#in fandoms like this we really depend on self regulating

[shipcestuous]

Sorry if it's a silly question or one you've answered before, but what's that "grade on a curve" ask referring to? I tried looking for more context in your discussion and anti tags, but I couldn't find anything, idk if that's due to Tumblr's search system.

Anyway, I personally think trying to prove anything to antis is a wasted effort in most cases. Most of them seem to be looking for reasons to get angry, possibly because they don't feel important or in control irl so they want to play the part of the hero battling the bad guys For The Greater Good online and get clout and admiration for it, so they're not generally the best people to try and have reasonable arguments with. Plus, with how many of them can be hilariously hypocritical about their interests ("you writing a physically abusive relationship in your fic proves you're unstable and dangerous, but me drawing a lot of violence and gore is perfectly okay," "we're essentially shipping the same problematic ship but I see myself as someone with good critical analysis skills and you as someone who's either stupid or evil, so it's fine for me to put it in my fanworks but not for you," etc.) I have my doubts about them reading "incest shipping isn't really a free-for-all, people have different tastes and opinions" and NOT somehow getting "people who like incest ship in THIS way are okay, but people who like incest ships in THAT way deserve all the hate they get" out of it...

On the other hand, I absolutely DO think it's important for incest shippers, proship/anti anti types, and people who just care about other people's comfort in fandom space in a healthy, non-self-centered way to be aware that we all have different preferences, boundaries, and even triggers, and that's okay! Just to make an example, if I like sharing fluffy headcanons about a wholesome brosis ships with you (general you), that doesn't necessarily mean I'll be okay with you reccing me hardcore BDSM darkfics about a codependent twincest ship out of the blue just because I'm into incest. Or, if I like twisted, manipulative parent/child and I've gushed about it you, even on multiple occasions, that doesn't necessarily mean I'll be okay with you suggesting me an extreme underage noncon scenario for the same ship, just because I like my incest dark and fucked-up.

We all have a place in fandom, no matter if our tastes run wholesome or twisted, vanilla or hardcore... and I think it's safe to say that many of us actually like both, even if at different times, for different ships, in different context or different combinations! But to coexist together peacefully, we have to be clear about what we want or don't want from our fandom experience, and respect other people's boundaries. Even when we don't get them, or we think they're too specific, or they're the squshy "X is yes or a soft no for me depending on the day, unless Y happens, then it's a HARD no" or "X is a hard no for me unless Y happens when Z, then it's just a soft no or, in a W context, even a yes" kind. (And, as someone who does have some squishy boundaries, let me tell you: they're actually WAY more frustrating when you try to formulate them in an understandbable manner so you don't accidentally cause any misunderstanding than when you have to hear them out, lol.)

Fortunately, I don't think I've actually seen cases like these happen a lot among incest shippers. But I think it always good to keep all this in mind!

Hi Anon,

I apologize for making things difficult for you. The grading-on-a-curve analogy first came up in this post. It was primarily a discussion of Cathy and Chris, so I didn't link back to it.

I agree with you. Many antis cannot be reasoned with, will always assume the worst, and need to pass judgment to validate themselves, or some other psychological reason. If we start regulating our behavior to appease them, they win. As always, the best way to deal with the issue is to ignore them, create content, and enjoy ourselves. But even though they are prone to assumptions, we also don't want to give them any fuel for assuming the wrong thing about us as shippers.

And then within our community its important not to make assumptions, but I think we have a pretty good understanding among ourselves that tastes vary. But it's good to remember to always give details when recommending things so that people can make informed decisions.

Thanks for sharing these thoughts, Anon!

[lily-the-leopard]

hermitcraft and thirdlife get a fandom tag and not dsmp bc dsmp fandom cant be trusted to fandom tag properly, like genuinely can’t be trusted with its massive scale and young users

(also dsmp fans need to stop puts dts to tag wranglers in the tags for “doxxing the creators”, maybe then they’d get a fandom tag)

"last anon was /lh kinda, but genuine reason why dsmp doesnt have a fandom tag bc it fits ao3’s pre existing conditions for rpf. plus the fandom specifically for dsmp? its fairly new and peaked during this time ao3 has been making big changes to the site, like they’re creating a blocking function + more things and that takes more than a couple of months to plan and roll out this versus hermitcraft having a tag, hermitcraft fandom has been established for multiple years with a decent size fanbase to warrant it"

Oh boy nonny, this was certainly a take to wake up to, I'll be honest. I'll take you at your word and assume you really meant this to be light-hearted, so instead of throwing out the whole suitcase, lets unpack some of this! I think it's a conversation that's a bit overdue in my little corner of the internet. I am gonna put it under a cut though, because I had a lot to say and it got kinda long.

Right, so here's the thing. I get where you're coming from. This fandom is pretty young, you don't trust them. But if you've been on dsmpblr at all, you'd know this fandom is actually pretty good about tagging things! Like- better than some other fandoms I've been in! And I think it's funny that you'd bring 3rd life into this, because from what I know they lost their tag when ao3 realized it was being used for minecraft rp, it redirects to RPF just like the "Dream SMP" tag now.

I know it's frustrating when people use posts in the archive to complain. I've actually sent a ticket about this, which is the proper way to get ahold of staff, but I'm so tired of seeing real names thrown into the Dream SMP. You don't tag MCU fanfic with "Steve Rogers | Chris Evans" do you?? No, there's separate tags for RPF on so3 because we understand that characters are not their actors.

And I don't think the DSMP qualifies as RPF personally! I think if anything Hermitcraft should. I'm glad they got their own tag, don't get me wrong, I'm an HC fan as well. But the DSMP has an ongoing plot with characters that are different than the people playing them, moreso than HC where they largely play themselves. (This isn't to discount someone like Xisuma btw I think his lore is great, but as a whole they tend to do smaller plots, if any).

Also, the DSMP fandom is huge! I've been in fandoms much smaller than DSMP who have fandom tags. You know what got a tag before it had a major online presence? The Mechanisms. Had like five whole fics and it got a fandom tag. That's a band, by the way, doesn't use the RPF tag either because it's cabaret and they're playing characters.

Not to bring mechs fandom into this (god I hope this doesn't crosspost into your tags, I apologize), but nonny why does a band and another mc server get a tag, but a mc server that has established storylines spanning over a year get shoved into RPF with character tags sharing the real names of creators who only go by an alias??

And lastly. I know we've got a lot of kids here. But I'm not a kid. I was one, back in the day, pre-ao3. And I love the archive! It has its problems, this being one of them, but as a whole I'm glad we have a corner of the internet for ourselves.

I just wish I could actually filter RPF because I don't personally read it, and I can't do that unless we have a fandom tag.

[sonneillonv]

yea you're right with everything. i guess eddie sometimes takes the special k when he needs to escape too. what most people criticise is that he could have made her addicted to it because that happens when you take drugs to escape

Yeah, that can definitely happen. And who knows? He might take it. We don't really know whether he self-medicates with anything (besides alcohol, and very mild alcohol at that). He's definitely not getting any actual medication for his obvious ADHD 😅

Talking about addiction is thorny and difficult for a number of reasons. Classism, ableism, general anti-drug attitudes, and hell, even racism all play a part in how addiction is viewed in American culture. Addiction is hard to define - a lot of people in this fandom have pointed out that K is about as harmless, and only slightly more addictive, than caffeine and marijuana. But when people are dependent on caffeine, we typically don't describe that as an 'addiction', or if we do, we don't attribute the same stigma to it as we would if someone was addicted to Ketamine.

This is especially funny to me because I have ADHD. People with ADHD notoriously self-medicate with caffeine because it has the opposite effect on us that it has on other people. It's incredibly easy for someone with ADHD to develop a caffeine dependency that can actually affect their health in many ways (not just the withdrawal headaches but blood pressure and heart problems that can be dangerous), but we don't get stigmatized for that: we get stigmatized for taking Adderall, which basically does the same thing for us. Adderall is a controlled substance because it's SO popular on the street. It is, essentially, a legal dosage of Speed, and because it's associated with recreational drug use, it's heavily regulated - which means I have to overcome hurdles to get my prescription that a lot of other people don't. Since ADHD makes remembering to do stuff and forming habits really difficult for me, extra barriers result in frequent medication lapses - I can't get a 90 day supply, so I have to do a special song and dance to get my meds every single month, and I have to keep seeing my GP so she can keep prescribing it to me in case I'm suddenly 'cured' and don't need it anymore, and she has to put a special call into the pharmacy so they know a real prescriber actually wrote the prescription she transmitted electronically from her office, etc, etc. Those medication lapses fuck with my health because you're not supposed to just 'stop' Adderall. It's addictive, and you will have symptoms if you go cold turkey. Not to mention, if I have a lapse for more than a few days, my life starts heading down the tubes because I need my medication to function enough to do basic tasks like, y'know, dishes. Laundry. Vacuuming the floor.

So I depend on Adderall, which is addictive. Am I an addict? Is there a difference between me, a person with a prescription, and the kids who are buying it off their local pill guy to help with 'academic performance'? If so, WHY? Why is it different that I need a drug to perform, and they need the same drug to perform? Or, if we flip it around, why is the idea of children taking Adderall to focus better in school such a threat that the system needs to make it nearly impossible for me, an adult with a medical disorder, to have consistent medication? Many, MANY disabled and mentally ill patients face systemic barriers to getting help because people are SO scared of enabling 'addicts'. Pain management in America is utterly fucked because people are so scared of (and disdainful toward) 'addicts'. At some point, we have to recognize that our culture uses the word 'addiction' as a boogeyman. It's meant to create fear and demonize individuals, and that is NOT a constructive way to talk about or address dependency.

Other countries have begun to recognize and treat addiction as an illness (or a consequence of treating an illness which can be managed with professional assistance), and they are seeing a LOT more success in harm reduction and addiction recovery than the US. I don't want to type another five-page essay here, so I'll just say that a lot of people get addicted because they self-medicate. They self-medicate because something in their life is intolerable to them. They may choose more harmful or dangerous methods of self-medicating if they're unable to fix the bad situation or alleviate the pain/stress. A long-term, unhealthy, and degenerative 'addiction' the way that we typically think of it has two factors - the chemical addictiveness of the drug itself, and the threat of the environment you're trying to escape. American rehabilitation suffers because even if you can break a person's chemical dependency on a substance, we don't have the social programs in place to fix the shitty situation that caused them to self-medicate in the first place. Once they're 'clean', they have to go right back to being broke, jobless, unloved, ill, stressed, abused... and if that's too much, and they turn back to substance abuse again, most of us get on a high horse and go, "Tsk tsk, well I guess you never deserved my help in the first place. Never trust an addict!"

To continue my personal example... evidence-based research proves that if you want kids to stop abusing Adderall, it's not effective to put it behind a bunch of legal barriers. What's effective is asking yourself, "Why are kids feeling such immense pressure in school that they need chemical assistance to meet standards? What could we do to alleviate this kind of pressure on students while still helping them learn?" Then addressing the root problem, which removes the need to self-medicate.

'Addiction' isn't a monster in the closet. It isn't some kind of looming evil. Lots of people need a particular substance to live and function. The diabetics in my family are utterly dependent on insulin to live, and I'm dependent on Adderall to do dishes. They need one kind of help, I need another. Someone who's become dependent on heroin needs a different kind of help to thrive. But it's all HELP. It's all NEED. With Harm Reduction, we focus less on demonizing the fact that people have needs, and more helping people meet their needs without destroying their lives. In the case of heroin that would mean breaking their chemical dependency, but it's not because "OMG it's bad that you need this". It's because the heroin is killing them and we want to find a way to alleviate their suffering that doesn't also kill them.

So when people are like, "OMG Chrissy could have got addicted!" I'm over here like "Yeah she could have got 'addicted' to pseudoephedrine or adderall or prozac too, so what?" (in the sense that none of the above are 'addictive' on par with, say, opioids but can create dependency in the long-term.) Nice upper-middle-class girls take that stuff all the time. If people care about Chrissy avoiding addiction, the solution is to address the problems in her home life, not to clutch pearls over a tranquilizer she was offered once.

That's why it seems pretty obvious to me that people who demonize Eddie for selling her K don't actually care about Chrissy (or real people with chemical dependencies) at all, they're just trying to feel superior. Just another expression of modern puritanism in fandom and I'm over it. 🙄

[radiqueer]

Hey, I have question for you and that is have you ever made a post or know of one where a minor like you outlines the specifics of how we adults are supposed to interact with you (on Tumblr, for example)? I know, you'll probably be thinking: "Just don't be ageist/treat us as equals, duh!" but please hear me out, I'm asking this in good faith. One of my main problems is, for example, that - online culture being dominated by US culture and it's norms - that I will leave myself open to... tbc

Part 2: potentially life-destroying accusations of grooming/pedophilia not from you or other minors who want to interact in good faith, but from adult antis/minor antis who are not acting in good faith but want to get back at me, as soon as I say something they don’t like. I absolutely agree with you that such bad faith behaviour is NOT exclusive to minors but in the current climate - especially here - interacting with minors in fandom leaves one especially vulnerable. I would like to know tbc..

Part 3 (and I forgot sending the last one anonymously, please don’t publish my username) …whether you could accept/understand that some of us feel this need to protect ourselves. I want these conditions to change as much as you do, because I remember what it was like being in your position and I truly hated it, so I want very much to act differently towards minors now that I am an adult. But I really don’t know if I can for the above reason, which is not your fault of course but still… tbc

I have never made an entire post about it, no. I have, however, set clear guidelines in my faq and in interactions with adults on this website. 

honestly? I don’t know. this isn’t how I set boundaries; most of my experience setting boundaries with adults is over discord DMs and moderated servers and I’m exceptionally good at self-moderation, thanks to the adult friends who taught me exactly how to regulate my interactions and modeled various forms of relationship boundaries for me

please note that I use “relationship” as a neutral word - it doesn’t signify anything romantic unless it explicitly talks about a romantic relationship. 

the clearest and most objective set of guidelines I can give you is:

don’t violate DNIs. ever. this is a big one. if you violate a DNI in any way, and it’s always best to interpret DNIs generously, back off at once. block them, just to be safe. do not engage even if they engaged first. if they keep harassing you, block and report. it is not worth your skin, and manipulative antis can and will use your hesitance to block them out of hand as an indication that you are a predator. give them nothing to go on. 

you do not have to read the blog links of every blogger you come across, but if they’re in their bio then it’s best to skim through them at least once. 

for me, personally, I practice intelligent boundary setting, which is a really fancy way of saying “it depends.” if a friend I know and regularly speak to tells me that my fear fetish is showing on one of my posts, that’s different from like, you saying the same thing. which seems obvious, but you’ll be surprised at how many people think boundaries can be objective and set in stone. 

take, for a lighter (hah) example, my eating disorder. [tw eating disorder and weight talk ahead] I have an ED, I don’t really try to hide it. one of my friends is more invested than the rest in making sure I eat more-or-less enough as regularly as possible. she does it because she struggled with food herself and because she knows I’m underweight, and she wants me to be okay. the problem is that there’s only so much advice I can take before I shut down entirely. so we have to navigate that in an intelligent manner - she checks in with me regularly, and in turn I tell her when she’s going too far or stepping too close to a line of conversation which ends in a shutdown. I also make sure to let her know when I need help, and to thank her for her help no matter how many times I get it, and in general I make an effort to be an equal participant in our conversations even when she’s helping me. but there’s other people in my life who I don’t allow to talk to me about food (they violate that boundary constantly, reinforcing my need for it) and that’s bad. so like, I can’t go “adults talking to me about food is Okay” or “adults talking to me about food is Not Okay” because that boundary can and has to be set and reset as the conditions around it change. [end ed tw]

or like, sex. sure, as a minor I can (hypothetically) go “don’t talk to me about sex” but……what is sex? is heavy petting not sex? can my adult friend - lets call them Brianna, she doesn’t exist I made her up for this example - can Brianna not talk to me about the cute guy she flirted with at her college mixer? is it different if Brianna and the cute guy most definitely did not make plans to fuck after the mixer? what is the difference? can Brianna recommend me a song which contains explicit lyrics? what about explicit themes? can Brianna and I talk about #metoo? can we talk about how she’s afraid to walk back her to her dorm room at night because the security guard on her street creeps her out? can Brianna read my explicit fic? can I read Brianna’s? can she recommend it to her friends who don’t know me? 

this is an annoying amount of questions, isn’t it? now you get it. there’s a few more paragraphs where that came from. 

the best way to tackle this is to answer each question as it comes. there’s no need to spend a month hammering out each detail. flag certain subjects - I ask my friends to warn me before showing me explicit images (of the sexual and violent variety) because that boundary is fluid. some of my friends can complain to me that they’ve been horny and some of them refuse to discuss sexuality with me outside of academic contexts because they’re wary of influencing me. and you know what? both of those are fine. both of those are good and normal and they can co-exist. you will never have the same set of boundaries for everybody in your life. that’s just impossible. 

so focus on what you can do. learn to regulate your own boundaries, and know that the first step to teaching others how to set boundaries is to model your own. ask, “is talking about this okay?” when something sensitive comes up. learn to go “let me know if i ever say anything that makes you uncomfortable” - understand that in your bones, if you can. people telling you something makes them uncomfortable when it’d be easier to be silent is how you know you’ve built trust. it’s a compliment. when they let you know, back off and also go “I’m sorry”. maybe let them pick the next topic of conversation, or move onto something else. 

on tumblr, like I said, don’t violate DNIs. read every link available to you if you plan of following that user. don’t reblog posts tagged #dont reblog. some people (like me) prefer to interact largely over anon, and some people have different needs. it isn’t your job to parse that. communication is a two-way street. try not to say creepy things (”is it something I would say to someone on the street? did they ask their followers to send them things like this?” no and no? don’t say it)

if you’re an adult with “minors dni” in your bio and you’re going to interact with minors off anon, that’s generally a rather bad move. some may take offense - some may not, but it’s a toss-up you don’t want.

let me know if this helps! 

[thelittlepalmtree]

What is a healthy ship?

I think about this a lot, because we through the word “toxic” around constantly. I actually love the word toxic to describe relationships that are draining, because like radioactive or poisonous materials, toxic behavior may be unnoticeable on a given day or it may have a big affect all at once. However, because of overuse of the word, I’m going to talk about healthy vs unhealthy.

So first of all, let’s identify things that are risk factors: A relationship between a boss and an employee (even after that dynamic has ended), a relationship with a significant age gap, a relationship between people of different social strata, a relationship between a person who has financial control of another person, and a relationship with a history of aggression/dislike of one another, a relationship between a therapist/social worker/doctor and a client, a relationship between a teacher and student, a relationship between people of different physical abilities, etc.

Obviously these risk factors vary in many ways. That’s because what makes a relationship unhealthy is a clear and dramatic divide between the partners. This is true of every relationship. That’s why teachers, doctors, therapists etc have strict regulations and ethics because the people they serve are in their power. Abusing that power is wrong. Now you can have some risk factors, and not be in an unhealthy relationship. In fact most if not all relationships have some risk factors for an unhealthy dynamic (common).  For example, people of different social strata can have healthy relationships, they just need to work that out and find ways not to let that into their relationship. And there are millions of healthy relationships where one partner has financial control of the family, but is not abusive.

Then there are gray areas. Personally, I think that a relationship between a boss and an employee isn’t inherently abusive as long as they are no longer boss and employee (look at Aunt Hilda and Dr. Cerberus on TCOS, Ben and Leslie in Parks and Rec). But there are so many factors involved that if one of my friends told me she had a crush on her boss, I’d tell her not to pursue it and I heard a boss was trying to pursue a relationship with an employee I’d immediately be uncomfortable. But a lot of it depends on the job relationship, have they always been boss and employee? How dependent is the employee on the good graces of the boss? Is the boss using rewards or punishments at work to control the employee in the relationship? Is the boss directly managing the employee? I have a similar thing about age differences. Often people are quick to condemn a 20 year old dating a sixteen or seventeen year old, but there are so many factors that you really have to look at it on a case by case basis. Similarly I know people who have very strong and loving relationships with a 7-10 year age difference that met when the younger one was in their early 20s and the older one was in their 30s. Personally, that isn’t something I’m interested as a 20something trying to date, but that doesn’t mean that every relationship like that will be terrible.

That being said, there are some risk factor that are always bad (absolute). A relationship between a therapist, counselor, personal aid, or any profession that gives the professional intimate and necessary knowledge of the person is wrong. If you need that explained think about Elijah Wood in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Did he skeeve you out? Yeah, that’s why the “my therapist is hot and I want to date them” plot is often very cringe. A relationship with an adult and a child, is always going to be bad (If you’re wondering where that line is, you’re too close to it). A relationship with a history of abuse is always going to be a relationship that is unhealthy. 

The thing is, if the relationship hasn’t happened yet, and it doesn’t have one of the clearly wrong risk factors, whether it’s actually abusive or not is really up for debate. A lot of time we throw the word abusive around for ships we don’t like. Sometimes it’s about misinformation, where people assign an absolute risk factor to a relationship in which there is no absolute risk factor. A big one for this is buckynat, a ship I adore. I’ll go into the age difference (which is one of many things that does not make sense):

the primary canon for the ship is in the comics based on Black Widow: Deadly Origins (the last comic to give specific dates for Natasha’s life)  they met when Natasha was twenty eight and Bucky was thirty nine. Not a significant age difference when you consider that at this point they both have anti-aging bastardized super serum that will keep them both alive for sixty three more years and counting. While other comics have alluded to changing the timeline, they have not actually provided different dates or information (there’s also some discrepancy as to whether or not Natasha was continuously with department X or not).

In the MCU (not that it matters now) it would probably not be hard to establish Natasha as older than the date given in CA:TWS and it would actually empower her to say that she has a version of the serum (where right now she’s just a normal human) and undo the horrible concept that she was sterilized as a graduation from the red room (in the comics she can’t have children because the serum makes pregnancy impossible unless you take immune system suppressants). If they didn’t want to go with this plot line, they could also just have Bucky and Natasha meet in the early 2000s right before she defected (Iron man 2 came out in 2010 if she met Bucky in 2004 when she was 20 she’d still have six years to defect).

And yet there is some strange insistence that if Bucky and Natasha even look at each other in the movies it will be some sort of pedophilia because of a throwaway line in CA:TWS, and based off of almost no evidence from either of the two reservoir of content we have. And rather than just say “I don’t like this ship” it’s been called unhealthy from every angle. Ironically in the comics it was one of the healthiest and most supportive ships which is why so many people fell in love with it. (but that’s for a different blog)

 Then there’s the assigning a gray area risk factor to a ship and insisting it always means that relationship will be unhealthy. I have to admit, I can be guilty of this. And I’m calling myself out right now because I do this to the reylo ship all the time. The thing is, these are legitimate reasons to not ship a ship, they’re gray areas and if you’re like me, the very existence of these risk factors makes the idea of the two characters being together seem cringe-y. So my Reylo analysis below:

The risk factor that makes Reylo seem unhealthy is the fact that Rey and Kylo had very few positive interactions in the first film, and in fact their most in depth conversation was while Kylo was hurting Rey. But, given the circumstances, it is possible they might get together. Think about Katarra and Zuko, who were on different sides of the same war, and then later became good friends (and personally I shipped them like crazy). It’s commonly accepted that in movies with grand fantastic implications, that two people who are on different sides can later become friends when one of them makes a major personal change.

Now, in the second movie, it seems fairly evident that that character change has yet to happen. But speaking from personal experience, it takes a lot for someone to be a better person. While it’s not a good idea to get together with someone to change them, it’s not like that’s an impossible thing to do, but also Kylo and Rey are not together and have yet to get together in the films. So presumably most of the shippers are hoping for Kylo to make better choices before the two characters get together.

That’s the thing about shipping. No one ships the version of Reylo where Kylo is a whiny bitch who wants to take over the metaphor for the original nazi army metaphor (they’re called storm troopers people) and he spends all day emotionally manipulating Rey just to make her feel bad. The ones who do ship it, like that Kylo and I guess Rey have to become better people first. They don’t ship things as they are now, they are excited about the potential happiness these characters can find.

While this isn’t a good way to live your life (i.e. don’t date someone who isn’t their best self right now), it can be a fantasy for someone. I get it, the idea that the person you like isn’t great yet but eventually they’ll get their shit together. The thing that makes it nice is the fact that it never happens in real life. So if that’s what you’re into, cool. You do you. If your version of the ship is okay, we’re good.

Then there’s the last method of calling a ship unhealthy. That is taking a number of common nearly universal risk factors and using it as evidence to say the ship is unhealthy. To me this is the grossest misuse and one of the most common. It is almost always used against canon ships that get in the way of the popular ship and it can honestly push people out of the fandom. The example I’m going to use here is the ship Karamel, because once again I did not ship it at all. But I saw so much Karamel hate that I’m familiar with the ridiculousness of the some of the arguments. Analysis below:

Where to start with this one. Honestly everything was thrown at this ship. The fact that Mon-El was kind of a dick in the beginning. The fact that his parents were bad people. The fact that he told her he liked her multiple times. The fact that Kara took some time to show interest in him. Yes, if a relationship is abusive, these might have been early red flags, but this relationship was not abusive. It wasn’t the best relationship ever. But Mon-El never disrespected Kara’s choices or ingnored her when she said stop or no.

The truth is, sometimes people have crushes on people and it’s not mutual. In this situation, they had to remain a part of each others’ lives, and honestly, I’m glad that Mon-El was honest with his feelings. Because for him, Kara’s friendship was really important, and she was constantly pushing him to be open wit his feelings and to be more emotionally mature. So when he was honest, even though the conversation was risky, I think it was the right decision.

Here’s the problem with labeling this relationship as abusive. Obviously, the implication is that Mon-El is abusive. When you are in an abusive relationship, it isn’t a choice. It’s something that happens to you, because an abuser will constantly lie and gaslight you so that you have no real understanding of the facts and therefore cannot really make a choice. If you say Kara was in an abusive or “toxic” relationship just because she’s in a relationship you don’t like, you are taking away her choices. The best part of Supergirl is that Kara has to struggle to make choices whether they be right or wrong. She’s the one in control of the plot, she’s the driving force. So to then take all that away because you disagree with her choice in partner, really ignores her power and turns her into a passive, incapable woman. Whether or not you like her relationship with Mon-El, it is clear that she is the one that sets the boundaries and she is the one that drives it.

So then there are clearly abusive ships. I’m not going to do an in depth analysis but I think the best example is Jarley. The tamest incarnation of this ship Suicide Squad in which the Joker tortures her and then pushes her in a vat of toxic chemicals. It’s also a relationship between a therapist and a patient. A truly unhealthy relationship is one that satisfies most or all of the following criteria:

The couple is actually together in the canon (otherwise how would we actually analyze that dynamic?)

The couple has an absolute risk factor

There is evidence in canon of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse (this is not having an argument or teasing each other, for more info go here)

There is evidence of gaslighting or maniuplation (these must be intentional)

There is a clear power disparity between the characters

It’s important that we don’t over-label ships as abusive. First of all because there are a lot of people who are in abusive relationships or have been in abusive relationships all over the world. If they see that just any relationship that people don’t like is qualified as “abusive” it will become so much harder to then see their own relationships with clear eyes. I legitimately realized that my parents had been abusive to me because of some of the discourse here on tumblr. But if I was fifteen in the marvel fandom right now, it would be really hard for me to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy relationships. 

It’s also really important to make a distinction. Not all ships are created equal. There are dark corners of fandoms where parent/child ships grow and pedophilic ships are popular. And several fandoms have very popular incest (sibling) ships. These relationships are not okay. We need to be able to call them out undeniably. And every time you call a ship you don’t like unhealthy when it isn’t, you’re giving people a reason not to believe you when you do call out an unhealthy relationship.

Our words matter, and how we treat each other matters. It’s important to remember that there are no easy answers here. And also it’s okay to just not like something. You shouldn’t feel the need to justify it and you shouldn’t feel the need to declare it from the rooftops. My favorite ship is Buckynat. I’ve never once gotten mad for seeing a “how do you like buckynat?” “not my cup of tea” post. I get so upset when I see a “How do you like buckynat?” “oh it’s so TOXIC” post. In the same way that if you liked chocolate ice cream and your friend told you that chocolate ice cream is contributing to misogyny and trauma for women everywhere, you’d be a little up in arms.

If you read through this, thank you so much, you probably don’t need it. If not, well, you’re not here are you?

[agnesgoesadventuring-blog]

Getting REAL tired of people acting like Caleb going through trauma and then having a mental break means that he's not mentally an adult or like he's a child or something. That's not the way it works people. But thanks for infantalizing people like me who have been through trauma, fandom.

The impact of emotional trauma on the brain does not stop neural development, so the idea that he’s “basically a teenager” is absurd. Emotional trauma will absolutely impact the way the brain develops, but it’s not going to halt development. Now, there is such a thing as regression, where someone who has undergone trauma or some other kind of extreme stress regresses to an earlier stage of emotional development, where they felt safer, when stress was less of a problem, or when they could deal with stress in less adult ways. But this is just one of many different responses to such things, and it is not the usual response, and it doesn’t really have anything to do with the actual development a person has experienced, nor is it necessarily a result of trauma happening during a certain point of development.

Trauma and significant emotional distress can have an enormous psychological and neurological impact on a person, but not in such a way that you get “stuck” at the age you were at when you experienced that trauma, or where you somehow stop emotionally and intellectually aging during the time that you’re undergoing that emotional distress.

And the thing is, the concept of “mental age” isn’t the most sound thing in the world. It’s based on incredibly outdated ideas about intelligence and neural development. It isn’t used much in the field of psychiatry much anymore because of those things, and because it’s pretty much meaningless when it actually comes to treating disabilities and to determining a person’s capabilities and what kind of support they need. There are a lot of different things that go into making up a person’s level of development and capability, and those developments all happen in different parts of the brain and interact with each other in different ways. Some people can be capable in rational ways that are considered “intelligent”, but they aren’t capable of doing things like maintaining a relationship. Some people are incredibly skilled at interpersonal relations and emotional processing, but they aren’t as capable at more rational thinking. Getting good grades in school doesn’t necessarily mean that one is the most “intelligent”, and having high “intelligence” doesn’t mean one is going to excel in school or work. Basically, there are a lot of different kinds of “intelligence” or capabilities that develop in and are controlled by different parts of the brain, and they interact with each other in very specific ways. So the concept of “mental age” is overly simplistic and only demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of neurological development.

And yes, the concept itself is considered pretty offensive by a lot of people, both people who are disabled and people who work in the field, so people should really avoid using it or applying it.

Now, as I’ve said, trauma and significant stress absolutely can have a huge psychological and neurological impact on a person, and it can have an impact on our neural development. Considering the age at which Caleb experienced his trauma, it likely did have an impact on his development. But not in the way that so many people are presenting it, as “he missed these years of his life so he was basically still the age he was when he went into the asylum”. Nope. That’s not the way neural development works

Because the brain develops back to front, the things that probably were most impacted by Caleb’s trauma would be the things controlled by the frontal lobe, like impulse control, problem solving, complex decision making, emotional regulation, and a deeper understanding of consequences. It could have also impacted his abilities when it comes to social interaction, and the development of his self awareness, which helps people develop a firm sense of self.

Trauma during brain development can have an impact on things like the connectivity and size of the parts of the brain that are affected, as well as the amount of activity that occurs in those areas. But that does not mean that development stopped at the point of trauma, or at the point where a person would be removed from a more normal societal setting, so no, a person who suffers from these things is not “basically the mental age they were when it happened”. They’re the age that they are with parts of the brain that were specifically impacted by their trauma. That does not make them “basically a teenager”. The brain continues to develop, it just develops in a way that is impacted by that trauma. It might develop in a way that is not considered “normal” or “healthy”, but again, and I must stress, it is not the same thing as being stuck at the “mental age” a person was at when the trauma first occurred.

Caleb, having been locked away for a very long time, might be “young” when it comes to life experience, in a way similar to Molly, and that can have an impact on how he develops his sense of self and his identity. But, again, that’s not the same thing as being “basically the mental age of a teenager.” And because the trauma occurred when he was still a teenager, it’s likely that he’s less capable of controlling his impulses, relating on a social level, etc. But that’s not the same as INCAPABLE, and that’s not the same as having the “mental age” of a teenager. And “less capable” might not even be the best way to describe it, especially if there were things happening during that time that might help to develop those things. “Capable in different ways” might be more accurate, depending on all of that. None of that means that he, or anyone who suffered trauma at the age and therefor had their neural development impacted, isn’t capable of functioning as an adult.

And there are a lot of things that can cause strange development for any number of these specific things that don’t necessarily have anything to do with trauma, but we never actually try to categorize those people as being “the mental age of a teenager” or anything like that. We might call them a bit immature, but we rarely actually treat them as though they’re children. Lots of people have problems with impulse control, or social interactions, or emotional regulation, or any number of those things or any combination of those things, but it’s never thought that they’re “basically still a child”, at least not in any literal way. And we shouldn’t think of people who have undergone trauma in that way either. Because it’s not true.

[littlestarprincess]

The fact that Yukine is *not* a survivor is a really good point -- we think of him as a survivor because he is running around doing things with our other protagonists and he's an active participant of the story, but taking a moment to remember that he's not definitely can put things into perspective. . .

. . . But it actually doesn't matter, in the grand scheme of things. There's a huge tendency for fandom to buy into the good victim/bad victim dichotomy, and I think with how Yukine's arc initially plays out, that dichotomy seems to be encouraged, especially since we don't start questioning it for another fifty chapters -- and with Adachitoka's pacing and foreshadowing, I definitely think that's by design, but that's a whole other conversation.

Here's the thing: people respond to pain in different ways, and people have different boundaries. Even if Yukine were a survivor, he wouldn't be a bad person for lashing out, especially when you take into consideration that the biggest "crime" a shinki can commit is entirely based on mentality -- we're told time and time again that stinging a god, a sin for which shinki are regularly abandoned and left to rot into ayakashi, depends entirely on how well the shinki is coping with their death, and how they perceive their actions. Yukine does not have coping mechanism, so he stings Yato to death's door. This isn't because he's doing bad things -- it's because he knows they're bad, and feels helpless and abandoned and guilty for even thinking of doing them, and then not only is he feeling like this, but he's constantly put on blast *by* Yato, who is at this time a stranger, for being a bad guy. Expecting someone not to react badly to their own despair being treated as proof that they're bad is. . . Outrageous, and lacking in any self awareness (which, I mean, that pretty much sums up gods and societal expectations for all time so) and it's natural that it would spiral out of control the way it did in the Yukine arc, even without taking into consideration the abuse Yukine experienced, actually dying, and the fact that he was fourteen.

(Fourteen year olds have like. Zero emotional regulation. Emotions all over and out of control. Even if you take away the abuse and dying, fourteen year olds are dramatic as hell and would definitely be causing all sorts of blight just from being fourteen, dealing with puberty and having minimal experience with the uos and downs of life.)

Look, the environment that Yato brought Yukine into was toxic. It was marginally better than Yukine getting swallowed up by an ayakashi, but he was still picked up by a homeless guy with no people skills (Yato has improved markedly, but a lot of how he interacted with people in the beginning was Super Bad, even if it was being played for laughs) in a society that expected him to maintain a constant emotional equilibrium and humiliated and shamed him when he wasn't able to do so. The absolution in Yukine's arc was like putting a band-aid on an open sore, tucking the bad things out of sight and forgetting about them, but Yukine has never once been an "angry jerk". He wanted to be treated like a person, and was punished for it until he was able to accept that his lot in life would always be scraps, a two by two plot of land in Heaven and someone else's living room on Earth. Then he held onto things really fucking well, honestly, until he was abandoned again (not just by Yato, but by Kofuku and Daikoku and everyone he'd ever met, since Hiyori was bedridden at that time and Yukine had no way of knowing, and for what? A contagion he didn't know he was carrying because no one can tell him about it without risking destroying him? What a crime. How selfish.). What do people want from him? For him to just be happy with nothing?

No one in the world is.

There are plenty of abuse survivors who don't become angry jerks like ayuikne is right now?

The key word is SURVIVOR. Yukine isn’t an abuse survivor because HE DID NOT SURVIVE. He was starved, beaten and BURIED ALIVE! And then he was forgotten. That’s the whole point. A lot of abuse survivors get to grow up, overcome the abuse and build a life for themselves. Yukine never had the chance to do that. He never lived a life without abuse. That’s why he’s mad, and frankly, calling him an angry jerk is really insensitive and shows a tremendous lack of empathy.

[garden-of-succulents]

Wait, so you don't have BPD but you want to write parse with bpd as your representation? How does that work? I'm really sorry, I like your Parse stories and read them and I don't mean to say that you shouldn't write them, but I don't understand where you're coming from on this. Is it really that difficult to identify with any of the characters of color on the same level?

I’ll answer your questions backwards so the long personal story can go under a readmore:

“Is it really that difficult to identify with any of the characters of color on the same level?“

That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last few weeks. Like, mental health is my wheelhouse, that’s a huge thing I write about; what about writing mentally ill characters of colour?  I can do it pretty easily with my OCs (cf. Luis and Maida) but feeling my way into mental health themes with canon characters of colour is more difficult while Kent and Jack are kind of like... low-hanging fruit, for me.

It’s why I’ve started bugging @abominableobriens with thoughts about BPD Nursey, gone back to trying to work my way into Ransom’s anxiety (I can’t find the post where I talk about where I was with this a couple months ago).  It’s not a smooth process, though--I’m flopping around being like “but how do I respect Ransom’s personality and preferences but get him some TREATMENT and REST” and “Okay but I haaate conflict-laden relationships and Nursey and Dex’s canon relationship is so full of sniping, how do I write Nursey without Dex?” and that’s the kind of flailing and experimentation I have to do internally or talking to a few people. Mostly the for-public-consumption stuff that’s come out of that process so far has been fluffy romantic headcanons.

So we’ll see how that goes. It’s partly that positive depictions of BPD/the kind of complex trauma I’m interested in are really rare. Before OMGCP, I spent most of my time writing straight-up OCs in fandom contexts because I couldn’t find what I wanted in the source material. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Oookay, and now for the long bit: Why I care really personally about representations of BPD even though I don’t have it myself.

So basically, I’ve been depressed/mentally ill since elementary school, but growing up I kind of internalized the idea that letting my family know I was suffering would be so awful and unbearable for them that I could NOT do it. So I hated myself and I was miserable and was convinced that I couldn’t tell any adults about it. The big lifeline for me were young adult problem novels--books about teens in treatment programs for eating disorders or self-injury or, heck, kidney disease or parapalegia--I never saw myself in the symptoms, precisely, which was confusing, but I did see myself in the emotional experience of overwhelming pain, and I was captivated by the idea that feeling so awful all the time wasn’t normal, it was a disease; and a disease that could be treated. There were people who could help me be Not-That--but I couldn’t ask my parents to see a therapist, since that would be too awful for them, so I tried to soak up what knowledge I could through those books (or the nonfiction books that were available to me).  The books... were very  bland, whitewashed, rendered down to be acceptable; the girls were very soft, very fragile, would never hurt a fly (except themselves). I kind of internalized that as what a Good Mentally Ill Person should look like, and didn’t realize there was any other sort of mental illness.

In junior high school I started being able to articulate this depression to other kids and started making friends, online and in real life, who were also mentally ill like me. We could talk together about feeling worthless and unlovable, and participate in a conspiracy of silence Not To Let The Adults Know.

I’m struggling to explain this and keep my narrative somehow concise, not an essay about my entire childhood--long story short, I’m not Borderline; I was a lot more emotionally stable, even if my stability was in absolute fucking misery. I could take an emotion like a punch to the gut and sit with it, when a lot of my friends would have to get it out somehow--it drove them to do crazy and self-destructive things. (As an adult I know this difference is a lot about genetics and our lives before the age of three.)  And also, long story short, I learned that one way to make people like me was to pay attention to them and take care of them. I nurtured out of self-defense and because it was the only way I knew how to socialize. So I was the person all my friends told about their problems.

And I thought they were like me, that we had the same problems, the same illness? I tried to take what I learned from books and apply it, which was all about being patient and giving and empathetic and loyal and A Good Friend. I thought friendship could cure anything.  No matter what anybody did to me, I was totally disconnected from my anger and self-protective instincts; I thought I had to be a sponge, soaking up all their bad emotions and loving them no matter what.

So I was totally unprepared for them to split on me. I didn’t know anything about the idealization/devaluation cycle.

Splitting is... so, Borderline Personality Disorder is basically an inability to self-regulate, to integrate, to tolerate ambiguity. Either the person with it is an amazing perfect god, or a destructive piece of shit. Either their friend is a wonderful loving angel, or an evil demon who hates them and wants them to suffer. And this is an opinion that can flip on a dime, depending on how the person feels in that moment. So like--

I was maybe 16 or 17, and made a friend through a speech and debate club I was part of. From out of nowhere she liked me, thought I was pretty and smart and special. I stayed up until 3am one weekend and talked with her; we shared our hopes, our dreams, our favourite books. She sang a Scottish ballad that she said reminded her of me (”black is the colour of my true love’s hair”). The next time we met she gave me a little teddy bear with a hand-written note about what a good friend I was.

Then in the club, it was my job to make sure everyone got to meetings on time and was properly dressed and everything, and someone pointed out to me that my friend was wearing a skirt that was way shorter than dress guidelines allowed for. I had to go tell her that she was supposed to change and said, squirmingly uncomfortable, “People have talked to me...”  She stalked off.

That night was a ceremony where people who aged out of the group got to talk a little bit about what the group meant to them, and say goodbye to people, and play or sing a song. Her turn came, and she announced that our entire group was full of fake, awful, petty monsters, two-faced liars, almost as hurtful, hateful, and abusive as her foster parents. The song she played was “Just Like You” by Three Days Grace. I sobbed the entire time and tried to apologize to her, but it didn’t work. 

About a month later, she emailed someone in the group to say she’d been angry and hadn’t meant it, and she was sorry for ruining the ceremony.

That kind of thing happened to me with... maybe five or six different people, to greater or lesser degrees, from the time I was 12 to the time I was 20, which is when I finally got a handle on what was going on and how to predict it and keep it from happening. Friendships where everything was fine, wonderful, great thanks, how are you, fine, wonderf--KABOOM YOU’RE A FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT LIS YOU ABUSER (oh wait sorry i didn’t mean it where are you going).

It took a lot of work to learn that I had to get my sense of self from something other than helping other people, to look after my own needs as well as other peoples’, to learn (GASP) to accept and even ask for help. A lot of things changed when my mom told us, when I was 15, that she was depressed and going into therapy, because that meant we were allowed to do these things in our family. I immediately blurted out, “Can I see a therapist too?”  So I got more centred in myself, and also finally figured out what was going on with my friends, and got better at maintaining friendships with people with BPD that did not explode, at making friendships that were not based around me being a pseudo-therapist, and at getting my helping-people jonesing out with actual paid work.

So you might notice that a lot of my fics about Kent and BPD aren’t actually from Kent’s perspective or about him--they’re about people trying to live with him. Hurricane or Campsites are stories about people who know what to expect, who have some understanding of what he’s like and how to keep themselves safe. They can find ways to love him for his good parts without letting his bad parts hurt them, can love him without letting themselves be sucked in by the extreme warmth of his regard, can maintain their own boundaries and make their own decisions.

(To be honest, I was initially really amazed to find that people with BPD appreciate my fics or me talking about the subject? Because I am an outsider, because I am writing from this perspective--a medical perspective, no less! The voice of the Establishment! But a lot of people have been really receptive to my POV--which might just be, again, the paucity of positive representations at all.)

I didn’t really think about it this way until I got this ask and started trying to explain it, but... I’m trying to write the kind of story I could have used when I was a kid.

(So then you ask, Lis, you’re still writing about other people, about meeting other peoples’ needs--when are you going to write about children like you were, about experiences like yours? When are you going to tell your own story? and then I change the topic and sidle awkwardly out of the room. I’m not ready for that yet.)

[coffeeandambientnoise]

Social Justice Activism Has Become Just Another Fashion Accessory

Pop activism is just a giant Che Guevara T-shirt draped atop the collective bosom of a generation of vapid attention-junkies.

By Mahdi Barakat

OCTOBER 11, 2017

Recently it was super trendy to do a volunteer trip in a poor country and follow it with a Facebook picture of oneself holding a helpless brown child. This sort of flattering altruism raised many eyebrows, and for obvious reasons: If your actions are truly about helping the less-fortunate, why flaunt it?

Although I’m not doubting the sincerity of many who do such volunteer trips, you don’t need to be a psychoanalyst to recognize that “holding the helpless African child” is often a form of self-promotion. Even our friends on the Left have found ways to interpret such photogenic philanthropy as self-serving.

Most of today’s political activism feels a lot like the profile picture with the Third World child, especially among the under-30 crowd. We all know contemporary activism tends to find its way onto social media: A person goes to an anti-Trump rally, and nine times out of ten will post a status documenting that participation. So now I ask: Is posting a photo of yourself holding an anti-Trump sign akin to posting a photo of yourself holding a Haitian child?

Yes, but publicizing one’s compassion is a much more clever game now. Whereas helping needy children on a volunteer trip doesn’t actually require broadcasting one’s actions, the purpose of modern-day activism is closely tied to the notion of spreading awareness—sharing your good deed with the world is an inherent feature of the deed itself. What a convenient goal.

We’re not meant to doubt the motives behind your flattering #supportthecause selfie, because you’re spreading awareness. That picture of you courageously holding a sign at this week’s anti-fascism protest isn’t to show the world you’re a great person, or to let your social circle know that you’re hip to the cause; no, it’s about spreading that magical awareness.

What We Call Decisions Made to Look Good

You don’t need to be a Seinfeldian cynic to see through all of this. Instagram, for example, is literally dedicated to projecting an idealized version of one’s life and character for others to see. It’s the ultimate tool for self-advertising. Instagram is where you share a bird’s-eye view of your cappuccino next to a book so everyone can know how quaint and learned your Sunday was.

By some weird and wild coincidence, Instagram just so happens to be among the choice platforms for promoting cosmic justice as well. In some happy twist of fate, the platform that is meant to portray the perfect version of oneself convenientlyhappens to be the go-to medium for those exhibiting their burning commitment to uplifting humankind.

I’m not buying it, and neither should you. By Occam’s razor, it sounds like what the kids are calling “activism” these days is really just another means for enhancing one’s appearance. Like a nose ring, a contrived candid pose, and a retro photo filter, activism injects a desirable aesthetic into one’s social media persona. What do we call decisions made to look good? Fashion decisions.

In favoring style over function, we’re left with a shallow knock-off of true activism for the kids to play with. Bastardized, standardized, and commercialized for superficial mass consumption, what we are actually witnessing is pop activism.

Pop Goes the Activism

Like other things “pop,” pop activism is more concerned with channeling the appearance of the original than knowing its substance. It requires no appreciation for the root material, nor the intellectual commitment to the ideas that underpinned the original cultural phenomenon. Generally, the younger the pop activist is, the more acutely fashion-oriented his or her “activism.” Resist capitalism on Saturday, and enjoy its fruits on Sunday. Decry institutional oppression in your latest Facebook status, yet lack the faintest idea of what truly oppressive institutions are like.

The pop activist is like the gym bro who posts shirtless pics of his hot bod to “inspire others to be their best selves.” The pop activist is like the supermodel who posts a no-makeup selfie under the pretense of “celebrating imperfections,” knowing full well that she still looks better than 99.9 percent of people would after a two-hour appointment at Sephora. The pop activist is very much like the person holding the African child, except the pop activist rarely does any actual good work.

Pop activism is just a giant Che Guevara T-shirt draped atop the collective bosom of a generation of vapid attention-junkies. If Katy Perry is a true activist, then she’s also a true punk-rocker. And whether you’re an aspiring Instagram model or peddling climate change models, there’s always a pop-activist accessory for your tastes.

Here’s the funniest bit: the very individuals who claim to abhor the idea of “cultural appropriation” are practicing the ultimate appropriation. They’ve extracted the imagery and language of meaningful activism from generations and peoples they cannot understand. Pop activists poach the look, but most will never come close to fathoming the circumstances and experiences of the truly downtrodden. Thus, the pop activist trivializes historical struggles for the sake of social cosmetics. It’s wrong for a white girl to wear braids, but apparently it’s just fine to liken a rally for subsidized birth control to Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington.

What’s New About This Old Human Feature

Now, trends and Instagram quirks are usually harmless. It’s cute when cuffed trousers make a comeback for a few years. It’s cute when you’re given a glimpse into the (theoretically personal) moment an acquaintance proposes to his fiancée. We can argue that these cute things are narcissistic and vainglorious, but they’re not tangibly malignant.

But this phenomenon of cheap-and-trendy social consciousness has demonstrated an ability to drive policies that coerce and regulate people’s actions. That’s no longer cute. Sub-cultures as shallow as Beyoncé fandom shouldn’t have a dramatic effect on society’s most important institutions. We should be bothered that a bunch of hipsters who are nostalgic for eras of real struggle are exaggerating and fabricating human rights crises just to get their fix. We should be extremely bothered that “wokeness” has become a marketing gimmick for major fashion enterprise.

We’re all familiar with the silliness of virtue-signaling. We intuitively know that people go around wagging their fingers at others in order to make themselves look and feel good. We also know that activism has always had a place in vogue media.

But things are different now. Social media grants every person his own brand, and we’re constantly curating the studio of self. We are our own PR teams in the social marketplace, always ready to strike a pose or feign an emotion for the camera. Whoever or whatever brought us here reeks of malevolent genius. Pop activism dovetails perfectly with our ‘round-the-clock jobs of self-promotion. As a consequence, framing serious political issues with hyper-moralistic language becomes more effective. It’s no coincidence that campus leftism broke into the mainstream in tandem with social media’s meteoric ascent.

It’s the Confluence of Selfish Advantages With Activism

You may be thinking, “You’re not being fair. My best friend, Quinn, may derive some social benefits from his activism, but he’s genuinely devoted to what he’s doing.” Good point. But I’ll note two things. First, I don’t claim that no SJWs or pop activists maintain pure fundamental motives. Some of those gym bros really do want to inspire others with their washboard abs, and some supermodels do seek to celebrate imperfections. Yet general skepticism is warranted because, these days, activism is generally not what it purports to be.

Humans are good at convincing themselves of whatever reality aligns with their comfort.

Second, even if one is consciously committed to one’s own bag of social causes, it’s not unlikely that self-interest is a significant driver. Humans are good at convincing themselves of whatever reality aligns with their comfort. It just so happens that lots of rich people vote for and believe in the guy who wants to lower taxes. It just so happens that lots of welfare dependents vote for and believe in the guy who’s promising more government benefits.

It just so happens that your best friend, Quinn, settled on a political disposition that’s great for his image. It just so happens that he’s found himself in a political culture that guarantees praise for every instance of exhibitionism from his extended social circle. It just so happens that Quinn found a way to simultaneously fight for all that’s right in this world and look fab while doing it.

There’s an easier way to get to the bottom of this: Do you think half as many people would attend church if doing so didn’t come with any social benefits? That’s not so hard to admit. By that same token, are we to believe that half as many people would be Women’s Marching if it were all anonymous?

What makes pop activism so contagious is that it’s as easy to convince oneself of the virtue in one’s deeds as it is to persuade others. Just as traditional religious systems are so effective in generating activity by socially and spiritually rewarding the most conspicuous worshippers, the ecosystem of contemporary activism does much the same. Two hundred years ago it was bonnet-clad Puritans brandishing their religiosity; today we have pink-haired baristas converting every news item into obnoxious displays of sanctimony.

We Don’t Have to Be Like This

But the smartest woman in the room isn’t compelled to tell everyone how smart she is. The most pious man at church doesn’t feel the need to pray where everyone can see him. Similarly, a real activist doesn’t approach an anti-Trump rally with all of the social opportunism of a sorority pack eager to Snapchat the best pics from their Coachella weekend.

Don’t get me wrong: all of the hot topics of pop activism are worth talking about. But using activism, to whatever degree, as a means to social ends taints whatever intellectual integrity you may hope to associate with your political advocacy.

There’s always the hope that pop activism will go the way of Tamagotchi pets and Ed Hardy tees. But this is unlikely. Social signaling is an integral human function. Like music, pop activism will always be popular, but different content will go in and out of style. Future generations will inherit the paradigm of superficial activism, simply replacing old content with new (hence the rise of alt-righters and meme-based right-wing politics as an alternative to the leftist pop-activist program).

Unless we transcend the naïve idea that flattering activism is some sort of virtue, the country will always be at the mercy of the whims of fashion. That probably doesn’t make for good policy.

Mahdi is a first-generation American Muslim from Salt Lake City, Utah. As a strong advocate for small government and liberal principles, he dedicates his time to researching and writing about public policy and culture. He holds a master's degree in engineering from University College London and has worked as a consultant in the medical device industry.