FNM Fandom Drama 6

• That putting “!!!!!” on a post by a kid who’s gotten a response from someone on IG is the same as “In fact, it was YOU who encouraged this girl to travel from New Jersey to New York, by HERSELF, to take bass lessons from a man she doesn’t even know”. Sure. *I’m* the sanctimonious one here. Again, if you don’t like being called a liar don’t fucking lie.
• That you’re fine with keeping people you feel were threatened private until you want to prove a point. I thought the entire purpose of calling her Kiddo was to keep her out of this mess, why did you link to her to show off my exclamation points? Should we just start using her name now? (See also why I didn’t link your post @leperwitch )
• That a band member responding to a social media post is a serious about the things they say to their fans. Do you think she got a high five from Corey Taylor too? I think that one came up. Here’s a fun question to ask yourself if you’re into observation and empiricism: how do I know what I know? What I *know* is that a kid who was @ing a bunch of people she admired said that one had responded that he’d love to give her lessons. Did *you* see anything more disconcerting or any followups? Did you see his message to her? Since you’ve already outed this particular person maybe you can share some insight on that beyond what an excitable child who had been messaging a bunch of people she was fans of posted. If you can share that kind of information then *I* will know more and we can make some forward progress on this.
• That there’s child porn in Macumba. Legit had no idea. 100%, that is something I learned that I was not aware of because I hadn’t watched it because I figured it would be too upsetting. That is good to know for the future for completely shutting down any sharing of it and reporting any sharing of it. Actually thank you for that because I was not aware. I knew there was a suicide, I knew there was a scene of a person’s labia being nailed to a table; that’s all I knew because that’s what upset the other person and what I was talking to them about.
• That you *do* believe my standard of evidence is lower than yours *and* you believe the same thing about the rest of the fandom. Can you tell us how many people you know of that he’s attacked? Can you tell us the states in which people have made statements to the police against him so we know where he’s active? Those pieces of specific information would lend a lot more credence to your story, wouldn’t out any victims, and would do a better job of acting as a warning. But age, state, gender, and method of contact for each attack you know about would be a better survey of who could be protected while still not outing victims or detailing their trauma. And if you’d say what jurisdiction charges have been filed in they *could* be public record; I’d pony up five bucks for a name search and the first couple pages of a record if it meant there was proof of what you’re saying so that we could prove to other skeptical people that there’s a credible threat. Jesus fuck, I don’t want a rundown of each attack step by step, that’s depraved, but so far you’ve posted more proof that he’s a bad landlord than you have that he’s actually attacked anyone or perused minors on social media. If you believe this thing is true I want to know why you believe this thing is true but I don’t want to do it in hidden ask boxes where no one can see what’s going on because that’s how rumors and shit-flinging get started.
• That talking about your big, comprehensive post that *everyone* knows about is “cherry-picking.” (It has under 10 reblogs, please tell me that the stat counter you live and die by has it with at least a few hundred views because otherwise your claim of “everyone” is making me doubt your other claims even more). You said it yourself, it’s the most well-traveled post, it’s the one with the most details. It’s obviously the best choice to assess. I’d imagine that a future PI would care more about the fact that their statements could be easily picked apart than the fact that someone was picking it apart.
• That you interpret my social justice blogging as smugness and a holier-than-thou attitude. I’m sure there are plenty of people who see it that way, but I know there are plenty of people in the fandom who don’t and you’re right, that’s not how I want to come off because as it turns out I’m 100% sincere about it.

I was talking to an MRA type about radical vulnerability the other day and I’d much rather do that here than have a bitchfest. So here’s me being vulnerable: when you didn’t follow me last year and I was trying to be nice to you and welcome you it did hurt my feelings at the time. As more time passed and I saw more of your posts I was no longer concerned that you hadn’t followed back but I was worried about you, you seemed unhappy with yourself and your situation and you expressed that by punching down at people less intelligent than yourself. Eventually I became so frustrated by seeing this ongoing flood of criticism and negativity that I lashed out at the tokenizing post you made about Terri Genderbender and unfollowed you, when you responded by doubling down in a way that suggested she was also too stupid to know better, just like you used to talk about your coworkers, I washed my hands of it and tried to ignore your posts as much as possible when they came across my feed.
But I’d still occasionally see that something had hurt you and I’d worry about you, or I’d see that you had made changes that made a positive impact on your life (you seemed happy with a new diet, your surgery was tough but has made you feel better, you’re going to school for something you care about) and it made me smile.
Your photo in the snow is beautiful, it looks like you’re having so much fun and I’m so glad you have moments like that. But I have trouble processing this empathy for you and something that, from the outside, looks like obsessive negativity. Your own birthday post about Patton is the one I probably should have responded to because it was a combination of those same two things - appreciation of something while including dramatically divorcing language to distance yourself but due to my own volatile feelings about you I went off on someone else’s post as a proxy that still had things I could criticize. So I’m sorry for jumping on another post when I should have been directly addressing you.
These last few paragraphs were written after the bullet points, obviously, and I’m aware that there’s some tonal dissonance here. I still think my criticisms in the first few paragraphs are valid but do not have the energy to rewrite them in a way that is nicer and I don’t think you’d care much if I did anyway (but seriously, I’d recommend unlinking kiddo’s post, make a screenshot of it if you still want to show my response). I don’t know that you and I are ever going to get along but I do know that I am probably done with *this*. If you’d like to work with me to get me to believe what you believe, respond here or message me or send anons, I don’t care at this point. If you think you’ve said and done enough and are secure with the steps that you’ve taken to prove your point, fine, so be it.
Anyone reading this probably knows me, I’ve reblogged from my main before, I’m @ms-demeanor and my own last name pops up there a lot but I’d really like to stress @leperwitch‘s point that if someone has *not* shared their name on tumblr it is not cool to do so. AND I’d like to point out that I’ve heard from at least five people in the fandom now (including leperwitch) that they’re getting creepy anons with conspiracy theories in their inboxes; if anyone knows who this is or has been getting creepy anons the post I make immediately after this one is going to be about that, if you’re interested in finding out who else has been getting this shit please reblog it with your story. If you don’t want to share but just want it to stop using the block button on the anon will block that IP address so the anons will stop and the blogger making the asks will be blocked from your feed unless they go somewhere else to make their posts.