it’s too unthinkable that anyone would do that. innocent until proven guilty. and that doubt protects abusers who are willing to pretend they too are trusting, caring people who follow the rules.

in fact, bullies care more about setting down social rules than anyone because they limit the behavior of everyone other than themselves. Rules set boundaries for ethical people. trust that those rules will be followed blinds people to all but the most blatant rule-breaking behavior. and when bullies lay down the rules, the rules themselves are often designed to encourage and shelter abusers.

I believe this is why the worst abusers so often turn out to be the most vocal activist, the most upright churchgoer, the politician with the anti-abuse platform. Such bullies do, in fact, truly advocate for everyone following the standards of behavior they support … except themselves.* These abusers are free to jump in and out of bounds whenever it suits their needs, making them all but impossible to call out. They harass and threaten and torment their targets, exploiting the victims’ trust and sense of obligation to protect the bully from exposure. but the moment a target retaliates, abusers are the first to call them out for bad behavior, damaging the victim’s reputation and improving their own without compunction, sympathy, or remorse.**

Perhaps the most ironic part is that the higher the standard of behavior the bully advocates for, gatekeeps, and regularly violates, the more powerful and invulnerable they become and the more blatant and open their two-faced behavior can be.  Their hypocrisy is only remarkable to people who know what standards they supposedly uphold and demand of others. To everyone else the standards themselves are absurd. so what if a person falls short sometimes? why do you care? why are you surprised?

This is the social loophole that bullies and abusers in the anti-shipping movement exploit - and there are a lot of abusive anti-shippers. As the self-declared fandom/shipping police, tasking themselves with creating rules of conduct and aiming to enforce them by shaming, guilting, and threatening dissenters, anti culture by nature attracts the best shame game players - bullies and abusers - and draws them into its ranks. 

unhampered by social obligation or a need to play fair, abusers rapidly rise to the top of policing communities like anti-shipping. already governed only by their own convenience, an abuser will never suffer from concerns of going ‘too far’; therefore, the loyalty of an abuser to a cause that gives them licence to abuse will never come into question. their gleeful eagerness to punish, lack of sympathy for their targets, and their willingness to come down hard even on other antis is both admired and feared. everyone wants to be their friend to insure their inevitable slip-ups due to self-conflicting rules are forgiven, unwittingly putting themselves in debt to a person who will never let them forget it.

so who’s left to call a hypocrite out, even when their hypocrisy is open and blatant? at least subconsciously aware that the the only real tethers on behavior in spaces where authority is nonexistent - tumblr, twitter, etc - are empathy and shame, abusers do their level best to evoke those feelings in everyone around them while being completely free of those feelings themselves. they cannot be shamed by anyone; they don’t play fair and they don’t show sympathy if it doesn’t serve their needs.

In short: as long as a bully’s opponent gives even the slightest fuck about playing fair, being kind, and giving the benefit of the doubt, they will never out-bully a bully.

the point of this long-winded post is this: 

if you’re hoping for some creator to smack antis down; if you’re sitting in front of your computer, jaw dropped, as antis flock to the dmcb fandom and set up their absurd rules despite the source material being in conflict with everything antis supposedly stand for; if you see anti-shipper victims sharing how they were driven to suicide attempts and think ‘surely this time antis will be conscience-striken’: the reality is that anti-shippers will never apologize, will never admit to hypocrisy, and will never take ownership of the consequences of their actions. 

bullies always come up smelling like roses because they know social rules are actually nigh-unenforceable. They only apply to the abuser if the abuser chooses to abide by the rules, and why would they limit themselves like that?

and if you don’t like it, there’s nothing you can do about it. 

that’s the joke. (i’m not laughing either.)

*and the louder bullies support the cause of vulnerable people, the more unthinkable it is that they would ever exploit vulnerability themselves. 

**this is a wildly successful technique abusers use for self-protection. it accomplishes many things at once:

it feeds the abuser’s deluded worldview wherein their target is the badguy and the abuser is their hapless victim. (this is how abusers justify abuse most of the time: they have to act outside the rules to protect themselves!)

puts the spotlight on the victim, magnifying their errors and minimizing/erasing the effect of the abuser’s provocation

the victim feels ashamed for their behavior; even if they realize they wer provoked, they are ethically bound to acknowledge what they did was wrong (and the abuser will hold it against them for eternity)

the victim may be successfully gaslighted into doubting that their actions were provoked or warranted

if the victim attempts to act against their abuser’s interest in the future, their credibility is now damaged/doubtful

if the abuser can’t pull off looking squeaky-clean to others, tarnishing their target’s reputation makes outsiders less likely to come to their aid, excusing the abusive dynamic as ‘mutual.’

[summersxldier]

To who it may concern

I don’t even know how to begin this. I can’t get into my laura account (hollis-in-horrorland) so I am praying that by tagging this with the old usernames it reaches the right people.

This is overall just an apology. I’ve hurt so many people for no reason other than wanting to belong somewhere and to someone.

For a long time I was unmedicated, or diagnosed improperly and this isn’t an excuse but a realization of just how poorly i treated so many people. 

I’m really hoping I’m not overstepping boundaries or hurting anyone by trying to reach out and find you to give you this apology and if I am I’m so fucking sorry. I owe apologies though and I’m just really hoping it reaches the right people, I’m hoping more than anything else in this world it reaches two or three people specifically.

Steph (theuselesscarmilla), I’ve reached out before through someone else and while that apology was sincere I don’t think I’d actually understood the damage I did. And the worst part is I didn’t even mean half of what I said when I said it, it just felt so good to have someone so close when I felt so horrifyingly alone and I took advantage of that on the deepest level and it’s disgusting. I want nothing more than to take it all fucking back and I know I can’t and that’s not even what hurts the most. What kills me is knowing how much I hurt you, how I refused to see your side at the time because I was broken. I’m sick to my stomach thinking about it every single fucking time and I wish so bad that I got to say how sorry I was before it was too late. It was the worst thing I think I could have done to anyone. You were my best friend, and I hate that I sacrificed that just so that I could temporarily not feel so alone. I don’t know WHY you’ve been on my mind the last three days, I can only assume it’s due to me obsessively watching WandaVision remembering she was your favorite. But overall I hope you’re happy, I hope that life’s been better to you, I hope this finds you only if it won’t hurt you. You were everything I needed but I was never truly there for you. I was an awful friend to you. I’m sorry. Sarah (girlthehellup), our friendship was absolutely destroyed at my own inability to think for myself. I had this person that freshly entered my life tell me how to interpret the things you said, how you spoke to me. And literally for no other reason than my own inability to trust my gut. I had a habit of being most comfortable when people told me what to think and do, and I fell right back into that trap for someone who didn’t have good intentions for me whatsoever. I miss our friendship so much because it was the first friendship where I felt I was doing everything right for once, and then I let that asshole’s voice get into my head about every single thing. And I don’t mean for that to come off as me blaming her, I was the one that chose to listen despite knowing you better. I shouldn’t have done that, and if you see this I truly hope that you’re doing okay, that you have your own pet goat, and that you’ve left that shitty town by now.

Sam (elvirxarchive), You gave me the tough love that I absolutely needed and didn’t want to hear. Just like with Sarah I let someone else get in my head. You were going through hell and I just...I didn’t even try to consider that whenever we talked. I didn’t even try to understand or help or anything. I think I still have the drawing you did when I couldn’t move my legs and refused to go to the doctors. I’m sure its somewhere. I definitely still have the youtube video up of us playing prop hunt! I regret so much letting that stupid fucking snake in my head because you nor sarah deserved for me to just give up on trusting you. It wasn’t worth it, I hope you can forgive me for bailing and letting that happen. Letting someone gaslight and manipulate everything just so she could isolate me and make my entire life about her to be at her beck and call.

I miss all of you, and for whatever reason this has been on my mind so damn much. I don’t know if it’s a divine timing deal or what, but I’m hoping that I still have a chance to make it right, and to make amends because the universe knows you all deserve that more than fucking anything.

If, and this is a big if as I know that I fucked up, any of you would like to try and talk again, or get a less public apology my socials are below. I’m hoping people don’t take advantage of this. You can also use it to block me of course, I’d understand that as well. I’m just hoping for a chance to do right. Cammie/Camden (I go by Connor now tho) Tumblr/Twitter/TikTok: Lostboyfritz Discord: LostBoyFritz#0655

[evans-heaven]

A rant.

If after reading those two words up there you’re already gearing up to start an argument with me, I suggest you stop here. I’m not dealing with that bullshit tonight, or ever.

I'd just like to make it clear before I say anything else: I am not siding with anyone or trying to create drama. The purpose of this rant is for everyone who is a part of the tumblr fandom to see and read. Agree or disagree afterward, I don't care. But I need to get this off my chest.

I am just as upset about recent events as anyone else. Hell for a while I was even considering leaving the fandom. A lot of us didn’t expect Shawn to hang out with the type of people he did over the course of the past few days, (what, like 3? And they weren’t even consecutive) and a lot of us are upset/disappointed/hurt or whatever-like I said, myself included. But you know what? Its gone too far and its getting ridiculous.

Shawn Mendes is a 19 year old (kid, man, whatever you want to refer to him as) and the fact that he’s in the limelight doesn’t single him out from making bad decisions or being around the wrong people. And I get it, we don't want interaction with Hailey Baldwin or any of those other models to go beyond the party he attended. LA makes everyone make stupid decisions, but guess what? The only stupid decision Shawn made was going to that party.

There are people on this website making Shawn out to be the fucking Antichrist. Act like you don’t see it, act like you don’t know what I’m talking about, and believe what you want, but its the fucking truth. Maybe others aren’t taking it to that extent, but there are some people who are truly overreacting and making the situation bigger than it seems. I’m seeing people saying they ‘don’t know Shawn anymore’ but newsflash, despite all that’ s happened, you still do. Everything we see about him is in articles and interviews. And yes, he’s a good person and we know this. We all shouldn’t be dismissing who we know him to be because of a stupid fucking party that he went to with his team. Its not like he left them home to go to the party and grind on Hailey and Kendall and whoever the hell else. He took them with him and he had fun with them, like he would have at any other fucking party-because that's all it was-a party. The only proof we have of Shawn even being within Hailey’s eyesight is photo, that, as I’ve said in the past, looks like he just jumped in at the very last minute. Don’t act like he’s a dick and an asshole and a different person just because he got mixed up with the wrong people for a hot minute.

Shawn went to LA to record his third album. He found a beautiful studio in a secluded area where he could get inspiration. He did not go to LA to meet Hailey and hang out with her 24/7 and hook up with her and go to her party. So stop acting like that’s the only reason he was even in LA to begin with.

Am I mad Shawn allowed himself to be influenced? Yes. Am I going to make it seem like this entire thing is his fault? Am I going to make it seem like he is begging the tabloids to write about him? Am I going to make it seem like he’s forcing Hailey to use him? No. Not at all. Why? Because I have better things to do with my life than create my own demons and scrape the barrel for reasons to shit talk Shawn.

I said some harsh things to people in my chats about Shawn that I now regret. Those words were the product of anger and disappointment. But all of that went away when I reminded myself of the person I love. I love Shawn Mendes, the Canadian singer songwriter a musician, son, brother, occasional meme, and the guy who singlehandedly captured the hearts of 26.2 million people and counting. He’s not Shawn Mendes, guy who got involved with Hailey Baldwin, did some dumb teenager shit and is now in the lying ass tabloids, his name right next to hers. That is some dark shit, but that’s not the person he is. That’s just a sliver of the person we’re all afraid he’s going to become. Again, for the millionth time, myself included. But it has not happened yet and we shouldn’t talk as though it has.

Shawn is no longer in LA as you should know unless you’ve been under a rock with Patrick. You know what that means? It means he’s stunted the recording process. It means he realized what was happening and he got himself away from it as soon as he could. In case you didn’t notice, we’ve not gotten a single snap from Shawn in the studio for a while. That was because he was sucking up LA life and apparently, just maybe, sucked it up too much. So he left. He went back home to reconnect with his family and friends and to get back in touch with his roots. He got lost, and he needed to be reminded who he was. He took it upon himself to do so. No one forced him. And don’t tell me I'm reaching with that because ALL OF YOU are fucking reaching right now.

Go listen to Understand. I don’t care if you hate it, go listen to it. And crank his speech up extra loud, because some of you really need to hear it.

I maintain: I am not taking sides or trying to start drama. I’m mainly trying to end all of this that’s happening. I know we all feel disconnected from Shawn right now-I do too. But let’s not forget the reason we all love him.

There’s a lot more to this that I wanted to add but I’m tired af. You can gather what you want from this.

And not to be harsh or anything. but y’all like to complain about twitter stans, when in reality, during these past few days, you’ve been acting just as bad.

(this is unedited but idgaf)

<3

[ascendingdevillived456-blog]

Am I pessimistic or just real?

Most of the time I feel like I'm accidentally surviving my own life. Not to sound like I'm bitching, but I don't have any idea why I'm alive. I've been trying to keep my life simple, but found out that is a very complicated and arduous task. I, physically, am 30some years old, and deeply know my spirit or soul or life force or whatever you want to label it as is old as fuck. I'm a little odd, I've been told, but when you realize early in life that nobody anywhere knows what in the bluest bowels of Hell they are doing, you start making decisions that TRULY matter on a high, VERY HIGH, level of deep understanding. Not to sound like a preachy zealous god-freak, but preeeeetty fucking sure we live in and on the garden of eden as mentioned in that book written 2000ish years ago. You know the one, oh... it has that bearded guy in the middle east who was the Christian God's son, but was a Jewish king, a rabbi, a carpenter, and who led a gang of misfit trouble making hooligans that wanted to make life better for everyone and ended up dead and martyred for it and is currently the nearly-nude mascot for countless kitchens and bedrooms in thousands of American homes. Jesus, what is that guy's name.... anyways... that book. I'm not great with names, nor hiding sarcastic remarks or, OR blatant disregard for that which really does not matter.... uh, uh, uh, oh well. Back on topic now. Ready? On this "bestowed paradise" of Ours, there are a few shitty things that I just WILL NOT turn a blind eye to. I got this list, you see, that has the WORST possible inventions on it that the world could have done without. Number 1 is people... People are needy, greedy, dumb, panicky, self-centered, talking alien-ape hybrids that ruin and destroy almost every thing they put their grubby little peter-beaters on. We kill for thrill and pleasure alone or in packs and have this problem understanding what compassion and sharing equally are. I did two years of kindergarten, consecutively I will add, I know you are supposed to share and be nice or something like, oh I don't know, your behavior is checked, and you learn to play with others. And now number 2 (insert low-brow sophomoric butt-mud poop-shit-fart he he he coment here. I did, but think up your own.) my list. Borders. "We look different in skin color or you talk funny, uh oh, I no longer have trust other human being, stay away from my personal comfort zone. We'll be fair though and draw a line in the dirt in case you get the same vibe from me. Ok?" "Ok, good idea. Me and my family will kill you otherwise maybe, yeah, no, yeah. Stay away. Good job." Are you shitting literally me out of your dumb asses? Where is the logic and practicality in that. We let famine happen daily because, what? Noone knows what to do? Help your fucking human brothers and sisters, and the little ones if your heart has room, you apathy ridden bag of severed dicks. This is everyone's home right now, teach people who have no knowledge. There is no such thing as unteachable. Read between the lines here guys and dolls. Break time. Let me tell you that I'm not being a rude loud obnoxious Internet troll here, some of my rants and tangent ramblings have a twisted sense of humor and are meant to make you take a minute and chuckle at its finest absurdities. Oh my, but we can also be multitasking manimals and take some inventory of ourselves and the other manimals in our lives and have conversations with each other like we're meant to. Anyone over 27 will remember a time before everyone had a fucking idiot screen in their face at all times. (Heh, jokes to come.) What separated us from beasts is our ability to develope and utilize language. To any younger folks reading this: we used to sit at the same parties you all do now, and used our minds and speaking abilities to have a blast. I'm talking some wicked-awesome fucking ideas and fun times were had before the wedding of man and technology. Put the phone down, and step away from the screens. Please. Number thwee, sorry had, food in my...nevermind. money is next on my little list of things I see as wrong. If a person has a lot of money, they generally have a lot of stuff to make sure they're happy beyond worry. On the other end of the spectrum you have... anybody? Class! goddamn kids pay a-fucking-tention! You have a person with little to no money. I will spell this out for you and you know who: that person can't be happy beyond worry because, huh? Some people have been going ape shit on their own happy. Hmmm. Opposite of happy? Right, thanks Julien, smart guy you are, UNhappy. I hope I just made a Julien's mind blow apart. Lol. Now, monetary wealth is referred to as worth. If you gots like soooooo much worth like it's bananas and stuff, then your like totally worthwhile or worthy. Julien, let someone else try now, get your tongue out of my ass you brown-noser. If you ever want to be heart broken ask the poor kid at an elementary school how he feels after the first recess after Christmas break. I bet the word worthless crosses both your minds and you purse your lips and them real big empathy tears well up in your eyes. That kid is programed to think money and worth are the same thing, and will do what he or she can to make sure they ALWAYS HAVE money when they grow up otherwise everyone else will know they are worthless. Made myself cry a little bit there. Guns guns guns are 4 on this list which may make you laugh or at best pissed. In case you missed I'd be remissed if I didn't say you need to come up with your own rhymes and eloquence. Guns though are made for one thing; ending lives. Plain and simple, keep reading you left wingers and right wingers both. The eagle that is the U.S. of A needs you both to work together in order to soar. I have really upset myself with saying that, but it's out there now, ain't it? I feel everyone should have gun training and own a minimum of three guns open carry on a daily basis (we've already got them and they've seemed to dug their heels in so we might as well adapt with the fucking things.) A semi-auto rifle for hunting food, a shotgun for food/eminent defenses, and a pistol for protection of family and home. Common knowledge for everyone should be stated from an early age: IF YOU DRAW A FIREARM ON A FELLOW HUMAN BEING, BE SURE THAT YOU CAN MAKE THE CONCESSION THAT YOUR LIFE HOLDS MORE VALUE THAN THEIR'S THEIR POSSIBLE DEPENDENTS. DO NOT SHOOT TO MAIM. IF YOU DRAW, SHOOT, AND SHOOT TO KILL. REMEMBER THAT THEY ARE AWARE OF THIS TOO, AND IF YOU KILL THEM. YOU MUST LIVE WITH THE MEMORY OF YOU NEEDLESSLY TAKING A HUMAN LIFE BECAUSE YOU THOUGHT YOUR LIFE IS MORE IMPORTANT THEN THEIR'S. guns huh? 5. Prescription drugs. Pharmaceutical companies are not your friends. Especially in the world of psychological medication and pain management. I take aspirin on occasion, in my younger days I was always told I "needed something to help me." Help me do what? From the age of 11 until I was into my mid twenties I've been on damn near everything besides Haledol and Geodon. Thanks for being good dealers...I mean doctors and pharmacists. If you want to ask my diagnosis I will share, but let me say that I haven't taken nor would I recommend any person to give a child DRUGS. They are not safe because they are prescribed. Ritalin is molecularly identical to cocaine. No bullshit. They are training kids to be druggies later in life and parents and insurance companies pay for it. Act now and for $799.00 a month you won't k ow who you are, have bleeding of the teeth, lazy finger syndrome, backward stools, brain bleeding episodes, coma and death, but wait there's more. If that pill doesn't work simply tell us and we will give you some other stuff that will make sure your little boy grows tits like a woman and may have a compulsive gambling and or masturbatory addiction with possible suicidal ideation. At least he'll do better on his homework. Fast forward to early adulthood... "oh mummsy? Daddykins? Whatever do you mean I'm no longer on your insurance plans? I simply must have all these pills to be completely the best I can be." "Gee you can just acquisition the local the scumbags who clandestinely make and distribute the bad version of the same drug you've been on for your whole life, my golden child." And don't forget the ssri's. Google this shit kids: ssri's long-term effects on the mind and body. And finally number 6. Social networking. I've never had a Facebook, MySpace, twitter, or anything else. This site I found accidentally while bored and this is my first time posting anything anywhere. The negatively charged part of social media is shit like; omg I 8 a waffle cone with chokl8 chip cookie dough ice cream scoops. Kill yourself you fat cow. Oh boo hoo sad face.... So long cruelty of this place, I have been wearing my life inappropriately I've been informed. Good bye 14 years. Wrapping up at this point as I've said enough for now. I'll be that eccentric and hilariously unfiltered buddy of you get my styles here. Just need to vent sometimes. Help me with Tumblr if you're interested in that... I guess. Looking forward to seeing responses. It should be noted that I have the utmost respect for any religion but abhor the use of faith as a means to control and not gain a better relationship with divinity. I'm not a doctor or political ass hat. I'm a song writing free-spirited music loving real deal motherfucker. "And I didn't even graduate FROM fucking highschool." I.Q. is up a bit above above average. No, that is not a typo.