The internet, by its nature, is and always has been a liberal place. If the term liberal offends you, then regard it to be meant in the classical sense. The internet is a medium that allows for the free sharing of ideas, either anonymously or otherwise.
For the past twenty-five years and longer, the internet has been used to bring groups together who might not otherwise have a voice in mainstream society. Everyone from atheists, to homosexuals, to Vectrex enthusiasts. If there's a sub culture for a thing, it exists online. One reason for communities to come together is obviously due to shared interests and experiences. Another is safety. Some people feel that their lifestyle or ideas are dangerous to talk about in their community. With online communities, people can have an anonymous handle and share information freely.
As time has passed, some groups have more and more been integrated into society. Many atheists no longer feel that "coming out" is unsafe, and homosexuals now have the legal right to marry, a concept which was anything but mainstream back when I first got online. It turns out that most people don't give a fuck about what others do in their private lives.
For as much good as the internet has done for the free expression of speech, in particular for minority groups, it has also caused groups to coalesce around the idea that what other groups or people say is wrong. There is actual oppression that exists in the world. It could come from a source of power and money, or it could come in the form of prejudice based on race, creed, gender, or sexual orientation. Most of us have experienced this in some form or another.
There's this thing that I call "the rubber band effect." The supposition states that as much as we push back against something, for example racism against people of African descent, elements of society will form together, such as on the internet, and push back against either the group that was doing the oppressing in the first place, or a group that is perceived by some as responsible for whatever the initial transgression was. This post is an example of the latter. The OP feels justified in being indifferent towards the death of a child because the father was white and male (and probably cis). An example of the former is this post. Women (and men) have fought for generations to obtain equality for women. Now the recoil is to erase gender constructs from society altogether.
As a point of example, one community that has formed is recent years is the fat acceptance movement. (See our archived SROTD feature on /r/fatlogic here.) Is it okay to be fat? If you want to be, sure. But it is healthy? Science says no. I am an accepter science. I accept the big bang, evolution, climate change, vaccines, and so on. I also accept that obesity is a serious health issue. Two years ago I became morbidly obese. I spent some time in denial. Then I had a period feeling sorry for myself where I thought that there was just nothing I could do. I was miserable. But then I decided to make a change. I complete changed my lifestyle. I took my doctor's advice. I lost over one hundred pounds. I still have more work to go, but I am no longer morbidly obese, and I feel fucking great. I mention this because comments like these are not sane. First, it's an example of straight up science denial. Second, it's not helpful to anyone who is obese and wants to change. Someone whose health is at risk might believe this, that a doctor telling you to lose weight is just fat shaming. That there is no way for some people to lose weight. That obesity is healthy. It's not true. And it's harmful, not only to the individual espousing the ideas, but to anyone in the same position who buys it. Essentially, it's snake oil, but instead of doing nothing, it does harm.
We live in an era where trust for media and authority is at an all time low. We can pick and choose what media we consume. Just in the same way we only subscribe to subreddits we like, many people also only consume media that agrees with their established worldview. We can further join online communities that perpetuate our own beliefs to the point where it becomes an echo chamber, drowning out other ideas and views. Of course, this isn't healthy, not just for the individual, but for society as a whole.
There are lots and lots more examples that I can provide which shows the kinds of insanity that is posted day after day. And we could look at it together and analyse it. But that's not really the point of TiA. It's more meant for a laugh, not to stand against SJWs everywhere. At its heart, it tries to be funny (and often succeeds). Also, this is already a really long post. I had an interesting discussion with the mods. So now I'll turn to the mod interview to go deeper into the reasons why /r/TumblrInAction exists and what it's all about.
1. Do you believe that society is teaching a new generation of people to find outrage and oppression where none exists? If so, what are some good examples?
/u/GammaKing: Not exactly. Most people are pretty reasonable, the problem comes from a smaller element of society who've taken on the mindset that nobody has any right to say anything that makes someone else uncomfortable. There are people around that go out of their way to try and take offence over trivial matters, but as far as teaching I'd say it's more of a social media-based effect. Tumblr is far from unique in it's ability to go batshit over stupid matters, but the battles they choose usually go against Tumblr's favourite scapegoat - straight white men.
Typical examples being:
Having dreadlocks is racist if you're not black.
Not displaying fat people on fitness posters is "fatphobic".
Giving basic safety advice like "don't pass out drunk on the street" is
"victim blaming".
I'm sure the others might have some more thoughts.
/u/ShinkoNetCavy: Today I went to an event on someone lecturing about the game industry, had no idea who it was, and they were talking all about how oppressed women were, and we had to fire men to get these people diverse. The majority of the people attending this were the new generation. I can say that yes, especially in universities there is a very big force behind SJW logic.
Reaction: Holy shit man, that's bullshit. I am a gen xer going back to college now. I am a communication (not with a "S") major, and two classes I have to take are relational communication and gender communication. The former was super SJW. Not just the standard stuff you'd think of, but it even promoted the stereotype that blacks are more anti-gay than anyone else. Not that it didn't have valid information about what safe space is in a real relationship, because it did and that term is a real thing. But it also went deeper than the tumblr abyss and into what I'd consider to be racist territory.
/u/GammaKing: On that point, I should probably add that injecting politics into universities is quite a strong trend which has recently started to make it over here to the UK. This isn't really an action of society, but of a few agenda-driven people in powerful positions. For example, a while back there was a mandatory workshop on racism in the workplace held where I am. The sum of it was essentially "Even if you think you're not, being white means you're racist". You could say that this is an example of how people get brainwashed, but by and large everyone came out in agreement that the whole thing was a farce. The agenda pushing is there, but people aren't as receptive to it as you might think.
/u/GroovyEFS: I do not believe we are teaching this specifically, but we have left the door wide open for encouraging it by telling everyone they're a unique special snowflake as they're growing up. "Everyone is unique and everyone deserves a participation trophy."
I think it is those who keep this mindset into early adulthood (18-24) who become SJWs, and rarely this will continue even past those ages.
/u/Goatsac: Unequivocally yes. For years we've been teaching each and every child that it was special just for being. Now we've been teaching them that they are special by how upset they get. Which is why they are loud with it. The Oppression Olympics is fucking twisted. The constant contest for oppression, I believe, is just normal human competitiveness asserting itself in the only outlet it could find amongst these people. You're not allowed to be better than anyone at anything, but they aren't allowed to be better than you. So it's a mad dash to the bottom where only a retarded, negroid, hermaphrodite, paedophile rape-victim with no eyes, half a leg, three arms, and incontinence can win. Unless of course they don't whole-heartedly support Social Justice, then that niggerass uncle tom motherfucker has just internalized their racism, and they deserve everything they've had happen to them.
A good example is "Rape Culture." From stats so turned on their head, twisted and fucked with (basically raped), or just outright made up, we get this weird Red Scare fear-mongering against men where every man is a rapist, he just hasn't raped you yet. And everyone has to tout this, everyone, even the President. To not support this fantasy is to support rape. 1 in 1 women in college get sexually assaulted. It's a pandemic.
/u/TheHat2: In some ways. Universities tend to be a hotbed for this. Most schools require students take some "diversity" class (or multiple classes), for example. Gonzaga outright calls this the "social justice core." Courses like these will encourage students to become activists, to raise awareness about some sort of perceived injustice. We saw a lot of this in the list of demands in the wake of the Mizzou protests, where some groups found issue with their university not having mandatory classes that teach "the historical racial violence of [UNC-Chapel Hill] and [the city of Chapel Hill] as well as a historical and contemporary look at the ways in which racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and cisheteropatriarchy structure our world," or their university expanding its campus to "gentrify" a neighborhood (UNCG), or their university not protecting students from "intolerable and psychologically detrimental" posts on Yik Yak (Emory). Don't get me started about air conditioners...
2. What's the greater evil in the tumblr-sphere, being straight, being white, or being male? I ask because it seems like there are now political forces, in particular online, that are extremely derogatory and biased against people who aren't different, who don't stand out. Another example that comes to mind is so called "thin privilege." There seems to be a lot of hate for people who want to be fit and healthy. So, let's add "fit" or "thin" to that question.
/u/GammaKing: It depends who you ask. What I think many people don't realise is that different users on Tumblr prioritise different issues. Ultimately though the shared feature is that "privilege" has often come to be used as a means to excuse someone's own prejudice. For example, a black blogger who holds a prejudice against white people will often cite "white privilege" as an excuse for doing so. That's not to say privileges can't exist, but more often than not it's a thinly veiled cover for dismissing opposing arguments on racist/sexist grounds. Which identity is the most disparaged seems to change weekly.
/u/GroovyEFS: Race has become the latest hot topic within progressive circles so I honestly think being white is now considered "worse" than being male now.
/u/Goatsac: The need to be a special snowflake is part of the Oppression Olympics. To find ways to be so more horribly twisted than the next xir. That's where that comes from. I mean, say we're both gay, black transwomen right? And we fit in with other gay, black transwomen, but now I'm fat. Checkmate, bitches. Oh? You're fat now? Shit, I'm autistic. You're autistic? Fuck you, I'm manic depressive bipolar, and I think I have the soul and mind of a half-cat, half-dragon, half-toaster, quarter-galaxy, and I can't do math.
Of the four (Straight, White, Able-bodied, or Male), White is the greater evil. It's the trump card that shuts other people down. Kinda like what I was just rambling about. Say you're a retarded, fat, autistic transwomen with no legs and I'm just a moderately successful black woman. You're white, I'm not. You've led a privileged life, my friend. A very privileged life. For shame.
/u/TheHat2: I think it's between being white and (cis) male, but I'd lean more towards male. White privilege is still a huge thing that Tumblr rails against, especially since Black Lives Matter has kicked into high gear once again. The Patriarchy seems to be the eternal boogeyman, though, and with it, male privilege. The whole concept of masculinity seems to just push too many buttons in the Tumblr-sphere. It's divisive, it condones and relishes in violence and competition, it drives men to take possession over people, etc. A lot of anger over the idea of manliness. Hell, one of my last college classes was on Hemingway, and there were many people who described his being the epitome of manliness "highly problematic." I think a lot of this comes from the desire to end traditional gender roles and presentations, but that opens an entirely new can of worms, most notably, "without gender roles or social presentations of gender, how do you define the differences between genders?"
3. The concept of being "triggered" isn't new. For me, as an ex-smoker, certain things triggered me. Like if I was on the patio at a bar and someone lit up. It made me want to smoke too. But I didn't ever take it out on the person who was smoking. They were within their rights to be on the patio having a cigarette. I either had to resist or maybe go back inside. The difference in the social justice movement is that they seem to want to be comfortable not by changing their habits and beliefs, but by changing other people. Would you agree with this? Can you recall posts where "triggering" has led to people committing acts of violence or property damage? How do you think is the best way to deal with being "triggered"?
/u/GammaKing: I don't think that's quite right. Certain things can "trigger" memories of traumatic experiences, and that's a perfectly good reason to place content warnings about things like rape and violence. The difference here is that Tumblr took this to the extreme and started putting warnings before EVERYTHING. At one point it wasn't uncommon to see "TW: Weight loss" or similar. Over time the term devolved into referring to anything which makes someone feel remotely uncomfortable, and with that emerged this idea of the "safe space". "Safe space" ideology basically involves shutting out any idea which the in-group disagree with, for fear of upsetting those within. It's been rather damaging to universities in recent years for it shuts down debate and places severe restrictions on speech. So in short, disclosure is fine for genuinely sensitive topics, but people shouldn't expect subjects to be totally avoided just for their personal comfort in a public space.
/u/GroovyEFS: Everyone has things that trigger bad feelings. I have them, you have them, we all do. This is just natural.
How you deal with these feelings is what's key. In your example, you just deal with it or take yourself out the situation. This is the right way to do it and I don't think anyone on TiA would hate on you for it either.
I absolutely agree that it is attempting to change the world to fit you that is the issue, and that's exactly what we mock.
/u/Goatsac: (TW: Bad Grammar) I go both ways with the triggering thing. I completely understand the point, and endorse the intelligent use, of trigger warnings and all of that jazz. The situation you just mentioned, the smoking and all of that. That's personal responsibility and not forcing your own nonsense onto other people, which are two things this social justice, worthless Millennial, cyber generation struggles with. That's where they fuck up with trigger warnings. They became a badge to show how "woke" you were. Then competetiveness had it's way with them. And now they're a hilarious joke.
/u/TheHat2: Absolutely agree. I seem to remember a video a while back of a student assaulting a hyper-religious protestor over his "offensive" signs, and though he didn't say he was outright triggered, it came off that way (I think some people theorized that he had some severe mental disorder that could've led to the behavior, but I don't know for sure). The way I dealt with my trauma triggers when I was most sensitive to them was to stop being around anything that I thought would trigger an anxiety attack. Exercise online blocking tools, avoid certain places and/or people, not bringing up certain topics in conversation that could lead to it, etc. It's basically being hyper-conscious of your trigger and doing what you can to keep it from affecting you. You can request some changes of others, but demanding them is going too far. That said, I don't believe in "trigger warnings," either. You don't know who is going to be triggered by what. One of my triggers was a person's name. I know of someone who was abused by their mother while she ran the dishwasher, but his trigger became the sound of that appliance, not mentions of abuse. Yeah, triggers can hit at any moment, but it's up to the individual to be proactive about that, to care for their own mental health; it shouldn't be the responsibility of others.
4. How do you respond to accusations that TiA is a "hate" subreddit?
/u/GammaKing: This has become one of the more annoying little memes on Reddit, perpetuated by those with a political narrative to spin. Put simply: TumblrInAction is not in any way, shape or form a "hate subreddit". We have strong rules enforcing decency and respect and try to maintain a positive atmosphere. You probably saw the hatesubredditoftheday AMA we did, and in a nutshell it seems that they can't actually articulate any evidence to support their claims. In fact, talking to us caused their narrative to completely fall apart to the point that they were admonished by SRS for allowing us to speak at all.
It seems that it's primarily the offmychest mod network that try to perpetuate this accusation these days, and I posted a decent rebuttal of their latest charade here if you're interested.
It's worth pointing out that if you do happen to go to /r/againsthatesubreddits' list of "hate subs" you might notice two things:
Their list contains a bunch of Neo Nazi communities, but also a sizeable number of innocuous subs focused on issues like gamergate, abortion, Trump and even /r/drama for some reason.
In line with the above, you might also notice the absence of overtly hateful communities such as /r/againstmensrights. In fact, on further inspection it becomes clear that this is not a list of "hate subs", but a list of political opponents.
And so, with all this in mind, to me it seems clear that the people calling TiA a "hate sub" aren't doing so in an honest attempt to inform people - it's not convincing to anyone that's actually visited. Instead, this is merely an attempt to convince the uninitiated to look away without a second thought, maybe even parrot that accusation elsewhere.
/u/GroovyEFS: With laughter.
/u/Goatsac: When the whole purpose of your weird cult thing is to seek out any and every way that someone might be slighting you, or for you to declare openly that you might have it just slightly worse than anyone else in life, I imagine a forum, or subreddit, dedicated to laughing and mocking the central tenent of your faith feels like hate. A bunch of folks sitting around, having a good time, socialising (in the limited context the internet allows), telling jokes, having a good time with life just seems antithetical to the sort of person that gets featured on TiA. People, getting along, having fun, I imagine it's almost too much for their poor, little neuro-atypical selves. I will admit that at times their can be a lot of just counter/anti social justice nonsense in there, with a focus less on funny and more on combating the evil pinkhaired plague. Thankfully the funny reasserts itself and we can go back to just having a good time.
/u/TheHat2: It's a way to write us off because our community is full of people who criticize feminism, social justice, political correctness, etc. Sure, there are some nasty bigots on our sub that think they're in good company, but we try to weed them out where possible. We have rules in place that prohibit advocation of hatred or harm. If people see it happening where the mods haven't, it needs to be reported to us, not highlighted somewhere that uses it as proof about how TiA is a "hate sub."
5. What is TiA's overall mission?
/u/GammaKing: TiA is a place to kick back and have a chuckle at some of the silly stuff that gets posted on Tumblr. In the early days this was often people who thought they were turning into wolves and that sort of thing. However over the past few years social justice on Tumblr took off in a big way, so that's quite prominent these days, and you have to smile at people ranting about how bathroom mirrors are a sexist conspiracy.
/u/GroovyEFS: Keep laughing at crazy idiots.
/u/Goatsac: I feelz that the goal of TiA is to just have fun. To have a laugh with a few folks about something that was found that was so ridiculous, others have just got to check this out.
/u/TheHat2: To laugh at the logical gymnastics of others, and to point out how such logic makes no sense. For entertainment. We don't really like how the sub's been moving more toward outrage-bait, though to be fair, some of the logic we see is hard to just laugh at.
6. What would you like readers to know about your posting policy?
/u/GammaKing: Two things. Firstly: the key thing to ask yourself is whether your post is amusing. If it's more rage-inducing, it's better suited to the dozens of other subreddits for that content, such as /r/SocialJusticeInAction or /r/SJSucks. We aim to be different from all those and so strive for a laid-back attitude. This isn't the place to go for some sort of imaginary "culture war".
Secondly: Do not contact the bloggers. That'll earn you a ban. We'd also like to ask that, as funny as you may find it, the sub would be a much nicer place to moderate if Tumblr wasn't flooded with troll blogs and parody accounts. Please don't make them.
/u/GroovyEFS: We do not allow going after young teenagers because we all have blunder years. We make every attempt to remove satire when we see it, in fact there is a massive automod rule for removing all the known satire blogs. We tend to moderate submissions relatively strictly to ensure high quality content.
Comment rules are much more laid back. We do not want anyone using TiA as a soapbox or outright attacking other users, but other than that we try to allow reasonable free discussion within TiA's comment section.
/u/Goatsac: Try to have more fun with your titles without pushing your shitty little agenda the way the people we make fun of do. I've seen great titles help a mediocre submission, and I've seen shitty, preachy, agenda driven titles get things awesome removed. Don't become your "enemy" during your little "fight" against them. And for fuck's sake, being an easily-triggered, hyper-emotional, greenhaired fat fuck that whines about fat, easily-triggered, pinkhaired, hyper-emotional fucks that whine about oppressions is no way to fight in the Great Internet Culture War of The Twenty-Teens. Don't do it. It's bad.
/u/TheHat2: Don't post something just because it makes you angry. Don't post things that are too serious, like responses to terrorist attacks or rape accusations (false or otherwise). Don't use the sub to fight your political battles. And most importantly, DO NOT CONTACT ANYONE FEATURED ON TiA UNLESS YOU WANT TO GET A BOOT UP THE ASS.
7. Last question, there's a sub called "HateSubredditOfTheDay" that promotes subs that they feel are hateful. Why did you agree to do an interview with them? (Editors note: Said subreddit made a post apologizing about promoting TiA... and then deleted both the original post and the apology.)
/u/Goatsac: I wanted to from jump. I knew how bad it would go. Two of the moderators involved there are also modded to a little informal gathering of nonsense I'm involved with called /r/dickgirls. And both have presented themselves as fairly reasonable, although Minn-ee-sottaa is young. When first approached, we were all like, nah, go have fun with that, as an opening bid. Then gradually, Gamma used his natural role of "Daddy Pants", Hat's experience with professional journalists, and my connection to the moderator that approached us to see if we could get at something maybe not unbaised, but less shit flinging. More real accusations instead of "my feelz! they hurt!"
I've mocked and belittled those people for over two years. Watched them scramble and react to the stupidest of nonsense. I have to say, the whole thing was actually surprising me up until some rando AA account and creepy ass Quietuus showed up. And then it devolved into a beautiful thing.
Did you catch the drama post? At Kaalaaa updated it to include the goldfish links of the original and the apology post.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/4ho1md/did_rhatesubredditoftheday_coddle_with/
/u/GammaKing: In my case, it's because they approached us asking for an interview while clearly having an agenda. I promptly made it clear that if they wanted an interview they'd have to be willing to engage rather than smear. They agreed and sent a bunch of trap questions, presumably looking for something they could call hateful.
Only problem was, we weren't hateful. When they got back well reasoned responses I think there was a realisation that there was no way you could write a "look how awful that sub is" post with the material they had. So they went for an AMA instead hoping the community would figure it out.
Unsurprisingly the community couldn't come up with anything either, so they shut it down and started circlejerking.
The point is that we're more than willing to engage with criticism. It's better than being insular, and you make them look like a bunch of utter fools because their narrative falls apart. Basically if someone wants to damage your reputation, confront them and be goddamn spotless.
So basically we agreed to it because we knew they had nothing. Their cause was doomed from the start.
I hope the TL;DR of this is that actual oppression is evil, but perceiving entire groups of people as oppressors (or worse), e.g. all straight people, is also bad, and forming a group for the sake of finding new reasons to be oppressed or new people to oppress is not sane. And what do you do when you see someone being crazy? Laugh. That's all you can do.
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