Given what has recently come to light about Vocaloid producer GHOST (specifically racism and ableism), I wanted to speak about R.I P.'s ableism again. (I previously did this from a different throwaway.)
I will say that GHOST's ableism, from what I have seen, includes anti-NPD ableism, including legitimizing the term "narcisstic abuse" and insiuating people with NPD are inherently violent. (screenshot not mine)
R.I.P.'s ableism, while not as obvious or direct, is specifically related to people with BPD and their "dangerous" symptoms.
They hurt my close friend this way by, in short, encouraging a mutual friend to stalk its private twitter and leak vent tweets about its BPD symptoms, then years later writing a song demonizing it for these symptoms that it deliberately tried to keep hidden from them.
We need to keep the vocasynth space a safe place for people with heavily stigmatized disorders (such as cluster B personality disorders) to exist and to use the music we make and listen to as a form of coping and therapy. It cannot be a safe place if these ableist behaviors go unchecked.
I made a post about this around 2 years ago. It includes a link to a Google Doc (and I do apologize because I know Google Doc "callouts" are inherently petty at this point, but it was the best way I knew how to compile the screenshots and information). I have reblogged that post to this blog, and if for whatever reason you wish to reblog this, I recommend you reblog that post instead. The only reason this post is not unrebloggable is because I do not know if it will appear in tags. If you would like to share anything you know of these producers or anyone else having a history of ableism, please make your own post. I do not want this to spiral into a callout drama thread of reblogs that only aims to air personal grievances.
I originally wanted to queue this post a month in advance because I do not want to use this horrible situation with GHOST as a means of promoting awareness of a mostly unrelated issue. I did not want to post this so soon after that has come out. However, I have recently seen people use this situation to praise R.I.P. (among others) for being so much better, which is extremely hurtful knowing that they have never faced any consequence or apologized for their behavior. I do not want to wait longer to post about this again, on the off chance people will listen and understand why R.I.P. (specifically regarding the song MISS MISERYGUTS) is not innocent of ableism.
These topics are only related in the sense that they are both indicative of a larger issue within the vocasynth online space. I have some hope that people being made aware of GHOST's recent ableist remarks (among their other racist, antisemitic and otherwise extremely toxic behavior) will make it easier for people to recognize this kind of ableism and hold people accountable for it. As of now, R.I.P. has not been held accountable.
For the record, from what I can tell, R.I.P. is no longer friends with GHOST and has directly posted on Twitter about GHOST's racism and other wrongdoings, though I do not know whether they have directly addressed his anti-NPD ableism. Unfortunately, given their past behavior, I would not by surprised if they at least privately (if not publicly) held some of the same ableist opinions as GHOST.
Thank you for reading. I give my condolences to anyone who has been hurt by GHOST's behavior.