as small as a world and as large as alone, bobbityhobbity: I honestly don’t think the trend...

10:30pm July 26, 2015

I honestly don’t think the trend of labeling all negative character behavior “abuse” is really an effort to trivialize abuse (even though that’s what it sometimes does). I don’t really think it is cavalier at all. Otherwise the “abuse apologism” accusations wouldn’t be so loud. I think there are actually people on this website who think that fairly common human foibles are abuse dynamics. I don’t just mean stuff like “lying.” I mean that there are people here who think that the following constitutes “abuse”:
Not having perfect self-awareness
Not being in touch with one’s own feelings about something or not being able to articulate them perfectly
Not anticipating exactly how a statement, action, or situation will make someone else feel
Not being aware of someone else’s specific triggers
Having your own issues with trauma and poor coping that make it difficult to navigate interpersonal relationships
Disagreeing with somebody
Remembering an incident differently than someone else (I have actually heard this called “gaslighting”)
Arguing back when someone insults you
I think some of it is due to immaturity. I think there are some individuals out there who do not understand that most of the world is just as fucked up and confused as they are. They expect that everybody else is perfectly in touch with their motives and acts precisely in alignment with them. Thus, if they feel hurt by something someone else has said or done, they assume that that person meant to hurt them. And because they feel that their experiences and their perceptions constitute “The Truth,” they assume that anybody who perceives things differently is “manipulative” and “gaslighting” and trying to deny their reality.
But more than that, I think there is a dynamic on tumblr (and certainly other places on the internet) that rewards the discovery any possible reason to declare someone irredeemable trash, to place them beyond the pale of social norms, and therefore to justify any aggression directed at them or their defenders. Being mean to people is fun. But it is even more fun when you are able to frame it as righteousness, as striking back against “toxic people” and protecting the rest of the community from their evil.
I have seen this kind of shit directed at actual living people on this website, not just cartoon characters, but I think it’s all part of the same unpleasant package. There is a surprisingly narrow tolerance for simple humanity on this site (and on the internet as a whole).