The Mess's Accrual

Remember to steer clear. I was one of the lucky few who got my art from her years ago after a huge ordeal and massive waiting period with zero communication, but plenty more never did.

THIS

FUCKING THIS

"<OP> is a <particular kind of bigot> here's our 20 page google doc of proof":

Irrelevant information

Irrelevant information

A completely innocuous joke that the OP made which is only bigoted if you approach it with the worst faith possible

A ton of screencaps that provide nothing except to pad the google doc

Screencaps of someone else just randomly having their own beef with OP that they're airing publicly for literally no reason

Evidence that seems to suggest OP might be a member of the minority identity they're supposedly bigoted against

Evidence that OP likes a television series that tumblr currently hates

Evidence that OP likes something which, if you jump through a professional-dog-show number of hoops, can be linked to something bigoted

An out-of-context blurb which is probably what started all the drama and again only looks bad if you read it with intentionally bad faith

A passing reference to the fact that OP has profusely apologized but that's evidence that they're bad according to the callout post

Discord screenshots of someone who's clearly the aggressor interacting with OP trying to make them admit something

Evidence that OP is maybe just a little bit annoying, as if that's a crime on the Cringe Website

And then all the notes on the post are like "#omg I had no idea" "#blocking them #stay safe everyone" or "#god I always knew they were weird"

Hello everyone!

I've said it several times, but I wanted to take a moment to illustrate exactly why screenshots are absolutely worthless as evidence of anything on the internet. Some friends volunteered to help me out!

Go look at the two screenshots I provided, can you tell which one is the original? Take your best guess after studying both, and keep that guess in the back of your mind.

You can sometimes spot fake screenshots if the image itself has been edited, but if if a person is clever about how they go about it, it's impossible to tell real screenshots from fake ones. Discord is one of the easiest sites to create perfect fakes on, as you can see above. Creating the fake screenshot took me about a minute and 30 seconds. I opened discord's web app, then used the console to change the text people wrote. I then took screenshots of both the original and my edit. I could even create a video scrolling past the fake messages with new ones coming in if I felt like it. Doing this in the desktop application is a bit harder, but still no longer than a 20 minute project.

This is what I mean when I say screenshots are meaningless as evidence. They are trivially easy to fake, and mean nothing unless they are coming from a trusted source with other methods of verification. You can do this with any social media site, any dms, etc. Do not trust a screenshot to mean anything on it's own, because at this point it's literally as reliable as saying "dude, trust me."

And if you're thinking: no, no, I've clearly spotted a difference and know exactly which screenshot is the fake?

Well, alright, which one is the real one? Which one did you pick?

No matter which one you picked, it's wrong. Because neither of those screenshots are real. I lied to you. Here's the actual original:

One of my service learning classes involved work at a local homeless community center, helping people write resumes and cleaning bathrooms.

Our instructor told us to expect to see the bathrooms trashed a lot–like you will clean the bathroom and immediately someone will wreck it.

And it’s not because they disrespect your work or don’t value having access to clean bathrooms or whatever, but because of control.

When you feel like you have no control over your life or your environment, your brain is going to want to assert control however it can.

Which results in trashed bathrooms.  It’s control exercised over the one small part of your environment that you still have the power to affect.

I see kids on tumblr using the language of social justice as cudgels on people who actually do care about and listen to them

or holding the creators within their communities to an impossibly high standard that they never apply to mainstream media properties.

I just see trashed bathrooms. ‘These are the people my voice will reach,’ they rationalize, ‘so these are the people I’ll hurt.’

Basically, the 1% Theory dictates that in every fandom, on average, 1% of the fans will be a pure, unsalvageable tire fire. We’re talking the people who do physical harm over their fandom, who start riots, cannot be talked down. The sort of things public news stories are made of. We’re not talking necessarily bad fans here- we’re talking people who take this thing so seriously they are willing to start a goddamn fist fight over nothing. The worst of the worst.

The reason I bring this up is because the 1% Theory ties into an important visual of fandom knowledge- that bigger fandoms are always perceived as “worse”, and at a certain point, a fandom always gets big enough to “go bad”. Let me explain.

Say you have a small fandom, like 500 people- the 1% Theory says that out of those 500, only 5 of them will be absolute nutjobs. This is incredibly manageable- it’s five people. The fandom and world at large can easily shut them out, block them, ignore their ramblings. The fandom is a “nice place”.

Now say you have a medium sized fandom- say 100,000 people. Suddenly, the 1% Theory ups your level of calamity to a whopping 1000 people. That’s a lot. That’s a lot for anyone to manage. It is, by nature of fandom, impossible to “manage” because no one owns fan spaces. People start to get nervous. There’s still so much good, but oof, 1000 people.

Now say you have a truly massive fandom- I use Homestuck here because I know the figures. At it’s peak, Homestuck had approximately FIVE MILLION active fans around the globe.

By the 1% Theory, that’s 50,000 people. Fifty THOUSAND starting riots, blackmailing creators, contributing to the worst of the worst of things.

There’s a couple of important points to take away here, in my opinion.

1) The 1% will always be the loudest, because people are always looking for new drama to follow.

2) Ultimately, it is 1%. It is only 1%. I can’t promise the other 99% are perfect, loving angels, but the “terrible fandom” is still only 1% complete utter garbage.

3) No fandom should ever be judged by their 1%. Big fandoms always look worse, small fandoms always look better. It’s not a good metric.

Don't get me wrong: I investigate warnings, and I act on them if they're true and relevant. But callout posts are, on a very fundamental level, not about what people say they're about. There are exceptions, but generally speaking they're made for one or more of the following reasons:

OP didn't like the subject to begin with (often for bigoted reasons), and they wanted a reason, and a following, to justify and validate that.

OP wanted to gain popularity, so they made themselves look like either a victim, a hero, or both.

OP wanted to claim victim status in a private falling-out in order to preserve good standing with their own friends/their community.

OP didn't like what the subject was saying, and wanted to silence them (often for bigoted reasons).

OP genuinely just wants "revenge" on the subject, or otherwise wants to ruin their reputation and have them sent harassment.

Again, there are exceptions: there are "callouts" that just unravel a subject's lies, or point out problems in already public actions. If OP is claiming to have been personally victimized in a legitimately serious way, and especially one that indicates the subject might be a danger to others, I'm definitely more willing to believe it- one obvious example being sexual violence.

But oftentimes, callouts are incredibly personal, misleading, emotionally manipulative, blatantly untrue, or all of the above.

This person came to me on anon; I have absolutely no way of knowing what their motives are or how trustworthy they are. There is no credibility or accountability here.

And I did read the post. Lo and behold, it's riddled with emotionally manipulative language, false accusations, and the biggest reaches I've ever seen:

"DON'T READ THIS CALLOUT, IT'S SO TRIGGERING TO EVERYONE, JUST TAKE MY WORD FOR IT. But the proof is here if you REALLY don't believe me"

"Proof" is a scarce handful of screenshots taken out of context that contain emotionally evocative language, but do not support the accusations at all.

Some accusations are genuinely just weird logic leaps with no support, others are matters of personal opinion obviously driven by bigoted motives.

OP themselves expresses very publicly that they believe people who are marginalized in the ways the subject are, who speak on that marginalization, should be silenced.

I try to assume good faith here, and I want to believe this anon was just guilt-tripped and manipulated by the post in question. I don't hold any ill will here.

But anon, I want you to ask yourself:

Are the accusations you're making something you have personally investigated and found to be true?

Does this person deserve the harassment and ostracization they will likely receive as a result of your accusations?

Will you hold yourself accountable for the damage you've caused if you're wrong?

If you have a strong in-group/out-groop mentality in your social circle.

If you are presented with a list of people to not interact with

If you follow a very black and white, 'you're with us or against us' mentality

If every argument you have has been presented to you by someone else and is diluted to a set of simple moral imperatives, with no nuance or opportunity to verify their factuality allowed.

If the group sends you out to proclaim a message of damnation, one that would no doubt would make you a target of ire and pushback from others, not in the group, thus cementing in your mind that only your in-group is nice, supportive and will take care of you.

If you are expected to remain loyal to your group and every question about validity of its claims is treated as dissent

If you feel like you are forced in a position where you need to twist the facts, be untruthful and defensive to preserve your position. If you feel a burning feeling of almost panic inside your chest that makes you want to run or attack those who present information threatening your worldview. Those are signs of cognitive dissonance.

If you experience any or all of those points, you probably ended up in a high control group. Please, seek out help and stop all the activity there, if possible, and find a way out. Behaviours and mindset, encouraged by such groups will have lasting psychological damage on you.

Don't be afraid to reach out to people outside the group, maybe even those considered enemies there for a differing perspective. Use your logical brain. Think, analyse your behaviour, don't rely on emotional reactions to guide you.

Engage empathy and think what exactly you were accusing others of and how your actions might affect them.

Look long and hard on how activity in this group actually makes you feel. Are you always on edge? Feeling like you need to conform to a standard? That you always need to be vocal of your support or condemnation of certain people? Do you feel threatened by people outside the group when you seemingly just act in the best interests of your group? How everyone outside of the group is seemingly oblivious to simple moral arguments and are horrible, deprived beings, focused only on debauchery and sexual deviance?

And again, THINK, not react.

- DENY their responsibility for an abusive act, - ATTACK both the victims and third parties who defend or support the victim, - REVERSE the roles of the VICTIM and the OFFENDER, insinuating that THEY were mistreated first and acted as a form of justified retribution, or that they were mistreated to a greater extent and they are claiming their justice. In any event, all the energy goes into diverting the attention from the original offender and multiplying accusations on the other side. Other “interesting” phenomena that can manifest when shit hits the fan are: 

- GASLIGHTING - a form of manipulation where the offender invalidates the victim’s emotional response surrounding the situation of abuse and the way the victim relates to their experience of abuse, aiming to usurp the victim’s very right to acknowledge their own emotions and express them - the most basic form being, “You couldn’t have felt abused at that moment”/ “It’s all in your head”/ “If you felt abused in that situation, it’s because you’re too emotional/ too fragile/ biased not to assess the situation rationally”.

- TRIANGULATION - a distorted, manipulative form of communication where third parties are dragged into the conflict with incomplete information usually coming from the offender, to it seems natural to believe and support the offender even if someone isn’t inclined to any kind of violence. Third parties dragged into smear campaigns usually haven’t experienced any abuse themselves, and thus they are biased to believing the first source they hear from. That’s why it’s so, so important to check how strong group discourages or limits access to testimony from the other side in any way.

This can turn into the the offender actively engaging FLYING MONKEYS, agents other than the offender themself but usually loyal to them, who orbit the victim’s space and contact them seemingly without a connection to the original instances of abuse. This contact may take forms of fracturing established boundaries by people the victim doesn’t expect hearing from, gathering information about the victim’s actions for the offender, attempts to “mediate” between the abuser and the victim and encourage reconciliation, or more outright abuse now perpetrated by a wider group of people, either on the offender’s beckoning or following the third parties’ own (still one-sided) judgment.

- MOVING GOALPOSTS - if the victim attempts to own up to the accusations they have faced, the abuser might invent new and new offences and arguments over time, apply higher moral standards or another set of moral standards altogether that weren’t brought up in the first place, or mixing in ad hominems to assure the villified victim is never redeemable.

You will usually encounter most abovementioned terms in the context of narcissistic abuse, perpetrated by a broadly defined group of people who have an excessive need for positive reinforcement and self-esteem with little consideration for the methods used to achieve the goal or the collateral damage. In my personal experience, when such tactics are used, you won’t see genuine accountability or good will to end the conflict on the side of the original offender. Also in my personal experience, such offenders are deeply insincere. They can show very different faces to different people and switch them rapidly depending on their current need. This makes matters complicated: because someone has been nice or neutral to you personally doesn’t mean they’re innocent. What is much more telling is the person’s attitude towards the ones they refer to in third person. Constant gossiping and vagueposting behind people’s backs to one’s own limited audience, even if there isn't active fandom drama, are not healthy behaviours. They are red flags. This is why, no matter how harrowing the experiences might be and how much none of us want to see this kind of shit on our dashboards, it is important that the community firmly stands up for the people who are proven to be mistreated and doesn’t give credence to the resurfacing drama.

If anything a person says in their internet space is filled with contempt towards others, it is not healthy, even if it isn’t a reason to outright cut someone out. Parasocial relationships in the Internet make it far too easy to let others in too deep and accept their beliefs without questioning general attitudes. Don’t hesitate to keep a safe emotional distance even if you feel loyal towards the person. Don’t let anyone pressure you into behaviours or beliefs that make you feel even slightly morally uncomfortable only to stay in popular people’s good graces, or to to belong in a group.

If you suspect you might have been used in any of abovementioned ways without openly signing up for anything nasty, dr. Ramani  Durvasula runs an acclaimed educational YT channel that contains explanations and tips on how to be less confused about what happened. Confusion is a common feeling when you’ve been used without having full knowledge about the situation.

the people on the list: how dare you spread lies about us! can't you see how harmful it is!

Also word of advice on the anon asks, use the three dots and click block on one of them then refresh your page/app and check how many ya got. It’s likely only one or two senders. So once you block one, the rest automatically disappear.

No one’s pretending to be a white knight. We’re all just concerned townspeople who want to go about their day but won’t sit idly by anymore due to the bystander effect while a corrupt self-appointed self-important judge posts up fear mongering lies about the townspeople on the townhall’s board in order to rile the town up for a stoning.

Because that’s exactly who the people who assembled that blocklist are. Self-appointed judges that deemed portraying Cullen (a WHITE CHARACTER) as sexually dominant was wrong. While using the language that this was about fighting racism in fandom when the majority (90%) of their callout was about a white character. Dunno about you but …championing the portrayals of a white bread character like Cullen is not fighting racism. And these people were using fandom as activism which is a whole other issue. And they went on a harassment campaign toward these artists and fans for liking pRoBlEmAtIc portrayals or even just liking a single post from someone.

oh anon, how brave of you to ask this

i despise the tendency of this plateform to expose dirty laundry to get the "public" opinion on your side (even if it will only ever be your own mob), just as much as i despise wasting my time with irrelevant bullshit (go offline, touch grass, you know how it goes) because some people thrive off turning a petty online matter into "activism".

but to answer your question, i asked my friends how the blocklist came to be because i had no previous knowledge of "the mess". to which i was given proof of what the people on the blocklist are accused of.

so it's okay hollywhatever exposed my pm, because at the end of the day i don't care. her friends are cheering for her, clapping at her "amazing" comeback (it seemed pretty piss poor to me) and she feels very accomplished. good for her. i, on the other hand, know my friends were right to have this blocklist for the sake of caution.

It’s interesting you use the phrase “terminally online” when the people who handed over that list of names and those (dreamfall) who posted it on the discord without proper research literally are the ones “terminally online” for judging and slandering REAL PEOPLE for how they “hypersexualized” FICTIONAL characters (some even their own). There was no racism, if you did any amount of research into what happened. If you didn’t literally it’s all documented on this blog here.

They were the ones who harassed first, and we have someone from their discord who admitted to sending anons to harass them. Everything else after was reaction to their slander/libel, lies, harassment, and death threats. because ya know it affected real people. we were concerned with REAL IN THE FLESH people. Versus the mess crew people like bluhawke, isavhenan, cullenvhenan, tloaque, and bitchesofostwick (just to name a few) were so over concerned over fictional characters, made a call out post claiming to be a fight against racism when the entire post was really about the “hypersexualization” of Cullen. A WHITE BLONDE HAIRED character. They attributed far more importance and impact of fanfic and fanart over a WHITE character. That’s not fighting racism. That’s using the language of leftism and progressives to discredit and control the conversation so they don’t have to reveal what they were really pissed off about was how people created so much artwork of Cullen in a dominant sexual role.