Lil Pup🪡

I was scrolling through Tumblr and came across a post of KNOWN PEDOPHILES ON TUMBLR (many of which have or want to rape actual children/minors)

THERE ARE ACTUAL PEDOPHILES ON TUMBLR TRYING TO GET IN TOUCH WITH MINORS ON TUMBLR

Hi, everyone who reblogged this recently.

Do you know how many of those accounts in that list are still active? By my count, zero. Of course, I could have made a spelling mistake somewhere, and around halfway down the second to last page I gave up and decided I was wasting my time looking for Tumblr Blogs which hadn’t existed in years.

Do you know what it means that every single one of those blogs is deactivated?

It means they got bullied off the site.

Every. Single. Time. Someone reblogs a post like this, it contributes to the problem.

Now, they could have been banned, and if they had been, that would be fine, but based on what I found obsessively going through this list and putting each of them into the search bar, that doesn’t seem the case. At least a third of the blogs posted here have other posts actively tagging unrelated people asking about the situation, and if they were involved with people on the list, and if the remaining online posts from other blogs still show that much I’m sure there was much much more before.

“But Lavender!” you exclaim, aghast that I would say such a critical part of the Internet, the bit where you go around and call out people you’ve never met in the name of righteous justice, a problem. “They were pedophiles! They deserved death threats and to be bullied off the platform!”

And you know what? If every single one of those blogs was an actively pedophilic one, I would agree with you. If every one of them was complaining about how hard it was to isolate children? Absolutely. But in my digging, I found that multiple of them (one was @habitcare, I can’t find the other again) WERE ACTUALLY MINORS.

IN YOUR OVERZEALOUSNESS TO PROTECT CHILDREN YOU SENT DEATH THREATS TO THEM, OR AT THE VERY LEAST HELPED OTHER PEOPLE DO IT.

“BUT LAVENDER,” you say, foam dripping from your mouth at the scent of a public callout. “BELIEVE VICTIMS.”

And yeah, okay, that one’s fair! I’m not going to disagree with you there, actually. The thing is, this is Tumblr. It’s a platform where you can bring up other people’s blogs and check what they’re saying.

A lot of people on this list have MAP in their name. Anyone like that absolutely deserves to be called out, and it seems obvious those blogs are using MAP to mean the “sexual orientation” and not the navigational tool. But the kids? Mate, you were “calling out” kids for being into minors?! Hell, even if you were calling out kids for actually acting like pedophiles, you know what? I know decent people who went through the alt-right pipeline and were literal Nazis and came out the other end. What they need is therapy not fucking cyberbullying. Alienation from their peers is not going to fix anyone’s mental issues. ESPECIALLY NOT WHEN THEY’RE NOT EVEN OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL.

“BUT LAVENDER” you scream, spittle flying from your open mouth, “IF WE DON’T HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE WHO WILL?!”

I DON’T KNOW MAYBE THE MODERATION TEAM OF TUMBLR DESIGNED TO DEAL WITH THESE THINGS?! THAT’S WHY THE REPORT BUTTON EXISTS.

Look, I get it. It feels good to feel like you’re doing good. But call-out lists like this do not help anyone. Unless you have checked through every single blog on the list, unless you can verify that yes, they did say problematic things online, you’re just sending harassment to innocent people. The pedophiles just take their audiences and move on to new accounts, or they get banned by Tumblr. The only people this actually significantly helps or hurts are the people caught in the crossfire.

If you want to do good in the world, go volunteer at a homeless shelter, or reblog activist pentions. Don’t reblog callout posts unless you’ve individually verified that every single person on that list deserves it. People who only “do good” online are very rarely doing good, and yes, for some people that’s their only option, but for the vast majority of you a soup kitchen near you is in desperate need of staff.