vastderp:

cloudydrake:

Having followed your blog for several months I really don’t see you as an innately angry person at all. Obviously you have your moments, and I’d say you do have a bitter streak (it shows up the best when you have one of your “I’m going to pick myself up by my bootstraps just so I can spit in my opponent’s eye” moments) but I really don’t see you as angry or even exceptionally aggressive. You don’t start shit, though you clearly have no problem with finishing it.

Of course as I’ve said before I find the way you handle people to be pretty inspirational, so I’m not a very objective source. I know that I’ve always had a real problem with being a doormat, and seeing the way you handle people who ARE trying to attack or gaslight you has encouraged me to stand up for myself more. It’s nice to know that there are people in the world who both refuse to put up with any bullshit AND are consistently kind and generous to others.

That said I guess cultivating a little more patience or being less quick to start calling names wouldn’t hurt? I don’t really know. The name-calling is so entertaining and so many of the people you use it on so blatantly deserve it. Perhaps a trial period is in order.

tumblr’s made me incredibly impatient. just the sheer volume of anyone, from buddies to assholes to the merely slightly weird, with the power to send me words on any topic at the click of a button, it’s overwhelming. and with that volume comes a proportionate increase of shitheads, and they all find me.

little luka was a terrible doormat. the reason i don’t back down now is because i said never again in a moment of sheer self-disgust. i made a decision to stop seething on unspoken slights that i say nothing about because I didn’t want to cause a fuss. i chose to start seeing myself as being as important and worth defending as everyone else, and there is something to be said for the philosophy of “Don’t start none, won’t be none.”

but tumblr makes it worse. People who don’t read before they reply infuriate me and they can still send me fan mail when i close my inbox. People who respond to things I didn’t say as if i had said them infuriate me and they can send me fan mail, reblog me, reply to me or tag shit with my name. People who play headgames and look doe-eyed when I identify their moves by name infuriate me because i’ve been scrapping with that shit since I was 13 and it gets old, it gets very fucking old.

a tumblr blog means easy access to anyone who feels like dropping their two cents. anyone. there’s no blocking the majority of the input from whoever wanders by, be it troll, warrior or just plain random person who wants to have a conversation about video games that is weird and boring. i’m sarcastic and SJ-skeptical. i don’t agree with a lot of tumblr values, i have unpopular fandom opinions about homestuck and i have like 3 current posts that have gone to 10k notes. dear god. that is so much exposure. no wonder the troll count has gone up.

i stare into this deluge and think about how there’s this idea that it’s somehow morally superior to indulge creeps, like being mean is the very worst thing. it’s the same mentality as “ignore the bully and he will lose interest”, with the same results in practice, as far as I’m concerned. this is a popular blog site; there will always be another shithead waiting to take his potshots.

bleah.

I see you’ve moved on with reblogging other things, so please ignore this if you’re just moving on from the argument!

I’ve been following you for a while, though, and after seeing a lot of these kinds of arguments, the way they evolve reminds me a lot of the whole difference between telling someone “You’re a racist” and “What you just said was racist.”

Someone can do and say a racist thing without intending to. It doesn’t mean they’re a bad person, but it also doesn’t mean they should go on doing that thing. What you’re doing is often comparative to that, in pointing out, very bluntly, when the things they are doing are manipulative.

The problem is, “what you are doing is racist” often turns into “you are a racist,” which becomes “you are a horrible person” to the person being spoken to. In the same way, “what you are doing is manipulative” becomes “you are manipulative” becomes “you are a horrible person,” and they get defensive.

The kind of passive-aggressive remarks you object to aren’t seen the same way by the people making them- they likely think that they are being polite, because as far as I’ve seen, that kind of language *is* what’s considered nice and polite in places like tumblr. Because you’re blunt about it, the person you’re talking to often assumes you’re skipping straight to the “horrible person” comment, and gets defensive. Maybe they are actually a manipulative person. Maybe they’ve just learned to be that way because that’s the norm around them. Either way, that kind of thing takes a lot of self-reflection to become aware of and to change, and one argument on the internet isn’t likely to start that, when they can point at your bluntness and say “he was just being a troll.”

(Source: introsquirrel)