Remember the sixpencee child slave thing? What happened there, exactly? Was the kid freed? No? They were just run off the website? OK so what good exactly did that do?
people stopped engaging with her thats called a social consequence and it absolutely helpful to lower social influence of harmful people with harmful ideas
Remember the bone stealing witch? What exactly did that witchhunt accomplish? The person got arrested, oh that's great, the american justice system surely rectified the situation
the bone stealing witch didnt get arrested by cancel culture there was genuinely quite a few extra steps involved there
what the fuck is that supposed to accomplish? Will we get the oh-so-trustworthy authorities involved? Are we hoping for an arrest? A conviction? Throwing a queer or poc person in prison so they can be abused and assaulted and humiliated behind bars? Is that who we are?
the thing is that "callout culture" is a tool and it can be abused and misused but it can also be used effectively i feel a good example of overstepping the line is with the case of hivliving someone confronted her she agreed to apologize and stop doing what she was doing but then the person who confronted her crossed the line and doxxed her causing a lot of real world consequences when that simply was not necessary or required
if they had simply confronted them with what they knew and hivliving apologized and abandoned that blog and persona then it would be just and there is a circumstance wherein the callout post came before the apology and didnt dox her wherein the result would be the same
its actually a good thing to effectively deplatform people with harmful ideas people like charlie kirk for instance never actually care about debating they only care about normalizing wildly sexist homophobic racist ideas in the mainstream media and the way to combat that is not to beat them with facts and logic bc ultimately even if you "win" you still platform their ideas and legitimize them by debating them so the answer is that you need to shut them down and not let them have a second word on the matter
and deplatforming people can be a really effective way to do so what matters in these cases though is
B. where it happened (ie. i found out that this person has some weird and bad kinks on their private blog they never advertised or this person had an argument with someone on their reddit thats not remotely linked or advertised on their tumblr) bc then the question is less what did they do and more why are you stalking this person
C. what (socially imposed) natural consequence does this merit (ie. someone having a bad take in an argument doesnt merit deplatforming in fact having several bad tales doesnt merit that but if you have a long and consistent pattern of intentionally harming others lying to others or normalizing harm done to others might!!!)
D. what your goal is in spreading the message is (like id argue if your goal is vengeance thats a bad tactic)
E. how long and in what ways should this follow someone (ie. what hivliving did was fucked up but did she deserve to lose her ability to attend college because of it??? probably not whereas should sixpincee not be considered for pr job because her family owned a child slave and she defended this probably!!! could sixpincee grow from this and learn and actionably speak out about the things that were normalized in their life for them??? sure!!! is that the job or random tumblrinas in order to make that happen no and is a forward facing social media job a good idea for someone who might still have some unlearning to do a good idea??? probably not)
F. how is the "callout" what is the balance of power executed and how will it affect others (id argue even so much as a waterlogged screenshot is in essence a callout post even if theres not tumblr username in said screenshot ppl can usually find the post in question and vagueposting tends to be about and happen within circles their followers also are within and a callout post with extremely load emotionally charged language from a much larger blog utilized against a much smaller blog ran by a black trans woman is going to affect her way more than say a lateral post with reblogs cut off at a specific number telling people about smthn fucked up a much larger blog did from an objective lens not super editorialized??? thats quite literally just journalism
Callouts and the like don't serve any real good in the world. At a macro scale they divide us when we should be standing together
if someone in your community is actively harming other members of your community you absolutely do not have to include them and stand by them and allow them to continue causing harm with no repercussion would you allow a nazi in your community simply because deplatforming and uninviting them from your community spaces would to you be comparable to imprisonment???
and at a micro scale they result in deeply traumatic never-ending harassment and threats and doxxing and worse to a person who almost definitely does not deserve it. And again, for what? A sense of "justice?" this is not justice. This is retribution. It is punishment.
again this absolutely does not have to be the case
we should be energizing and encouraging positive behavior far more the internet loves to stoke rage for engagement and shame doesnt change behavior as effectively as encouraging good behavior
but that said it is also not tumblrs duty to fix people and trying to do so while allowing someone to continue causing harm to others and or normalize harm done to others is still enabling
and how a callout affects people and for how long is ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY within the control of whoever first posted it especially with all of the publication tools we have on tumblr to date
and id say if the "callout post" in question is quite literally a fair and balanced reporting of the persons actions then the publisher had accountability for how its written and how its received to a certain extent but after a certain point once you have published a text it is no longer your own and it is not on you what people do with it the matrix is an analogy for realizing youre trans and how the movie is written framed acted and directed all absolutely have an impact on how its received and that is all on the people who were involved but i dont think anyone ever thought the end result would be manosphere red pill and its not on the wachowskis that people used their media in that way
and for the record though it shouldnt need to be said in order to add credibility to anything i have said here i am also a strict prison absolutionist AND i think alerting people to the harm of popular and influential people is vastly different than personally contributing to the incarceration of individuals
otherwise making a tumblr post about what donald trump did recently would by that logic also be considered "cop behavior" sorry to say it
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