Idk man I might get torn to shreds for saying this, but I simply cannot understand the new trend, particularly among younger internet users, where people write a laundry list of their triggers in their bio and then expect everyone to read and cater to said list on a PUBLIC PLATFORM.

This is the same mentality that drives people to attack appropriately tagged fics on AO3 for having x y or z content because “How dare you post this when I have trauma about this???” Obviously if someone is going to write a super heavy and highly sensitive fic and NOT tag it properly, they ought to be called out on it. But this isn’t about that, it’s about the people who don’t curate their own content, it’s about the people who enter public spaces and demand that the general public cater to THEM specifically.

Additionally: Listing out your triggers for everyone to see is just ASKING for trolls to come into your inbox and flood you with triggering content. (Unfortunately, as much as we would like to believe otherwise, the internet is full of selfish jerks who don’t give a crap about anybody’s trauma.) Not only this, but the algorithm does not read your bio. The algorithm does not care about your triggers unless YOU make sure to block specific tags and content.

YOU are responsible for curating your own content, and nobody else.

Obviously this is not to say people shouldn’t try to tag their posts for common triggers, because that’s the common courtesy thing to do. But if Becky has a phobia of bees, it is on her to block that tag and curate her feed around it, and she does not get the exclusive right to suddenly demand that nobody talk about bees within a ten mile radius of her. If Alec has a phobia of dogs, then it is well within his right to avoid contact with them, but he doesn’t get to go to a public park and yell at anybody who brings their dog there. It is his responsibility to know his own limits and seek out parks that are dog-free. (If someone brings a dog to a dog-free area, that’s a whole different issue that I won’t be getting into rn but yes, the person who does that is in the wrong there.)

The internet is widely a public space. If you want to create a safe space completely and utterly free of your specific triggers, you have to put the work in to make that space for yourself. You don’t get to ask other internet strangers to do it for you.

I’m saying this out of genuine concern (and admittedly, frustration) because there are so many young teens in fandom nowadays who don’t understand this, and they end up putting themselves in extremely vulnerable and even downright dangerous situations because they don’t understand that putting your well-being in the hands of a stranger is a terrible idea.

Please be safe, and for the love of all that is holy, be reasonable. Curating your content yourself is just as much a protection for you as it is a vital key that allows public communities to function.

I'm not a furry and I am indifferently supportive of furries doing their thing or whatever but the funniest thing about so many of those chronically online little gen z sex puritans is the fact that if those furries didn't exist or disappeared, none of you little shits would ever get to use the internet again because our tech industry would crumble lmao

Remember when Baby Boomers and Gen X sparked that whole violent video game debate and everyone sane collectively rejected it?

Like we all agreed that the cause of violent and criminal behavior is usually not one thing, but many different factors, and that enjoying video games that have violence in them doesn't inherently lead to violent behavior... Right?

So

You guys also realize this applies to more than just video games... Right?

Please tell me you do.

Me: Hey I had this Thought™ can I post it?

My Brain: Not yet. I need time to prepare a response for every possible misinterpretation that I can imagine.

Internet culture has made certain very miserable crowds of people assume that anything that confuses or discomforts them is a personal attack directed at them, and that pain from the "attack" is a good enough reason for them to lash out with projected insecurities to make themselves feel better about their own miserable situations

”i don’t know enough about this to make an informed opinion” is a valid standpoint to have, And is INFINITELY more respectable than just pulling whatever out of your ass and dying on that hill

You can only know what you know, and that’s okay. The sooner you acknowledge that, it’ll be easier for *you* and everyone else around you

one of my least favourite things about internet discourse nowadays is the "i'm not reading all that" precedent. like if you write paragraphs arguing for or against something, suddenly your point is deemed magically "invalid" merely because of its length. like bro could write the most nuanced take on a topic ever to be written only to be shot down because he dared delve into the depths and complexities of the topic, consequentially making his explanation ✨long✨. like you're literally not even giving bro a chance to explain his viewpoint by doing that, you're just being a little cunt. oh i can call this thing shitty with no explanation and be totally valid in my veiwpoints but bro over here writes four paragraphs on why he likes a thing, he must be reaching fr lol desperate. fucking hate that shit like where's the nuance? it's literally just a scummy shutdown technique at best and advocating for illiteracy at worst.

My Tumblr crashed twice as I tried to reply to a TERF and I think it was the universe stepping in to tell me no.

It's okay not to argue sometimes. You won't change anyone's mind, you'll just get more angry.

this is just so unreal-

I'm seeing a lot of people here and on other platforms getting angry at people who have come from Tik Tok (and youtube to a lesser extent) who refuse to say words like death, racism and anything relating to heavy topics. Sometimes they won't even say the names of minorities either.

Any I get why this is frustrating and just not a good practice. The people criticising these folks are absolutely right, we need to get comfortable saying these words and discussing these topics. Not to mention the fact that self-censorship can cause issues for people who are legitimatly triggered by those topics (e.g. due to trauma), But as someone who spent a lot of time on Tik Tok and youtube before coming here, I think there's some vital context missing here.

I'd say a good 75% of the people on tik tok, and by extention, people who have moved elsewhere from Tik Tok, using words like "unalive," "r#pe," "sewerslide" or whatever else aren't using it because they're uncomfortable with the topic. In fact, it's quite the opposite. They want to talk about it, but Tik Tok's content moderation is so wildly strict that they can't. Even saying the words would get you flagged by the algorithm, ESPECIALLY if you had captions enabled or the actual word written in text from the in-app editor. This was especially true for people from minorities trying to talk about issues affecting their community or even just themselves (hence the hesitation to even say the minorities name sometimes).

This isn't just some conspiracy theory either. Tik Tok staff admitted to doing this intentionally on several occasions as a way to "keep the peace". I remeber when I first joined, it came out that they intentionally limited views on videos of visibly disabled people, both to prevent bullying but also because "some users find that content disturbung." I couldn't even show my stumps in videos without my videos getting stuck on 0 views at best or account warnings for "inappropriate content" at worst. I got DMs from several people after my video about disability pride month in July asking why their comments wishing me a happy disability pride month got removed, when I went into check the filtered comments, they'd all been hidden for "bullying". The same thing was happening with people commenting and saying the word "autism." And that's just the disabled community. I know similar stuff was happening in other communities too.

Most of the time, you had to speak in coded language to get your point out there. It's not that they're uncomfortable with it, it's because the videos would be dead in the water if they didn't. Getting the message out using these "toned down" replacements was better than not getting it out at all.

"OK, but this isnt tik tok, they shouldn't do that here" yeah, I agree, but for a lot of kids, Tik Tok was their first real experiance with social media, it makes sense that they're going to assume other platforms will be the same. YouTube is just as bad, if not worse, in some respects. Tumblr even has its fair share of censorship issues, too (e.g. queer people's posts being flagged as mature for seemingly no reason). It's not a stretch to make the assumption they'd need to continue the practice of self-censorship here, too.

This isn't to say that NO ONE is using the censored words to avoid hard topics/because it makes them uncomfy, but in my experiance, those people assume this is the best thing to do because everyone else was using it. They don't stop to ask why. They just repeat it, which in turn contributes to making them umcomfey with the real word.

I'm not saying don't pick people up on this stuff. We NEED those words, and we need to be more comfortable with them so stuff like the above situation doesn't happen and become a self-perpetuating cycle. But it started from a real, genuine need to censor ourselves to even get the message out, and I think it's important to keep that in mind. It's not just kids being "too sensitive."

★︎ — INTRO — ★

↯︎ — YO !! IM POGO / PUKER ;; THEY / IT PRNS

— HYPERFIX ON MSI + MARILYN MANSON

↯︎ — DISC ;; madonnawayne // AO3 ;; blowjoby // TT ;; euringerx

— DNI ;; ANYONE CAN INTERACT W/ ME (except not really) UNLESS UR A P3D0, RACIST, HOMOPHOBIC OR TRANSPHOBIC !!

↯︎ —INTERACT;; IF UR A MM OR MSI FAN, ENJOY ANY “PROBLEMATIC MEDIA”

— RB / LIKE FOR MOOTS :3 !!

Was on Twitter debating a guy mad at devs saying the IGN devs should all make games like bg3 and he somehow thinks devs don’t try to push back against micro transactions and the like. So does that happen and have you ever seen it work?

This whole situation reminds me of a hypothetical news headline "SCIENTISTS PROVE EATING CHOCOLATE CAN STOP CANCER" which is actually reporting on a published a research paper that talks about how some specific organic molecule that is found in trace amounts within chocolate show anti-carcinogenic results when consumed in higher quantities by lab mice, but that humans would need to consume something like 50 pounds of chocolate daily in order to achieve the necessary quantity of the organic molecule in question. The article misrepresented what the devs said and turned their words into the kind of imaginary strawman villain that gamers love to hate. Clickbait isn't worth talking about because it isn't a real discussion and you probably already know why.

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[Image ID: A tweet by cosetthetable from 7/31/22. It reads, “When a person gets doxed, particularly when they’re trans, it’s a good idea to be a bit curious as to how the information became public before participating, even when you dislike them, even when you think the information about the person is objectively bad.” End of description.]

My favorite response to internet discourse has got to be “fair enough.” Like, I acknowledge what you said and you are entitled to your preferences but I am not inclined to be influenced by them.

Bad Internet Opinions fall into three (3) distinct categories:

Annoying, but it’s not that deep: This could very well be an objectively wrong opinion, but it’s ultimately harmless and does not matter

Annoying, but it IS that deep: Relating to a minor or inconsequential issue, but concerning in that it reflects their wider worldview

Just Straight Up Bad: Thinly veiled or just plain racism/homophobia/transphobia/ misogyny/ableism/what have you

Examples:

Annoying, BINTD:

“I just don’t think [X CHARACTER] got enough development in season three.”

Could this be argued against with facts and logic? Yes. Could it even be proven wrong? Quite possibly. Does it really matter? No.

Annoying, BIITD:

“I don’t think Halle Bailey was the right person to play Ariel. She wasn’t originally black, and if it’s racist to make black characters white then they shouldn’t do it the other way around either.”

This refers to a relatively minor issue, but shows a fundamental misunderstanding of white privilege and communicates the view that white media is ‘pure’ and people of color should not be impeding on that.

Just Straight Up Bad:

“There’s not actually any proof that the holocaust happened.”

Do I even have to explain this one?

I find that categorizing Bad Internet Opinions this way helps me pick and choose my battles since being queer and autistic online can get hectic. I hope this helps someone else as well.

It's me, OP, once again asking you to respond to the things I actually said, instead of just getting mad at bunch of stuff you made up in your head