Commodification and Responsibility

[rynling]

On one hand, I agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly and have been preaching it since 2016.

One the other hand, I do think that, if you have a sizeable enough platform, you have a responsibility to use it wisely.

On my third hand - and this is the hand stretching directly out of my anxiety-ridden heart - I think it's scary how social media has blown issues relating to commodification and responsibility wildly out of proportion.

Something happened this week with Noelle Stevenson. Because of the nature of Twitter, I'm not really sure what it was, but I think they made some sort of visual gag related to a noncanonical sibling of one of the She-Ra characters during a BLM charity livestream. Like, the character Bow is an archer because his name is "Bow," so maybe he has a sibling who is a farmer because his name is "Sow." This was apparently perceived as an insensitive comment about Black people working in the fields. Or something?

Regardless of their intention, Stevenson apologized immediately, publicly, and sincerely...

...and that tweet was interacted with tens of millions of times. I've muted a lot of words associated with fandom discourse, but my timeline was still filled with people making vaguetweets about being disappointed with creators they once looked up to. And that's fair, of course, but still. It took a lot of maneuvering for me to figure out what everyone was tweeting about, and I still can't be sure what actually happened. All I know for sure is that a hashtag with Noelle Stevenson's name garnered far more attention on Twitter this week than news relating to Jacob Blake.

It could be that people are responding to much deeper issues concerning hiring on the She-Ra staff and cast and representation on the show. I wouldn't know, but I think that's a reasonable assumption to make given common industry practices. Stevenson's personal Twitter feed, however, is all about supporting people of color and boosting minority voices. But again, I don't know what's going on, so I'm not in any position to judge.

All that being said, it's not easy to be perfectly polished when you're giving an impromptu public performance that hasn't been rehearsed in advance or edited afterwards, and sometimes you say dumb shit because you're nervous. I still think about very specific stupid things I said during my first year or two of teaching that never would have left my mouth if I weren't giving a live performance while stressed out and tired, and I sincerely regret them and have done my best to grow from the experience. Even people with the best of intentions fuck up sometimes, you know?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, while I believe it's important for people who have a large following on social media to be held accountable for their words and actions, the fact that a poorly considered offhand comment can become a matter of public discourse on an enormous international stage is frightening.

Comments

[lassarina]

I'm not in the fandom, but the general consensus among my friends who are (and who are generally very much focused on intersectional social justice) was that it was just a very slightly weird comment that got taken very, very far out of context and proportion, to a degree that was, well, frightening. AFAIK it was "only" about that singular comment, and not "this comment is emblematic of [all these other issues]". I don't know the creator, haven't watched the show, and have no horse in this race, other than being generally terrified by how much this went completely sideways.

It keeps cycling back to, I love writing, but do I want to be a published writer?