Completely contextless comment that I'm applauding

u/Rogryg Commented on 1 month ago

In cases like this, it's not so much "the left" as it is people who are at best "left adjacent" - the biggest contingent of these harassers are former members of the Tumblr fandom community who migrated to Twitter following Tumblr's porn purge, and brought their toxic community norms with them.

They're vaguely left-ish on account of being overwhelmingly queer, trans, female, and/or PoC, but because they're generally younger they also have poorly-conceived or non-existent political beliefs beyond identity-related issues, and they have little sense of history. They're harassing people not due to any kind of ideological disagreement (as in more typical leftist in-fighting), but because they've built a culture with a social norm of hyper-aggressive policing of microaggressions. This is why their criticisms tend to start with social connections and non-political acts, with political acts and beliefs only being dragged in after the fact, and also why their targets are generally media critics and cultural commentators rather than more explicitly political people.

Emphasis on vaguely left-ish on account of being overwhelmingly queer, trans, female, and/or PoC, but because they're generally younger they also have poorly-conceived or non-existent political beliefs beyond identity-related issues.

I've always had my issues with Tumblr, but this quote totally summarized what I absolutely loathed about the Tumblr culture. Sure, for me it manifested in the form of ranting about children's inability to understand copyright laws, but that really is just tied up with the grander issue of a bunch of people with poorly developed ideology who latches onto whatever seems to serve their interest without interrogating whether they've actually understood anything.

In short, children. And I'm so done trying to have a conversation with a bunch of children.