people don't talk enough about the trauma callouts can cause and the fact people can and will use them maliciously to destroy the social life and often livelihood of people they just don't like (often out of bigotry too!) since that would require applying critical thinking to what you read and understanding that you can't just go "oh shit this person is being called out they must be Bad"
if you've been maliciously called out i love you. if you have trauma from being called out i love you
wanted these tags on my blog
I've seen dedicated long-term readers of mine, who I know are nice and compassionate people, share callout posts that are just full of absolute garbage nonsense about popular bloggers, fully believing the broad accusations even though the 'evidence' is clearly transparent bullshit. (We're talking "X watched a cartoon that has a single scene in a random episode where a teenager proves his hair colour to another teenager by heavily implying that he's shown him his pubic hair, off-screen, which is never mentioned again, THEREFORE X IS A PEDOPHILE BECAUSE TEENAGERS HAVE PUBIC HAIR IN THE SHOW" level of evidence.) They'll share these callouts and then just internalise whatever the accuser claimed forever, 'I heard X is aphobic/racist/a pedophile/whatever' years later even though they either don't remember why, or recall a vastly exaggerated and completely incorrect version of events.
And this terrifies me.
Because at some point, I'm going to get impatient with one of the more rude or entitled asks that I receive on this site like every writer does, and I'm going to be short and dismissive in my reply, and that person is going to decide they want to retaliate by trying to ruin my life. And they're going to write a stupid callout post. And these very nice but somehow also very judgemental readers of mine are going to see it.
And I don't give a shit about the vicious, petty idiots who actually write these callouts. But I'm not sure how to handle the results when the misinformation is coming from inside the house.
#oh the ouran host club bit lmao#and yeah
I was talking about Fruits Basket what do you mean we have two nickels
One time I briefly mentioned a friend of mine, an internet microcelebrity from a subculture you've never heard of, to somebody. And their first reaction was, "Aren't they a pedophile?" They were recalling a callout post. They didn't even remember what was in the post, or the context he gave to show how it was all being taken ridiculously out of context. It's still circulating out there.
*weak, exhausted laughter*
I had people sending asks to my daughter when she was 16, saying horrible things to her and telling her that she was abused.
My brother deleted his Tumblr account because he gets really, really upset at how cruel people have been to me. Tumblr is the only social NerdyKeppie media account which I manage entirely on my own, because Jake just refuses to be here.
It's horrible to be in the center of it all, and I'm someone who has a nearly-supernaturally thick skin after being an Opinionated Queer on the internet for over 30 years, but the splash damage for me is so shitty. The way in which people feel free to not only punish the individual but everyone within explosion distance? Holy shit, it fucking sucks.
The secret is that callout posts are always full of absolute garbage. They're like cops. Everyone talks about them like some abstract and exceptional good example exists to measure them by, but there isn't one.



















