Quantum Cartographer

Anyway I need to share with you all the most hilarious line that has ever been written, circa 1887:

It was flagged as "Eksplicit", shadowbanned, and every reblog turned invisible. The flagging is also unappealable (unless that is an error, thanks tumblr)

Happy Trans Day of Invisibility from your tumblr mods!

Only found out because I tried to reblog with an update from your local trans unicorn siblings!

I cannot even LINK to my old comic without every new post getting deleted.

The original post was pardoned, but the shadowban still persisted and every reblog was hidden from the dash and flagged explicit. I'm not sure if it recovered by now, or if it's always going to be at risk of banning.

So whatever staff reviewed my complaint agreed that it wasn't explicit. So thank you for that, moderator. This highlights that the problem starts with bad actors reporting anything they don't like, and that it's a tossup if your appeal is seen by a bot, a normal human, or a bigot.

I'm grateful I can still touch people and spread positivity. Many of my queer siblings, brothers, and sisters - especially trans sisters - can't say the same.

But no matter what happens, we will always have each other. Every letter in our alphabet is a pillar holding up a beautiful world that only stands if we're all in it together. The world may call you a monster, but it calls me one too. Maybe you won't hear it from the rest of them, but listen and you will hear it from me.

I love you.

The kingly pig looks taken aback by this statement. "You claim to be 'baiting' our kind?.. A master of it, no less - after all the trust we hsve placed in you?"

Yesterday, the federal government introduced Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, with the stated goal of making the online activities of Canadians safer. The bill raises significant civil liberties concerns, including through the limitless powers it grants the government and a new digital safety regulator. “Greater transparency and accountability from tech companies is long overdue. But that must come through clear, targeted rules, not sweeping obligations and an open-ended government authority over any regulated service,” said Howard Sapers, Executive Director at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA). “A blank check for federal power is the wrong answer to a real problem.” “Bill C-34 introduces obligations which are so alarmingly broad that providers of regulated services will be tempted to over-comply at the expense of users’ freedom of expression and privacy rights,” Sapers added.

Read more.

the elf I just hooked up with, taking the lavender and honeysuckle lollipop from their mouth: An infinite scroll... most elfmaidens learn to enchant a scroll to never end before they're a mere 300 years old. It saves on paper.

me: oh see that's just writing, with social media it's really bad, it just leads to people doomscrolling all day

the elf I just hooked up with, spluttering and panicked: The Doomscroll! Be silent human, thou shoulds't not speak the name of that fell parchment

Remember the sixpencee child slave thing? What happened there, exactly? Was the kid freed? No? They were just run off the website? OK so what good exactly did that do?

Remember the bone stealing witch? What exactly did that witchhunt accomplish? The person got arrested, oh that's great, the american justice system surely rectified the situation

And again, those are instances where the accusations were true and involved real substantive harm to another person. We used to joke on here how callout posts were shit like "receipts below: [several paragraphs of petty fandom drama] [three paragraphs of petty interpersonal drama involving cheating on partners or stealing food out of the fridge or something] [fabricated evidence that the person is responsible for the murder of JonBenét Ramsey]"

And that was back in the 2010s. The meta has changed. Callouts used to be a tool people used to point out actual harm a person had done, rarely, and more commonly were used as a means of bullying somebody over petty drama. Nowadays they're used to manufacture outrage and harassment against marginalized populations. They are a weapon bigots use to turn us against each other. A few manufactured accusations here, some out of context or clipped screenshots there, and people who should be standing in solidarity with each other against white supremacy, patriarchy, cisheteronormativity, are instead devouring each other.

It's sinister as shit, dude, and people will still share these accusations without a second thought. So, why? What is the point? What's the best case scenario here? Raising "awareness?" what the fuck is that supposed to accomplish? Will we get the oh-so-trustworthy authorities involved? Are we hoping for an arrest? A conviction? Throwing a queer or poc person in prison so they can be abused and assaulted and humiliated behind bars? Is that who we are?

Callouts and the like don't serve any real good in the world. At a macro scale they divide us when we should be standing together, and at a micro scale they result in deeply traumatic never-ending harassment and threats and doxxing and worse to a person who almost definitely does not deserve it. And again, for what? A sense of "justice?" this is not justice. This is retribution. It is punishment.