Something on my mind lately, not simply due to recent annoyances in my notes but years of tumblr acting like this, is just how much discourse comes from people not merely dismissing an entire text due to a problematic element within it or something the author did elsewhere, but getting really angry when others donât throw the baby out with the bath water. And someone can decide not to read a text for moral reasons, to be clear, I've also done it, but they want everyone else to stop reading the thing too, and act like anyone who doesnât must be acting out of malice. But idk, for me, part of what happens when your parent is an English professor is that you learn to read texts critically. Lol.
People are like, âYou read this article? K you must endorse every line the author wrote and everything they ever did, then!â But. No lol. Sometimes people agree with some parts of an argument, disagree with others, but share the text because it made them think. A shocking concept, I know. Moreover, most people don't look up the authors of everything they ever read. It's not even a question of separating the art from an artist, it's that most people put down whatever they read and don't seek out anything else the author made, so itâs a lot more useful to be like âoh, I donât like that authorâs work because of xâ because itâs likely the person will say âoh really? Damn, I didnât know thatâ, instead of immediately getting accusatory like âoh, you read this? Well that must mean you stan the author and donât care aboutâ"
Tumblr just never got beyond "donât consume problematic content lest you absorb its evil." Viewing someone with suspicion for simply reading something** and talking about it quickly dips into anti-intellectualism. Again, you can choose not to read something, but someone saying "well this is flawed in some ways but good in other ways" or "this person is a dick but was right about x so it's worth reading" isn't blindly defending the text, automatically out to hurt people, or being a cheerleader for the author. Sometimes, people can view a text on its own, weigh its merits despite its flaws or the flaws of the author, and don't need to shake their head the entire time they're reading to let their followers know they don't endorse every line or every action by the author.
(**Unless itâs like Mein Kampf or the Turner Diaries, which are just full of outright hate speechâthough even then, these are studied academically through historical and sociological lenses! Studying them for research on extremism =|= reading for pleasure lol)
