Hi, y’all. I’m tired, I’m annoyed, and I’ve got a bunch of time on my hands. Let’s do a deep dive into why the term “drama” is ultimately harmful when it comes to conflict inside of a fandom and shouldn’t be used.

This is gonna be a long thread, so I’ll link a Google Doc version of it here. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x7s-yhANv8PIlC_wbjcSACluOIBvbcVTIWtu5AedCZ0/edit?usp=sharing. With that out of the way, let’s begin.

“Drama” is (unfortunately) a pretty universal term. We see it everywhere; stuff like “what’s the twitter drama today” or “furry drama is insane lmao” or even “god it’s so tiring seeing all this drama on my feed.”

With its seemingly universal usage, it’s prudent to ask “What does drama actually mean?” After all, a clear understanding of it is essential to deconstruct its problems, and luckily, I have an answer.

“Drama” has become synonymous with “conflict.” Doesn’t matter what kind of conflict; it just means “conflict.”

That is a big fucking problem.

To see what I mean, let’s go back to a relatively recent incident within the furry community.

On December seventeenth of 2019, Olly, known online as @/TheShamrockFox, was outed as an active zoophile and pedophile (predator).

There were screenshots, multiple testimonials, and enough evidence that even the people who normally handwring about evidence in these situations couldn’t dismiss it.

This was the response.

I want to jump back to the definition of drama for a moment, because while saying it’s synonymous with “conflict” isn’t incorrect, it is incomplete. You see, “drama” has a very specific connotation.

When someone says “drama,” your heart doesn’t skip a beat. “Drama” is associated with fights among friend groups, relationship issues in a high school setting, people saying that someone else is a bad friend, etc.

“Drama” isn’t associated with the kinds of serious issues it’s often slapped over. If someone said “have you heard about the Olly drama,” you’d assume he got in a fight, not that he got outed as a literal fucking predator.

And that’s where the problem is with the term drama. Its use inherently dismisses and minimizes the situations its applied to, and since it’s applied to everything, even situations where someone is being (break) exposed as a dangerous, predatory, animal-abusing individual.

That’s what these responses were doing, intentionally or not (Images here). They equated someone being outed as a zoophile and pedophile, who was actively harming animals and children, to something you’d find on Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

And it worked. Olly changed his @ to @/OliverKitsune, made a NEW account called @/TrifoliumFox, and still has THOUSANDS of followers, a not insignificant portion of which are children.

This isn’t just something that happened with the Olly situation, though. Wild__life being outed as a still-practicing zoophile? Drama. LockjawArts and their partner literally killing someone? Drama.

All conflict, including the really serious shit, has the drama label slapped onto it, and as a result, is minimized and dismissed.

And listen - I get that. It’s really, REALLY fucking easy to just call a situation “drama” and sweep it under the rug - it’s tiring to hear about dangerous people, and it’s comforting to just call it drama and move on; I understand.

The problem is, though, that lets dangerous people get off with little to no consequences, and as such, continue getting away with this stuff. I mentioned Olly already, but this is far more wide reaching.

I’ve highlighted it before, but @BoozyBadger has a really good thread on why this mentality is dangerous. https://twitter.com/BoozyBadger/status/1248034093989801991

I’ve seen this happen before, in another community, where enough people got away with enough shit that it became an actively dangerous place. I was groomed there. And guess which word I saw everywhere regarding people who spoke up.

Drama is an easy, convenient label to make problems less severe, even the ones that absolutely should not be minimized. And it’s dangerous as hell.

So stop. Confront situations head on instead of hiding behind a convenient label so you don’t have to think about it too hard. Stop equating pedophiles being exposed to arguments in high school.

Drama is an actively harmful term when it comes to discourse. We should start treating it as such.