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.

Comments

[rivier.livejournal.com]

Indeed it would. You're quoting from two threads, not one, for a start. The first thread - your first four comments - has nine comments in response to the OP and each other, all variously jeering at Tencrush and explicitly critiquing her parenting decisions, including information about her children that I certainly didn't know. One of the responses you cite asks "can we not talk about her kid" - there's no response to that, modly or otherwise. Nor is it a suggestion that the criticism of Tencrush is in any way per se invalid, nor are any of the other comments you've quoted from that particular thread.

The other four comments you found came from the longer thread, a few posts below. The responses get pretty garbled in a mishmash of jeering at Tencrush and me, jointly and severally, but my rough count gives at least 35 attacking Tencrush, 20 or so raging against me, and upwards of 30 or so attacking the commenters criticising the meme, including the ones you quoted.

If that seems to indicate a tolerable balance to you, or you find that indicative of a meme where 'many' are challenging the hate and those challenges are being fairly debated, rather than deleted or dogpiled, then I can see that you would feel the meme is a good place in which to participate, and support for / participation in it doesn't reflect poorly on those who do. I don't see it that way myself, no.

[shaggydogstail.livejournal.com]

You seem to be having difficulty in distinguishing between malicious comments, which are often (though not always) challenged, and any negative comments. Not every negative comment or criticism is hateful - calling you out for referring to meme-users as "a shoal of cunts", for instance, is perfectly sensible behaviour.

[rivier.livejournal.com]

I have no such difficulty. I do suspect the dividing line between one person's negative but clearly not malicious comments, and another person's malice, is a subjective one that's going to vary, depending on whether you're the subject of that negativism / malice. I doubnt we're likely to reach common ground on that, since it is a subjective interpretation, and I was the target in question for a great deal of it.

On a more objective point, then, maybe you could explain to me why you're willing to assert that it's 'perfectly sensible behaviour' for the meme to eviscerate me for using 'cunt' as an insult, but for anons on the meme to refer to myself and Tencrush, repeatedly, as 'attention whores', with none of the anons using this term being censured for using a derogatory female slang word as an insult, by you, any other anon, or the moderators?

[shaggydogstail.livejournal.com]

I think you do, because your own behaviour is at least as bad as the things you don't like seeing on the meme. I do, however, take your point about the difficulty in remaining objective about criticism aimed at oneself.

You refer to anons criticising you as "eviscerating", though I really can't say that the comments about you are any more hostile than the ones you made yourself on your journal. To put it bluntly, your attitude suggests that you can dish it out but you can't take it.

I suspect the reason "attention whores" gets less flak than "cunts" is that "attention whore" is widely used enough in fandom to have lost its sting for many people, whereas many women find the the use of a word for female genitalia as OMG WORST INSULT EVA! offensive. The offense is compounded by the way you continue to refer to meme users as "cunts", knowing full well that many of them find this offensive and misogynistic. Maybe you have good reasons for disagreeing about how offensive a word it is, maybe you don't, but to deliberately and provokatively refer to any group of people using a word you know they find offensive and then complain when they're offended by it is ridiculous.

[rivier.livejournal.com]

You're free to assert that you know my own mind better than I do, in determining what concepts I do and don't have difficulty in grasping, though on the balance of probabilities I think it's unlikely that you actually do.

It's interesting that you've moved so quickly to replicate two of the meme's commonest weaknesses: steering a discussion from the impersonal (the question of whether it's 'unreasonable' to state that everyone who participates in the meme implicitly condones it) to the personal (whether it's 'reasonable' for the meme to lambast me for calling it a shoal of cunts'). And mis-interpretation, because at no point have I complained about the meme being offended by being described as 'cunts'. Indeed, I've said here and in my own blog that I welcome their offended comments, since they are tangible proof of the meme's hypocrisy. Nor did I suggest anywhere that the meme's 'eviscerating' of me was somehow worse than anything I've said about it in my own journal: why would you suggest that I did? To put it bluntly, your response here suggests that, like the meme, you're uncomfortable dealing with abstract concepts and verifiable substance, and happier when rebutting a debate point by falling back on a personal attack based on mis-representation of the facts.

Handwave or 'suspect' subjectively all you like, but the meme operates a double standard when it openly labels me a sexist and a misogynist because I use a female-derived slang term as an insult, but at the same time ignores and condones the widespread use of '[x term]-whore' as an insult (attention whore, grammar whore', etc). The meme rules state 'don't be sexist', but 'whore' is a sexist term that the meme collective 'you' are happy to use. Presumably, until someone criticising the meme uses it, at which point the 'sexist' slur will be deployed again, and the collective 'you' will once again choose to ignore the double standard.

As you've chosen to make this personal, let's be very clear about the personal element. I didn't launch some attack on the meme out of the blue. Some weeks ago, I queried a mod call there and, as a result of that discussion, was banned for harrassing the mods. The meme then, repeatedly, cited me by name in anon threads and branded me a troll and a racist (or at best, someone who absolutely equated negative comments about a TV show with racism). As I'm unable to respond there, I flagged the defamation in my own journal and responded with defamation of my own. Now, I understand that, while the meme loves its self-appointed role as the fandom police, scouring random journals in search of content to mock and deride, it is collectively far less happy when it is subjected to the same scrutiny and open mockery. But, to use your own terms, if the meme is going to dish it out to me, then I'll dish it back, every time. You apparently find this ridiculous of me, and that's your entitlement, just as I find it at the very least 'ridiculous', as well as offensive and hypocritical, for anyone to claim that the meme is, on the whole, a reasonable place whose members should not ever be collectively blamed when some of them behave offensively.

You are, however, the only person I've so far seen who's been willing to argue on behalf of the meme's collective reasonableness in a public post with your own lj-name attached. Responses in my own blog have been unilaterally hostile to the meme. Would you mind if - subject to tencrush also concurring - I posted a link on my lj to your thread here? I think it would be interesting for people on my flist to see that my own very vehement dislike of the meme isn't a universal viewpoint.

[shaggydogstail.livejournal.com]

I could respond you your points individually, but at this point I feel it would be a futile exercise. I'm bowing out now.

Thank you for the courtesy of asking my permission to link to this thread, which is appreciated. I would really rather prefer not - I don't want to have to deal with the flood of comments telling me how wrong I am this would likely produce, whether you want it to or not.

[tencrush]

Thank you both for being civil to each other in my journal, it's much appreciated.

For the record, the 'can we not talk about her kid' comment was a reply to a comment Rivier mentioned in which somebody was righteously capslocking about my parental negligence and giving info about one of my kids. I didn't see it last night, but when I woke up this morning that comment was STILL THERE. Nobody had reported it for 10 hours, so I had to. It's kind of easy to conclude that asshole behaviour is condoned.

[shaggydogstail.livejournal.com]

Heh, I do try my best to disguise the fact I really was raised by wolves.

I don't remember seeing that comment last night (although I was only skimming, so I can't guarantee it wasn't there) and it seems to be gone now. Quite a few comments seem to have been deleted now, which shows they aren't condoned, even if they're not removed as quickly as you'd like.