A little backstory...

[tencrush]

I'm not "friends" with rivier, by which I mean she's not on my flist, nor am I on hers. In fact, she once described me as follows: "I'll freely admit that I've frequently wanted to bludgeon her with a ton of silage for many of the things she's said." Cool. I happen to agree with many of her opinions about Torchwood and who_anon, and at the same time, I probably disagree with her on many other things. But I know who she is and I know where to find her and should I have any problem with what she says about me, I could, if I so desired, contact her. Because I am an adult and I talk to people like they're adults, too.

I think karaokegal has some hilariously batshit opinions, and she knows I think that. She knows I have an irrational love for Ianto Jones, and she probably thinks that makes me deranged. And yet we do, on occasion, talk to each other. Like big people. Weird, huh?

The reason I brought those two people up in a previous post, is because they, like me, have been targeted by who_anon on many occasions. Now a conversation about somebody on who_anon usually follows the same sort of lines. Witness, for example, a conversation about me posting the BBC complaint response from "Julie Gardener" a few days ago.

Julie Gardner responds to tencrush's complaint to the Beeb.

Lol, I love Julie even more now she gave tencrush's boo hoo
complaint all the attention it deserves.

Now, now, anon. Julie Gardner needs to personally grovel
at tencrush's feet, because she wrote . . . I mean she acted
. . . I mean she's in charge of . . . no wait what did she do again? :P
I sympathize with putting complaints on record, but how could
they expect a personal response?

Now that sort of conversation is pretty standard meme fare. Someone takes what I said out of context, and somehow concludes that I was angling for a "personal response" from Julie Gardner herself to my complaint. I wasn't, I merely mentioned Julie Gardener's name because it amused me to no end that the BBC complaint response claimed in a roundabout way that they had shown my complaint to Julie Gardner herself and she had responded, personally, to my specific complaint. Which, obviously, she hadn't, nor would I expect her to (and certainly not within 16 hours of me filling in a webform, dudes). I thought that bit of it was funny, and I quoted two lines from the response because I thought they were funny and contradicted each other and so I wanted to share them. I didn't mention my kids or what it was, specifically, that I complained about because it's nobody's business but my own. I shared a bit I thought was funny with you. More or less end of story. Nowhere did I say that I wanted the production team of Doctor Who to actually read or even care about my complaint, my children or anything I have to say about anything. I don't. Russell's Who just finally managed to get on my very last nerve so I felt like complaining. As is my right.

Anyway, that's how the conversation went on who_anon. Then a comment was left about whether or not I was a responsible parent. More about that later. But, as you can see, the conversation started off by someone misinterpreting my sense of humour, and what it was I posted, and just went on from there with people commenting on that misinterpretation ad infinitum. Now I could have stepped in at that point and defended myself and the gist of what I wrote, but that would have involved me going unanon on the meme, and that's frowned upon as attention whoring trolling. Trust me, because I've done it. So the best thing to do in this sort of situation is just to leave it and wait for it to go away. Which is usually what I choose to do.

On this occasion, however, like I mentioned, my status as a responsible parent was commented upon and that's a touchy subject between me and the meme, and that made me flip out just a little bit. See, the thing about the meme is that personal insults about fans' personal lives are not allowed. So shit like this just gets deleted by the mods (Yeah, there's a more of this, less amusing and more personal shit on my hard drive, but this isn't a woe-is-me-and-the-mean-meme story, so I'll leave it there, I'm just illustrating a point I happen to have capped because I was awake):



In a way, I think it's a great shame that stuff like this, and like, say, comments where people threaten suicide over things that were said about them, gets screened or deleted and disappears from view. Because it makes it very easy for meme-apologists to claim that they're there for the picspams and the love and to pretend that the meme isn't what it is, which is a place to spew anonymous bile. No more, no less.

Now, I've been defriended in recent days by some people over the whole anonmeme thing, and frankly I'm upset about that, sure I am, because there really isn't anyone in this fandom that I dislike, in fact, most people I like quite a lot, whatever their opinions. But at the end of the day, as I said in the comments to my previous post on the subject, I do disapprove of the place, and I do think that if you participate there, you're condoning this sort of behaviour which can only be described as "cuntish" (Yep, that's probably a sexist word, yeah? But it's the most accurate word in my vocabulary, connotation-wise. No other word really covers it, sorry, so why don't you step past that for a moment, anons, and address the actual subject instead of whatever tidbit you can pick out to be morally indignant about, yeah?) And yes, I know not everyone there is like that, and I appreciate what it is that people like about being anon, I really do. But you're still condoning it. And you're lying when you say it's all hearts and flowers, so maybe you should stop doing that, really.

I say wanky shit all the time, I know I do, but I say it right here and anyone who has a problem with it knows where to find me. I said something unneccessarily mean about a fic a few weeks back and the author contacted me and called me on it. As is her right. I apologised because I was out of order. I don't claim to be nice to everyone all the time, but I don't hide from what I say, even when I say something stupid that I probably shouldn't have said because I'm in a bad mood. Some of the things anons say on the meme, they stem from pure cowardice and malice. It's hiding behind anonymity to spout hatred and insults and anyone who posts there and pretends that that doesn't happen and really it's a happy, fun place is fucking deluding themselves.

I hope the place dies a death. (It seems to be dying a European death already, have you noticed? There's only about 20-30 comments posted there while I'm awake and online. Maybe my American friends who are so active there in my nighttime will soon go the same way.) If it does, I hope I contributed in some small part to the death of the meme. It can't come soon enough. I'll never "unpretty" the place again, trust me, but for reals, guys, it can't really get any uglier anyway.

And no, obviously, this isn't friendslocked, like I said, I'd like to contribute in some small way to the place dying. Of course I read it, I claimed once (maybe twice? okay maybe three times) that I was going to stop reading it, and I did, for a time, but then gossip happens and I go right back. I'd love for there to be a pure whovian gossip comm. And by that I mean I wish ohnowhodidnt had actual gossip. Why can't we do that, people? We should get on that. Not me, though. Somebody else.