hey. if someone tries to smear you on the internet for something asinine, what you need to do is block every single person engaging with the post and remind yourself that absolutely under no circumstances are you obligated to draft a PR response defending some out-of-context screenshot or kink fanfiction or thing you said when you were 15 or whatever put your blood in the water. you are not a public figure or a brand. you do not have to respond to something if you know in your heart it is bullshit.
i've been seeing how this post is resonating and wanted to write a followup when i had the right words for it but these tags by @stagrunner perfectly summarize exactly what i was going to add.
you can tell someone's motive by how they approach a problem. if someone is actually genuinely concerned about something you've done in the past and not just in it for the spectacle, they'll reach out for clarification before resorting to anything as dramatic as callouts. someone who has decided to call you out is not someone with whom you can hope to recover your image-- you were not important to them in the first place. If you were, they would have handled it privately.
sometimes people are just ideologically at odds with you and aren't going to be convinced. sometimes it's not a case of "trolling" and you're dealing with a true believer in whatever moral code you've violated. if a hundred strangers think you're a sick in the head rape apologist because you post whump art of hazbin characters or whatever, wouldn't you rather be spending your time drawing more of that fucked-up art than arguing with them about why you're not a bad person? fuck 'em! block indiscriminately! block on vibes! you don't have a Public Image to maintain and don't you forget it.
