I donât know what to call it anymore. people get heated about terms like âpurityâ or âcancelâ or âcall outâ culture, or canât seem to agree on a meaning. Iâm not talking about like. no longer supporting rich and powerful celebrities when their abusive actions come to light. Iâm not talking about holding people accountable, or warning people about active abusers. but I am seriously concerned about how we treat social media users once they get even a small amount of attention, even in small niche spaces.
I am concerned about this culture of combing through years of peopleâs social media accounts, looking for âproblematicâ shit theyâve done. I am concerned with the whole culture of using âcall outsâ as a tool to harass and ostracize users large and small. I am concerned about the malice we spread behind peopleâs backs, in screenshots and posts they arenât able to see. I am concerned with this culture of demanding apologies for things said years ago, things already outgrown and regretted, and of ignoring those apologies even while pilling on more censure. Iâm concerned about this whole culture of accusation and misinformation, where the most outrageous claims and holier-than-thou performances are rewarded with notes and views, even as facts are ignored and context removed. I am concerned about the lack of accountability, the way the accused is given no opportunity to defend themselves from the onslaught, the way their responses and explanations go ignored, the way any charge can be made at any time on any evidence, with no ability to appeal or exonerate. Iâm concerned about the way this culture targets minority users and turns their own communities against them. Iâm concerned about the actually harmful and predatory behavior that gets lost in the bog, and how we have lost the ability to distinguish between shades of gray with any level of sanity. And I am concerned by the sheer number of people who fail to realize they are perpetuating bullying and harassment.
I am enormously concerned with the way people who are âcalled outâ are never forgiven, never allowed to make amends, never allowed to grow, how their efforts to learn and do better are ignored even while strangers callously repeat and reblog and retweet the same criticisms ad nauseam.
And I see this everywhere, happening to anyone. And yes, this applies to larger accounts and youtubers and âinfluencers,â and a bunch of content creators who may or may not be making a decent living off of their work, but who are certainly not ârich and powerful celebrities.â (Because apparently we spend so much time in online microcosms that yaâll canât tell the difference???) Christ, my blog isnât nearly as large as some people seem to think, itâs obscure by most measures, and still Iâve been the target of mass harassment for years. Iâve seen bad and watched others go through worse, seen users with far larger and far smaller followings driven off of this and other platformsâdriven off with a violence and bloodthirst that had nothing to do with making a community safer and everything to do with a toxic culture gone wrong. Fucking fix this already.
Abuse is still abuse when it happens online, when done by strangers, when done en masse, when sanctioned by a community, and when done with âgoodâ intentions. Do BETTER.
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