Some of you may have noticed that xkit guy has not been active for a few months and while most of you still have functioning xkit extensions, you may have noticed that there have not been any new updates or have been experiencing glitches and xkit guy has not fixed it the way he normally does.
My xkit has actually stopped working a few weeks ago and default tumblr has been a hideous and extremely inconvenient place ever since. I was talking to chimis-changa about it and we were joking about how xkit guy was like a superhero and tumblr staff are the…questionable characters that cause trouble for him. chimis-changa decided to investigate, he found out why xkit guy has not been active and it freaking sucks.
xkit guy (his real name is Atesh) has been good to us. He made dozens of really useful extensions that made our tumblr lives easier, he has diligently kept track of all the inconvenient tumblr updates and actually took time off from his paying day job and spent hours trying to fix everything because people were calling for xkit guy to save them from terrible design choices and he always tried to deliver.
and then someone sent a message to The Abusers and Predators on Tumblr page about something that he allegedly said to them, but they had no proof. The Abusers and Predators blog then made a post asking people who may have been harassed by Atesh to come forward but no one did. And because this website is full of self righteous assholes who always jump to conclusions without waiting for actual legit proof or even take the goddamn time to read everything carefully, they decided to go ahead and send Atesh a ton of abusive and cruel hate mail even on his personal blogs.
The Abusers and Predators blog has posted this post explaining that they were not accusing him and that they were only asking for people to come forward if they had similar experiences.
Apparently, because of the enormous amount of abuse he was getting, Atesh decided to leave tumblr. His last message was:
Congratulations to every person that sent him abuse. You have driven someone who was innocent, that spent hours of his time, time that he could have spent at work earning money, trying to help you. We don’t even know if this has made him suicidal but it might have, and that is not fucking okay.
Personally, I want to make it up to this guy. He has not deactivated his blogs yet so I am going to try to send him as many kind “thank you”s and as many “i am so sorry people are assholes” as i possibly can. If you would like to do the same, the links to his blogs are down below. Maybe we can drown out all the terrible messages he got. Maybe he will decide to log in someday and see that we appreciate all the hard work he did for us.
Please remember that there was no proof he did anything and he was never given a chance to defend himself. Don’t be a dickhead.How would you feel if you were accused of something like this when you didn’t do it?
I have never been more disappointed in the tumblr community than I am right now.
I’ve had a couple of asks about XKit Guy and why he left/how we can ask him back, and this is the best suggestion I’ve seen *points up*
But it behooves us to remember that a lot of this doesn’t seem to have come out until Tumblr’s official programmers broke it again and XKit guy didn’t just show up to fix it. I always kind of wondered how long he’d stick around given the ebb and flow of demand for his services without a ton of regard for his actual self.
I’m not trying to scold everyone or anything, but maybe it’s time to stop depending on a college student doing this out of the goodness of his heart and make a genuine, concerted effort to lobby the actual programmers to stop fuckin’ shit up.
Anyway, it’s a thought.
While I appreciate the good intentions of the OP, I think it’s worth mentioning that any flooding of attention is incredibly stressful if you’re already in a bad place, and just bombarding this poor guy with messages – even if they’re positive – might just make things worse. Please, if you’re wanting to support someone, don’t become yet another problem. He left for a very good reason, and slamming his other web presences with message after message is not the answer. If you want to send him support, do it once only, do it in a calm, respectful manner, and don’t beg him to return to his previous role. Also, don’t make your message a vehicle for venting about tumblr staff or the hate mail crowd – that’s heavy, depressing emotional bullshit he has to deal with on top of everything else. Then, step away and don’t bother him again. He’s got a life to live that is important and is not about making your tumblr experience more convenient.
knitting in the dark 