The Captain-Planet-Official Problem

I've been open about my distaste for “call-out” and “canceling” culture within left-leaning spaces on social media. My overarching point is that people shouldn’t be harassed online, especially not for stupid shit that doesn’t matter.

I’m going to put it out there, however, that sometimes people do in fact need to be shut down. Figuring out where to draw the line between “something you don’t like that isn’t hurting anyone” and “a toxic asshole who can just be blocked and ignored” and “a serious problem that is affecting far more than a tiny online community” isn’t always easy, however. There’s a lot of moral gray area here, and I think it’s worth talking about.

In my experience, one of the main issues that comes up during these discussions is something I’m going to call “the Captain-Planet-Official Problem” after an ecofascist blog on Tumblr that was extremely popular in relatively mainstream circles before it got shut down. The problem is this, basically: A lot of alt-right gateway accounts are popular because they’re funny, relatable, friendly, kind, and filled with memes that most reasonable people will find silly and inoffensive.

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So this is the problem: How do you explain that what a blog like Captain-Planet-Official is doing is a completely different type and level of “problematic” than a blog that celebrates an imagined romantic relationship between two fictional characters? And are you going to send a message to everyone you follow who reblogs a popular post from that blog? And if one of these people tells you that they don’t care, because it’s just a stupid meme on Tumblr and doesn’t matter, are you going to unfollow them? And if you unfollow them, what are you going to say to the other people in your fandom who still follow them? That they shouldn’t interact with them because they don’t take white supremacy seriously? Because they reblogged a Captain Planet meme about protecting the environment by fighting capitalism?

I should mention that this goes for radical left-wing messaging as well, especially when it comes to TERFs who use catchy feminist slogans to promote homophobic and exclusionary rhetoric and ideology. “How dare you say that protecting women’s rights and reblogging pride flags is bad” works in exactly the same way as “How dare you say that protecting the environment and reblogging cute animal pictures is bad.”

In any case, I don’t think the answer is necessarily to appeal to the powers that be to shut a particular blog down. As the Tumblr “flagged posts” debacle proved last December, there’s a lot of potential for abuse and basic ignorance when distant authorities are invoked, so it’s in the best interests of a community to figure out how to handle problems like Captain-Planet-Official on their own. Deciding where the line is between the normal stupid bullshit that happens on social media and something that’s genuinely scary isn’t always as easy as it is with Captain-Planet-Official, nor is it always easy to tell when someone has crossed that line and isn’t coming back. This is why I wish left-leaning communities would stop devoting so much energy to inane ship wars (Will Rey and Kylo Ren kiss? Who cares??) and start using the principles of social justice to figure out what to do about the promotion of dangerous ideologies that’s happening in the real world right in front of them.

Detective Pikachu

This is a story about a guy who bullied me in college for writing fanfiction.

During college I put together a ton of scholarships and got to spend a year in Japan at a study abroad program, where I ended up in a relationship with a guy who went to a different school. It wasn’t a healthy relationship, but I was young and stupid and genuinely believed that I could fix things if only I could become a better person, which mostly entailed never saying anything when my feelings were hurt.

I worked three jobs during my senior year of college (on top of a full courseload, a senior thesis, and the grad school application process, fun times) in order to be able to fly to go see this boy at his university. I couldn’t afford a hotel room, so I would stay in his dorm, where he lived in a suite with two other boys.

One of these boys was really funny and smart and outgoing and talented, but he was also vaguely misogynistic in a way that young men at fancy colleges can be sometimes. He considered himself to be a writer, and one of his favorite topics to discuss when I was visiting seemed to be how much he hated fanfiction. Like, what’s more sad and pathetic, furries or the disgusting people who are too dumb to write anything other than fanfiction? Haha.

My charming boyfriend later told me that this guy knew that I wrote Pokémon fanfiction, and that he would sometimes perform readings from my LiveJournal in front of an audience for shits and giggles.

I don’t know if that’s true or not. What I do know is that this guy had a giant dildo suction-cupped to the wall above the television set in the dorm suite’s common room. The dildo’s name was "Dick Rambone." More than once I found myself sitting on the common room couch and slowly dying inside as this guy addressed his diatribes against fanfiction to Dick Rambone, as the dildo above the tv was presumably familiar with how horny and gross women and gay men are. Especially people who write Pokémon fanfiction, how sick is that?

So this is one of the guys who wrote the story and script for Detective Pikachu.

........

I actually discuss this in my book, how fanwork by women is often treated as amateurish and embarrassing while the exact same work done by men gets turned into Hollywood movies.

It’s weird – it’s so goddamn weird – that this ended up hitting so close to home.