#Acceptable Targets On Tumblr

[kyliaquilor]

Stop using the word Genocide when it's not a genocide.

[defectivegembrain]

"People caring about x discourse must all be unemployed" no actually employed people are extremely capable of being petty assholes about irrelevant shit that they're wasting their time on. For example some will see an argument they dislike and feel the need to use employment status as an insult.

[wordfather]

Weird question but would you hypothetically be ok with ending someone’s life as long as that person is considered an “acceptable target” by Tumblr i.e. disabled, bisexual, and in their mid 30’s?

you're right that IS a Weird question! what the fuck are you talking about!!!!!!!!!!!

[nellasbookplanet]

Isn't it funny how today it’s pretty common belief on here that the idea of 'cringe' and shaming of people who like 'cringe' things is bad. That the big fandoms back in the day that people like to make fun of - superwholock and john green books and twilight and homestuck and whatever was popular at the time - certainly had elements very deserving of critique, but how that critique largely drowned under people pointing and laughing at, the mostly teen girl, fans. Like, we are pretty agreed that this was bad, right? That it’s cruel to actual people and makes it difficult to have genuine conversations about the actual flaws of the media and fandoms in question, right??

And yet here we are today and I see people doing the exact same thing to newer fandoms with the defense that the fans are cringe or, if you're trying to be all moral about it, problematic and possibly evil for liking a popular media. Like, I don’t care about reylo or our flag means death or taylor swift or romantasy novels to any particular extent. I don’t have a horse in this race. But I keep seeing their fans treated as acceptable targets for harrassment or bullying. Posts talking about how immoral they are and then their screenshoted 'proof' is mostly just. Women being passionate about a thing that they love, or god forbid daring to defend it or being bummed about everyone else harrassing them. And I think it's kind of scary how we keep repeating this cycle of designating a media as inherently problematic, therefore all of its fans are problematic, therefore they are deserving of every ounce of mocking and public shaming they get.

[carnivalls]

"cannibalism is so mainstream now" yeah well that sure didn't help me when i told an offline coursemate that i was thinking about exploring it for my dissertation

[yunmeng-jiang]

> open a fic

> it's tagged "everybody lives/nobody dies"

> sidenote "except nmj he dies"

> it starts looking a bit sus regarding its treatment of jgy

> get to the end

> nmj comes back as a sentient fierce corpse

> jgy is the evil villain who did everything wrong just because he felt like it

> jgy dies

[wondermumbles]

think I'm going to gift crabs on crab day after all

Tumblr is making mistakes and there are better things to donate to, but

the people who hate crab day are so nasty about it, telling staff to "kys" and just being generally foul

spite crabs it is

[crystalkleure]

What they do not tell you about harassment is that if the people trying to get a rise out of you are not succeeding by prodding you directly, they will change tactics and try to get a rise out of you by harassing your friends

Even somebody who isn't particularly affected by verbal abuse being directed towards themself is likely to be very upset by their friends getting dragged into it and getting hurt

[torisprlng]

💬

[turigirl]

sigh

[annebonyy]

i forget how liberating and easy it is to unfollow accounts on here and not be forced to still look at their dumb posts

[orcelito]

Already kind of losing my mind with the sudden exodus of Twitter users in the p5 tag

Holding up my metaphorical "block" gun with shaking hands just like "give me One Fucking Reason-"

[medicinemane]

I don't know, those gifs of Andrew Garfield saying how to him the most terrifying thing is certainty... they resonate with me

The way people go around so damn sure that they're right about things, frankly I think there's very few things more dangerous than not even allowing for the possibility that you're wrong

Like you've just decided that you 100% know best, and from now on any evidence to the contrary is just something to be pushed aside because it's clearly wrong. The harm you'll do isn't real because obviously you wouldn't be doing it if there was harm. You're just right. That's the end of it

No, I agree with Andrew Garfield, I'd much rather stop and reassess over and over, as many times as I need to, to make sure that I'm still doing the right thing

I'll never be anything cause it just doesn't interest me, but if I was going to join a religion I know I'd become Jewish

Thought that since I was little with all the Jewish friends I had at school, and what's more it just seems to fit me best, all the elements of questioning. Hell... it even sounds like if I said "you know, I don't really believe in god", that there's a chance the rabbi might say "funny thing, me neither" (I've heard some don't), but if not that at least "eh, that's fine, why don't you come discuss why with us"

It's just funny the number of times I've related to something someone's saying, and then you find out their Jewish and this ties into that sense of questioning things, and that interview is an example

I agree with him, nothing scarier than being 100% sure you're correct... you can do a lot of bad things once you know for a fact you're right to be doing them

[photomatt]

You gonna do anything or make any statement about the rampant transmisogyny on this hellsite, especially in cases like predstrogen recently? Or yall gonna stay silent and keep letting/making us get pushed off of it.

I have a number of asks about this, so this is to address all of them, I won't do each individually.

We generally do not comment on individual cases, but because there seems to be mass misinformation around this, I will make an exception and comment on predstrogen.

First, Tumblr has a number of LGBT+ including trans people on staff, and they see things from the inside fully, and they're not protesting this case.

Why do we wrongly have a transphobe reputation? We did have an external contract moderator last year that was making transphobic moderation (and also selling moderation, criminally). As soon as we were aware that person was fired, and we later terminated the entire relationship with that contracting firm and have brought almost everything in-house (at great cost). I have previously commented on this publicly, several times.

I am not aware of any Automattician (people who work at Automattic and Tumblr) who has made any transphobic moderation actions. If it's reported it is investigated immediately, if anything were found that person would be terminated for cause immediately.

Predstrogen's account was suspended for:

Repeated mis-tagging of adult content against Tumblr's community guidelines. This has nothing to do with clothed transition photos, she had 20+ other blogs and multiple accounts with names so explicit I can't post them here without a mature tag.

Multiple cases of harassment of other Tumblr users, not just me.

Multiple threats of violence, not just the one I share below.

These represent a breach of our Terms of Service, and we've exercised our right to refuse service.

Threats of violence are never okay. Threats of violence are not protected speech. We will work with police and FBI where appropriate, though to be clear prestrogen's case hasn't warranted that so far. I'm referring to what we may potentially do for other threats. I just got a death threat yesterday from someone mad about predstrogen, and that account was immediately terminated.

So regardless of whether you still think Tumblr staff is somehow a bunch of transphobes, know that threats of violence or death are still not acceptable and will result in immediate and serious action. Know that when you rile people up, they can do dumb things with possibly permanent consequences.

(2 hours later update: I have changed instances of the pronoun "they" or "their" to "the account" because I am unaware of pronoun preference in this instance and don't want to misgender anyone. Thank you for the people who reported this as an issue. Update 2: "She" is apparently better, the post now says that. Sorry for the mistake.)

Here's one (of many!) examples of the harassment violations, this one targets me but there are others targeting other users on the site.

The second part seems to indicate she wanted to be suspended, I'm unaware of why, perhaps to create this sort of uproar. I agree the hammers feel silly, but the start, "i hope photomatt dies forever a painful death" is a violation of Tumblr's community guidelines and terms of service.

The car part did hit close to home as I have almost died twice in car accidents.

Update 2: Added this text to the adult content part: This has nothing to do with clothed transition photos, she had 20+ other blogs and multiple accounts with names so explicit I can't post them here without a mature tag.

[comicaurora]

I've been reading some stuff on punitive justice, and it made something click for me that I've observed a lot online but haven't been able to put into words before.

When someone does something wrong, that's bad, and the damage it does needs to be repaired while the person needs to try to do better in future to minimize repeating harm. We learn it in preschool - say sorry, don't do it again. If they keep at it, remove them from the situation where they can do the harm until they prove they're responsible enough to go back in.

So if it turns out someone DIDN'T do anything wrong, that should be a relief! There's no damage to fix, no internal errors to correct. Less work for everybody, literally no harm done. False alarm, all good.

The thing I've observed is, lots of people want them to have done something wrong. There's almost disappointment when it turns out there's no harm done. And I think that's because of this general undercurrent of punitive justice as morally righteous and desirable: someone does something wrong, you get to punish them. Turns out they're innocent? That's disappointing. Find another reason you get to punish them, or find another bad person you get to punish. But at the core of it is that desire to punish someone. Someone you can hurt in a way that makes you a better person for hurting them.

This particular brand of almost cannibalistic pseudo-justice is super common in tumblr, one of the most ostensibly liberal spaces on the internet; I see more borderline savagery in online discourse here than in the actually toxic parts of the internet that are just openly cruel for cruelty's sake. It's always thrown me for a loop, and has frankly also hurt me, because on the rare occasions I get personally dogpiled, it only actually stings when it makes me worry that I've legitimately hurt someone. If I did something wrong, or more realistically when I inevitably do something wrong, that would make it good and right for people to give me shit about it every day until I'm dead.

The thing that clicked for me most recently was this bit in Ijeoma Oluo's Be A Revolution:

Punitive justice is specifically, uniquely appealing to people who have suffered injustices. Of course it's the Tumblr zeitgeist. Everyone here is a marginalized person failed by at least one system. Punishing someone for perceived injustice is how someone the system has deemed worthless proves their value in blood, even if the person being punished hasn't harmed you directly - even if they haven't harmed anyone. "Righteous" anger isn't about the target in these cases, it's about the inflicter. This is how much my pain is worth.

And that kind of violent validation is so alluring and so very dangerous. It seeks an outlet, wearing the justification of justice. Who's in reach? Who's an acceptable target this week? What's a good reason to use?

Is there anything they could do that would make me stop?

[hussyknee]

(alt included)

Seein' too many Twitter refugees asking if they'll get in trouble for saying "kill yourself" to people and while no, you're not gonna get nuked from orbit, that is maybe something you just shouldn't be doing in general perhaps?? Maybe telling people to kill themselves is bad actually?? Some of y'all are wild, why is the first thing you can think to ask on a new platform if you can send one of the worst kinds of harassment to people?? Grow tf up and learn how to use the block button. It'll do wonders for your mood, trust me.