[thread] Can we please talk about this growing anti trend of actively targeting their own mutuals when they find out their moot ships something they don't like? And the implications it has for this website and the normalization of extreme and unfiltered bullying?

so heres a PERFECT example of this. To start, this user doesn't like what the other user ships, a pair that happens to be two brothers. They have been mutuals and the user was not hiding it, though even if they did, like who cares? anywho, instead of quietly unfollowing we get

This- a call to action of folks who are mutuals to both to unfollow this person because of what they ship. This isnt new. This isn't isolated. This is a problem. Why you ask? Because problematic ships have existed since the beginning of fandom and it hasn't normalized anything

Lets take a trip back in time here to the early and mid 2000s. Fred/George, Inuyasha/Sesshoumaru (actually all of anime) had some pretty popular incest ships. Drarry and Draco/Hermione were popular bully romances. THIS. IS. NOT. NEW. But in these days, you would sort of eyeroll-

and move on- maybe have a little flame war on your forum and avoid that person in future threads. Similarly with Tumblr, it came down to a disagreement. I left fandom for 7 years and came back to see an active effort to bully people off of social platforms for fake romances -

between fake people and was appalled.

So aside from the fact that doing this goes against a fairly functioning existing fandom culture, whats the problem here? WELL, A FEW THINGS

1) It encourages bullies to feel righteous.
This is basically an effort to actively bully and hurt people. Plain and simple. You aren't saving your moots. You aren't calling out someone whose done something wrong. In fact, in my example, many folks called OP out.

Deciding that ships are grounds for bullying because of a fake implied social implication is more or less bullies trying to find ways that they can abuse people without negative social implications. This is good for those abusers, who will even be praised for their abuse.

2) It is attacking a vulnerable population. A lot of fandom twitter is BIPOC, LGBT, or vulnerable in some other way. Assuming that the user is not vulnerable socially, most of fan twitter is full of outcasts, folks with mental health issues & more.

So to wrap it up, using this tactic of trying to isolate and systematically attack someone who is reaching out online for friendship, compassion, empathy, and a sense of belonging, who likely is vulnerable in some way is a dangerous game that has even been documented-

- to result in suicide. Its that shit they tell you when you are 12- you never really know who you are communicating with online. But these bullies ant antis do not care. To them, regardless of the user's personal state of being or vulnerable status, they have been selected as-

a victim, and how this user is triggered or traumatized or dug out of what could be the only community they have to be themselves is pretty much moot. The anti has already decided that their victim does not have value is a person and does not deserve empathy. because of -

A FICTIONAL SHIP.

Imagine for a second what efforts a person would need to go through in their brain to dehumanize and strip a person of value based on fictional interests? What am I saying? Antis who do this are bad people. Yep. They are bad people being enabled.

3) These antis are co opting actual social justice and real life issues to bully. This is a no brainer. While antis themselves may be victims of trauma, fans of problematic ships often are as well- and this creates a really volatile environment for the victim of said bullying-

where they are being not only abused online, but potentially re traumatized. Never mind that this sincerely blurs the lines of how we communicate about these issues as a whole and trivializes them.

Anyway, long story short, fandom discourse where fans are literally being singularly targeted for their fandom preferences is super dangerous to the individuals AS WELL AS for the general survival of fandom culture, which is being polluted with toxicity that is limiting peoples-

comfort in expressing their interests and passions for fear of being abused by strangers OR WORSE, people they once considered friends. I urge you to CALL THESE PEOPLE OUT whenever you can. Aggressively. I did not blur the name of the bully in my screenshots because I want to to