(1/2) Hi! This is a little out of the blue, but I just wanted to thank you for being a shining beacon of reason on this site. I joined tumblr when I was probably too young to handle it - around sixteen or so, I'm twenty now - and got dunked into the deep end of the worst sides of tumblr culture. I was surrounded by people who hate civil debate and free speech, accuse you of tone policing when you ask them to calm down, and think there is no possible right answer other than their own opinion.
And then you came along! The first person I saw on this site with differing opinions! You explained so perfectly why tumblr culture is toxic and I remember feeling relieved that someone else was on my side. So from an HTP loving, queer-identifying, aroace, nondysphoric trans person – thank you so fucking much for giving me hope on this hellsite. (2/2)
Thanks, anon. It means a lot to me to hear that. I mean, fuck, that’s the hope, right? That all the opinionated grumpiness I fling out into the general cesspit of Tumblr discourse hell will actually help someone. Especially someone stuck smack in the middle of the bullshit with limited tools to resist getting swept away by it.
Like, let’s face it, tossing a bystander a rope (or starting the wheels turning, or setting off the lightbulb moment, or whatever metaphor you want to mix in) is the best thing that could possibly come of yelling at assholes who are Wrong On The Internet, because the assholes sure don’t have any interest in listening to dissenting opinions. And sometimes it feels like a pipe dream–like the idea of reaching people, outside the little circle of oldtimers who already agree with me, is just a prettified excuse for me to give into the ol’ temptation to sharpen my tongue on jerks, under the delusion that it could contribute something positive to the world. So–thanks for listening. Thanks for coming into my askbox and saying what you said. It means a lot.
Also, Christ, I’m sorry your teenage self first got into fandom when it was like this. Something else that means a lot to me–a whole fucking lot–is the accepting, weirdo-friendly sandbox fandom gave me during adolescence. My misfit ass was so fucking lucky to find a community whose values included shit like “other people's investment in things that rankle the hell out of you isn’t your business unless they’re out looking for debate on it,” “the fucked-upness of someone’s tastes doesn’t necessarily reflect on them as a person,” and “judge if you want but leave others in peace if they aren’t hurting anyone.” (Yeah, even though those values were far from universal, and routinely got trampled in whatever the Overinvested Petty Flamewar Du Jour was. The fact that they had actual weight and no organized backlash made for a radically different environment.) I was also lucky my formative years overlapped with the subculture’s peak emphasis–and occasional haphazard education–on harm reduction instead of virtue-enforcement. I was lucky to fall in with people whose rejection of fundie conservatism included scorning any threshold of “harm” that starts at “ambient damage to society from your failure to be some arbitrary type of role model at all times.”
Like, this is important stuff in general, but it made for an extra-awesome, nurturing environment for teenagers, who need room to experiment + loose guidelines for navigating approval/rejection of others’ behavior without causing too much collateral damage. No matter how flawed and dysfunctional that era of fandom could be, it was so fucking valuable as a place for oddball kids to be at home while they figured their shit out.
It half makes my blood boil and half brings me to tears to see present-day fandom do the exact opposite–ripping people to shreds for the slightest failure to conform, teaching everyone that minding each other’s business is not just OK but an obligatory part of their duty to police every theoretical deviation from the One True Social Justice That Is All Things To All People, telling them (from a position of in-group trust!) that it’s right to be wracked with shame and anxiety about not living up to some twisted idea of wholesome, unproblematic, and “healthy.” It’s a sick travesty of something that was a refuge for me when I most needed one. It makes me want to throw up, because fuck, anon, you deserve so much better than this. All the kids it’s been inflicted on deserve better–none of them, not even the ones who’ve thrived and become perfect little righteous bullies, could possibly deserve what it’s done to them. But the weirdos, the kids who have fucked-up unusual tastes or don’t fit neatly in the expected boxes, who are under constant threat of getting shunned and berated for it in this of all places–they’ve been fucking robbed.
The modern social-media landscape doesn’t offer a lot of ways to foster a community where that shit doesn’t fly. Moderated offsite spaces like kinkmemes and Discord servers are something, they’re how HTP developed and survived, but the center of gravity is still Tumblr/Twitter/etc. So I guess contributing to a circle of vocal YKINMKATO holdouts also functions as my small, imperfect, futile attempt to carve out a space that can give people some pale shadow of what fandom once gave me. Amorphous and boundary-less, vulnerable to intrusion, but still a social sphere of some kind. IDK if this corner of Tumblr ever played that role for you, anon, even a little bit, or if it was just nice to hear a dissenting voice. But that’s far and away the best thing I can hope for when I shoot my mouth off–followed closely by being the dissenting voice for anyone who needed to hear one. And it’d still barely make a dent in what I owe this ridiculous, infinitely precious community of nerds, perverts, and freaks.