On Your Left

It's not weird that we are here! There are SO MANY OF US! We're not outliers, we're not oddballs. We are occupying a space we CREATED and we are still fucking here, having fun with all our younger online friends, which is COOL AND GOOD and NOT EMBARRASSING ACTUALLY. It's fucking rad.

Look. We *built* online fandom, comrades! We built it with Angelfire and Geocities and the fucking telephone cables we unhooked from our phones to plug into our enormous, boxy desktop computers to suffer through glacial download speeds that today's children can't even fathom. I think we should all agree to stop apologizing for being here when this is our fucking house. An excellent sentiment (not mine):

To all of my beloved young friends - remember this when you get older. You don't need to grow out of fandom. Who the fuck cares if it's cringe? Childlike joy is something to CELEBRATE, NOT SOMETHING TO BURY AND HIDE!

WOW I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS IS MY FAVORITE TELEVISION SERIES OF ALL TIME (it's not out yet)

This homeless person is making me uncomfortable. Should I call [a man with a gun]?

My neighbor is having a loud party. Should I get [a man with a gun] involved?

There are some teenagers skateboarding. Do you think [a man with a gun] would get rid of them for me?

I have made a lot of cops and former cops mad by pointing out that I solved all the same situations they solved without a gun at all. I made them even more mad when I said, "Having a gun makes you the biggest coward in the world. Because everything you perceive as a crisis is always solveable with Gun. I have met most of the same emergencies and crises that you have, and I have competently solved them without Gun by talking to people, yet you've never met a single crisis you couldn't solve with Gun. Eventually everything that scares you ends with you getting your gun out, whereas I've been scared by a lot of situations I walked out of without ever resorting to Gun. Because I didn't have one. The fact that I'm standing here before you today means you don't need a gun in nearly every situation you have ever brought a gun to, and you're a whiny baby with a deadly pacifier. Therefore you're a coward and I'm not."

They really don't like this, and it's one of the reasons I don't work for the government anymore.

PSA, if you are called in/out, if you unintentionally hurt someone, if someone expresses they were hurt and that wasn’t your intention, if your words are interpreted in a way you did not intend…. you can literally just apologize.

A grand majority of the time, a simple apology and acknowledgement is enough! You can say you didn’t mean it and try to explain again, but you need to recognize and own that your words hurt someone.

Getting called out/in is an honor. It means someone trusted you. It means they thought that if they brought your behavior to your attention, you would be a smart and kind human and change your behavior.

If someone says something awful and I know there's no changing them, I roll my eyes and keep walking. If someone didn't roll their eyes and keep walking, and instead offered you their soft underbelly to risk saying, "Actually that's kind of fucked up," because they thought you'd value the information and adjust accordingly, you have been honored.