I'm not crying. I'm not crying. I'm not crying.

[betweensunandmoon]

Which, of course, means, "I am crying, but I don't want anyone to know, because tears are something you Do Not Do in my house."

Rest in peace, Olivia, you amazing woman.

Comments

[igenlode]

Nothing to cry about at 104, I think. One couldn't very well ask for more...

[betweensunandmoon]

True, true. She had it pretty good, all things considered.

The section of Tumblr I inhabit tore itself apart a few days ago, and it was one of those issues where remaining neutral is not an option. I and pretty much everyone I'd befriended there were attacked, and one or two were even driven off the platform. It's still going on.

On top of all that, I was feeling very doubtful and discouraged about a project I'd had a lot of enthusiasm and passion for, to the point where I considered forgetting about the whole thing because I obviously wasn't qualified to handle it. I decided to continue working on it, but it was a very distressing experience.

Hearing my favorite actress had died just felt like being kicked while I was down.

[igenlode]

Tumblr again :-(

It really is like the nastiest sort of girls' school...

[betweensunandmoon]

Speaking from experience there? :P

I try my best to avoid discourse, drama, and general nonsense, but it doesn't always work.

[igenlode]

Speaking from literary experience and second-hand report from friends who've been targetted by coteries who make the Heathers look benign (but don't even realise that they're not the heroines of the hour in so doing, which is the pernicious part).

I thought you were one of them, but maybe that was yet another online teenage acquaintance who found herself as the inadvertent target for speaking up in support of someone the queen bees wanted silenced and shunned...

[betweensunandmoon]

No, we've never interacted on Tumblr as far as I know.

The situation in question was someone trying to gatekeep online games aimed at children and playing the victim when called out on it.

[igenlode]

No, we've never interacted on Tumblr as far as I know.

I know we haven't -- I don't have a Tumblr account ;-)
But I've had various people tell me about their Tumblr pile-ups over the years, and it always tends to be the same demographic...

The situation in question was someone trying to gatekeep online games aimed at children and playing the victim when called out on it.

When you 'call out' someone you are spontaneously attacking someone who doesn't even know you -- you create a victim :-(
Remaining neutral is very much an option -- seriously, just how important are the gaming habits of other people's children? How many of the people in question even had children?

[betweensunandmoon]

It wasn't spontaneous. The person in question was saying that heterosexual, cisgender, and neurotypical people shouldn't be allowed to participate in certain fandoms. Everyone who disagreed (most of whom were LGBT+ people with mental disorders, funnily enough) merely pointed out that hating entire groups of people for reasons outside of their control and saying they don't deserve to enjoy certain things aren't very nice things to do, no matter who's doing them.

[igenlode]

And yet this 'merely pointing out' caused the community to 'tear itself apart' and drive people out :-(

Seriously, when somebody says (or is interpreted by third parties as saying) something as impotent as "I don't want anyone who doesn't share my peculiarities in my gang!", the correct response is not a witch-hunt to stamp out the deadly poison of badthink. This does not improve matters — as demonstrated.

[betweensunandmoon]

There was a witch hunt, all right, but neither we nor the original poster started it. It was a third party who'd bullied and harassed other fans on different platforms in the past, I believe.

The person who deleted their blog was a mutual of mine who got a lot of hateful messages accusing them of promoting genocide and the like after they said that no one should be excluded from a fandom, basically.