#the '(but that might just be me 😔)' part doesn't just undercut yr discernment‚ it undercuts the praise *predicated* on yr discernment

[aeide-thea]

so i went to reblog some fanart earlier and started to tag it #oh this is. incredible actually, and then paused and thought, @‍self why the 'actually.' what is that adverb conveying. and i contemplated it for a bit, and finally concluded: well, shit. it's reflexive deprecation.

the thing is, deprecation is my starting position pretty much always, and that's a problem in itself, but mostly my problem; but when you're talking abt somebody else's work, and you start backing defensively away from imagined negativity before anyone's even actually voiced any? you may think you're playing bodyguard, but in reality you're the vanguard of the assault, opening a wedge for enemy forces to strike.

i was talking a couple of weeks ago abt seeing ppl tag that kristin sue lucas name-multiplied-by-one post with tags like 'this is art To Me' vel sim., and honestly i think it's a similar sort of reflex—i think exposure to the tumblr vernacular often leads people (very much including me!) to produce turns of phrase like this, that ultimately serve to convey roughly

'i, a clever girlblogger,¹ am, yeah, engaging with this frivolous hai pollai²-coded material; but my relationship to it, unlike that of most she-ple, is Intellectual and Analytical and Examined! and to make that clear, i'll be dropping in these little verbal particles from time to time, in order to distinguish my own, elevated examination of the subject from the state of risible naivete³ i'm implicitly ascribing to the other, more ordinary audience members i'm conjuring up only to instantly put down—but like, it's fine, i'm a free-and-easy girlblogger(TM), so you can't think i'd ever deliberately propagate establishmentarian prejudices! never mind the effect my rhetoric might subconsciously be having, on me or on anyone else…'

and i think this framing is worth squinting at, and worth attempting to excise from one's speech and from one's mindset, because when you get right down to it? it's just yet another insidious manifestation of respectability politics, that's gotten people to adopt it via the cuckoo-chick strategy of positioning itself as cutesy tumblr idiolect.

and like, circling back around to that fanart i mentioned at the outset: yeah, the tag did feel weirdly prosodically truncated to me without that 'actually'! but this way, if the artist ends up seeing my discussion of their work in their notes, they won't be getting slapped in the face with a wet dead fish first, so like. what's more important, you know?

⸻ ¹ ""(gender neutral)"" ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoi_polloi in the feminine, if i haven't totally fumbled my declensions… ³ phrasing nicked from a comment of @‍proudheron's.