I think now that most of the dust has settled regarding Salem I think I can confidently do a bit of a post-mortem on the whole thing.
Most people still don’t know that Salem pretended to be an Asian girl called Kung Fu Revvy, and that he used racist broken English when pretending to be her.
Most people still don’t know that Salem lashes out and uses slurs to put other people down.
Most people still don’t know that Salem is surrounded by the worst people imaginable, such as his (now ex) SO Wiz and Mari.
Most people still don’t know that Salem lied about being pregnant and a miscarriage for clout and legitimacy à la hivliving.
Most people still don’t know that Salem’s whole current bunny persona and set of online aliases are to escape even MORE problematic behavior under previous aliases such as puppychan.
Most people still don’t know that one of Salem’s last acts on tumblr before being banned was telling another user to kill themselves.
Most people still don’t know that Salem has meaningfully apologized for none of this and hasn’t substantially changed his behavior.
And there were docs, screenshots, and receipts all proving these things! And I think there’s a super critical piece to the puzzle as to why nobody knows any of this.
All the information above was obfuscated from view by the sheer volume of uninspired critiques of his bad art. For every one post about his insane history and behavior most Salem-critical blogs put out twenty about how crappy his art was. Claims of Salem being a piss-poor artist easily overwhelmed any more meaningful conversation.
Was his art bad? Yeah. Was analyzing his bad art an occasionally apt tool for understanding how he understood the world? Absolutely. But NEVER should critiques of art overtaken the real, meaningful reason as to why he’s a bad person as much as they had.
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