#The things I've been posting on my sideblog are absolute unhinged | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mrmallard · 4 months

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I was just thinking about that hatemail trend where people will blatantly lie about you and your actions, to your face, as if the lies they're asserting are truths that you need to address - and if you don't engage with the lies as if they were actually true, you aren't Taking Accountability and they have the excuse they needed for a nuclear fuckstorm of cancellation.

It's never happened to me, but I've seen it happen. Like a while back, Sarah Z made a comment like "honestly between proshippers engaging in some problematic concept on a hidden sideblog and people who go out of their way to stalk other users for weeks at a time and try to expose anything and everything they've ever done as a means of taking them down, I feel like the proshippers are less deranged and dangerous in that situation" - this turned into "Sarah Z thinks it's okay for people to write graphic explicit SA fantasies about children, she's a pedo enabler and she needs to be cancelled!!!" and shit like that. When I think the core of the message is "for a group claiming that others are deranged borderline criminals, the extent that they go to - up to and including targeted stalking for extended periods of time - over what ostensibly amounts to people exploring dark concepts and themes in their work, is absolutely unhinged and genuinely dangerous in the exact way they're claiming their enemies to be unhinged and dangerous".

Like it may have been worded awkwardly, but I think someone engaging with good faith can see the through-line. And I've always been concerned that one day I'm gonna skirt too close to the sun and have a "how dare you say we piss on the poor" moment like that in my askbox. But that being said, I made my peace with the concept a while back, because I came to the realisation that I know the content of my character, I know what my values are and I live by my own values and ethical standards - and nobody can rob me of my character or my dignity when I know exactly who I am.

I was a shitty teenager. If that comes up, all I can do is apologize and do whatever's in my power to make amends. I'm concerned that one day I'm going to say something tone-deaf or get distracted by a tangent that comes off poorly despite my best intentions. I can explain myself, apologize for the outcome and restate my commitment to the original point - because I'm never trying to undermine an important point or speak over it, though I am prone to tangents.

People are free to take that in whatever way they want, including negatively, and if I fuck up I understand that there might be negative consequences.

But I know in my heart that I'm not out to hurt anyone, and I'm committed to being in the moment and doing the right thing - because mistakes happen despite a person's best intentions. And I like to think that the content of my character and my values shine through when I post. So if things ever do get to the point where someone is blatantly telling me that I did bad things that I just outright didn't do - like to the extent of putting words in my mouth that I outright never said or ever intended or implied - I'm not going to lose myself. I know who I am.

#messyposting #long post

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