Early MCYTblr Interviews: leftistgnf
today's interviewee (after far too long letting this sit in my drafts) is leftistgnf/marg, also known for running the gnflegalteam blog! they were kind enough to answer my laundry list of questions, and i'm excited to finally share them with you all!
Q: What do you remember about the mcytblr awards?
A: omg i hope this isnāt a disappointing way to start but i actually remember very little about these. were these the ones angie markets did? i just remember attempts to make mcytblr-wide events like this usually got complained about because the fandom was too big lol.
Q: What was the gnflegalteam blog?
A: probably the most poorly-aging part of my digital footprint šsometime in late 2021 i started doing a bit on my blog where iād roleplay as a lawyer defending george from the gay allegations. on april fools day 2022 i made a sideblog with this fake press release about how we lost our case and needed help with the appeal and people started sending asks and it became a whole little side project. it was honestly pretty fun! people who already didnāt really fuck with me called it parasocial, but so was everything we were all doing all the time. unfortunately it is gone forever nowā¦. after the story about george sexually assaulting caiti became public i made a final post telling him to kill himself and someone reported it and tumblr deleted the sideblog LMAO. it was a pretty fitting way for it to go out.
Q: What was the "drama stream" that you and Hari streamed?
A: HAHAHA okay this was like, summer 2022 i think? i had made this channel with the gnflegalteam username just to talk in solās twitch chat, with no intention of ever streaming, but hari and i began kicking around the idea of doing a āāādrama streamāāā where weād mostly talk about cc drama. iām not sure how to best describe this but: we, and our friends, tended to disagree with the dtblr majority on a lot of controversies. and dtblr could be really vicious when you had differing opinions! even on inconsequential stuff like lore takes! so people already saw me and hari as being toxic and controversial, just because we held those differing opinions, and i guess i felt like i didnāt have anything to lose by talking about it all at once.
admittedly we clickbaited it a lot and probably flew too close to the sun and hari made a very uhhh.. inflammatory advertisement for it. but looking back i donāt think we actually talked about anything THAT crazy. like i said, most of the ādramaā was related to creators or the dsmp and not other tumblr users. there was a group of blogs who specifically planned a stream at the same time as ours and made posts about choosing positivity or something, which blew what we were doing way out of proportion and created its own unnecessary drama. but the stream itself, after all the angry anons we got leading up to it, was a lot of fun. it attracted a lot more attention than i ever expected. i infamously got connoreatspants to react to a raid from a channel called āgnflegalteam,ā which was probably one of my favorite moments of my whole mcytblr experience.
Q: What was it like to be in 404blr?
A: 404blr, especially in the earlier days, was nice because there were so few of us who actually considered themselves āāgeorge mains.āā george never streamed and was barely even active on social media so a lot of the community bonding happened over content droughts. i remember a lot of thinkpieces on the trajectory of his career and these floods of desperate āi miss georgeā posts. also, i know you didnāt ask about 404cord but i want to mention it briefly because basically everyone on 404blr ended up joining in the first couple of days. before all the drama it was really just 404blr people, plus a couple dream stans who also really liked george. it used to be very fun and normal!
imo most of the conflict surrounding 404blr happened when we fought with other subblrs. there was definitely a clash between dream/dnf mains and george mains, because they would really mischaracterize and over-sexualize george in ways that felt weird to us. in the context of shipping, george was always portrayed as this blushing virginal twinkish nymphomaniac. in general a lot of self-proclaimed dnf/dream team mains were really just dream mains who liked george as the other half of a ship and didnāt really care about him as a person. honestly, we were always just on a soapbox trying to convince people that george was a fun interesting good streamer.
itās complicated to look back on because obviously i think george is really fucking gross now, which colors all my memories of being a fan of his. i donāt know that i still agree with my past self about him being particularly good at streaming either. but i met a lot of friends through 404blr and generally think about that specific community fondly
Q: Why was Hari in people's blocklists?
A: hmm i wonāt say too much about this just because itās not my exposĆ© to give. but like early 2021, when i had just joined mcytblr, there was this discord server that hari was in, and they had a conflict that escalated to the point of some members putting her and āher supportersā in their dnis. it was really bizarre because they talked about her like she was a problematic content creator and not a friend they fought with. i was mutuals with a couple of the people who were mad at her and they were vagueposting like she killed their entire family. iirc everyone involved was very young at the time, which i think explains a lot of how that went down.
Q: Do you think there was an overlap between inniters and 404blr?
A: yes thanks to me! JUST KIDDING. i personally was a big clingy duo fan so i followed a lot of inniters and ended up being friends with a lot of inniters, but most of them didnāt really gaf about george. a lot of inniters (sbi fandom in general) didnāt like dream and really didnāt like rpf so we were a little star-crossedā¦ i canāt speak for innitblr as a whole but there were definitely jokes among my mutuals about a couple of us being token george mains or token dnfers. because george (at the time) was kind of controversy-free and also interacted a lot with the uk dsmp creators, i think it was easier for them to let 404blr into their hearts than like, dreamblr or dtblr.
on the other side, a lot of dtblr people hated inniters because they were critical of dream, or because they had such different opinions on lore. i was constantly getting anons asking me why i was friends with certain blogs who had made fun of dream before. so i guess idk if crossover is the right word because it was more like, three or four dnfers who really liked tommy and shamefully showed up at the doorstep of innitblr asking not to be softblocked. thank you spider enclosure for extending that grace to me.
Q: What was it like on the inniter side of Tumblr?
A: my personal experience with innitblr was great! obviously a lot of them felt apathetic or negative towards george or the dream team but that was never really an issue for me i guess -- all my mutualsā criticisms were pretty fair, even back when i disagreed with them. i remember the community itself being really funny and a lot less volatile than dtblr or even 404blr. they were also way more invested in lore, which was another draw for me because i was always a huge lorehead. tbh i probably posted as much about clingy duo as i did about the dream team so i was basically a part time inniter anyways. that being said, innitblr skewed a little younger than dtblr so i was never as involved in the community. but i always loved interacting with them and iām still friends with a lot of my (ex-)innitblr mutuals. most of spider enclosure (for example) are still on tumblr and just post about like doctor who and shit.
Q: What were some positive things you remember from that time?
A: like iāve mentioned: i made a lot of really really great friends who i still talk to often, even a year and a half out from leaving the fandom, which is easily the most positive outcome for me. i could write a million words on how grateful i am for those relationships. itās kind of sweet to think about how these random blogs i befriended during a crazy minecrafter hyfx are now people iāve hung out with in real life, or who send me instagram reels, or who i watch timothee chalamet movies with. mcytblr also had some of the most talented artists and writers iāve ever met! i also think the culture of liveblogging was a LOT of fun, especially during like big lore streams or mcc. an all time favorite memory was liveblogging tommyās love or host because i saw tommy fans, george fans, and variety fans on my dash all begging for it to end lmao.
Q: Conversely, what are some negative ones?
A: a lot of people were likeā¦ really really not nice. and iāll be honest, most of the not nice people were on dtblr. itās kind of insane thinking back on the stuff that was said to and about me and my mutuals. this is another thing i donāt want to get too into because a lot of the stories arenāt mine to share but in addition to run-of-the-mill suicide baiting i got a lot of lesbophobia in my ask box, and my friends got anti-semitic and islamophobic and racist and transphobic hate anons. iāve been on tumblr for like 10 years and it was my first fandom experience that was that vitriolic. it was also really easy to get swept up in that kind of toxic culture -- iām certain i said some things i wouldnāt be proud of now, especially in defense of dream or whatever.
after october 2022 when dtblr self-rebranded as ādtblr 2.0,ā there was a lot of gossip and hate posted about those of us who had left. i donāt like admitting this but it really fucked me up for a while! and ruined a lot of my ability to look back on the fandom fondly! it sucks knowing that people who have never once spoken to you have decided to hate you.
anyways, iāve done a lot of self-reflection on my own relationship with fandoms and online discourse and public figures and i think iām better for it, so i guess i hope the people who harrassed us have done that too.
Q: Were there any major fandom/creator events that you remember?
A: broadly speaking, mcc will always have a special place in my heart because it was such a community-wide event. like yes it was about the creators but there was so much activity in the fandom surrounding it (posts, art, analysis, etc etc) that it felt really major for us too.
i donāt remember details about this but i know there were mcytblr elections at some point in like 2021 maybe? i just remember i endorsed the 404blr ticket. maybe youāve already archived posts about this. i donāt think it really went anywhere, but the campaigns were fun! and it was the first ācommunityā event in the mcytblr fandom that i remember being around for.
ALSO iām a little nervous to talk about this one in case itās still controversial on dtblr. but ages ago i had a friend who put a bunch of mutuals in one of those silly hunger games simulators and it became this whole thing where people accused them of only including the ādtblr 1%ā. which was like, categorically untrue, but it spawned such inane discourse that itās ingrained in my mind forever.
Q: Is there anything else you'd like to share or have archived?
A: i think you got an anon asking for 404blr perspectives in the wake of caitiās statements, which is likeā¦ what do i even say except that george is a sexual predator lmfao. because he is! obviously i left the fandom when a lot of people did, after dreamās grooming allegations, because i think heās also acted inappropriately with underage fans (to put it mildly). the sheer number of survivors publicizing their experiences with abuse and assault in the mcyt space proves how prevalent an issue it is, and how harmful it was to have george and dream (and wilbur, and punz, and so on) in such positions of power there. itās nauseating to think how much they, and men like them, were able to get away with. i regret how many red flags i overlooked, even back then before the worst of it was known.
iād like it archived that spider enclosure was technically in the washington post. they ran an article about r/place back in april 2022 and the screenshot they chose for the header included the spot where we wrote āspienā even though itās so horribly pixelated that itās illegible.
uhh i think thatās it. sorry if this was more focused on dtblr than 404blr, they were pretty inextricable by 2022. but i hope those people who wanted to hear from 404ers got the insight they were looking for? my parting wordsā¦ subscribe to tubbo.
