Driffiting Through the Interwebs

cielrouge:

Sources:

Found this nifty historical sterling pound converter here: http://uwacadweb.uwyo.edu/numimage/currency.htm

http://suite101.com/article/the-victorian-dawn-of-fandom-through-sherlock-holmes-fanfiction-a388795

Also, I just really wanted to use the following: 

Wow….

abuttmaleprivilege:

Oh sorry, are we only allowed to express the opinions that make you feel good?

This is something I agree with so much.

evelynvincible:

Point of interest:

I don’t understand this thing about raging on people for “Tagging hate.” I mean, if I’m writing a post about something, whether it’s something I love or something I hate, the post is still about that thing.
For example: If I’m writing about Moffat [the God] or Moffat [the misogynist], it’s STILL a post about Moffat. If I’m looking through the Moffat tag, the tag is about MOFFAT, good and bad.
If I’m in the “Moffat is a God” tag, that’s something different.

If I’m going through a tag about a fictional character, I don’t expect every post to be fanart and fanfiction and praise. To me, that seems kind of pointless. I want to know what people THINK about those characters (besides who they should be fucking). Sometimes, people have actual opinions WHICH I MAY DISAGREE WITH, but I want to know what those opinions are BASED on.

Fanfiction and fanart are nice, but it’s not like I’m tagging my critical posts as “Theon Greyjoy Fanfiction.” It’s just tagged as freaking Theon Greyjoy, BECAUSE THE POST IS ABOUT THEON GREYJOY. WHY IS THIS ROCKET SCIENCE TUMBLR?

hatey-mchaterson:

onedirection—is-my-infection:

So apparently 9 Larry shippers lives were lost last night due to hate mail. I am very amazed by this. I cant believe that our fandom has caused people to think so little of themselves that they would want to take their lives. It doesn’t matter if you are a Larry Shipper or not, you don’t send Hate. You don’t send the boys Hate. You don’t argue, believe what you want to believe but don’t let it affect the lives of others. Please guys this was not right.. R.I.P to those who took their lives <3

Please don’t compare someone deleting their blog because they got hate mail for shipping two members of One Direction to someone actually killing themselves over it. Deleting a Tumblr isn’t nearly as serious as taking one’s own life, and honestly from the sound of it those people needed to go outside for a while anyway.

What is it about One Direction that makes people act so CRAZY? It’s just a boy band, wth?

^That’s what I’m wondering because I’m tired about hearing and seeing One Direction real person fiction crap on fanfiction.net.

anivad42:

Except that I do I know why - I study this stuff, computer mediated communication and group polarisation and the freedoms of anonymity and the ease of miscommunication and all the factors that can make these worse;
and Tumblr, in the way it’s structured and the demographics who use it, is the perfect medium for fostering the kind of out of control hate that builds on itself and gets worse and worse, people getting angrier and angrier over what started out as relatively minimal, trivial issues.

and I get caught in it too, every now and then, but I’m trying consciously to pull away. And I’m trying to remember:

1) everybody is human and everybody slips up sometimes. Every single person on this planet who is a conscious moral agent has at some point done or said something that really hurt someone else, intentionally or not, or that is thoroughly disgusting and offensive in some way. If you’re most people, it’s eventually forgotten and forgiven and no one holds an eternal grudge against you for it. But if you’re famous, either as a celebrity or as someone who has a lot of Tumblr followers, that one bad thing is going to get quoted and reblogged with vicious commentary as people analyze it to death and make various conclusions on how you’re a terrible human being who doesn’t deserve to live. Imagine if that was you. Or a friend. Or a loved one. Be merciful.

2) people are individuals, not groups. It’s easy to group people together, especially online, when the only things you know about a person is one tiny aspect of their identity and you extrapolate from there. There’s this thing called the Social Deindividuation Theory which explains our tendency to abandon individual identities in favour of group identities, especially online, and treat others on an in-group vs out-group basis, automatically ascribing positive traits to in-group members and negative traits to out-group ones.

But people can’t be simplified that way. Your worst enemy has some good in them too. As does that person you’re bashing on Tumblr, or that politician, or that famous actor, or that specific group of people you’re antagonistic towards for whatever reason, justified and not. For any perceived or real enemy, think of them as a person. They too have feelings, problems, likes and dislikes, hopes and dreams, people who care about them, people they care about. They too believe that they’re doing the right thing. Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

3) Everyone likes problematic things. Everyone. Films, TV shows, books, celebrities… None are perfect, because we don’t live in that world. If you’ve ever enjoyed a piece of mass media, you like something that’s problematic. All of us are problematic in some way. Let them who is without sin cast the first stone. I’ve defended my fandoms countless times in the past, not because I condone their problematic aspects, but because they’re so much more than that to me, and I get upset at seeing them piled upon with hate the same way I’d be upset if I saw it happening to an also-flawed friend. Things don’t need to be perfect to be loved. If that were the case, there’d be no love.

4) and learn to let go. Sometimes it’s more important to be sensitive than politically correct, even where criticism is valid. Sometimes the latter causes more harm. Telling someone in evident distress that they used problematic wording is the wrong time. Telling a survivor that things they said contribute to rape culture is cruel. Derailing well-intentioned discussions into much-longer critiques of ableism because someone called a bigot ‘retarded’ takes time and energy away from addressing that bigger problem. I’ve seen all that happen.

Can we make Internet social justice into being more about helping and comforting the oppressed rather than fighting the oppressors? About doing good rather than winning arguments? About defusing hate rather than creating more hate?

And can we just be excellent to each other? Just a little more than usual? please?

fandomfic:

The whole idea of “tagging hate” being against “Tumblr etiquette” (which is not actually a real thing, by the way) has really made me curious about this topic.

The tags are regularly treated as places only for fans of something to convene; only fans of Glee would track the Glee tag, only fans of a particular ship would track that ship, etc. And that’s true; that’s a valid observation. I’m not going to argue that the tags are populated mostly by fans of media posting and communicating about that media. However, this has been around way before “be a mate don’t tag your hate.”

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This person has put this so eloquently. I feel it is at a point where you need to be always clear that you have opinion about something.