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rynlingAs I continue to reblog cute pictures and post fluffy shipfic on Tumblr, I continue to be tagged on reblogs of social justice call-out posts. As far as I can tell, I'm being targeted because of a pseudo-literary reading of Ganondorf's villain monologue at the end of The Wind Waker (link), which is a fairly lazy piece of writing but for some reason got a decent number of notes when I posted it back in March.
I was doing a lot of "volunteer activism" at the time - one of my lawyer friends dragged me along to babysit people's children while she did pro bono legal advocacy for people whose relatives had been imprisoned during the recent riots in Baltimore - and a relatively minor but still important part of my motivation for posting the piece was that my experiences had made me sick and damn tired of seeing Ganondorf being portrayed as "evil angry barbaric Oriental other." Ironically, I'm now being accused of perpetuating neoliberal and neocolonialist ideology, ie, "black people always want white people's shit."
It's complicated, and I'm willing to acknowledge the validity of multiple points of view. What I am not willing to acknowledge is the condescending and counterproductive assumption that I am ignorant and need to be educated, especially not at the rudimentary "Intersectional Feminism 101" level at which Tumblr seems to operate (probably because a majority of its most active users are in fact college students).
As Angela Davis has written, "Whenever you conceptualize social justice struggles, you will always defeat your own purposes if you cannot imagine the people around whom you are struggling as equal partners."
I am going to get that quote tattooed on my palm; and, the next time someone sends me an off-anon message to inform me that I am a bigoted cunt and should commit suicide immediately, I will tell them to talk to my hand. Or to read Women, Race, & Class for a more informed and nuanced (and still gut-wrenchingly relevant, even thirty fucking years later) view of how to handle intersectionality, either way is good.
I would consider closing my ask box entirely, but I get a lot of sweet messages from friendly strangers and adorable anons. Also, I want to continue to document the "anti" "aggro" "discourse" on Tumblr, which I think is an extremely interesting subcultural movement. I've been having almost daily conversations with a professional cultural anthropologist friend of mine about the recent drama in the BBC Sherlock fandom, and the two of us are thinking of putting together an actual academic paper about Tumblr-based fandom wank. We have both seen our fair share of epic wank sagas since the early 2000s, but we both agree that the wank on Tumblr is really... special.
I was doing a lot of "volunteer activism" at the time - one of my lawyer friends dragged me along to babysit people's children while she did pro bono legal advocacy for people whose relatives had been imprisoned during the recent riots in Baltimore - and a relatively minor but still important part of my motivation for posting the piece was that my experiences had made me sick and damn tired of seeing Ganondorf being portrayed as "evil angry barbaric Oriental other." Ironically, I'm now being accused of perpetuating neoliberal and neocolonialist ideology, ie, "black people always want white people's shit."
It's complicated, and I'm willing to acknowledge the validity of multiple points of view. What I am not willing to acknowledge is the condescending and counterproductive assumption that I am ignorant and need to be educated, especially not at the rudimentary "Intersectional Feminism 101" level at which Tumblr seems to operate (probably because a majority of its most active users are in fact college students).
As Angela Davis has written, "Whenever you conceptualize social justice struggles, you will always defeat your own purposes if you cannot imagine the people around whom you are struggling as equal partners."
I am going to get that quote tattooed on my palm; and, the next time someone sends me an off-anon message to inform me that I am a bigoted cunt and should commit suicide immediately, I will tell them to talk to my hand. Or to read Women, Race, & Class for a more informed and nuanced (and still gut-wrenchingly relevant, even thirty fucking years later) view of how to handle intersectionality, either way is good.
I would consider closing my ask box entirely, but I get a lot of sweet messages from friendly strangers and adorable anons. Also, I want to continue to document the "anti" "aggro" "discourse" on Tumblr, which I think is an extremely interesting subcultural movement. I've been having almost daily conversations with a professional cultural anthropologist friend of mine about the recent drama in the BBC Sherlock fandom, and the two of us are thinking of putting together an actual academic paper about Tumblr-based fandom wank. We have both seen our fair share of epic wank sagas since the early 2000s, but we both agree that the wank on Tumblr is really... special.
Re: Still chewing on your ramble
Date: 2016-10-10 12:21 am (UTC)In my experience, it's really, really easy to tell the two apart, and I think the difference is extremely important, especially since real violence is being performed against real people and causing real pain.
Classifying death threats, rape threats, anonymous hate mail, and organized bullying campaigns as "disruption" demeans the concept, regardless of the intentions of the people who are engaging in such behaviors. Moreover, I suspect that people who perform real "disruption," whether conscientiously or as a routine aspect of their lives on planet earth, would not appreciate being placed in the same category as people who get together to, say, urge someone to commit suicide.
For what it's worth, Whitney Phillips's monograph This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things has served as a useful resource to me in the development of my own understanding of the evolution of the term "trolling" and its connection to political-activism-in-scare-quotes. I'm using the term as Phillips does, namely, to designate aggressive and intentionally harmful online abuse targeted against an individual in order to provoke an extraordinary response.
Basically, I agree with you that "disruption" is understandable and justifiable, but a line does need to be drawn somewhere to demarcate defensive attitudes and behaviors from "trolling," even if that line then must be repeatedly renegotiated.
Re: Still chewing on your ramble
Date: 2016-10-10 02:16 am (UTC)Thanks for the ref to Whitney Phillips' monograph. ps: my credit card says "hello." ;)
I scanned the monograph's ToC while nodding vigorously at how she breaks down the history into three periods with the years (2003-07, 2008-11, 2012-present) as it maps closely to my pet historical theories/explanations so now I am curious to read it to see how Phillips' ideas intersect with other ideas.
All that said, I am still on the fence regarding whether all people who engage in this definition of trolling are in attack mode or if some are in a highly vitriolic defense mode, and if that distinction can be drawn based on how their perceive their situation. And just because someone is psychologically in defense mode does not mean that their actions are justified, so I make this distinction purely to understand why they are motivated and **not** to justify or excuse their actions.
...and now I need to wait until Wednesday for that amazon package to arrive.
Edited to add: just started reading a review of Phillips' monograph and the reviewer says that Phillips makes the distinction between online bullying vs “the self-identifying, subcultural troll." So, using Phillips' definition (second hand here) I completely agree with you that she is talking about trolling as an attack mode subculture.
So, I will restate what I said above to adopt this use of language: there are people who are engaging in defense-mode cyberbullying and people engaging in attack mode trolling / cyberbullying. When the defense-mode cyberbullying escalates, it appears identical to the tactics used by trolls.