fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3810 ]

[ SECRET POST #3810 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3810 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Marvel's Agents of SHIELD]

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05. [SPOILERS for Supernatural]

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06. [SPOILERS for Dragon Ball Z]

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07. [SPOILERS for The 100]

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08. [WARNING for discussion of rape]

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09. [WARNING for discussion of rape]

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10. [WARNING for discussion of suicide]

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11. [WARNING for discussion of incest]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #545.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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I only still have an account because "The Discourse" includes a bad habit of url-jacking, yet another way in which yahoo has been monetizing drama and harassment. I deleted the access key from my password manager though so I never log in.

But I can still complain about how tumbler is among the big-data social media sites that have been tacitly encouraging the worst forms of social networking through bad design and stupid management. I'm hoping that the merger results in an escalation of user-hostile "features," and a slow decline until it's ultimately shut down. (Or maybe they'll get a clue and do something about sockpuppet sideblogs, url-jacking, and lack of moderation controls.)

Honestly I'm eager for Pillowfort to gain momentum and get past beta so I can join them and ditch tumblr for good.

And I see a lot of people mocking the people who complain about the 'political correctness' when I actually see a lot of people concerned over the straight up bullying and hate mobs and the unforgiving nature. It's gotten to the point where I feel like the people who dismiss people who show concern are either ignorant of it, or okay/complicit in it. Because a lot of my friends who care deeply about social issues have decried the whole "call out" thing going on on tumblr.

I agree that Tumblr is bad and, as cbrach says, deeply structurally flawed.

but I also think the criticisms that people make are very definitely politicized. both in the way that they use them - the bad culture of Tumblr gets used as an argument against particular political positions, or indeed against particular fandom preferences - and in the way that they conceptualize them - the bad culture of Tumblr is attributed to the personal or political failings of the people who use it. And I also think that those complaints get picked up by people as a convenient justification for positions that aren't really related - I think there are people who make those complaints who are functionally just complaining about political correctness at times.

Yeah well there are plenty of people who are just pointing out that the bullying that happens there, that has led plenty of people to attempt and at least one known person to succeed in killing themselves from the sheer amount of harassment that aren't complaining because political correctness. They're complaining about the fact that people are being bullied to death and harassed to breakdowns and chased off the site.

Yes people criticize in the wrong way. But that doesn't mean that there isn't something to be addressed about Tumblr and people will bring up legit criticisms of the gaping issue (or just leave for a similar but better platform) until it's dealt with.

Yeah, there is some of that going on. But I have to say, that if you're running a pseudonymous sideblog devoted to dozens a day of "callouts" of specific demographic groups, I'd say your social justice compass needs to be reset.

Sure. It's profoundly toxic and unjustifiable by reference to social justice. But I would also argue that it's toxic in basically a similar way to how, like, Helldump on Something Awful in 2007 was toxic, for instance. That's not good obviously but it's not novel.

True, it's not novel. Which is why my primary ire is on the people running tumblr and twitter who set up systems for that to happen, even though we've known what online harassment looks like since the 1980s.

Yeah. But figuring out how to create structurally sound, functional online communities is a hard problem, and the Silicon Valley mindset is all about not even trying to actually solve hard problems and just getting to market.

Metafilter had a good thread on the history of this problem along with some criticisms of callout culture from back in the 1970s.

Trashing involves heavy use of the verb "to be" and only a light use of the verb "to do." It is what one is and not what one does that is objected to, and these objections cannot be easily phrased in terms of specific undesirable behaviors. Trashers also tend to use nouns and adjectives of a vague and general sort to express their objections to a particular person. These terms carry a negative connotation, but don't really tell you what's wrong. That is left to your imagination. Those being trashed can do nothing right. Because they are bad, their motives are bad, and hence their actions are always bad. There is no making up for past mistakes, because these are perceived as symptoms and not mistakes.
The acid test, however, comes when one tries to defend a person under attack, especially when she's not there, If such a defense is taken seriously, and some concern expressed for hearing all sides and gathering all evidence, trashing is probably not occurring. But if your defense is dismissed with an oft-hand "How can you defend her?"; if you become tainted with suspicion by attempting such a defense; if she is in fact indefensible, you should take a closer look at those making the accusations.

http://www.metafilter.com/167493/Distinguishing-character-assassination-from-accountability

This is also a good article on some of the specific dynamics of the problem on the left:

http://theamericanreader.com/jenesuispasliberal-entering-the-quagmire-of-online-leftism/

although I'm very much opposed to attributing all or even most of this stuff to ideological causes - I think mostly it's dysfunctions of modern society and the Internet as a medium - there's clearly SOME role that these ideological elements play in the specific manifestations of it

I think it's a bullying problem wearing ideological clothing. The groups involved are often appallingly ignorant of basic information, relying on fake news, disinformation, memes, and urban legends that have no provenance outside of their cliques.

I totally agree. From my point of view it's an extremely toxic community (depending on which part of it you're involved with) but it basically is just a very toxic community, which is why it's weird to see how much more significance people seem to assign it over and above being a toxic community.

It doesn't help that similar to right-wing trolls and harassment, these communities co-opt ideas of political discourse and free speech to justify shitposting and harassment.

Sure. But I don't think it's especially difficult to understand the specific contours of how that happens - the toxicity of the community seems fairly transparent. We should be really familiar with that mode of Internet toxicity by now. Which I think is why I think the way that people talk about it annoys me so much. It really bugs me when people ignore the continuities with other Internet communities - both the ways in which its toxicity is similar to other toxic communities, and the ways in which its fandom-y elements are similar to other fandom-y things. And that's, I think, where I'm coming from w the idea of stop going on Tumblr. Because the choices that you have with Tumblr are the same that you would have about any other toxic community on the Internet, and I think one of the central options with toxic Internet communities is to not engage with them once you recognize them as toxic.

I know that's somewhat unfair, because Tumblr certainly is deeply toxic. People who point out that it's toxic are basically right even if they're wrong around the edges. But nevertheless the stuff around the edges does bother me with its wrongness.

Actually, the straight up bullying and hate mobs are actually done in the name of political correctness in the majority of cases on tumblr.

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