#lately all i see on the dash is discourse and people arguing back to antis and whilst i completely understand it

[hephaestn]

i miss hg week so much

[babygirlthor]

i think i joined this fandom at literally the worst possible time.

this post has been a long time coming but i am currently irritated enough to actually post it so here we go

(under the cut because this just got WAY too long)

personally i'm here for the art, the angsty headcanons, the jokes and fic recs... but the negativity continues to run rampant. i want to see different ideas and interpretations but... it's like there isnt even room for that anymore.

being in fandom has always been a very strange experience for me because i don’t enjoy conflict. i don't mind that other people like it, but for me, it makes me feel sick to my stomach and if i can't fix it i have to avoid it. there always seems to be parts of fandom that love to argue, but it's usually not too difficult to sort through it all and find some people i enjoy interacting with. and i'd just find my little corner and stick to that. but lately... that doesn't seem possible.

and the few of the more chill areas of the fandom (that i've come across) revolve around shipping. which still has the usual discourse, don't get me wrong, but they also seem to stay in their pockets of people and ignore most of the other kinds of drama.

unfortunately for me, i dont have the desire to interact with shipping most of the time. so i'm stuck in this weird limbo that... is too long of a detour for this post so i'll leave it at that.

at this point i see so many conversations, even light hearted meta posts quickly turn to arguments. actual conversations and discussions are a rarity. people spend more time making fun of each other than actually discussing the material. the different 'sides' of the fandom seem to get further and further away and it seems like sharing a differing opinion is impossible. I know plenty of people love to argue but like.... first of all- okay, I really don’t care (tbch I didn’t even finish watching the show because it wasn't my thing) and i dont care to see it.

personally I think some of the concepts from the show are neat- even though i don't have a desire to finish watching it at this time- and applied to fic could be fun. but even that has become such a divisive topic.

putting that aside, I get that people are upset about the show. but sometimes i see posts from both so-called 'anti' and 'positive' sides of the fandom mocking each other. and at this point? what is this achieving?

~and there's just too much to rant about in one post so i'll just zero in on one very specific type of post that is currently bothering me~

i really hate to see people making fun of each other, especially behind their backs. (i want to point out: there's a huge different between 'this hc makes no sense and here's why i think it's wrong' and 'wow look at what these idiots think'. i'm not talking about the first one or general discourse rn, which is a whole other topic)

if one feels the need to repost something because they know OP wouldn't want to see it on their post... shouldn't that make one stop and think for a moment? there's zero constructive purpose for mocking someone, especially on a public platform where they could see it.

vagueposting doesn't always bother me, but sometimes i think... if you're really dying to talk about this, wouldn't it be more fitting as a private conversation?

and every time a post like that come across my dash, it makes me angry and uncomfortable and it's not even about *me* or something i relate to. why does one feel the need to do that? why do i have to see posts like this every week? and why is it encouraged and perpetuated as so many chime in with agreements? i guess it might feel cathartic in the moment, but is it really going to make anyone feel better? is it really worth it to push someone else down just for a few seconds of amusement?

and if something upsets you i get making your own meta (or rant) post about it. there's plenty of hc that upset me as well. but again, there is a HUGE difference from that and making a post, not about the actual topic and hoping for a discussion, but purely with the intent to mock someone.

and you know the worst part? a lot of the ones i see making these posts are the same people that complained about 'toxic positivity' fans mocking the fans that didn't like the show. and now they're turning around and acting the exact same way.

this is just my viewpoint and i don't expect anyone to agree with me on any of these points. and maybe there's some nuance to these posts i'm missing out on or i'm making this into a bigger deal than it is, but at this point intent is pretty much irrelevant (for me) because this continues to taint my experiences with the fandom.

[blackwoolncrown]

I literally have to keep myself from hating people so much when shit like that goes down, I don’t mind that they disagree, I mind that I explicitly state precisely what kind of person I’m talking about in my posts and a bunch of asshats always make pointless reaches to project whatever their prefab argument is on my post so they can be a dick. I am not talking about people who just ‘disagree’ with SJ posts. I’m talking about people whose blogs are devoid of actual analysis, experience or intellectual merit who literally just go around reblogging SJ posts that have been passed down through their shitty little friends so they can just go ‘OP is an idiot/lol SJWs are so lame/wow this post gave me cancer’

There are so many people who do just that and only that. They might specifically be anti-feminism, anti-...people-caring-about-racism, or whatever, or just anti-SJ in general, but the thing is they have NO actual investment in the improvement of relationships between humans. They have NO actual investment in actually bettering understanding between two parties. All they want to do is laugh at people they don’t agree with, and that’s easiest to do by belittling their point and positioning themselves as if every SJ argument is ~soooo ridiculous~. Meanwhile, their entire blog is 90% reblogs with very little original content, because without a fall boy, they have nothing funny to say. Without anyone to kick, they don’t have an argument to stand on. Interestingly enough, since the once-a-year-flood-of-douchebags has flown in to my mentions, I’ve been playing with what they sound like these days and sadly they’re exactly the same. Any argument that touches on a fact of intersectional bigotry that they, personally, have never experienced, gets immediately thrown out as ludicrous. Words fail me when I attempt to describe just how podunk and uneducated it looks for a person to go WELL THAT SURE IS DUMB when it’s simply clear that it’s *new* to them. These are adults whose first reaction to something they don’t understand is THIS IS STUPID instead of just “I don’t get it”. Also, not surprised at the amount of men still using the 4chanian logical fallacy where they go ‘oh you’re mad now haha I win’. Someone yesterday used that one and like, for those who haven’t dealt with it, it’s basically them taking the position that a discussion online is a Battle Of No Feelings and the first person to show emotion is the loser.

So, not only is that not what arguments or debates are about, but that’s also always 100% a front on their part. For instance, a guy yesterday landed on my dash after his lengthy back and forth with a mutual of mine about how, according to him, protesters in the streets deserved to get hit by his car because they were blocking traffic.

For the record, he admitted that he had never been stuck in traffic due to a protest. For the record, as far as I can remember on her behalf, both myself and my mutual have either been in traffic that simply detoured from a protest (Wow! You mean you don’t HAVE to run people over?), and I have been in protests where traffic was being directed around.

So first of all the entire situation his angry argument was based on was purely hypothetical. Second of all his understanding of how traffic and protests interact is uneducated because he’s either never actually been in one,driven up to one, or seen how traffic moves around them, and instead of ASKING what happens, this guy clearly just sat up in his head concocting a fantasy of driving up to one and being late for work, one that filled him with so much anger that he decided to write and DEFEND why he figured protesters deserved to get hurt and or die. But his tactic, once I dealt with him, was ‘haha ur mad’. And he’s not? Being so frustrated by imaginary traffic that you advocate vehicular homicide is not a neutral position. But this comes down to men being awful. They really honestly feel that their misanthropy is neutral. Hate is, I regret to inform you all, a feeling. And it’s hate and confusion that motivates people to constantly leech on to arguments aimed at bettering the world and constantly derailing them with pedantry, apathy, and just plain chuckefuck bullshittery. I don’t reblog even most of where my posts end up, but it’s been exhausting seeing how many people specifically dance around my point in order to build a nice strawman, when they could have just as easily not said anything if they didn’t agree. There’s nothing wrong with just letting someone be ‘wrong’ in your opinion if it’s not literally something that endangers people. People like this think they are doing something very noble by vigilantly attacking every slightly-different-and-more-empathetic-than-theirs stance on tumblr dot com, but the true reality is that it is an addiction. 

Arguing with people on the internet feels very good- so good that people enjoy watching it. Any time I do bother getting into discourse, someone ALWAYS sends me a congratulatory ask specifically talking about how GOOD they feel seeing it. It’s vicarious righteous anger. And it’s the same way those asshats feel, loading their blogs up with snarky one-line disses at the end of a feminist post they don’t like, or an anti-conservative post they don’t like, or a post about toxic masculinity they don’t like. They didn’t have anything to say, but it feels good to be able to shoot another arrow into your enemy, doesn’t it? And people are chasing that feeling. That’s why I don’t like when I get compliments on discourse, and that’s why people will specifically twist my VERY simple fucking points in order to get a jab in. It’s sad, it’s really, really sad.