I Can't Stress Enough How Much The John Green Debacle Was An Early Example Of How Cancel Culture And

I can't stress enough how much the John Green debacle was an early example of how cancel culture and purity culture combine to make people feel righteously justified to engage in harassment.

John Green, during his time on tumblr, committed the heinous sins of...being neurodivergent and talking openly about it, earnestly interacting with fans in a very direct and unfiltered way, and writing about teenagers navigating first love and sexuality while he himself was an adult. The worst things he ever did were be a little cringe or misspeak, for which he was always prompt to apologize (often whether he really needed to or not).

Yet despite the former two being things tumblr claimed to love and the last one being true of 99.99% of YA authors, in this case a large segment of tumblr users steeped in the early 2010s resurgence of purity culture decided that these things were suspicious and predatory, and used that as an excuse to justify some truly awful behavior.

Which is really all that cancel culture is: the normalization and even celebration of the process of misapplying morality or ethics to dehumanize someone for the express purpose of justifying whatever pain and suffering you want to inflict upon them. Basically, deciding "this person is bad, so I am exempt from affording them basic respect and human dignity, and am allowed to cross any and all otherwise uncrossable lines in order to punish them without damaging my own moral or ethical standing."

Contrary to popular tumblr lore, the infamous "cock monologue" was not the sum total of the harassment, or even the worst of it. Callout blogs issued long lists of "receipts" about how terrible John Green was, most if not all of which were either taken out of context or completely refutable. His works were torn to shreds by people who'd never read them, as evidenced by much of the criticism being obviously and blatantly counter to the actual contents of the books.

Not that it mattered. Once the John Green hate party reached a certain level of critical mass, it became less about who he actually was or what he'd done, and more about proving you were a good person by hating him. That's the natural conclusion of cancel culture, after all: virtue signalling by identifying yourself in opposition to the cancelled parties. They're bad, and I'm good, so I hate them! Or, more often: They're bad, and I hate them, so I'm good!

Before it was over with, John Green had been accused, with no evidence, of being everything from a Nazi to a pedophile and subjected to hate mail and death threats. He eventually left the site for the sake of his own mental health, and because he no longer felt comfortable engaging directly with fans in the same way he once had.

Yet even now, with the benefit of hindsight, and even among those who ostensibly reject purity culture and condem bullying and harassment, very few on tumblr take what was done to John Green as seriously as it should be taken or condemn it as thoroughly as it should be condemned. Which I think is something we need to at least consider doing, given the increasing rise of purity and cancel culture online, and given the recent influx of professional creators eager to interact with fans on a more direct level than they have on other social media.

And my concern is not purely, or even primarily, for the Mike Flanagans and Lynda Carters of the world. I'm far more concerned, actually, for the small, independent or self-published creators in this space, and how much even a very small level of visibility gives too many people a feeling of carte blanche to engage in harassment.

I myself have less than 3k followers on here, a handful of popular posts, and zero notoriety or consequence outside of tumblr whatsoever, and I've been repeatedly told to kill myself for saying such innocuous things as "I don't think censorship is the cure for the world's evils" and "maybe learning the history of communities you want to participate in would be a good idea."

Thankfully, all it took for me to stop the harassment that came my way was to block those few individuals. But there have been many instances over the years of small creators or just random tumblr users that got a bit popular being stalked, doxxed, swatted, and harassed to the point of leaving the site and dealing with serious mental health issues as a result. It has never been just John Green. John Green isn't even the worst example. And tumblr has never learned its lesson.

More Posts from Gendhb and Others

gendhb

2 years ago

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gendhb

1 year ago

Hello! I hope you have a nice Whitsuntide and celebrated in the memory of our may-bringer Arthur. I wanted to ask, if you had any recommendations (or websites) on Old/Middle English literature for someone, who's already gotten themselves into the German mess of medieval literature? I am mainly looking for your personal 'must-read' texts that you might be able to name from the top of your head. I'm trying to get cross-knowledge because I'm so much in love with it. Q_Q

Recommendations for people interested in getting into medieval literature: https://professorerudite.tumblr.com/post/159132582176/hi-there-what-kind-of-books-would-recommend-to

My recommended reading list for Viking Era/Heroic Poetry (this includes Italian and Old French) https://professorerudite.tumblr.com/post/159591094086/hi-there-saw-your-medieval-book-recs-could-you

Medieval research resources: https://professorerudite.tumblr.com/post/188677352835/medieval-research-resources

Here’s a link to a list of other Old English Poetry manuscripts (with summaries) Some great reads in Middle English would be Gawain and the Green Knight or Malory’s Morte Darthur.

Literary criticism book suggestions here

Free resource for teaching and learning about Chaucer: Open Access Canterbury Tales

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antisemitism

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gendhb

2 years ago

here's some advice for people new to tumblr i haven't seen around our parts yet... a very, very common current scam on this site to get some money out of folks is as follows:

You receive a message like the below, asking for a signal boost for a donation post pinned on their page; this is almost always for a pet.

You check their page and it all looks legit. They have an icon/pfp, a bunch of reblogs rather than an empty blog, the pinned post has candid cat/dog/etc photos that look convincing, and there's a link to a normal looking gofundme in a lot of cases, with similarly realistic photos. They didn't even ask you to publish the ask specifically, they just want you to consider reblogging.

…but if you scroll down far enough, it turns out there's only like a week worth of random reblogs, no real other posts and no interaction with anyone else on the site. Which isn't in and of itself an issue- everyone joins Tumblr at SOME point- but maybe a red flag?

Inevitably, when you reverse image search the pet photos, they were nabbed off instagram or facebook or twitter or something. It's a scam.

I was getting 2-3 of these a week at one point, and all of them were convincing, probably because I doubt any of them were bots. this is a really common scam but not nearly as easily spotted as obviously automated phishing attempts; don't publish or donate to these. they're hoping your sense of sympathy, generosity and even guilt will override your suspicion at a rando asking you for money. delete 'em.

i just bring this up because i'm seeing a couple people in tf fandom getting these asks and going 'hey, signal boost!!!'' and while it's a very kind impulse... yeah, it's overwhelmingly scams, folks. sorry.

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gendhb

2 years ago

some of us were put on this earth to draw characters standing against a blank background 5000 times

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gendhb

2 years ago

I think a lot of ya need to keep in mind that popular tumblr posts are just.. tumblr posts that happened to get popular. They are not professional articles written by career journalists. There may be incorrect information, spelling errors, biases. It may say "everyone does x", but really mean "people like me do x", because the OP did not intend for it to leave their circle of mutuals who understand their personal context. I'm not saying you can't ever criticize a post--but maybe take a second beforehand to think about whether you'd be just as harsh in judging a 3-note post your mutual spit out at 2am

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gendhb

2 years ago

Even as someone who supports and actively encourages the reappropriation of memes in order to take away any power they had with right wing/neonazi fucks I think making “Make X Great Again” memes or doing edits of the red cap is not as useful as it may seems.

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gendhb

1 year ago

after inputting some complex algorithms into my super computer i’ve determined what tumblr will look like in the year 2020

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gendhb

1 year ago

Just so we're all on the same page with the writer's strike.

If during the strike, it's announced about AI generated shows. We are not watching them. Not even out of curiosity. Let them fail every AI generated show they try make.

The human voice can not be replaced by AI. Don't let them try.