#and for what it's worth this elevated my perspective on HBG back up
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honestlyvan · 11 months ago
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In 2018, Quinn Curio made a video essay talking about storytime youtubers, and the cottage industry of people who only exist to criticise the content put out by storytime creators. It's an excellent overall video, but my main takeaway from it at the time was that when you're drinking deep from the well of dunking, it's easy to start dehumanising your target and... essentially getting high off your own supply. The other points -- about how many of these animators had broadly done nothing more than make art in a genre the critics didn't care for -- are also good, but the observation that this kind of "slime ranching" serves to gratify the critic primarily, and it's actual usefulness as criticism is limited by the context.
I'm not trying to make a direct comparison here -- I don't really watch HBG but I did watch this video and I think he did the best he could to impart an anti-slime ranching message to the video -- but the response to the video does, when it's not sheer schadenfreude from people who have carried hatchets for a long time, hit a lot of the same high notes what the appeal of something like storytime critics is. The easy hit of "at least I'm not that bad" is very tempting and sometimes genuinely necessary if you're low, if your self-esteem is truly garbage.
But I did also watch little hoots' video on the dirtbag left like an hour after release and I do kind of... wonder if the urge to find emotional release through "righteousness" isn't kind of inherently reactionary, and how that plays into a general contempt for compassion and giving grace that is inherent to any hierarchies. (After all, hierarchies aim to calcify -- with too much fluidity between classes they will not function as effectively). I wonder if there isn't something inherently sinister about our tendency to absorb criticism of other people from the perspective of the critic, rather than absorbing it from the perspective of a potential target of such criticism.
Because criticism, social pressure tactics, mobbing and dunking aren't primarily tools of the powerless. They're not primarily power wielded by those with little to no social clout to wield them. There's a reason the "twitter reply guy" is such an enduring fixture of the pantheon of people on the internet whose opinions we almost wholesale discard. And the people with no integrity to speak of are, let's face it, not as affected by them as we would like them to be, because the opinion of any given segment of the total population of people they can have influence on doesn't super matter to them.
At the very least, I think what OP is describing is our tendency to want to individualise the problem, and solve it by Getting Rid Of the Bad Ones (against a nearly inexhaustible supply of new Bad Ones), when this is largely a matter of incentives. When is your integrity worth less than the money being a grifter could bring in? (Have you ever even been rewarded for your integrity?) When is the social validation from your peers more than your repulsion towards socially aggressing against the outgroup? (Have you ever been rewarded for aggressing?) When you say "well I would never do something like that", who is that I you're talking about?
i think the thing that is specifically bothering me about the conversation about the new hbomberguy video ("live your life in a way so that hbomberguy doesn't tear into you for 3 hours", "hbomberguy has figured out how to death note someone through video essays", "oh new hbomberguy video [incredibly dense paragraphs of text] i now despise james somerton") is that it really feels like people aren't paying attention to what hbomberguy was actually saying. like, as much as he wanted to make people aware of the plagiarism issue, he also very explicitly did not like the fact that he might even remotely have a financial incentive to make those sorts of videos. and rather than the last video, which was a "get mad about this" call to action, hbomberguy spent this whole video sympathizing with the people who were directly out indirectly affected, and wanted the focus of people's attention to be on uplifting small queer creators
but also, negativity drives engagement so i guess it's to be expected.
#sorry for the whole essay OP. Your post really resonated with me#I do think the way Tumblr has this discourse is.... hm#well. I prefer it to what Twitter does#I've had my friends send dunk tweets towards Somerton to me as a way to extend the high#and it takes a lot from me to like. Confront them on that#because it's not pleasant being in the 'sympathy for the devil' camp#when the person I'm indirectly defending really sucks and I don't like them#The amount of smug I-would-neverlry I've seen on *this* site is much less than the smug I-would-neverlry from my *actual friends*#But I don't hold it against my friends as much because by definition#our conversations are private#The people just doing it in public I find much more suspect. Either because I think their boundaries aren't great#or they're displaying a tendency for slime ranching#and for what it's worth this elevated my perspective on HBG back up#after the Roblox oof.mp3 video I had pretty much written him off as a slime rancher#with a dangerously big platform#(foolish of me because I haven't seen that video and don't intend to)#Like.... slime ranchers on 'my side' are still slime ranchers and I want to be clear-eyed about what I think is acceptable tactics#for people to use and for me to expose myself to#Twitter -- the slime ranching *website* -- is blocked on most of my devices for this reason#and I am trying to build a resistance to#hm. How to describe it. To having my ability to give grace taken away#I would rather risk having a bit too much compassion for someone imminently loathable#than risk critically missing the ability to give grace to someone desperately needing it#after all thoughts are not actions. Me approaching this with less of a hardened heart can only ultimately harm me#as long as I always do my due diligence on siding with those materially harmed#inspired rule-breaking
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