Hey, let's talk about anons like this, because I know some people haven't been in a position to see the patterns these play out in on broader scale and may indeed not spot the trap.
And it is a trap.
An ask like this has several purposes.
First, it uses social justice language in passive aggressive and manipulative ways to try to coerce a behavior. In this case, the desired behavior is usually for the recipent to participate in community shunning and/or harrassment. The language above is intended to put the recipient on the defensive where, in the haste to disassociate themself from the Bad Thing, they quickly disassociate themself from the bad person, often with no particular fact checking or evidence.
The message is also intended to create a sense of being surveilled and judged by an unknown amount of people with unknown amount of social power and an unknown amount of relevance to your life.
Notice that these asks are usually framed as if they are coming from a follower or potential follower, someone who is addressing you personally and who cares about your opinion and who your blog has an effect on. However this is usually.... very much not the case. If you've ever had the misfortune to watch a gossip campaign from like this from the outside, you will very quickly notice that messages like this get sent in mass batches to dozens and dozens of strangers. (You can often turn these up with a tumblr search, if you look.)
The sender does not know you and probably does not follow you. They have a person they don't like (possibly for their stated reason and possibly not), and they are going through the reblogs of a post from that blog and mass messaging *everyone* with a form letter. They will not see your response and they will probably never even see your blog again.
Which brings us to the second goal of whisper campaigns like this:
Notice that I blacked out the names above? That's because when the recipient answers anonymous asks like this, they provide a platform for the opinion on their blog. An anonymous message like this that gets posted doesn't just spread gossip and apply pressure to the recipient, it is spread to the recipient's entire community.
The *goal* is to get access to your community. The *goal* is to use you as a soapbox.
Is the information accurate? Did anyone check? Does the anon have an ulterior social motive? BIG SHRUG
If you go into the comments on one of these whisper campaigns you will see that *most people never bother to check.*
They assume good faith from a follower, they're off balance defending themselves, and they jump straight to conciliation.
It's a really, really effective form of social manipulation, and really really commonly misused.
#using-to-process #hi-jacob #apocalypse #survivor
Puki how do you feel about @therealjacksepticeye being named the King of Tumblr by the official Tumblr account? Do you feel your throne is threatened?
I WAS FUCKING SNUBBED! HE’S BARELY A TUMBLR USER. HE IS A YOUTUBER! He came crawling back from twitter when that site turned into a Nazi Germany. I don't blame him for that, but this has long-since been my home, I am a man of the people. He doesn’t NEED these HAND-ME-DOWN TITLES!!! The Academy is filled to the brim with limp-dicked WORMS.
Not to sound like a fuckin hippie but please for the love of god start noticing and appreciating the natural world around you. You don’t have to go hike the entire Appalachian trail or anything and I get that not everyone has access to the outdoors for various reasons, but just fucking … look around you when you’re outside. Notice the sky and the sun and the birds and creatures. Start caring about them. I’m begging you.
The thief that only borrows in a sea with out the shark, But who protects the shadow from the dark?
my friend just released an album! you should totally check it out
https://daytona.bandcamp.com/album/planets-and-donuts
spirk using telepathy to keep each other alive. kirk, desperate, psy-null and untrained, reaching clumsily into spock's dying mind and pulling, dragging spock's essence into himself, wrenching him forceably from the very jaws of death and holding him there through sheer strength of will, saying you can't die, i won't let you, you can't leave me, i need you, and binding him to life and to himself until it's impossible to fully separate them. spock, more skilled, carefully managing each one of kirk's vital signs - keeping his heart beating steady, his lungs drawing breath, his temperature within a safe range, all while suppressing kirk's pain, and at the same trying, vainly, to keep their minds from tying themselves inexorably together, but they're pressed too close and he can't, and he hopes that kirk will forgive him, for bonding them like this (he will, of course he will), but the alternative, letting kirk die, was - unthinkable.
More alien thoughts:
So you know how fireflies glow in order to attract mates? What if there was an alien species that did that. They may be insectoid, they may not be, but in any case, they just flirtatiously light up at people they’re interested in. Or maybe they also just use it as a sign that they want to form friendly relations. So when they first meet other species they blink their lights at them to show them they’re friendly.
I was reading someone’s post about how a lot people dislike bugs but like fireflies because they glow. So maybe most humans warm up to them pretty quickly because the lights immediately make them seem more cute and appealing. Later, humans need to differentiate a friendly blink from a flirtatious one.
Meanwhile, a mimicking species also glows, however they use their glow to draw in prey (like a lantern fish does). Knowing that their sister species is peace loving and trusted by the other species, they use their similar luminescent abilities to their advantage. Space soon needs to learn to pick out little differences between the two species so they know what they’re getting into when they’re glowed at—do they think you’re cute or do they think you’re dinner?
Aaand because I love unlikely relationship dynamics, maybe in very rare occasions, the aggressive species actually does come to like a human/other species, but people have a hard time trusting them because of the general behavior of their planet.
I’m imagining a human with an aggressive glowing partner, and they’re introducing them to friends like, “Look, my partner is so cute! They glow at me! It was so cute how blinky they were when we first met!”
And then everyone is like “O.O That’s one of the homicidal ones…”