A rumination
Jan. 6th, 2019 10:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
roselightfairyOn Tumblr and other forms of social media that basically consist of scrolling through posts and posts of people's Opinions.
I don't know about you all-- and maybe this is just a personal failing on my part-- but until I have formed a rock-solid opinion of my own, I tend to be... very persuadable. It's probably one of those traits that can go both ways (between good point and flaw), but I'm naive and trusting to a fault in almost all situations, and usually when people tell me something I assume they're coming from a place of good.
This does not apply to blatant hate speech, but it does apply to those situations you read extensive arguments about on Tumblr, like the portrayal of certain types of relationships in fandom spaces, the use of certain words, the definition and application of various terms used in social justice spaces. (I'm being deliberately vague here because I don't want to either upset people with the mention of a specific issue that's triggering or to draw more Opinions onto my head when the whole point of this post is how exhausting they can be.) A common type of post you see circulating on Tumblr is the "takedown" post, where someone posts a strawman angry rant about one of these issues and then is thoroughly and systematically dismantled by a thread of equally angry, yet reasonably phrased reblogs. I always find myself completely taken in by these posts. The arguments are so reasonable, the opinions so close to issues I care about, and the people they're arguing against so easily dismantled, that I believe them.
And then later, I find another, shorter post that hasn't been dismantled yet, stating the exact opposite of whatI've now come to believe, and I get shaken to my core. This issue has two sides, I remember, and neither is clearly "right"? And who is getting hurt by these takedowns? Which opinions are valid? Who is right? Who is allowed to speak? And what, in the end, do I really think?
I might think it through and decide where I stand-- and then see another one of those takedowns, and it just churns me up inside, crushing me under all these piles of imposed shame that no one knows about because I haven't even argued, but I'm left with the certainty that I'm wrong, or that these people are wrong, but that there's no in-between, no reason-to-both-sides, no gray area. Everything is black and white, and the funny thing is that the thing that's black and the thing that's white alter depending on who's writing about it, and they both have points. But instead of being able to sort through and deal with the gray in between, it's just BAM one side and BAM the other, back and forth, dizzying and shaming and bruising, and I feel like this soft trusting part of me is being smacked back and forth like an apple between two Ping Pong paddles-- no matter which side it ends up on, it'll be bruised beyond use anyway, and no one will ever know about it because it's all happening inside my head, and the Ping-Pong paddles are the opinions of other people who don't even know they're smacking me around to begin with.
And what makes it worse is-- oh man, are those takedown posts fun to read.
There's an addiction to this smacking back and forth, to this feeling heard, to this nodding vigorously along to these wonderful points-- until you see a post from the other side and realize it's not as clear-cut as it seems, that none of it is easy. And then I feel sinking guilt for having agreed so thoroughly with the first-- maybe for still agreeing with it-- but also for entertaining this second opinion. I feel guilty and ashamed of not knowing, of not having the perfect, rock-solid, untwisted and unbruisable opinions. I feel guilty for being that apple, for allowing myself to ricochet between the two sides, for not deciding and arguing and knowing-- and at the same time, when I have decided, I feel guilty for being on one side and not the other.
All this is to say that... I'm starting to learn that things don't have to be black and white all the time-- or maybe I'm just hoping they don't have to be. (And that I really am working on weaning myself off of Tumblr-- and that maybe it'll be good to try another platform for a while.)
I don't know about you all-- and maybe this is just a personal failing on my part-- but until I have formed a rock-solid opinion of my own, I tend to be... very persuadable. It's probably one of those traits that can go both ways (between good point and flaw), but I'm naive and trusting to a fault in almost all situations, and usually when people tell me something I assume they're coming from a place of good.
This does not apply to blatant hate speech, but it does apply to those situations you read extensive arguments about on Tumblr, like the portrayal of certain types of relationships in fandom spaces, the use of certain words, the definition and application of various terms used in social justice spaces. (I'm being deliberately vague here because I don't want to either upset people with the mention of a specific issue that's triggering or to draw more Opinions onto my head when the whole point of this post is how exhausting they can be.) A common type of post you see circulating on Tumblr is the "takedown" post, where someone posts a strawman angry rant about one of these issues and then is thoroughly and systematically dismantled by a thread of equally angry, yet reasonably phrased reblogs. I always find myself completely taken in by these posts. The arguments are so reasonable, the opinions so close to issues I care about, and the people they're arguing against so easily dismantled, that I believe them.
And then later, I find another, shorter post that hasn't been dismantled yet, stating the exact opposite of whatI've now come to believe, and I get shaken to my core. This issue has two sides, I remember, and neither is clearly "right"? And who is getting hurt by these takedowns? Which opinions are valid? Who is right? Who is allowed to speak? And what, in the end, do I really think?
I might think it through and decide where I stand-- and then see another one of those takedowns, and it just churns me up inside, crushing me under all these piles of imposed shame that no one knows about because I haven't even argued, but I'm left with the certainty that I'm wrong, or that these people are wrong, but that there's no in-between, no reason-to-both-sides, no gray area. Everything is black and white, and the funny thing is that the thing that's black and the thing that's white alter depending on who's writing about it, and they both have points. But instead of being able to sort through and deal with the gray in between, it's just BAM one side and BAM the other, back and forth, dizzying and shaming and bruising, and I feel like this soft trusting part of me is being smacked back and forth like an apple between two Ping Pong paddles-- no matter which side it ends up on, it'll be bruised beyond use anyway, and no one will ever know about it because it's all happening inside my head, and the Ping-Pong paddles are the opinions of other people who don't even know they're smacking me around to begin with.
And what makes it worse is-- oh man, are those takedown posts fun to read.
There's an addiction to this smacking back and forth, to this feeling heard, to this nodding vigorously along to these wonderful points-- until you see a post from the other side and realize it's not as clear-cut as it seems, that none of it is easy. And then I feel sinking guilt for having agreed so thoroughly with the first-- maybe for still agreeing with it-- but also for entertaining this second opinion. I feel guilty and ashamed of not knowing, of not having the perfect, rock-solid, untwisted and unbruisable opinions. I feel guilty for being that apple, for allowing myself to ricochet between the two sides, for not deciding and arguing and knowing-- and at the same time, when I have decided, I feel guilty for being on one side and not the other.
All this is to say that... I'm starting to learn that things don't have to be black and white all the time-- or maybe I'm just hoping they don't have to be. (And that I really am working on weaning myself off of Tumblr-- and that maybe it'll be good to try another platform for a while.)
