#ethics of gonchposting

[hussyknee]

Those screenshots of Neil Gaiman begging people not to harrass him are so uncomfortable. He's clearly not enjoying it and clinging to patience by the skin of his teeth. Gotta say, this whole thing put paid to the illusion that this site's grown up some.

[hussyknee]

There's been quite a few academics and teachers I've seen who want to do an analysis of this meme. It really is fascinating as a simulation exercise, if rather unfortunately lacking in harm reduction protocols. But then it's not like a protest where there are leaders who can establish boundaries and strategies at the outset and take accountability for the actions of the actors. It's entirely dependent on community ethics, information sharing and consensus.

I also really think that we should do a post-mortem of the last week. I'm fascinated by the things that the construction of the lore revealed about Tumblr users, both good and bad, but also I think we can use greater awareness about triggers, tagging, detecting disinformation and where the lines need to be drawn. I have like 3 Gonchposts still racking up notes and from what I see, people are predisposed to be kind and helpful, they just don't know how. The assholes are very much in the minority (and they're noted assholes. Like a couple of times I searched a blog before blocking and beefing with people was clearly a lifestyle choice for them. And then there was also a nest of covid truthers which...we should probably keep an eye on that). It's just that it's quite hard to reach enough people. Hopefully if something like this happens again we can reduce the collateral somewhat.

As of this writing, Goncharov has been added and removed from the Martin Scorsese filmography Wikipedia page 7 times.

[hussyknee]

i'm so confused rn, can you explain the goncharov thing?? i get off tumblr for five minutes

(Edits closed as of 28 Nov.)

Lmaoooo

Nah I getchu. So this post has been circulating for like two years:

Link to post.

But yesterday, it had inspired someone to do this:

Link to post.

Next thing I knew there were fake Letterboxed reviews.

Goncharov moodboards. Really good ones.

Link to post.

Meta analysis. So many fake meta essays. Disturbingly good ones. And of course the memes. (Edit: HAVE I SAID THIS SHIT IS DISTURBING)

As you can see, the myth just started to grow, characters and ships and tropes being added one after the other, almost bizzarely without contradiction, until there was enough of shape to the whole thing for people to start posting fanfic about it on AO3. "No beta we die like ice-pick Joe" is already a tag.

Link to post.

It was hilarious in the beginning, but the way it's developed within less than a day, kind of like it's being willed into existence, is freaking me out a bit. We're toying with powers beyond our comprehension. 😂😂😂

Link to post.

Of course, there could be an ulterior motive as well.

Link to post (tags mine).

Edit: guys, please tag these posts "unreality" so people with disassociation issues can filter them out (not this one, this is an explainer). <3

----------------------------------------------

Edit 2: Aparently the boots in the original post are actually referring to a movie called Gomorrah that came out in 2008, directed by Mateo Garrone, based on the Scampia Feud. And other people had also been making posts about the fake movie for a while before the poster took off.

found by @thepotch

Edit 3: Explainer: why did those boots have this movie on them anyway?

Edit 4: Alt text added to all images courtesy of @valentineish ❤️

Edit 5: Turns out tumblr has done this kind of thing before. Nine years in this hell place and I had to have "Squiddles" and penis smp explained in the replies.

Edit 6: This post collects the Lore so far.

Edit 7: Lynda Carter (real one)/ earns more/ Tumblr cred.

Edit 8: Holy shit y'all we have the theme music. With sheet music. And it's on Spotify!

Edit 9: THERE IS A TRAILER WITH THE THEME MUSIC

----------------------------------------------

I made this post 18 hours after the movie poster went up. Closed edits 27 hours after first posting. So all of the above happened within 45 hours of the movie poster going up.

Edit 10: Google document live-compiling all the lore so far (Day 3)

Edit 11: Masterpost of Goncharov soundtracks (Day 3)

Edit 12: Entertainment news articles covering the Gonch-posting (real) (Contd from yday)

Edit 13: The music from the masterpost all compiled into a 31-minute original score with video edits on YouTube (edit: unfortunately taken down)

Edit 14: Staff's Goncharov art showcase for Tumblr Tuesday

As of closing on Day 3 there are 371 works in the AO3 tag.

-----

Updating with Day 3 shenanigans I missed yesterday:

Edit 15: Goncharov TV Tropes page

Edit 16: Ethics of Gonchposting

Important PSA 1 (how to reduce harm to Tumblr's neurodivergents)

Important PSA 2 (reality affirmation, anti-bullying)

Important PSA 3 (why you should stop trying to vandalise legit information sites)

Edit 17: Character lore from beezlebub whose poster they originated from

Edit 18: What we know about/ Director Matteo JWHJ0715 (#unreality)

Edit 19: Link to post with screenshotted and described NYT article (scroll down) and this golden exerpt from BuzzFeed: 💀

(alt text included)

End of Day 4 there are now 485 works in the Goncharov tag on AO3

----

Didn't get to update this on Day 5, so these are the Day 5 doings:

More trailers!

Trailer 1 (My favourite)

Trailer 2

Trailer 3

Trailer 4

I also just found out about the Goncharov Game Jam.

It appears this opened a day after after the meme took off.

Goncharov was first entered into Wikipedia between Day 4 and 5 (attempts to vandalise it with fake info don't count, incidentally – please knock that shit off) under List of Internet Phenomena. This was then expanded into its own Wikipedia page at the end of Day 5 because, according to the talk history: "the topic now meets the notability threshold for its own artice due to significant coverage in The New York Times and other sources cited." We're on Wikipedia, people!

And then we made The Guardian half a day later. So while the meme is definitely dying down to embers by now, it still stays winning.

YouTube channels with episodes on the meme:

InformOverlord (4:30)

Lessons in Meme Culture (2:43)

End of Day of 5 there were 511 works on AO3, and End of Day 6 (today) there are 556.

--

🚨BREAKING 🚨 from Martin Scorsese's daughter's TikTok (real actual)

tw: unreality:

We did it you guys!

Clarification: Francesca Scorcese asked her Dad about the meme and Martin played along. Please reblog this PSA to help Tumblr people with psychosis. Thanks.

Final edit: Day 8. Media reactions to Scorcese's TikTok (everyone from Forbes to Vulture). That one Tumblr user who said they'd do a screenplay if their post got notes has promised to shoot a single scene, but please don't be dicks just because you reblogged it; leave them alone until they get around to it themselves. As of end of Day 8 there are 609 works in the AO3 tag. I love all you lunatics. Peace! ❤️

[hussyknee]

(alt included)

No, "unreality" is for when we're pretending that it's a real movie (including art and music). Posts that discuss the meme as a Tumblr meme should just be tagged "goncharov" so people's filters can catch them.

NYT article abt goncharov has comments like 'what is the purpose of this film's existence these kids are just lying' motherfucker how do you think our ancestors survived. how do you think folklore formed. culture. music. art. PURPOSE????? do you think everything must be commodified? sold? weighed to be valued? has the rot in your soul spread so far you cannot find value in anything not spoken in numbers??? it's FUN. THAT'S WHY. THE PURPOSE IS THE ACT, THE MESSAGE IS THE MEDIUM, THE SYMBOL IS THE STORY. it brings people joy for its mere existence and that IS the point. existence is its purpose alone

[hussyknee]

⬆️ This ⬆️

i'm so confused rn, can you explain the goncharov thing?? i get off tumblr for five minutes

(This post will be kept pinned & periodically updated until 28 Nov)

Lmaoooo

Nah I getchu. So this post has been circulating for like a year:

Link to post.

But yesterday, it had inspired someone to do this:

Link to post.

Next thing I knew there were fake Letterboxed reviews.

Goncharov moodboards. Really good ones.

Link to post.

Meta analysis. So many fake meta essays. Disturbingly good ones. And of course the memes. (Edit: HAVE I SAID THIS SHIT IS DISTURBING)

As you can see, the myth just started to grow, characters and ships and tropes being added one after the other, almost bizzarely without contradiction, until there was enough of shape to the whole thing for people to start posting fanfic about it on AO3. "No beta we die like ice-pick Joe" is already a tag.

Link to post.

It was hilarious in the beginning, but the way it's developed within less than a day, kind of like it's being willed into existence, is freaking me out a bit. We're toying with powers beyond our comprehension. 😂😂😂

Link to post.

Of course, there could be an ulterior motive as well.

Link to post (tags mine).

Edit: guys, please tag these posts "unreality" so people with disassociation issues can filter them out (not this one, this is an explainer). <3

----------------------------------------------

Edit 2: Aparently the boots in the original post are actually referring to a movie called Gomorrah that came out in 2008, directed by Mateo Garrone, based on the Scampia Feud. And other people had also been making posts about the fake movie for a while before the poster took off.

found by @thepotch

Edit 3: Explainer: why did those boots have this movie on them anyway?

Edit 4: Alt text added to all images courtesy of @valentineish ❤️

Edit 5: Turns out tumblr has done this kind of thing before. Nine years in this hell place and I had to have "Squiddles" and penis smp explained in the replies.

Edit 6: This post collects the Lore so far.

Edit 7: Lynda Carter (real one)/ earns more/ Tumblr cred.

Edit 8: Holy shit y'all we have the theme music. With sheet music. And it's on Spotify!

Edit 9: THERE IS A TRAILER WITH THE THEME MUSIC

----------------------------------------------

I made this post 18 hours after the movie poster went up. Closed edits 27 hours after first posting. So all of the above happened within 45 hours of the movie poster going up.

Edit 10: Google document live-compiling all the lore so far (Day 3)

Edit 11: Masterpost of Goncharov soundtracks (Day 3)

Edit 12: Entertainment news articles covering the Gonch-posting (real) (Contd from yday)

Edit 13: The music from the masterpost all compiled into a 31-minute original score with video edits on YouTube (edit: unfortunately taken down)

Edit 14: Staff's Goncharov art showcase for Tumblr Tuesday

As of closing on Day 3 there are 371 works in the AO3 tag.

-----

Updating with Day 3 shenanigans I missed yesterday:

Edit 15: Goncharov TV Tropes page

Edit 16: Ethics of Gonchposting

Important PSA 1 (how to reduce harm to Tumblr's neurodivergents)

Important PSA 2 (reality affirmation, anti-bullying)

Important PSA 3 (why you should stop trying to vandalise legit information sites)

Edit 17: Character lore from beezlebub whose poster they originated from

Edit 18: What we know about/ Director Matteo JWHJ0715 (#unreality)

Edit 19: Link to post with screenshotted and described NYT article (scroll down) and this golden exerpt from BuzzFeed: 💀

(alt text included)

End of Day 4 there are now 485 works in the Goncharov tag on AO3

----

Didn't get to update this on Day 5, so these are the Day 5 doings:

More trailers!

Trailer 1 (My favourite)

Trailer 2

Trailer 3

Trailer 4

I also just found out about the Goncharov Game Jam.

It appears this opened a day after after the meme took off.

Goncharov was first entered into Wikipedia between Day 4 and 5 (attempts to vandalise it with fake info don't count, incidentally – please knock that shit off) under List of Internet Phenomena. This was then expanded into its own Wikipedia page at the end of Day 5 because, according to the talk history: "the topic now meets the notability threshold for its own artice due to significant coverage in The New York Times and other sources cited." We're on Wikipedia, people!

And then we made The Guardian half a day later. So while the meme is definitely dying down to embers by now, it still stays winning.

YouTube channels with episodes on the meme:

InformOverlord (4:30)

Lessons in Meme Culture (2:43)

End of Day of 5 there were 511 works on AO3, and End of Day 6 (today) there are 556.

--

🚨BREAKING 🚨 from Martin Scorsese's daughter's TikTok (real actual)

tw: unreality:

We did it you guys!

Clarification: Francesca Scorcese asked her Dad about the meme and Martin played along. Please reblog this PSA to help Tumblr people with psychosis. Thanks.

[hussyknee]

I love this idea! "Is this real or just a Gonchpost?" "Are we being Gonched?" 😂😂 It would be such a useful check, especially considering how many people on this website just believe that any twitter screenshot is real (I saw somewhere that the person who created the Cybill Shepherd tweets were slightly terrified of how many people were willing to believe them, and even the initial Letterboxd review poster had to be like "no this is 100% my work"). Those photos of Goncharov billboards and that Roger Ebert newspaper article genuinely freaked me out a little.

(I've edited that reblog to amend that "non-malevolent gaslighting" is a bit of a misnomer, and "harm minimised gaslighting" might be a better term.)

Also to stop and consider if something was posted as satire. "Yeah his dad's a license plate." We're really irony-impaired on this site. Idk it's not like we can make it happen but it would be cool if it did.

As of this writing, Goncharov has been added and removed from the Martin Scorsese filmography Wikipedia page 7 times.

[hussyknee]

You haven't answered my questions, you didn't respond to the posts I linked and you continue to not back up your arguments.

Abuse is defined by effect, not intent. Making neurodivergent and traumatized people question their reality and being lied to when they ask if it's real, and being out of the loop in the middle of a site-wite illusion that people are trying to manipulate real-world databases for, is in fact abuse and can trigger psychosis. This is explained in the posts Iinked.

You can be socially, systemically and institutionally gaslit. Medical gaslighting, for example, is the leading cause of PTSD in disabled and chronically ill people. Disinformation for the purpose of manipulating narratives is called political gaslighting and media gaslighting (be careful googling this because the right-wing has misappropriated the term).This all comes under epistemic gaslighting, an important sociological phenomenon and social justice term. The idea is not without critics, but here's another article that argues for its use.

And as I have said elsewhere: wider social gaslighting is a key component of interpersonal abuse and victimisation. Partners, children, employees, students, disabled people – people see them being abused or evidence of their abuse and trauma and then minimise it, dismiss it, or pretend like they didn't see anything. It makes you question your memories, experiences and feelings. Worse, most people who do this don't intend to harm you; they're just conditioned into a set of beliefs and worldview that makes abuse invisible to them. It's what makes it so hard to acknowledge abuse to yourself and self-validate your own hurt and fear, because it involves understanding that you are seen as acceptable collateral to your community. As social animals realizing that our tribe won't protect us is extremely traumatic and it's very difficult to ever feel safe again.

It's disingenuous to compare the use of gaslighting to the way the word "triggered" has been mocked, misappropriated and devalued by ableists. Nobody is mocking or devaluing the word here. This kind of humour – pranks, "bits" and anything that involves tricking unconsenting parties (as opposed to say, a magic show where people want to be tricked) and the general manipulating of narratives – necessarily crosses boundaries and toys with people's trust in themselves and others. There is an inherent danger and harm in this kind of lying. That's not to say that this kind of humour is always bad and wrong, just that the line between good-humoured fun and bullying can be subjective and easily crossed over. The ability for people to find the truth, tap out or opt out entirely of our shenanigans is the very real line between annoying and cruel. And even then, there are people who might be too afraid of being mocked or lied to that won't ask, and people whose previous gaslighting trauma is triggered by this version of it.

I would gently ask you why you're so upset and opposed to the idea that you might be engaging in something that has the same consequences, or some version of it, for people that you have yourself experienced. It's very important to understand that gaslighting can be inadvertent. The social gaslighting through conditioning I've mentioned earlier, and also clinging to your personal narrative and insisting only your reality and memories are valid are the most common ways we abuse without meaning to.

But aside from all of that, there are many things people do that may cause inadvertent harm to others. We live such wide and waried realities that it's impossible not to infringe on each other's boundaries when living in the crush of humanity. They are allowed to be angry about it and you are allowed to respect that but keep enjoying the things you do, in as ethical a manner as possible. We are not responsible for how others experience the world, but we do have an obligation to be responsible and minimise harm to the vulnerable by practising informed consent. It's not black and white. It's just that there is a line, and it must be seen and adhered to.

As of this writing, Goncharov has been added and removed from the Martin Scorsese filmography Wikipedia page 7 times.

[hussyknee]

I get what you're saying. "Persecution" is a more appropriate term for what the government does because it has systemic power and control over your entire life, unlike the teacher. But "gaslighting" and "abuse" are not so informal. You can be socially, systemically and institutionally abused as well. Medical gaslighting, for example, is the leading cause of PTSD in disabled and chronically ill people. Then there's political gaslighting (e.g covid truthers).

I also found this really interesting article debating the use of "gaslighting" to describe sociological phenomenon.

Plus, wider social gaslighting is a key component of interpersonal abuse and victimisation. Partners, children, employees, students, disabled people – people see them being abused or evidence of their abuse and trauma and then minimise it, dismiss it, or pretend like they didn't see anything. It makes you question your memories, experiences and feelings. It's what makes it so hard to acknowledge abuse to yourself and self-validate your own hurt and fear, because it involves understanding that you are seen as acceptable collateral to your community. As social animals realizing that our tribe won't protect us is extremely traumatic and it's very difficult to ever feel safe again.

As of this writing, Goncharov has been added and removed from the Martin Scorsese filmography Wikipedia page 7 times.

[hussyknee]

Edit 15: Goncharov TV Tropes page

Edit 16: Ethics of Gonchposting

Important PSA 1 (how to reduce harm for neurodivergents)

Important PSA 2 (reality affirmation, anti-bullying)

Important PSA 3 (why you should stop trying to vandalise legit information sites)

Edit 17: Character lore from beezlebub whose poster they originated from

Edit 18: What we know about/ Director Matteo JWHJ0715 (#unreality)

Edit 19: Link to post with NYT article (scroll down) and this golden exerpt from BuzzFeed: 💀

As at end of Day 4 there are 482 works in the AO3 tag.

(forgot to hit post last night. Here it is 14 hours later. D'oh 🤦🏾‍♀️)

i'm so confused rn, can you explain the goncharov thing?? i get off tumblr for five minutes

Lmaoooo

Nah I getchu. So this post has been circulating for like a year:

Link to post.

But yesterday, it had inspired someone to do this:

Link to post.

Next thing I knew there were fake Letterboxed reviews.

Goncharov moodboards. Really good ones.

Link to post.

Meta analysis. So many fake meta essays. Disturbingly good ones. And of course the memes. (Edit: HAVE I SAID THIS SHIT IS DISTURBING)

As you can see, the myth just started to grow, characters and ships and tropes being added one after the other, almost bizzarely without contradiction, until there was enough of shape to the whole thing for people to start posting fanfic about it on AO3. "No beta we die like ice-pick Joe" is already a tag.

Link to post.

It was hilarious in the beginning, but the way it's developed within less than a day, kind of like it's being willed into existence, is freaking me out a bit. We're toying with powers beyond our comprehension. 😂😂😂

Link to post.

Of course, there could be an ulterior motive as well.

Link to post (tags mine).

Edit: guys, please tag these posts "unreality" so people with disassociation issues can filter them out (not this one, this is an explainer). <3

----------------------------------------------

Edit 2: Aparently the boots in the original post are actually referring to a movie called Gomorrah that came out in 2008, directed by Mateo Garrone, based on the Scampia Feud. And other people had also been making posts about the fake movie for a while before the poster took off.

found by @thepotch

Edit 3: Explainer: why did those boots have this movie on them anyway?

Edit 4: Alt text added to all images courtesy of @valentineish ❤️

Edit 5: Turns out tumblr has done this kind of thing before. Nine years in this hell place and I had to have "Squiddles" and penis smp explained in the replies.

Edit 6: This post collects the Lore so far.

Edit 7: Lynda Carter (real one)/ earns more/ Tumblr cred.

Edit 8: Holy shit y'all we have the theme music. With sheet music. And it's on Spotify!

Edit 9: THERE IS A TRAILER WITH THE THEME MUSIC