#predstrogen drama

[house-of-musez]

I rarely share my thoughts online, for a variety of reasons, but i feel like in lieu of absolutely no recent events, I should share a writing rule I know of.

It's called the 'rule of imitation' (I don't know if that's what it's actually called, it's just what I know it as). It appears a lot in children's cartoons, and oftentimes we don't even notice it's there since it's sort of a behind the scenes thing.

The idea is simple: You can't show something bad if a small child could see it and reasonably imitate it. Thus, it's fine for a character to be hit by a falling anvil, but not by a friend swinging a baseball bat. It's fine for a character to be shot out of a canon, but not to be shot with a gun.

A child isn't going to have access to a canon or an anvil, but they *could* have access to a baseball bat from the shed, or a gun from dad's bedside table. Thus, the more 'mundane' and less dangerous actions are actually *more* harmful to display, as they could lead to children doing those things and actually hurting someone.

I think this rule of imitation applies to a lot of other things too, mainly: Internet threats.

If someone says they hope another person gets stung by a thousand bees after falling in a vat of radioactive honey, you have to consider that you can't imitate that. It's not a threat because it is very clearly not an event or action that would be able to be replicated in the real world.

If someone says they hope another person dies a painful death involving a car that's covered in hammers that explodes a few times, causing hammers to fly everywhere, you have to consider that you can't imitate that. It's not a threat because it is obvious that no one would be able to do that in the real world, and thus remains in the realm of fiction.

Neither of those are death threats since the action itself is so wild and improbable that it is clear it is not meant to be a serious call to action. What *would* be a serious call to action is someone saying that they hope all [insert slur here] get SAed and stabbed, since that is an entirely possible and probable action for someone to do. *That's* a death threat.

Reporting someone for that should be taken seriously, as it is a genuine call for someone's death. Pursuing legal action towards one of my own, entirely made up examples (radioactive bees, car covered in hammers) would be ridiculous, since anyone with common sense could tell that it's not really a threat.

Of course, i feel the need to make sure @photomatt knows that this is in no way related to predstrogen, because I worry that if they assume that this *is* a jab at them I may get suspended, as that is apparently a valid response in Matt Mullenweg's eyes. Again, just a random thought that popped into my head and i felt the need to share with the good people of Tumblr, and nothing more.

[carhammerexplosionmatt]

hello everyone!! this is a burner account to share this:

as photomatt deletes everything, me and a few others are trying our best to compile screenshots to spread the word of the situation. most of the screenshots in the dropbox feature a comment by one of our helpers containing context. if you have any screenshots you'd like to add, please dm me. there is a high chance this account will get banned, so please save this dropbox and the screenshots included and continue to spread the word.

thank you!!

edit: thank you to all the people sharing and reblogging this! please note that this dropbox is being constantly updated (as i type this, files are being processed) so be sure to check in frequently for updates.

edit 2: as this gets more popular, i'm getting more and more worried about the probability of getting banned. to send me screenshots, please feel free to add me on discord (@mit_skies). i'll try to keep everyone updated on there + it'll be easier for me to see and document screenshots.

[literal-bot-account]

y'know, back when I used Reddit, if you found some hateful content of any sort, it wasn't that hard to report it. You clicked the "Report" button, selected "Hateful Content" out of the wide variety of options available, and then clicked the "Submit" button. I did this pretty often, because some of the communities I was in attracted rather unsavory characters as a side effect.

Do you know what happened next? Next, I received an automated message that said basically "Hey, thanks for reporting This Content (link to reported content). We've received your report and will review it shortly." Usually, a day or two later, you'd receive another message in your inbox saying "Thanks again for reporting. We found this content in violation of our TOS and have removed it." Sure enough, if you followed the link back to whatever you reported, it would be gone.

It was that easy. No explaining yourself, no explaining yourself again but differently, no redirect to a new tab, you didn't even need to know the specifics of what did or didn't violate TOS. No matter what happened, they would write back and tell you what was going on. If the reported content didn't violate TOS, they would tell you.

When I hopped over here full-time, I continued that reporting habit, thinking it'd be largely the same experience. I have had complete and utter radio silence from @staff on every single report I've ever filed. Have I been making a difference? Is my voice being considered? Who knows! But it certainly hasn't felt like it so far.

At least now I know those reports were going straight into the garbage, rather than just having to wonder.

[icyplatinum]

So let me get this right.

A trans woman was harassed constantly for a while from what I heard were mostly transphobes and transmisogynists.

Said trans woman and multiple other people reported that harassment to tumblr staff. Tumblr staff proceeds to ignore said reports. Trans woman lashes out at staff as they’ve done nothing to mitigate the harassment she’s facing on their platform.

Tumblr CEO personally gets involved to get her account nuked because she made an obviously non-serious post about wishing that said CEO would die in an exploding hammer car accident.

Tumblr CEO then says that there is no transmisogyny at Tumblr staff because he himself doesn’t think it’s transphobic. He then proceeds to not acknowledge that the trans woman who‘s account he nuked was harassed and that Tumblr staff simply allowed it to happen due to the fact that she was a trans woman. Oh he also either already contacted the FBI & police to investigate said trans woman or threatened to despite what she said not being an actual death threat in the slightest.

The trans woman‘s backup account get‘s nuked as well despite Tumblr staff never really banning alt accounts for trolls or harassers showing a clear double standard again and showing that this seems to be a personal thing for the CEO.

CEO then continued having a meltdown talking about how good and trans-inclusive the totally not transmisogynistic staff members are and how some of them are trans themselves while continuing to not address the actual issue at all.

CEO then says nighty night while still having not addressed the actual issue at hand.

I think I got most of that right but I haven’t known of Predstrogen before this drama so most of the info is not from direct sources (except the CEO meltdown he did that all *very* publicly). If I‘m wrong on any point here please correct me.

[dreeming-royalty]

Coward got kung-pow-penis'd and turned off reblogs lmao. Fucking loser.

[bd82dh82bd]

by listing predstrogens sideblogs, matt is EXPOSING INFORMATION THAT IS ONLY VISIBLE AT AN ADMINISTRATOR LEVEL. under regular circumstances, you CANT see another users sideblogs. as per TUMBLRS PRIVACY POLICY. violating this is tantamount to a data breach like sharing someones password. a hacker might stuff your credentials and publish the names of your sideblogs to a pastebin — but this is a high-profile ceo digging into the database of his website to pull out confidential data and PUBLICALLY ANNOUNCE IT to slander someone for a personal vendetta. this would be a clear violation of privacy laws in my country and hes out of his mind

[theoretically-questionable]

PSA - Things You Cannot Say On Tumblr

Hi, I'm a tumblr user. Did you know that it's illegal to say "i hope photomatt dies forever" on tumblr?

It's illegal! It's a TOS violation. It's one of the only sentences that you're not allowed to say.

It was ok for me to say it right then, because I'm not actually saying it, I'm just letting you know it's illegal to say. Kind of like a public service. I'm letting you know, so that you don't accidentally go out and say something like that.

But what's interesting is that while it's very illegal to say "I hope photomatt dies forever a painful death" (that's illegal, extremely illegal, very very illegal), it's not illegal to say "involving a car covered in hammers that explodes" - because that's it's own sentence!

It's an incomplete sentence, sure, but it may have nothing to do with any previous sentence before it. So, that's perfectly fine. Perfectly fine.

However, I also found out that it's incredibly illegal to go on tumblr and directly criticise photomatt for tumbling ass-first into an overtly transmisogynistic mass-reporting harassment incident and deciding to side with the harassers. INSANELY ILLEGAL! Ridiculously, recklessly, insanely illegal!

It is yet more illegal to post a series of images involving cars and hammers:

ILLEGAL! They will come to your blog in the middle of the night an ban you for life. Extremely against the law.

Uh, one thing that is still technically legal to do is post a string of emojis related to cars, hammers, and explosions in the tags of your post.

Yes, this is an extended bit based on the WKUK 'I want to kill the president" sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg3_kUaYFJA

[thebwarch]

Gee whiz I sure love having an account on one of the most embarrassing sites on the internet. First the half-hearted porn ban, which still doesn't make any goddamn sense and is so embarrassing and cruel, (Literally you fucked up artists and artist incomes for nothing, morons) then months of flagging sfw posts as nsfw, then trans people seemingly getting marked as nsfw when not, then the CEO is banning a transwoman instead of heeding her reports she's getting mass reported and stalked.

You can permaban someone for an unfortunate slip but can't ban the nazis and terfs?

Also fyi it's fucking disturbing to say someone could call themselves a nazi and be fine. What the actual fuck is wrong with you. Just working on being Elon Musk 2.0. I bet you idolize him too don't you.

Cohost, the website, is a million times better than this site and I can't recommend it enough. They have sane nsfw filters and a very similar but even better featureset to tumblr. Oh and the staff are nice people and queer people are directly on staff. No corporate bullshit unlike this place.

https://cohost.org/rc/welcome

Can't get over the nsfw ban, especially the terms of it. Someone can talk about wanting to be smoten in incredibly nsfw text posts but a transwoman can't post breasts *or apparently even sfw timeline* without getting banned.

This isn't a transwoman causing a scuffle, this is your leadership sucking for goddamn years.

Literally just call us faggots and get it over with, you don't fucking support the LGBT community if you don't support nsfw. Corporate rainbow icon ass bullshit. Fuck you.

[disteal]

Photomatt reblogging an Ao3 incest writers reply where she calls someone ‘brainless’ for thinking calling the cops over hammercar is unreasonable and violent? An interesting turn for him

[fvck-you-bitch]

He deleted this too lmfao

[rude-doggy]

Car-Hammer: In Defence of a Death Threat

Hey everyone, I fell down a rabbithole after the banning of predstrogen and I had a humor class I needed to do a presentation for a humor class. it's an analysis of the ban and the reactions to it. I figured I should post it because it really opened my eyes to the humor here on tumblr and how it was weaponized. Also I spent hella time on it.

1. Thesis

In this presentation, I am going to analyze the ban of a popular Tumblr user, Predstrogen. Through this analysis, I’ll be able to shed light on the style of humor that is unique to the website, the way that style of humor keeps communities on Tumblr safe, and the way that Tumblr’s CEO tried and failed to silence that humor by villainizing it.

That was a mouthful; now let me explain.

2. Predstrogren

Predstrogen is the username of a blogger by the name of Rita.

A few weeks ago, she posted a transition timeline, a style of post coined by trans people to show their gender transformation progress.

The post was marked as explicit, and Rita was banned.

The misidentification of posts by trans people as sexual content is actually a common occurrence on social media sites (Haimson 5-6),

but it is especially bad on Tumblr, which is ironic considering that it has actively branded itself as the queerest place on the internet. (tumblr dot com the website and app [tumblr]).

3. Matt Mullenweg

Predstrogen was a very popular blog, and this blatant example of discrimination made people frustrated. One user even reached out to the CEO of Tumblr, Matt Mullenweg, to ask him about the ban.

He made a lot of different points in his response, but most importantly in our case, he claimed that the reason Progesterone was banned was because she made threats against Tumblr staff.

Tumblr users were not happy with this response, and one of them asked for an example of a threat. Mullenweg obliged, and posted this:

4. The Threat

This did not satisfy the Tumblr audience. Mullenweg was mocked into oblivion.

But,

He is correct. This is technically a death threat. So why didn’t Tumblr users see it that way?

5. Transgender People and Humor on Tumblr

In Kahente gah-han-de Horn-Miller’s essay “IO STER IS” (yo-ster-is), she discusses the ways that First Peoples use humor.

Obviously, there is a wide gap between the plight of First Peoples and the plight of trans Tumblr users, but many of her points ring true in both cases.

Horn-Miller states that, due to the difference in world views between people groups in First Peoples humor, “What may appear to be funny to some may not be funny at all to others.” (Horn-Miller 22) This is also true for Tumblr’s trans community. The brand of humor in Rita’s “threat” is obvious to anyone who is engaged with the community, but may be incomprehensible to an “untrained eye.”

Horn-Miller also states that the humor of First Peoples is pointed, aiming to “critique, to probe the limits of [their] values and to suggest new possibilities.” (Horn-Miller 40)

This is exactly what Rita was trying to do with her “death threat.” In fact, Rita made a comment underneath the original post clarifying this:

The lack of punctuation is another Tumblr tone indication that this is a sarcastic comment. With this, Rita is clarifying that her joke was a sort of litmus test, a critique of Tumblr’s moderation standards. She was trying to see how long it would take for Tumblr to crack down on her for a joke, as the website was actively dragging its feet moderating real bad actor elements like TERFs. This brings me to my second point…

6. Keep Yourself Safe

Tumblr’s weak moderation policy has hurt trans people, but it has also bolstered anti-trans sentiment. A large community of TERF’s [Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists] thrive on the site without much moderation to keep them away. (Felts 57-58, Hairedtin 68) This has obviously generated backlash.

Take this post, which went viral shortly after Rita’s ban, for example.

This post may look simplistic, even crass, on the surface, but dismissing it as such would do it a disservice.

In her essay, “Teasing, Teaching, Tolerating”, Kristina Fagan, like Horn-Miller, examines humor in the First Peoples communities. Once again, these are vastly different communities, but certain concepts carry over. Fagan claims that the humor that First Peoples cultivate usually has multiple lessons embedded within it. It is rare, she claims, that their humor simply “demonstrates unsuitable behavior.” Instead, it explores “troublesome or contradictory areas of life.” (Fagan 31)

By examining this post through a similar lens, we can see that the humor is not simply demonstrating the unsuitable behavior of telling someone to end their life, but is instead exploring the contradictions inherent to our transphobic world.

Why is it okay for transphobes to tell trans people to kill themselves by denying their identity or their access to medical care or access to their communities [lesson 1], but it isn’t okay to tell transphobes to do the same thing [lesson 2]?

7. Keep Yourself Safe - 2

These aren’t the only lessons, though.

Let’s examine a comment made on this post by another user.

In chapter 8 of his book Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humor, Michael Billig comments on the paradoxical quality of humor as both social and anti-social. Humor can bring people together, and also maintain social order via exclusion. (Billig 22)

The transgender community understands the context of this joke, and thus finds it funny. Moreover, they can find community within this joke, knowing that everyone who finds it funny knows these same truths. The “cishet” elements, not understanding this truth, take issue with this post. Thus, they are effectively marked and driven away by what appears to them as “blatant terrorism.” In this way, the insular community can keep itself safe from outside elements that would threaten them while also outwardly mocking those elements, a defence that is necessitated by the lack of competent moderation.

8. Poor Little Mullenweg

In an attempt to portray himself as a victim, Mullenweg villainized Rita by posting her joke and deliberately misinterpreting it.

In this way, he engaged in unlaughter, a term coined by Billig in his essay. Unlaughter, Billig says, can be “itself a rhetorical presence, speaking volumes of criticism,” effectively silencing laughter. (Billig 16)

Unfortunately, this silencing attempt failed.

Billig explains, “Just as joke-tellers cannot guarantee themselves a reaction of laughter… unlaughter, cannot guarantee to silence the laughter of others… Unlaughter is a favourite target for the laughter of ridicule.” (Billig 17)

In this case, the unlaughter failed because of the context surrounding Mullenweg.

9. Poor Little Mullenweg - 2

In her essay “Comedian Mike Ward v. The Quebec Human Rights Commission”, Christelle Pare examines a defamation case against comedian Mike Ward, brought on by his jokes about a young disabled boy, Jeremy Gabriel. In Ward’s set, he goes as far as joking about drowning Gabriel.

Pare argues Ward’s case, claiming that his jokes were permissible in the context of his “dark humor standup” and that he never intended to harm Gabriel. (Pare, 122)

Rita’s defenders are engaging in a similar argument, claiming that her joke was permissible in the context of “Tumblr” humor (which I have just defined) and that she obviously had no intention to harm Mullenweg.

More importantly, the context that surrounds Rita’s joke is not one of discrimination. Mullenweg is not a disabled child; he is the millionaire CEO of Tumblr. He is not a sympathetic victim.

10. Poor Little Mullenweg - 3

Still, Mullenweg does not falter. Billig claims that “ridicule can be more hurtful than hatred.” (Billeg 19)

Mullenweg, unable to handle his ridicule, is racing towards hatred. In an attempt to weasel out from under the laughter of the Tumblr community, he has refused to engage in the criticism levied against him.

Instead, he is doubling down. So far, he’s made multiple posts smearing Rita, posted her private usernames in an attempt to shame her, and mocked other users for supporting her.

11. What Now?

Interestingly enough, a group of trans Tumblr staff made a post condemning the actions of their boss and CEO, calling them “unwarranted and harmful.” They also plainly state that the car-hammer post quote “does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence.” They are in on the joke. They understand what the transgender community has gone through. They end by stating their commitment to preventing harassment and encouraging trans expression on the site. (Staff)

Predstrogen’s ban was unwarranted and harmful, yes, but it was really just a small symptom of a larger system that classifies all forms of trans expression as sexual. By deliberately misinterpreting the humor that transgender communities on Tumblr cultivate and use to keep themselves safe, Mullenweg villainized a trans woman and was made a laughingstock.

By turning himself into a figure of ridicule, Tumblr users who were otherwise unsympathetic to Rita’s cause were galvanized. This is a bitter-sweet point for Rita, who spoke about her experience on another social media site. (clownkiwi) She’s glad that light is being shed on this situation, but is disgruntled that focus is squarely on Mullenweg and not the bigger issue of trans censorship on Tumblr and the internet at large. If people really cared about the censorship that trans women go through on social media sites, she claims, they would have spoken up sooner.

Even after all this, it’s still not about trans women. It’s about the cis guy in power.

[leadergorilla]

From photomatt's response.

This is a lie and corporate speak.

Reddit a few years ago fully banned transphobia and subs dedicated to transphobic rhetoric. Yes, reddit of all places. The dude-bro website where you can post about black people being naturally violent and inferior to r/offmychest and receive 10k upvotes for it without any issue has banned transphobic centered communities for years now because they're fully aware of the PR disaster it would be with a serious threat of losing investor money and yet you're suggesting your website only had a minor cases of transphobia in it's moderation that has been removed and the staff is very queer and pro trans?

do you know how easy it is to make a fresh account and stumble down a rabbit hole of neo nazism and terf blogs on this site? Entire networks of blogs that will bluntly state "we actively harass and dox transgender people on here and spread misinformation about them." are everywhere on tumblr and yet the supposedly very trans and queer @staff for years now has remained completely silent on the thousands of blogs like this when, let me remind you again, fucking REDDIT, the wholesome 'elon musk is so based women are subhumans XD' website has had transphobia banned for years now and continues to monitor it.

This is an outright lie. You are lying @photomatt. There was not just "one transphobic staff member oopsie they're gone now it's fine! ^_^" It is beyond clear to the users of this site that despite it being proven by other similar companies that actively allowing bigotry to fester is a financially irresponsible decision you continue to allow it to spread en masse on yours. The only logical reason for this is that you, and many others if not the majority of the moderation team, agree with these beliefs and are now actively removing members of this website who did not violate any rules but were simply transgender.

Hell i've had anonymous asks turned off for years now because I posted a selfie when I was 16 (a minor) and received endless messages calling me slurs and that I should end my minecraft save. I'm 24 now and it's even more prevalent across the site.

You're a liar Matt and a terrible person for continuing this lie.

[icyplatinum]

it’s legitimately disgusting how tumblr CEO @photomatt can talk about how unmanagable pile-ons and harassment campaigns are after terminating an account that was being harassed in a much worse way with tumblr stuff not caring to do anything.

People have done worse than anything predstrogen ever did without getting banned or simply making a second account with no consequences.

There’s a clear double standard that exists on this site’s moderation that is heavily biased against trans people and trans women specifically . I do believe you when you say that you’re not transphobic but no amount of telling people and yourself that is gonna change this obvious double standard in moderation.

[boo-hoo-hooligan]

hello! sorry i'm late to this. :)

I, sadly, have no progress pictures and am not transfem.

I am posting this in support of trans women on tumblr, and just everyone under the trans umbrella in general.

[trainsgenderfoxgirl2816]

Hey mutuals considering what Matt mullenweg is trying to do with Tumblr data I might delete my account in a few weeks or months

I'm on Cohost and Transfem social with the Username Foxgirlthing Foamer on both (but I'm currently suspended on trasfem social because of improperly tagged hornyposts)

@femininefreyanyctophile @ppyotrovich @vagonca-rigo @rainthefemboi @ruvyii

[thumblrdotcom]

This is extremely ironically funny considering the current tumblr scenario