Because it is, as I have said, magical thinking bullshit that damages people, especially people with conditions like OCD or Generalised Anxiety Disorder. It hurts people. If you want to reblog things, nobody is stopping you. But posts that are deliberately phrased to make people feel powerless if they choose to not reblog them are never helpful. And posts that trap people into patterns of superstitious, compulsive actions can ruin lives. I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but some people already can’t leave their house without rituals and compulsions that their brain tells them they must complete or people will be hurt or die. Reblogging a post that has no purpose, that is purely a superstition or a guilt trip, helps no one, makes you more likely to compulsively reblog posts like it in the future, and exposes people who follow you to perpetuate the same cycle of behaviour. A blog post cannot hurt your mother. By reblogging it, you’re acting as if it has a power it literally does not have, and you’re spreading it, like a virus, through the internet. It’s a chain letter, and like a chain letter, the only power it has is the power to spread unhappiness, and it only spreads through you. That’s the point I’m making. You never have to reblog something. It literally has no power. But you do.
Tag: chain letter
Sometimes I say to myself “I had a pretty normal and boring childhood” but then I remember that 11-year-old me may have accidentally convinced some other kids that I was kidnapped by a shady government agency.
Care to elaborate?
WELL, SINCE YOU ASKED
2006 was the year that I
discovered the internet. I spent most of this time doing nothing but watch
Harry Potter fanvids and tracking down so much Harry/Ginny fanfiction that it’s
probably the reason I hated that ship for so long, kind of like when you were
in fourth grade and you realized that bologna was actually Really Bad and you
started aggressively avoiding it? Yeah, it was like that. Harry/Ginny was the
bologna of my formative fandom years.So I’m eleven years old and
for the last two months or so I’ve been just shoving my brain full of all kinda
of mature narratives that I really, probably, should not have been putting my mind
to at the time. My parents knew that this was how I was occupying my time but I
think that they thought, since Harry Potter was a kids’ book series, the people
who were writing the fics were…kids. And they eventually did wise up to
the fact that I was reading Really Very Adult Things and put kid blocks on the
computer for all of five minutes. But, y’know, that’s another story.It wasn’t really porn that I was reading, per say, as
much as writing that just…wasn’t meant to be consumed by an eleven-year-old.
For instance, stories about government espionage
and criminal crime. Things that
the HP books touched on, sure, but in a way that was consumable by the very
young and very naïve. These fics weren’t for the uninitiated. And I take full
responsibility for exposing myself to those things. I very purposefully did a
few things that I should not have in order to access this content. One of those
things was making myself an email, without my parents’ permission, at an age
two years younger than the Yahoo terms of service allowed at the time. I listed
my age as eighteen on the email account because that was the age you needed to be to get into some of the archives
I wanted access to and I had no idea that the administrators had literally no
way of checking if my email was registered to an eighteen year old person or
not.So, I don’t know if it was because
of being registered as an adult or because of the forums I was visiting, but I
got a lot of very weird spam. And since I was eleven and I had no idea how any
of that stuff worked, I thought it was real people…sending me emails.
Thankfully my parents had only raised a little
fool, not a big fool, so I never clicked any of the links or anything. I was
just quietly upset that people thought I cared about car insurance and online gambling
when all I wanted was to read the Marked Mature Chapter Of That Harry/Ginny
Wedding Fic. A fic in which ‘glass of water’ was used as a euphemism for orgasm,
which was something that I did not pick
up on until I suddenly remembered that line when I was sitting in a lecture
hall ten literal years later.Yes, I know.
So one day I’m looking through
my email to see if I have any new reviews on my Harry Potter/Hannah Montana crossover
fic (Yes, I know) when I come across an email the subject line of which is just
“Confidential.”“Cool,” says little Maggie,
who maybe at that point didn’t really know what confidential meant, and clicked
on it.This was a very long time ago
so I really don’t remember the content of the email, let alone the exact warning,
but the gist of it was something like:WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID SEND 10,000
DOLLARS TO THIS BANK ACCOUNT OR THE GOVERNMENT WILL BE NOTIFIED.This is very obviously
recognizable as a scam to somebody who isn’t eleven years old. It’s not even a
very good scam. It’s the kind of
thing that only children and elderly people with dementia would react to.Unfortunately, I was a child.
A child with a guilty conscience because I had been reading Things I was not
supposed to for several months now, and had also lied about my age by some
SEVEN YEARS to access the very email account by which I had been sent this ominous
message.Predictably, because I was both
an overreactive child and apparently an idiot
child, I freaked out. I deleted the email and panicked, very quietly, in
the corner of my dad’s home office for a good ten minutes. Then, for reasons
that are completely unknown EVEN TO ME, I retrieved the email from the trash
bin and printed it out. I then slipped
it into my backpack and brought it to
school the next day.Even worse, the first thing I
did was drag my two friends into the situation.“Meet me in the bathroom,” I said
to them, because some part of me seemed to think that my life had now become a
Cool Spy Movie. We huddled into a stall in the bathroom and stared at the
paper.“I don’t have ten thousand
dollars,” I told them.“What did you do?” asked one
of my friends.“That’s none of your concern,”
I said.“Do you think it’s the FBI?
Or the CSI?” (Not a typo—she said CSI)“Yes,” I said, and did not
elaborate.“What happens if you don’t pay
it.”“I’ll be kidnapped,” I said,
with utmost conviction. “That’s what happens when the government doesn’t like you.
They make you disappear.”We eventually returned to
class. I was pretty jazzed at being the center of our friend group’s attention
for the day. It was a Friday, and the height of my concern for the actual situation
had waned and, by the time I got home later that day, I had mostly forgotten
about my fear of being violently kidnapped by the CSI.Something that I’ve not mentioned
to any of you—and something that I had not mentioned to my friends at the time,
either—was that this was my last day at
that school. I was due to start at a new school that coming Monday. I hadn’t
told anybody because I was switching to a public school from a private school
and I thought that telling people would make them think I was dumb? I don’t
know, but I hadn’t told literally anybody
that I was switching schools. Not even my teachers. I assume that my parents
informed them at some point but I still have the middle school-level math book
hanging out in my closet that I never returned because I never told anybody I was leaving.I had no way of contacting
any of my friends from the other school. I wouldn’t get my first cell phone for
probably another six or seven months. I also
stopped going to the Youth Group that I was in with one of them because my dad
got spooked when I dropped some Knowledge About Christ on him at one point and
decided that the group was way too fundamentalist. (It was, but I was very
upset about being pulled out at the time.)So please imagine. Friend
comes to school with ominous email from ~the government~. Friend stops coming
to school. Friend stops coming to unrelated
activity. Friend doesn’t ever contact you again. You’re eleven years old.I’m not saying that there are
two girls out there who still remember me as “That girl who might have been kidnapped
by the government.” I like to think that they probably came up with a more
reasonable explanation as they got older. But it’s a possibility that, for a little
while sometime in 2006/2007, I accidentally convinced my friends that I had
been kidnapped by a shady government agency.
a quick reminder, not that there are many people who’ll see this:
sometimes someone won’t reblog a post that says something like “reblog if X matters to you” or “if you won’t reblog this bc it doesn’t fit your blog, unfollow me” or similar posts because the post is guilt tripping and they know that sort of thing either a) sets off their own anxiety, or b) sets off the anxiety of people following them. Or because it’s a social media post that they are actually under no obligation to share even if they agree with it.
obviously there are certain issues, like when someone reblogs a lot of social justice stuff from you but never anything about one particular topic (i see this a lot with posts about antisemitism, from a lot of the jumblr people i follow), but in general, don’t assume someone is taking some sort of stance just because they didn’t reblog one particular post.
this psa brought to you by i don’t mind when the blogs i follow reblog stuff like that, but i almost never will bc i know it sets off people’s anxiety and i disagree with the guilt tripping tone most of them take.
I wrote a meta post on this very topic HERE in February about why these kinds of guilt and shaming comments are harmful, and why I won’t reblog posts containing them.
Leave off the guilt, please
You’ve seen the posts. Not genuine PSAs about current events or fundraisers or missing persons or the latest government fuckery. I’m talking about the ones that are the digital equivalent of chain letters. The ones that threaten you or your loved ones or your pets or something if you don’t reblog. The ones that imply that if you DON’T reblog some trite generalised wish of goodwill to other people then you’re somehow a bad person and you’re actively willing the opposite.
This is magical thinking BULLSHIT.
It’s gross and it’s bullying and it’s wrong.
I have anxiety. I have self-esteem issues, I have self-worth issues, I already feel like I am letting people down every day, for no reason.
So when, out of habit, you reblog that thing, the thing that says ‘reblog this to help xyz’ as though it magically has the power to do anything, usually with a bunch of reblogs below judging anyone who doesn’t, know that you are making people like me feel that little bit worse.
My reblog won’t magically protect your pet from harm this year or protect your laptop or protect all the millions of people out there on this planet from flood, fire, famine or stubbed toe. Your judgement of those who don’t reblog these banalities CAN do harm.
The ones I like? ‘Have you taken your meds?’ ‘Get up and stretch.’ ‘Have you drunk enough water?’ ‘You’re a good person, I know you’re trying.’ The ones that actively help people keep themselves safe and healthy, and have NO EXPECTATION OR REQUIREMENT of those seeing them to reblog. And those who do? The comments aren’t a guilt trip, they’re often thanks. ‘Oh thank you, I had forgotten.’ ‘That feels so much better, thank you.’ and ‘I really needed to see this right now.’
If you’re reblogging something because of ingrained superstition or guilt, please just take a moment and think WHY. And then if you actually want to reblog, do it, but remember – you are spreading this out in the world, and your actions aren’t benign.
^^all of this.
I have anxiety, too, and those guilt-trip post used to set me off into a downward spiral that could last days. In my earliest days I might even reblog them, but it wouldn’t really assuage the guilt. It’s such emotionally manipulative bullshit that is helping nobody.
If you are like me and anxious about not reblogging it, maybe frame it like this: by not reblogging, you are protecting your followers and mutuals from facing the same situation.
It helps me – I have a protective streak a mile wide and have always over-identified with helping people. I am the guard to the content I reblog – I tag them for you to blacklist or to find again later. And I have sworn an oath not to reblog those chain-posts, any form of the ‘why is nobody talking about this’, ‘you just don’t care if you don’t reblog’. And because I have cast this role for myself, standing between you and these irrational guilt-trips, I can pass those posts by with only a minor twinge these days.
Don’t fall into the trap of reblogging. And if it’s a good post but has bs comments on it, go to the source and reblog from there.
Leave off the guilt, please
You’ve seen the posts. Not genuine PSAs about current events or fundraisers or missing persons or the latest government fuckery. I’m talking about the ones that are the digital equivalent of chain letters. The ones that threaten you or your loved ones or your pets or something if you don’t reblog. The ones that imply that if you DON’T reblog some trite generalised wish of goodwill to other people then you’re somehow a bad person and you’re actively willing the opposite.
This is magical thinking BULLSHIT.
It’s gross and it’s bullying and it’s wrong.
I have anxiety. I have self-esteem issues, I have self-worth issues, I already feel like I am letting people down every day, for no reason.
So when, out of habit, you reblog that thing, the thing that says ‘reblog this to help xyz’ as though it magically has the power to do anything, usually with a bunch of reblogs below judging anyone who doesn’t, know that you are making people like me feel that little bit worse.
My reblog won’t magically protect your pet from harm this year or protect your laptop or protect all the millions of people out there on this planet from flood, fire, famine or stubbed toe. Your judgement of those who don’t reblog these banalities CAN do harm.
The ones I like? ‘Have you taken your meds?’ ‘Get up and stretch.’ ‘Have you drunk enough water?’ ‘You’re a good person, I know you’re trying.’ The ones that actively help people keep themselves safe and healthy, and have NO EXPECTATION OR REQUIREMENT of those seeing them to reblog. And those who do? The comments aren’t a guilt trip, they’re often thanks. ‘Oh thank you, I had forgotten.’ ‘That feels so much better, thank you.’ and ‘I really needed to see this right now.’
If you’re reblogging something because of ingrained superstition or guilt, please just take a moment and think WHY. And then if you actually want to reblog, do it, but remember – you are spreading this out in the world, and your actions aren’t benign.
knitting in the dark 