#leftlib blogging

[melancholic-pigeon]

I think part of why I'm so moody is that bloodthirsty leftism has fallen so far into fashion and that scares the shit out of me

I spent like a year thinking I was a bad person because I couldn't tolerate the gleeful, graphically violent death wishes anymore. I started seeing claims that the only people who couldn't tolerate gleeful, graphically violent death wishes are bootlickers and fascism apologists. I started seeing claims that if you can't make yourself dehumanize your opponents, if you think it would be preferable to not literally assassinate people, you're a holier-than-thou coward.

"they want me dead, so I want them dead, and you should also want them dead or you're just as bad as they are"

maybe I just....don't want people dead?

I thought we were supposed to be the ones opposed to the death penalty and working for rehabilitative justice, but I've seen increasing amounts of people who demand exceptions.

Like, sorry, I think it would have been a horrible thing for the last prez to be assassinated, it would have emboldened the base and given them a martyr, and that apparently makes me a monster because he is a horrifically monstrous person?

I'm seeing way too many people pushing for vengeance and actively rejecting justice and progress because it isn't vengeful enough for them.

I know we're all angry. I'm furious. But stewing in hatred to the point where it's your entire fucking personality doesn't help, it just burns out your coils and makes you impossible to be around.

I should know. Thank god I grew out of it.

I'm just tired of the excuses and the hypocrisy and the justifying and the bullying and the cruelty and the aggression and the suspicion and the hostility.

Most people want and are trying to do the right thing. Suffering is bad. Why has this become contentious all of a sudden?

[melancholic-pigeon]

you load sixteen tons, what do you get

another day older and deeper in debt

saint peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go

I owe my soul to the company store!

-Sixteen Tons by Merle Travis, first recorded in 1946.

[femmedesyeuxnoirs]

when one of my posts gets popular theres always someone adding an unnecessary comment to my post and when i go on their blog, every time without fail, theyre part of the incel tumblr transphobe cliques that hover around cryptofashes. I go on the blog and its like *3 lukewarm leftlib takes* *unfunny 4chan humor* *transphobic post reblogged from [insert cryptofash]*

[melancholic-pigeon]

man I always find it baffling when someone makes a post to the tune of, say, "other people on the internet are not responsible for managing your triggers and mental health for you, you need to be able to take care of yourself in this regard because it's unacceptable to go yell at strangers for mentioning a TV show your ex liked in a server"

and someone else says "oh yeah, very true, here's a relevant story about me and a conflict with a friend over fic-related content"

and OP throws a fit that disgusting nasty freaks would reblog their post to say it applies to disgusting nasty bad fic and crow about how apparently other people ARE responsible for managing your trauma for you by not writing things you find icky

you were so close to getting it. SO CLOSE.

This happens all the time, too, someone discusses an aspect of purity culture that is 1000% the direct origin of purity wank surrounding any given piece of media and other people reblog it noting that connection and OP throws a fit because OBVIOUSLY smooshing the wrong internet barbies together is an exception to the idea that puritan fearmongering is bad

the cognitive dissonance alarms and disheartens me because being willing to make an exception based on your personal disgust is a bad bad bad bad bad thing and also an inherently authoritarian viewpoint and AUTHORITARIANISM IS BAD REGARDLESS OF WHERE IT COMES FROM, ACTUALLY

[melancholic-pigeon]

I'm pleased that on this veteran's day, I haven't seen any bad posts mocking veterans!

Like, mock the army, please, seriously; don't mock the teenagers who got preyed on and lied to by recruiters or the vets who are permanently disabled because of the atrocities they were put through and witness to or the people who were drafted and didn't have a choice. Vets =/= the army. "Support veterans" and "fuck the army for making them" are two statements that can and should co-exist.

But it's nice that for the first time maybe ever my dash hasn't had any bullshit of the kind that floats around on the fourth of July where people hear "hey fireworks sound like gunshots and can be extremely triggering to veterans" and think "LOLOL THEY DESERVE IT"

So uh thanks moots for being decent, reasonable people. It restored some of my faith in humanity.

[melancholic-pigeon]

An excellent offshoot of the last version I I reblogged.

The notes on this post are all pretty good and worth reading over, tbh.

of course, my frustration with how The Left handles people trying to become informed about their ideas is partly motivated by fear. I swear being online is like I’ve been sent back in time to stop a disaster that’s already happened.

On some level y’all get that the far right extremists are good at recruiting and radicalizing, but generally speaking The Left curses at and attacks people who are trying to ask questions, constantly reiterates that its people’s own responsibility to be informed, repeats the exact kinds of propaganda right wing media spews out because they think the concept of Christians being oppressed or whatever is funny, encases all their discussions in jargon that is impossible to understand without context, refuses to define the jargon even as right-wing media “educates” them about its Real Meaning, and spreads the idea that having a discussion with anyone right of center morally taints you. A part of me is screaming internally every second I’m online because of this. If you think of this as a cultural and ideological battle of sorts, the Right is actively recruiting soldiers while the Left is busy chasing anyone who doesn’t already have military training, a uniform, and weapons away from their recruitment office (which is boarded up with signs saying that anyone who asks where they can join will be forcibly removed from the premises) with baseball bats.

Like we can debate “performing emotional labor” until the sun burns out and probably some good points will be made but at some point it’s gonna be either emotional labor or living under a fascist dictatorship because all the people it wasn’t our job to educate went out and finally educated themselves, just like we wanted them to, using their free Google…

…which showed them how to find nazis that would happily answer all of their questions, without cursing or implying that they should already know everything, and lots of free, non-paywalled, easy to read and jargonless articles about how it’s a minority’s fault that things suck.

If we’re fighting back we’ve got to fight to win. That’s it.

[melancholic-pigeon]

rubbernecking on twitter about the S4r4h Z situation (censored because her fans have been namesearching and harassing people for criticizing her awful, dismissive victim-blaming

I'm really disappointed that so many lefty youtubers I used to like will circle the wagons and refuse to listen to the very clear evidence people have repeatedly begged them to listen to because S4r4h said they were mean

it's not hard to read adybpt's tweets. It's not hard to find people respectfully trying to explain why this harms marginalized people and why the ants are the ones being virulently misogynist.

There is no other explanation than that they're plugging their ears and deliberately refusing to listen.

Ants are g4mergaters and no better. How can you call yourself a leftist while refusing to listen to the marginalized people who are pleading with you not to trivialize the damage they do is beyond me.

I thought better of many of them than the rancid hypocrisy, DARVOing and defensive denial, but I guess I was wrong, and I don't like it.

[melancholic-pigeon]

What the dems are doing is not enough.

however.

In many of these cases, it's not for lack of trying, it's because the other side's method is "hold my breath until I get my way".

The fact that they have passed anything at all in the face of this kind of bullshit obstructionism and government by a tiny minority that has heavily rigged the game in their favor is impressive and we largely have congress to thank for that.

It's not enough, and OH BOY do I have a lot of criticisms about the dems, but please don't forget the context:

"I want ALL OF THE TOYS and ALL OF THE SNACKS for ME"

"They're not your toys or snacks, they're everyone's toys and snacks, and we need to share with the other kids—"

"NO! NO NO NO NO NO! MINE! ALL MINE! I'M GOING TO THROW A MASSIVE TANTRUM, STAMP MY FEET, BREAK ALL THE TOYS, PISS ON ALL THE SNACKS, PUNCH SIX PEOPLE, AND CRY AND COMPLAIN ABOUT HOW MEAN EVERYONE WAS TO ME"

and the more we think they're all the same, the more leftists think there's no point in voting. That's what the Russian psyops took advantage of in 2016. (Yes, that happened, I still have an email with hundreds of blogs I had interacted with in some fashion that tumblr had identified as Russian psyops, many via reblog threads— which meant a lot of my friends fell for it and spread it around too.)

It's super easy to fall for and extremely tempting to do so. I get it. But think about who benefits from trying to get this attitude to take off.

It's fucking mitch and the rest of his slime mold buddies. that's who. If we don't vote, if we sit back and become complacent and play right into his hands, we don't vote them out.

It's next to impossible to vote them out to begin with, because they know that without disenfranchising minority and marginalized voters, they will not win.

Mitch is MASSIVELY unpopular in his home state, and yet he wins reelection every fucking time because he ensured that the only votes that count are the votes for him.

(By the way, the voter restriction laws being passed in multiple states isn't in any way because of federal government. This is why they crow about state's rights so much. This is state government lashing out and attempting to punish their constituents for voting blue.

The only way the president can affect this is through federal law, and the only reason it isn't federal law is because the Republicans are holding covid relief hostage too, and refusing to pass any bill that includes voting rights. The alternative is not passing anything at all. It's not enough, it's nowhere NEAR enough, but just because something is taken out of a bill does not mean they're giving up on it forever.)

I vehemently dislike Biden and I vehemently dislike the fallacy of the extended middle. He was close to the bottom of my list for presidential candidates. But even a magical ideal perfect leftist president would have a very hard time getting almost anything done with mitch holding the senate hostage.

[melancholic-pigeon]

If you actually think that being marginalized - on any axis - completely frees you from having to think about how you treat other people of any and every category, there is something wrong going on in your understanding, and what you’re working for is not justice, it’s just a change in the hierarchy where you get to be on the top punching everyone else. 

I know it’s late, but like… people know 99% of authors don’t have social media handlers, right? That most small time creators, artists, Youtubers, and TikTokers are both obligated to stay on social media for their livelihoods and also don’t have any barrier between them and people being shitty just for the hell of it?

And I feel like we all know that, or at least should know that, and that what happened to Tess Sharpe is an outlier, but I also see authors get tagged in negative reviews all the time. I see YouTubers get pulled into drama that had nothing to do with them, because someone parasocially decided they had to be involved.

And there are consequences. People leave social media, they shut down access to their work. Tess Sharpe is no longer going to have anything to do with a book she wrote, a book a lot of people liked, because a small group of people refused to admit what they were doing was wrong.

And man, I don’t know how to convey that a conversation or a debate stops being so once you start deliberating triggering someone. You can’t reason with an organized internet harassment campaign, so what do you do?

I don’t know the answer to this. I don’t think anyone does. But if someone’s being shitty to you and they’ve crossed that line, you gotta get out of that situation. Lock your stuff down, reach out to others for help if you need it, block what you can and have a friend take over if you must. Don’t sit there and suffer, you don’t deserve it.

And stay off twitter, probably.

[melancholic-pigeon]

and on a separate reblog branch: I have seen this happen with my eyes and lost friends over it. They start out making a valid argument about tone policing, and then it snowballs into "I can say literally anything I want with no consequences and you're opressing me if you disagree", which snowballs into "if you don't agree with Kill All [Bad People], you're probably one of them"

and I should not have to explain why this line of thinking is so fucking dangerous.

It's not about whether bad people are bad. It's about whether someone being a bad person makes it okay for others to violate their human rights. It's about how easily "bad person" turns into "person who got in my way" and how much easier it is to get away with that when there are armies of well-intentioned rebloggers who take this at face value and think "oh well, it's a really, really, REALLY bad person, so it's okay".

I get the logic leap. It's still wrong.

please for the love of fuck stop with the "kill all [bad people I don't like]" garbage reblogs. Please. I am begging you to take this seriously.

IT NEVER STAYS LIMITED TO THE PEOPLE YOU THINK DESERVE IT. SOMEONE WILL ALWAYS USE "KILL ALL [BLANK]" TO SHOEHORN ANYONE THEY DISLIKE INTO THE [BLANK] CATEGORY SO THAT THEY HAVE AN EXCUSE TO ATTACK AND HARM AND ABUSE PEOPLE.

STOP.

[melancholic-pigeon]

see also:

"punitive justice is terrible and I will write an essay about how that translates into greater culture and interpersonal interactions"

"Yes! This! It contributes to purity culture in fandom that leads to mass harassment campaigns!"

"Ew, freak, I wasn't talking about BAD PEOPLE with BAD SHIPS"

you were, actually, you just decided that the truth is not the truth when it comes to stuff that makes you feel icky!

Frankly I find it deeply alarming how many leftists LOUDLY AND PROUDLY are totally okay with punitive justice up to and including the death penalty as long as it's Bad People Who Deserve It Because I Said So No You Shouldn't Fact Check Because That Makes You A Bad Person Too

that's not being in support of reformative justice, that's playing favorites and giving your cronies special treatment.

man I always find it baffling when someone makes a post to the tune of, say, "other people on the internet are not responsible for managing your triggers and mental health for you, you need to be able to take care of yourself in this regard because it's unacceptable to go yell at strangers for mentioning a TV show your ex liked in a server"

and someone else says "oh yeah, very true, here's a relevant story about me and a conflict with a friend over fic-related content"

and OP throws a fit that disgusting nasty freaks would reblog their post to say it applies to disgusting nasty bad fic and crow about how apparently other people ARE responsible for managing your trauma for you by not writing things you find icky

you were so close to getting it. SO CLOSE.

This happens all the time, too, someone discusses an aspect of purity culture that is 1000% the direct origin of purity wank surrounding any given piece of media and other people reblog it noting that connection and OP throws a fit because OBVIOUSLY smooshing the wrong internet barbies together is an exception to the idea that puritan fearmongering is bad

the cognitive dissonance alarms and disheartens me because being willing to make an exception based on your personal disgust is a bad bad bad bad bad thing and also an inherently authoritarian viewpoint and AUTHORITARIANISM IS BAD REGARDLESS OF WHERE IT COMES FROM, ACTUALLY

[melancholic-pigeon]

Friendly reminder this applies to EVERYONE, EVEN THE REALLY BAD PEOPLE YOU DON'T LIKE WHO HAVE HURT OTHERS.

Being against the death penalty and in favor of basic human rights absolutely must include all humans. RIGHTS are not bestowed on a case by case basis when someone is deigned to have enough Good Person PointsTM to not literally be fucking killed.

YES, THIS INCLUDES THE TERRIBLE PEOPLE YOU HATE.

I think part of why I'm so moody is that bloodthirsty leftism has fallen so far into fashion and that scares the shit out of me

I spent like a year thinking I was a bad person because I couldn't tolerate the gleeful, graphically violent death wishes anymore. I started seeing claims that the only people who couldn't tolerate gleeful, graphically violent death wishes are bootlickers and fascism apologists. I started seeing claims that if you can't make yourself dehumanize your opponents, if you think it would be preferable to not literally assassinate people, you're a holier-than-thou coward.

"they want me dead, so I want them dead, and you should also want them dead or you're just as bad as they are"

maybe I just....don't want people dead?

I thought we were supposed to be the ones opposed to the death penalty and working for rehabilitative justice, but I've seen increasing amounts of people who demand exceptions.

Like, sorry, I think it would have been a horrible thing for the last prez to be assassinated, it would have emboldened the base and given them a martyr, and that apparently makes me a monster because he is a horrifically monstrous person?

I'm seeing way too many people pushing for vengeance and actively rejecting justice and progress because it isn't vengeful enough for them.

I know we're all angry. I'm furious. But stewing in hatred to the point where it's your entire fucking personality doesn't help, it just burns out your coils and makes you impossible to be around.

I should know. Thank god I grew out of it.

I'm just tired of the excuses and the hypocrisy and the justifying and the bullying and the cruelty and the aggression and the suspicion and the hostility.

Most people want and are trying to do the right thing. Suffering is bad. Why has this become contentious all of a sudden?

[melancholic-pigeon]

Hello! I think you misinterpreted my post.

The thesis is that no, we mustn't be ready to kill for our ideals, because killing is a terrible, awful thing that no one should be ready for. Violence is not a force of nature; it's a choice that humans make.

The justification of making that choice by the logic that it's necessary and we must be ready for it is the exact thing I find so terrifying.

I'm fairly certain this was intended well, and I don't want to be harsh, so I hope I'm not coming off accusatory or anything. It's a reasonable position for a lot of people to come to; what frightens me is that it's very, very easily used to further cruelty. The reason that it's easily used to further cruelty is because it sounds reasonable.

I think part of why I'm so moody is that bloodthirsty leftism has fallen so far into fashion and that scares the shit out of me

I spent like a year thinking I was a bad person because I couldn't tolerate the gleeful, graphically violent death wishes anymore. I started seeing claims that the only people who couldn't tolerate gleeful, graphically violent death wishes are bootlickers and fascism apologists. I started seeing claims that if you can't make yourself dehumanize your opponents, if you think it would be preferable to not literally assassinate people, you're a holier-than-thou coward.

"they want me dead, so I want them dead, and you should also want them dead or you're just as bad as they are"

maybe I just....don't want people dead?

I thought we were supposed to be the ones opposed to the death penalty and working for rehabilitative justice, but I've seen increasing amounts of people who demand exceptions.

Like, sorry, I think it would have been a horrible thing for the last prez to be assassinated, it would have emboldened the base and given them a martyr, and that apparently makes me a monster because he is a horrifically monstrous person?

I'm seeing way too many people pushing for vengeance and actively rejecting justice and progress because it isn't vengeful enough for them.

I know we're all angry. I'm furious. But stewing in hatred to the point where it's your entire fucking personality doesn't help, it just burns out your coils and makes you impossible to be around.

I should know. Thank god I grew out of it.

I'm just tired of the excuses and the hypocrisy and the justifying and the bullying and the cruelty and the aggression and the suspicion and the hostility.

Most people want and are trying to do the right thing. Suffering is bad. Why has this become contentious all of a sudden?

[melancholic-pigeon]

last one I swear:

(And to counter the kind of posts I was talking about, yes, this attitude ABSOLUTELY bleeds into fandom, and you see it when proclaimed leftists call for the gruesome death of people who ship their NOTP and justify it to themselves by making up Pseudo-Social Justice reasons for why it's okay: or in other words, they make exceptions to their leftist practice praxis (ty autocorrect) based on their personal subjective sense of disgust.)

man I always find it baffling when someone makes a post to the tune of, say, "other people on the internet are not responsible for managing your triggers and mental health for you, you need to be able to take care of yourself in this regard because it's unacceptable to go yell at strangers for mentioning a TV show your ex liked in a server"

and someone else says "oh yeah, very true, here's a relevant story about me and a conflict with a friend over fic-related content"

and OP throws a fit that disgusting nasty freaks would reblog their post to say it applies to disgusting nasty bad fic and crow about how apparently other people ARE responsible for managing your trauma for you by not writing things you find icky

you were so close to getting it. SO CLOSE.

This happens all the time, too, someone discusses an aspect of purity culture that is 1000% the direct origin of purity wank surrounding any given piece of media and other people reblog it noting that connection and OP throws a fit because OBVIOUSLY smooshing the wrong internet barbies together is an exception to the idea that puritan fearmongering is bad

the cognitive dissonance alarms and disheartens me because being willing to make an exception based on your personal disgust is a bad bad bad bad bad thing and also an inherently authoritarian viewpoint and AUTHORITARIANISM IS BAD REGARDLESS OF WHERE IT COMES FROM, ACTUALLY

[melancholic-pigeon]

(just in case it needs to be stated, the death penalty is a horrific, morally reprehensible thing and should be permanently, completely abolished for everyone, yes, even Those Really Bad People; there is no level of badness that cancels out human rights, and by no level I mean NO LEVEL. PERIOD. NO EXCEPTIONS, EVER.)

man I always find it baffling when someone makes a post to the tune of, say, "other people on the internet are not responsible for managing your triggers and mental health for you, you need to be able to take care of yourself in this regard because it's unacceptable to go yell at strangers for mentioning a TV show your ex liked in a server"

and someone else says "oh yeah, very true, here's a relevant story about me and a conflict with a friend over fic-related content"

and OP throws a fit that disgusting nasty freaks would reblog their post to say it applies to disgusting nasty bad fic and crow about how apparently other people ARE responsible for managing your trauma for you by not writing things you find icky

you were so close to getting it. SO CLOSE.

This happens all the time, too, someone discusses an aspect of purity culture that is 1000% the direct origin of purity wank surrounding any given piece of media and other people reblog it noting that connection and OP throws a fit because OBVIOUSLY smooshing the wrong internet barbies together is an exception to the idea that puritan fearmongering is bad

the cognitive dissonance alarms and disheartens me because being willing to make an exception based on your personal disgust is a bad bad bad bad bad thing and also an inherently authoritarian viewpoint and AUTHORITARIANISM IS BAD REGARDLESS OF WHERE IT COMES FROM, ACTUALLY

[melancholic-pigeon]

really what it boils down to is:

if you make exceptions to your leftist praxis based on whether you think the person is deserving of your leftist praxis, you are morally inconsistent and engaging in a stunning level of hypocrisy and no better than the assholes saying poor people don't deserve handouts because they should have worked harder.

They are two different ways to say "I WOULD support your human rights, but since I don't like you and think you don't espouse enough of my morals, I think you should suffer instead".

man I always find it baffling when someone makes a post to the tune of, say, "other people on the internet are not responsible for managing your triggers and mental health for you, you need to be able to take care of yourself in this regard because it's unacceptable to go yell at strangers for mentioning a TV show your ex liked in a server"

and someone else says "oh yeah, very true, here's a relevant story about me and a conflict with a friend over fic-related content"

and OP throws a fit that disgusting nasty freaks would reblog their post to say it applies to disgusting nasty bad fic and crow about how apparently other people ARE responsible for managing your trauma for you by not writing things you find icky

you were so close to getting it. SO CLOSE.

This happens all the time, too, someone discusses an aspect of purity culture that is 1000% the direct origin of purity wank surrounding any given piece of media and other people reblog it noting that connection and OP throws a fit because OBVIOUSLY smooshing the wrong internet barbies together is an exception to the idea that puritan fearmongering is bad

the cognitive dissonance alarms and disheartens me because being willing to make an exception based on your personal disgust is a bad bad bad bad bad thing and also an inherently authoritarian viewpoint and AUTHORITARIANISM IS BAD REGARDLESS OF WHERE IT COMES FROM, ACTUALLY