#tumblr purity culture

[montyluvsjasper]

The problem isn't nuance or media literacy.

The problem is fans feeling like they own the work and characters.

The problem is people not deconstructing their purity culture and just putting its structure and attitudes into social justice and fandom spaces. (working on this myself and i will be making a separate post with useful links.)

The problem is using fandom spaces as social justice vehicles.

The problem is basing someone's moral character and values on what fictional stories and characters they enjoy.

The problem is the I'm right and if you don't agree with me you're stupid and a bad person mentality.

The problem is there is zero live and live mentality anymore.

The problem is rude delusional white social 20 something girls with a god complex saying "actually sweetie your wrong" along with a long line of mean girl insults. When they haven't so much as read a nonfiction book in years, watch a documentary that wasn't some flavor of true crime or researched something off of TikTok or Instagram. Sorry not sorry for saying that. I'm guilty of it too.

The problem is attacking actors, writers and other ARTISTS.

The problem with the current fandom climate goes so much farther than media literacy or nuance.

I'm tagging this in the GoT/HotD fandom but this IS UNIVERSAL.

[craycraybluejay]

apparently it is morally wrong to have a crush/sexual feelings for anyone in general. Like. the whole 'dont sexualize literal people ewwww.' i really really wish less teens were on the internet because of this kind of stuff. we are mass-producing mental illness and i am not kidding.

like imagine being 15, having a crush on someone in your class, going on the internet, and being bombarded with all sorts of people saying its wrong to experience sexual thoughts towards people in your peer group. its wrong for adults to have sexual thoughts about other adults. its even more wrong for you, a teen, to have sexual thoughts about your classmates.

you are 16 now and very lucky to be in therapy with a well off enough family. you confess to your therapist how evil you are for wanting to touch or look at that one girl in your class. she looks at you with confusion, like how your mother looks at you when you ask her why you have a computer and your friend doesn't. why is it fair. everyone's confused about you and you are confused too. you're evil, you must be, because you have dirty disgusting feelings. you deserve to be mocked online, says dogluvr15089. you're an evil monster, says @Official Priest of West California. you're a pervert and sexual predator, says fandom_m0m321. they have stupid names and no faces-- but if all of them are saying it then it must have some truth to it, right? your therapist is saying something but you don't hear her, you're in your head wondering if you should punish yourself, how you should punish yourself. when you're back in the room with her you ask her what's wrong with you. she writes you a diagnosis for ocd and anxiety. you take the drugs, like the good, righteous, pure teenager you want to be. they make you feel weirdly empty, and not very hungry, and kinda sleepy. they might give you dementia in your 50s but who cares. you deserve it for being gross. you look through the comments even on other people's stuff, the comments telling them the same thing you were told. you're still punishing yourself for natural feelings-- seeking out the same degrading bullying when you don't get enough of it. you don't tell your therapist you are doing this; because you know she would tell you to stop and you don't want to stop. it's a compulsion. you talked about those last Tuesday.

you're 17. you haven't asked anyone out. by some miracle, a girl who likes you takes the initiative. you stumble through the date awkwardly and anxiously, trying not to touch her, flinching away when your fingers brush over a cheap burger. she asks if you're okay, and then asks, "don't you like me?" She asks, "why do you look like you're scared of me or something?" You stay silent. But then when it happens again, she gets up to leave and the rejection causes the dam to break. You try not to cry, because that's Emotional Manipulation. You choose your words carefully, because you don't want to accidentally Gaslight her like the evil thing you are. You stumble through it but you tell her you're sorry, you tell her you've never had the chance to date. You tell her, shaking like a leaf, like a dumb idiot, that you really really like her and she's very pretty and you're scared to say Hot or Sexy so you don't. And you tell her you're scared. You're really scared she'll see you're a bad person and leave you for someone more pure and good. You try really hard to phrase it like a PR team would. She tells you that's ridiculous, laughing like sunshine and kisses and god, sex. But most of all you've never heard someone so flippantly tell you how ridiculous of a notion that is. She makes you feel brave. You tell her what people have been telling you, scared that you're Trauma Bonding her but pushing through. She, with more surprise, again tells you it's ridiculous. She's not laughing anymore, but you want to make her laugh. You ask with a voice too small for your age if its okay you think her laugh is really sexy. She smiles so brightly its blinding, and says she thinks you're sexy too. You hold hands when you leave together. You go on more dates later, and the two of you talk about your problems and your dreams. And she shows you how to yell at "internet dumbasses." And you still go to therapy except this time you think it's working, because this time you Get It. You get it's ridiculous, and you're happy enough to try to heal.

And you know what? You're one of the lucky few that got that chance. Many teens struggle with mental health problems due to the internet. Not all of them are caused by this purity bullshit. Some of it is body image-- accounts that encourage eating disorders and low self-esteem. Some of it is trends and feeling lonely and unlikeable. Social media doesn't just excaberate mental illness. Sometimes it really and truly produces it and this fact needs more awareness.

[shsl-fujoshi]

Well, I just got confirmation that just like last time this "isn't a situation that can be addressed through reddit."

Which means this wasn't just a mass spam report scenario.

Someone at tumblr has actually decided my @blackheartbiohazards account should be fucking banned, and they won't respond to me via support tickets.

Tumblr is not a safe place for free discussion.

There was nothing remotely TOS violating on my account.

This is due to my being outspoken about freedom of speech.

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

in real life actions matter more than motivations because actions are the thing actually having an impact on the real world and motivations are intangible, but in fiction? none of it's real. the only thing a story has to be in interesting. motivations tend to be more interesting than actions, which makes them more important. stop ascribing real world morality to fiction.

[icyheart-and-friends]

Please, for the love of gods, allow yourself to consume content/media uncritically

You can be aware of issues a show/game/movie/etc has but you don't need to be aware of it *all* the time, you shouldn't have to justify yourself liking it every time you go to talk about it.

You shouldn't have to feel like you're the worst person in the world just because you like something that happens to have problematic stuff in it.

And you're setting yourself up for failure if you go into something immediately looking for all of the bad in it, you're setting yourself up to be unable to enjoy it! And if you do manage to enjoy it it'll likely just feel wrong because of that!

I'm begging y'all not to consume *everything* critically and to sometimes enjoy things uncritically.

[coulsonlives]

I'm tired, man

[paracosmicessence]

haha it’s so weird how growing up in a sheltered conservative christian household where simply seeing two characters kiss was shameful and got me in trouble has impacted my ability to share with other people the fact that i find comfort in a fictional romantic relationship

[jessiarts]

I don't know who needs to hear this, but no one ever learns from being yelled at.

I've watched from the sidelines of many discourses/"cancellings"/what-have-youse that've happened around the internet and one thing I've noticed is none of the "Internet Public Enemies" ever learned from their mistakes or changed their minds by being bullied, receiving death threats, or threats of cancelling.

At best I've seen rejected public apologies. At worst I've seen people have genuine mental breakdowns and develop intense fear of ever speaking up again in case they accidentally say the wrong thing or their thoughts are misconstrued. Because the human mind is simply not equipped to deal with the very real effect of hundreds of thousands of people very loudly saying how much they hate you and that thing you said.

You know what I have seen change people's minds, though? Kindness.

I know, it sounds corny and not nearly as satisfying for some, but I've genuinely seen more people change their ways of thinking when someone has taken time to have a calm conversation with them instead of screaming back.

I think we need to try more love with these interactions. The goal should be to get the other person to grow as a person, not to "win" because you made the "bad person" leave the internet. Most people genuinely don't want to be hurtful, they just aren't informed.

The best way I can put it is to think about it like raising a child.

When a child says or does something bad, and they get screamed at and/or smacked, they don't "learn their lesson." The person who yelled at and/or hit them only took out their own frustration on that child, they didn't teach them anything. The child doesn't learn why what they said or did was hurtful or why they shouldn't do it again, they only become afraid of the punishment and usually try to find ways not to get caught the next time. They also just become resentful of the person who screamed at/hit them.

However, when a child says or does something bad and instead they are sat down and talked to like a person about why what they said/did was harmful, they're more likely to learn from that mistake and not do it again. Yes, they may mess up a few more times now and again as they're still learning and not perfect, but as long as you keep coming back to them and calmly explaining to them that what they did wasn't very nice and why, they'll grow as a person and learn they can trust the person who helped them through it.

The same is very much true of adults. I know it can be frustrating when someone who we believe should know better about something doesn't, but we also can't go after everyone like they are a Big Bad Evil for making a mistake either. (Save that energy for corporations.)

Will there be some people who just won't listen no matter how much it's explained why their behavior is hurtful? Of course, but they likely won't be the norm. And it's perfectly ok not to consume the content of someone who makes you uncomfortable. It's ok to state your disappointment and leave them to slip into irrelevance. But I've rarely seen a big flashy announcement for a boycott of a person result in that person believing anything other than they were being persecuted and then doubling down on why their behavior wasn't bad.

It's honestly a very Terminally Online thing to do, assuming everyone is meaning to be a bad person for supporting or saying the wrong things, and propagating the idea that if you mess up you must grovel for forgiveness that will never come because mistakes mean you are inherently bad forever and can never change.

Honestly I believe that's why so many people double down when confronted anymore. The internet has cultivated a culture with no forgiveness. Admitting you were wrong has become weakness in the internet's eyes- Better to double down and show everyone how Right™ you are and really how Wrong™ those bullies who disagree actually are. And if someone does come to change their mind, they're met with jeers for not getting there sooner or for believing the wrong thing in the first place. It's toxic.

We need to allow apologies and encourage growth and guidance. We need to let people know that if people make a mistake they'll still be welcome when they change that behavior. And also that they won't be met with some variation of "See, was that so hard?!" or "FINALLY!" That's important too.

We can't punish the behavior we want to see, and punishment isn't going to help us see that behavior.

[bardicious]

Genuinely think the cowards that don’t support OTW/AO3, should not be fucking reading fics on there. Like, your morals are so weak, you can’t even stop yourself from reading free fic. Pathetic.

[inactiveblog2023]

fandom service announcement

reminder to anyone it applies to: just because you don't like or agree with certain ships, or think they're 'wrong' or 'weird' or 'gross' or whatever, doesn't mean you can dictate how other people interpret characters and who they choose to ship. and it certainly doesn't mean you have the right to shame others for enjoying those ships.

shipping fictional characters hurts no one, but you know what does hurt people? ostracizing them from a fandom on the basis of some arbitrary moral high ground.

so can we please all just be nice to people no matter their shipping preferences? thanks

[hometownrockstar]

the art style i hate the most is... idk what to refer to it as i just call it the twitter/tumblr pro ship style bc even if they arent drawing those kinds of ships with it, every single artist ive seen who draws like it is pro ship. its like, idk even how to describe it cause its just so generic, they only ever draw the main popular m/m ship for a series and give them the same skinny body type with boring colors and lighting and lines, anyone know what im talking about?

[shsl-fujoshi]

Let's walk through this, anon.

[That user] is actively posting about and admitting to something bad. 

Therefore, anybody who follows [that user] is already aware of the information that you've brought to me.

Therefore, anybody who follows [that user] already has the information that they need in order to make a decision about how to proceed. Whether they want to block [that user], continue following them, or target them for harassment.

You're not bringing any new information to anyone who already knows who [that user] is.

Therefore, this information is only potentially useful to people who don't already know who [that user] is.

What do you want people who have never heard of [that user] to do with this information?

What is gained by bringing the existence of [that user] to the attention of people who have never heard of them before?

Do you want people who have never heard of [that user] to go and block them despite having never interacted with them before?

Do you consider mob justice a fitting form of punishment and you would like to send my followers after [that user] to shame them for the thoughts and behaviors you describe?

Or do you just want to spread gossip about people you think are bad?

What is the point of spreading this information? What action do you want people who you make aware of this information to take?

Why is it important to you to increase the profile and reach of this person by spreading awareness of their existence?

Why is it important to you to make people who are not aware of this person's existence aware of it?

Literally, anon, I am asking you to think about this, and send me an answer. You say you know callout posts are bad, so what's the point?

What is your goal in spreading this information?

[lgbtlunaverse]

The world exists in such a baffling state of simultaneous sex-aversion and sex-hegemony. Every social platform on the internet is trying to banish sex workers to the shadow realm but I can't post a tweet without at least two bots replying P U S S Y I N B I O. People are self-censoring sex to seggs and $3× but every other ad you see is still filled with half-naked women. Rightwingers want queer people arrested for so much as existing in the same postal code as a child and are also drumming up a moral panic about how teenage boys aren't getting laid enough. I feel like I'm losing my mind.

[the-final-sif]

Kind of interesting how a lot of tumblr condemns attraction but also thinks aces and aros are unnatural. Like are people just supposed to exist in a state of punitive denial

Oh I mean it is literally a fundamentally christian thing, I think the term is "culturally christian" and it was one of the things that really confused me when I first started hearing about christian beliefs from my friends. Like, there's this idea that sex is fundamentally bad and evil, and you should feel guilty and ashamed for having sexual thoughts.

But also don't you dare not want to have sex, you have to want it, but you should also feel bad about wanting it. It'd be unnatural for you to not want to have sex, but you also need to feel guilty about wanting to have it. You're supposed to just feel guilty. That's it. No matter what.

Like, it's just a fundamentally abusive system. The point isn't even to stop you from having sex, it's about making sure that you constantly feel guilty, ashamed, and like you owe something to religious authorities. It's just one more way to generate guilt as a means of controlling people.

Anyways, yeah, it's very telling how often certain groups spout this stuff off. They want anything sexual to be bad, but also you must want this bad thing. You can't want it and you can't not want it. Feeling bad? Well maybe if you pray and donate some money to the church you'll feel better. It's exploitive and there's a lot of people that consider themselves liberal that have some serious work to do unlearning it.

[superectojazzmage]

Will literally never understand people who think “but you’re talking about kids media!!!!” is a good comeback to people rightfully complaining online about minors barging into adult spaces and screaming “GROOMER PEDO” at everyone. Like, it doesn’t matter if the conversation subject is a kids show, it’s still ADULTS SPEAKING TO OTHER ADULTS IN AN ENVIRONMENT AIMED AT ADULTS. Whether they’re conversation subjects are appropriate for kids or not is irrelevant, it’s still grown ass people conversing amongst themselves as adults. You’re on a website that used to have go nuts show nuts as an official policy for God’s sake.

Minors need to butt the fuck out and stay in spaces that are safe for them, because leaving aside the fact that adult spaces are not meant for them and can lead to them being exposed to things harmful for them, it can also end up getting the adults in those spaces traumatized or in serious legal trouble. You shouldn’t even be on Tumblr or going anywhere near online fandom spaces if you’re under 16 at least, so stay the tuck away from adults who are talking with other adults — online or off — and don’t fucking be trying to act all high and mighty about people talking about whatever the fuck they feel like.

And let’s not even get started on how the antis who encourage and say this kind of shit turn out to be creepers themselves 9 times out 10…