#obviously the sheer volume of youtube drama is evidence of this

[knxfesck]

It's very interesting to see anti-AI discourse among artists because it really proves that a large subsection of people think that art in any form other than The Noble Anime Fanart And Adjacent Work or The Tortured Suffering is simply not worth making and that artists that dont fit neatly into these categories are lazy, fake, underqualified etc. "AI is bad because it steals labor" and yet you just told someone to lower their commission prices because you don't think their art is good enough for them to be paid minimum wage. Hm.

[gobbochune]

I’m calling you out for not knowing how to call people out

I saw a callout post for a problematic user the other day that was probably the worst attempt defamation I’ve ever seen. And this made me mad not because I thought the target was wrongly accused, but because there were like seven people giving their testimony to the abuse and yet it was handled so poorly that I doubt anyone who saw it would even believe them. This is pretty dangerous considering the person in question was an actual pedophile grooming children for sex, and a quick google search told me that this person has an army of stans ripping the lack of significant evidence apart in order to entrap new victims. Calling out the blatant inconsistencies in testimonies is a tactic that abusers use to separate their victims from the people who want to help them. Anyone who has had a run-in with a serial pedophile can tell you that they usually have a methods to make people trust them over numerous allegations. Its not enough to throw a rock at their house, at its worst, that rock can even help the abuser gain a victim’s sympathy. 

So I’d like to take this moment to explain how to properly spread information about a potentially dangerous person. Though, I’d like to make this very clear: I’m not saying this as someone whose done a lot of these as if its some kind of art form. I’m doing this from the perspective of someone who has seen the scum of the earth and know how they ensnare people, and hope to be able to spread awareness to potential victims. 

1. The Abuser

I feel like it is a no brainer to actually mention who the abuser is, but apparently thats difficult for some people to wrap their heads around. So often I will see purposeful misspellings or code names in callout posts to avoid causing drama. This is stupid for two reasons: Firstly, if it is at the point where you feel a callout post needs to be made for people’s safety, fandom drama should no longer be an issue. Secondly, if you don’t make it clear who it is you’re warning people about, how the fuck are they actually supposed to avoid them? Like, do you expect a 12 year old who is currently being gaslit by a pedophile to message you like ‘Hey, is @lle/////gory!!!334 Gregory? That kinda looked like his username but I couldn’t tell.’ Of course they’re not. They’re going to ask the person who is grooming them, who will either say ‘lol nah’ or make up a sob story as to why they’re being defamed. Grow a pair and use their names. 

It is very likely that the abuser will have more then one account, you’ll probably need to list all of them that you’re aware of, but know that the minute they see a post with their current name on it they’re probably going to change it. So, mention very clearly who they are, what circles they can be found in, and how they amassed enough popularity to trap victims in the first place. 

This callout post that I saw, which I will now be using as a reference for what not to do, managed to list the abuser’s various names but pretty much nothing else about them. All it said was that they were apparently the origin of some meme, but didn’t even explicitly say what the meme was so I had no idea if I even knew this person or not. I didn’t know if they were a fandom blog, an art blog, a social justice blog, a youtuber, the only context I could draw was from the fandom-specific usernames of their victims. If they changed their name, which they probably did right away, I would have no way of telling who this person was. 

Include screenshots of any of their posts with a lot of notes and listing this as identification for who they are. Also explicitly mention what circles they can be found in, any projects they were involved with, and any other iconography that can be associated with them. However, there is something I’d like to stress:

Do not include leaked personal information such as home address, workplace, or emails. It is not your authority to broadcast this information online. A callout post is not a legal testimony, merely a warning to other internet users within a community. If alerting the authorities is necessary, it is a different process to be handled by the victims and their supporters. Do not attempt to intervene through a social media. 

If you don’t want to receive hate from an army of stans thats understandable, which is why many people often will make a blog where victims can anonymously offer evidence. In fact, I suggest doing this as a first resort as it is easier to search “_____ problematic” into Tumblr then it is to scour a personal blog for mention of the abuser. This will also provide a handy archive for the allegations, and help keep up with the abuser’s activity. However, for legitimacy’s sake, I suggest that the mod’s identities of these blogs be clear. This leads us to my next point:

2. The Evidence

This is actually my primary reason for wanting to make this. The stuff mentioned above delegitimises accusations but isn’t really dangerous the same way a shoddy presentation of evidence can be. Someone who has been thoroughly brainwashed by the abuse cycle will look for any reason to continue a relationship with their abuser. They’ve likely been isolated from their friends, groomed to worship or fear their abuser, and are so drained from a volatile relationship that they don’t have the mental energy to waste on doubt. It takes a lot of strength to end even a good relationship, thats why abusers try to keep their victims drained and confused. They make them think it is easier to continue being abused then try to untangle the lies and manipulation. 

That is why you need to be explicit, blunt, and vocal about what the abuser has done. Put the most serious and unforgivable accusations at near top of your post in clear view. Try not to rely too heavily on accusations that dont have concrete evidence, as the abuser has probably already explained away anything you don’t have in writing. 

I am going to once again revisit the terrible callout post from before. The first thing they did was the usual attention grabbing intro with the paragraph pretending to tell us who this person is was to list a bunch of testimonies from various users.

Now, testimonies don’t really work over tumblr in a traditional sense. In a courtroom a testimony is given under oath, all the words spoken must be presumed to be true because the speaker understands that lying is a federal offence. Obviously the internet is not like this, and there is nothing stopping someone with a blog from lying. Not to mention, if they had been in the abuser’s circle in the past but is now flinging accusations, it is safe to say they didn’t leave on the best of terms. Abusers are famously unable to take responsibility for their relationships falling apart, odds are everyone in the abuser’s circle convinces their latest victim that all previous victims were in the wrong. 

I spoke with a friend who briefly joined the public discord of a known abuser to see what it was like, and showed me the rules specifically prohibiting anyone on the server to discuss allegations towards the mods. There was even a list of names that the bot would automatically block if you tried to type them in the chat log, and the mods had this witch hunt mentality where if they found evidence of you conversing with blacklisted users outside the discord, you would be banned and your name would be added to the list. It is very likely that the act of reading a testimony and asking about it could place a victim in danger. 

However, there is value to a testimony online if there are more then one. Testimonies are really only effective if there are an abundance of them, so many that you don’t even have to read one, the sheer volume of people speaking out against the abuser is suspicious enough on its own. Again, the presence of a blog that allows anonymous asks or submissions would be the ideal platform to publish testimonies.

Back at the terrible callout post, underneath the list of testimonies they had some bullet points of direct evidence that they linked directly back to the abusers blog. You should not do this. I cannot believe there are people who do not realise it is largely worthless to use posts that the abuser still has access to as a source. 

If you have even a remotely functional following anywhere on the internet you have probably said something stupid that bit you in the ass before. Your immediate reaction was probably to defend yourself, and when that failed, you go back and delete the post. Abusers can do the same thing, or, even more insidious, edit the post to say something else. 

“_____ fetishises black women! here is the link!” can originally have linked to something explicit but can easily be changed to “I think black women are beautiful and deserve our support <3 <3″ to make the writer of the callout post look stupid or overzealous. 

Screenshots are your friends. Take screenshots of the concerning behaviour and either include them in the post or link to a photo sharing archive. There’s really not much to explain about this. I cannot believe someone thought linking back to the original url would work. 

Another thing I cannot believe about that terrible callout post was that half of the accusations linked to posts of people repeating rumours they’ve heard. 

This is...dumb. This is unsalvageable. Don’t to this. It will never count and you will look like an idiot. 

However that terrible awful worthless callout post did have SOME credible evidence, to shit that didn’t matter at all, which leads us to our last point. 

3. The Abuse

Now this part is hard to discuss as most people seem to think abuse is a subjective term. This is not the case. 

While abuse can take shape in an infinite number of ways, not all stuff that pisses you off counts as abuse. Sometimes a jerk is just a jerk. Now you can hate a jerk as much as you want- they probably deserve it, but don’t try to sell someone just being a generally awful person as abuse.  

The terrible awful no good callout post tried to back up claims of criminal activity by saying the abuser cares more about Doctor Who than Flint Michigan. 

This is not abuse. Why would anyone think this is abuse. 

Now, if I have a blog devoted to a fandom I’m probably not going to post stuff about Flint Michigan to that blog. As stated above, I had no idea who this person was. For all I know they could have been exclusively a fanblog for Doctor Who. Sometimes there are just spaces that are kept away from serious real world issues and that in itself is not a crime. 

Trying to equate something like that to an act of sexual assault only makes it easier to dismiss your legitimate concerns by saying: ‘they’re just hating on me for being cringy’

There are millions of reasons why someone might not want to keep up with real world social activism on their blog, and those are a million reasons the abuser will use to invalidate your legitimacy. 

But hey, if that sort of thing annoys you, I totally get that. Go ahead and block this person, campaign against them, blacklist their stuff, encourage your friends to do the same. I’ve blocked people for less, just dont call it abuse. 

Now there is actual fan content that is means for legitimate concern. If the person consistently praises or creates content of abusive scenarios, its a red flag. If a person consistently defends incest or pedophilia, its a red flag. If a person bullies someone else for being ‘triggered’ over Flint Michigan, its a red fucking flag. 

The problem isn’t the art or the content or the blog type, but the mentality behind those things. Liking Doctor who isnt a problem. Liking the idea of Doctor Who having sex with his own daughter is. Avoiding current events isnt a problem. Trying to bully activists into silence is. You need to include that context to be taken seriously. 

Chat logs are your friend. Get the permission of victims to post, anonymously or otherwise, chatlogs of concerning behaviour. Try to focus on patterns to show a potential victim that the tactics used to insnare them have been used on other people before. Highlight instances of an abuser being sweet, (The Honeymoon Phase) as well as how quickly they devolve into abuse. 

In Conclusion

I’ve probably turned a lot of people off with this big dumb rant about something as petty as a callout post, and to those people I say: Good. If you’ve never been in a position to need this kind of thing then that is good. I’m not being facetious here, or implying you don’t know what you’re talking about just because you disagree with me, a callout post is really a last ditch effort to warn others that someone can construct in the aftermath of their ordeal. Pretty much everything I’ve mentioned relies on the willingness for victims to come forward, which I totally understand if they dont want to.

It is not my intention to bully others into sharing traumatic memories over the internet, but rather to make sure that anyone who does speak out wont become a target for harassment. At the end of the day, these are just posts floating around on tumblr. All you can ever hope is for someone to see your warning and stay away from the person who hurt you. Perhaps even draw the attention of other victims and help them process what has happened to them. 

But baseless claims and petty squabbles aren’t how you do that. Abuse should be taken seriously, and there is a large difference between someone Problematic and an actual Abuser.