pureegg: Moe-Blob Style Heroine of Pokémon Conquest (Default)
Pure Egg ([personal profile] pureegg) wrote2018-12-25 08:40 pm
Entry tags:

Tumblr's Toxic Waste

Or maybe I *won't* be posting every single day because gdi writing is hard work and takes a lot of time.

I'm really not used to not living in fear every time I utter a squeak because I stg the TINIEST slip up could get you killed on Tumblr so I just shut up for the most part. Even if I said anything people would seemingly misinterpret what I said on purpose while insisting their POV was the only proper one (even if they were basing their entire arguments on headcanons that weren't canon but "probably were, I mean that's how most people see it" and I was not in that fandom for long).

Now that I can, like... post stuff, and be relatively certain nobody's gonna scream at me for it... or follow people and be relatively certain they're reasonable adults with an actual grasp on reality... I have no idea what to do, or what I'm capable of accomplishing in a day, or what. I mean, I'm still nervous hitting "post", but at least I can actually do it.

Hell, instead of quitting entirely I've gotten bolder on my tumblr, reblogging a couple of hot takes I genuinely agree with and actually talking in a reblog of a post about water (though, as I get used to DreamWidth, I imagine I'll stop using tumblr entirely at some point. Slow death, here.)

I'm kind of ashamed, but I... I realize now that a lot of the stuff I was "signal boosting" was mostly because I'd been guilt-tripped into sharing stuff like it before, regardless of if it had sources, because part of me was terrified these people would hunt me down if I didn't. My parents already somehow got a lot of information on me that I never willingly shared and thought they had no way of getting, never once revealing to me how they got said info, and I guess... I'm just really terrified of being verbally abused again. My mother did that to me time and again when I was younger. I don't need to relive that.

It's... ironic, isn't it, that so many people on tumblr claim to be fighting for abuse survivors, but there's a survivor right here, absolutely terrified of them and how similar they are to the people who hurt her.

How ironic, that those kinds of people claim to be fighting for LGBT+ rights, but call Ace-spec and Aro-spec people (people that are subject to bigotry, alienation and ostracizing, harassment, corrective rape, and are even, somehow, bizarrely sexualized for their sexuality, just like gay people) "hetties", but there's an autochorrisexual-lithoromantic girl right here that, even if she wasn't ace, would be pansexual, a girl who can like men and women and enby people, too. Sounds pretty damn close to the B that's right there in the acronym. Hell, I've seen plenty of biphobia and transphobia from these people. Exclusionists know what the acronym stands for, right?

How ironic, that people like these say they could never be racist but claim that so many Japanese terms, like yaoi, yuri, and fujoshi, all refer to things that are dangerous and immoral and weird and sexually perverted, spreading lies to so many English speakers, lies that are so pervasive that you actually need to start seeking out and consulting bilingual people so you can delve into the history of Japanese fandom to learn that they were lies.

How ironic, that in their quest to prove to others that they are, in fact, good people, so many of these people became the monsters they sought to destroy. No one will ever be able to convince me that tumblr culture wasn't extremely toxic, because it was.

Anyway, uh... Illuminating Eve is absolutely not a 16-page outline in development hell, it's just that I'm not good at planning yet. Soon! In the mean time, I'll post other things and deal with the guilt of not working on that one big project myself because the rational part of my brain won out: if I focus solely on the horror fic on my DreamWidth, people will expect nothing but the horror fic, and I don't wanna pidgeonhole myself like I accidentally did with the Pony Storm of 2015.

kranethios: An anthropomorphic goat-like creature holding a purple butterfly on a raised hand (Asriel)

[personal profile] kranethios 2018-12-27 02:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh man, all that stuff about tumblr is toooooo real. Being away from that site has been really good for my mental health; I have anxiety issues already, and having to dance around my interests, ships, sexuality (I'm gray-ace and aromantic and this is the first time in actual years that I've felt safe saying that), etc. for fear of being dogpiled by squalling children who think they're the fandom/LGBT+ community police was not... helpful.

...It's very refreshing to be around reasonable adults and on a platform where it's a lot harder for things to go "viral".
kranethios: A boy with fluffy blue hair wearing a white headset, a large sky-blue scarf, and a white jacket with a dark blue design on the sleeve (Kaito)

[personal profile] kranethios 2018-12-27 10:49 pm (UTC)(link)
It sounds like we both ran into snippets of the same "discourse" (guh, just that word turns my stomach nowadays), because I remember all of that garbage. It's such a tremendous relief to see other people on the same page about it - the tumblr bubble had a way of making people who didn't necessarily always want to echo the loudest voices feel pretty frighteningly isolated sometimes.

I do feel more inclined to actually /engage/ with other people in the community AND with their content.

Something about the format here feels more cozy and familiar, like you're having a quiet conversation with a friend rather than screaming into the void and waiting for other people to scream back the way one might on tumblr or twitter. It feels easier to actually connect with people.

...Also without reblogging I feel the need to actually make and share my own content, which means I've been actually making and sharing my own content.

Hard same. I feel like I've been sitting on piles of Thoughts About Content™ without any motivation to actually create it, much less share it with anyone, partially because the format on tumblr felt a bit impersonal to me and the community's attitude made me absolutely terrified of screwing up. Since I logged off, suddenly I'm actually making something! It feels... amazing. I'm really excited.

I look forward to seeing what sorts of things you produce, too!