(no subject)

[sideways]

"Likes are nice but the reality is that they mean nothing as they do not help broaden an audience like reblogs do."

I do sometimes wonder whether this particular subset of online creators sees any discrepancy at all between frequently complaining that they don't get enough feedback and frequently complaining that the feedback they get is wrong. 'They mean nothing'. Spare me.

Comments

[dray]

One of my least favourite tactics, alongside the whole "if you don't reblog this you're a racist/homophobe/etc.etc. bad person" angle. On the one hand, I really appreciate when awareness is raised about topics I feel are important, but on the other I might not want to reblog them into the middle of my tumblr filled with pictures of cats, dragons, and stupid memes, you know?

Tumblr had a sort of disgruntled 'me against the world' feel to it, which I haven't often encountered on Dreamwidth, save in anonymous communities that stoke provocative behaviour. I appreciate that, even if it sacrifices some of the pace and ease of (ironically) quietly liking/voting up a post.

[sideways]

Uggghhhhhh the "not reblogging equals silence and silence equals tacit agreement and agreement equals scum of the earth" spiel was never Tumblr's shining high point.

I did buy into it for a time - the idea that I had a moral duty to help spread information - but then I ended up reblogging a couple of things that turned out to be (shock horror) not entirely truthful and that gave me pause. A short while after that I read a very insightful post on appropriated anger and that did me a world of good in rethinking how I wanted to approach 'social justice'. Watching the broader community descend further and further into forging outrage and hurt into social currency has been troubling in the extreme.

[dray]

I'd be curious to hear about that appropriated anger bit. I wound up doing a lot of scrolling past of things with social justice because I found tumblr wore down my spoons weirdly quickly (probably because of the outrage and hurt being slung around? Though I wasn't really self-aware of that for quite a while...)

I feel better about participating in groups IRL than on social media, in any case. When it's used as a tool to gather and chat in person, facebook et all are great. For armchair social justice... not so much.

[sideways]

I had to gone on a bit of a journey but - ahah! Found the sucker again:
http://queenieofaces.tumblr.com/post/80232081633/justice-anger-and-the-demand-for-perfection-why

In particular, this part:

"There’s also the matter of what I’m tentatively calling “appropriation of anger”; this is something that I see come up a lot with regards to race on tumblr. I can completely understand a PoC or mixed race person reacting with anger to someone posting something racist–however, when white “allies” react with the same kind of anger, I kind of side-eye them. (The same goes for men reacting to misogyny with anger, which I’ve been seeing a lot of recently.) There’s a difference between being frustrated because of injustice and being angry because you personally are being attacked, and I think tumblr’s blogging culture–in which anger offers legitimacy to whatever you’re saying–allows people to forget that distinction. My understanding of allyship is that a large part of it is doing all the education work that the group you’re supporting is too tired or too burned out or too upset or too whatever to do. So if you’re an ally reacting to something that doesn’t directly affect you with “Go die in a fire, you huge bigot,” you’re not really getting anything productive done or helping the people you’re supposedly supporting.

I think the reason why I see so many allies reacting with BURNING ANGER to affronts on the groups they’re supposedly supporting is that tumblr culture codes anger as the way the “in-group” reacts to the “oppressor,” and so allies think that if they react with the same amount of anger, they will be able to join the “in-group.” No, I’m sorry, if you’re not an ace of color, no matter how angry you get about someone saying ignorant things about aces of color, that won’t actually make you an ace of color. I can only speak for myself, but if you really want to be an ally for me (in whatever dimension), I’d much rather you compile a linkspam for the person so that I don’t have to than send death threats and call them a bigot. When you get angry about something that affects me and not you, you are making the issue about you and your anger, not the actual effect this issue is having on me."