calicokat
07-26-2009, 06:44 PM
http://pics.livejournal.com/calicokat/pic/000z3bby
SEE's had a hard bump with internet drama, or what is colloquially referred to as "wank" within fandom. Having fourteen years of experience with fandom, I still can't purport to be an expert in fandom. The rules of conduct can be different in different fandoms and on different boards, but there are some common elements that will help you navigate the individuals who may be disinterested or hostile to your cause and opinion.
In regards to SEE, although I'm open to correction, I strongly believe the first rule of Fight Club is this:
Do not talk instigate talk about SEE until the relaunched website is up and running.
I don't care if they've insulted your mum, your dad and your gerbil, impugned your integrity or even called you slurs. We'll get to why none of that is important in a second, but what's important for SEE is to relaunch with a totally new face that shows the broad concerns that have been raised in the various internet forums have been discussed and successfully met.
SEE needs to say "We value your opinion and have made some changes, please come take a look" but ONLY when those changes have been made. Otherwise there's a real chance of getting off message or people not being willing to come back and look a third time when content is actually up!
The most you want to say is "Your concerns are being addressed and the website will be relaunching in a few days, we'll be making an announcement and inviting you to take a look, then."
People that are distrustful of you don't want to go digging through forums to figure out what's going on, so the best way to make a positive change is to have something to really show them later this week! This will also give everybody a chance to cool down.
But, wait!
You may still be running up on a problem with some of the people you're talking to and have talked to. They hate you, and they hate the bands you like! They think you're a misogynist, racist, slash-goggle wearing fan child and they will be happy to tell you about it. At length. They have submitted their thesis for your review!
Thank them for their input.
There is no reason, ever, to have an argument on the internet. (Unless it gives you pleasure to argue on the internet, in which case you are a troll (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)) and are already emotionally detached from negative feedback, anyway.)
You may feel hurt. You may think, "How can these people think this about me? I'm nothing like what they're describing. I made a simple comment and they've extrapolated hurtful things that are completely baseless!" Your first instinct is to defend yourself and your reputation and try to set things straight.
This is a first reaction that will almost always end up hurting you further when you're dealing with strangers on the internet.
Instead, go get a soda. Wait!—I'm going to go get a soda right now.
Okay. I'm back. (With some A&W root beer.)
Alright, now take a look at what's been said to you. This person doesn't know you. This person probably has no personal feelings about you whatsoever.
Even if they've just said the most horrible thing that's ever been said to you in your life, for them, it's a typical response in a lifetime of responses to statements similar to whatever statement you just made that they disagreed with. It may or may not even be custom tailored to you, because it's a lot more difficult to put yourself in somebody you disagree with's shoes when they're just text on a screen. This person may feel a lot of people have been pushing a similar issue at them in a hundred permutations.
However, you're the one in the position of wanting this stranger whose face you can't see to be your alley and get invested in your cause. So, put yourself in their shoes.
Since it's the matter at hand, let's the recent case of fans immediately writing off SEE because it focused around K/S. Hopefully these won't be the issues that SEE runs up against in the future, but I think there's plenty of good examples to show the kind of analytical framework you want to set up to face any controversy on the internet with.
What they say: You're pushing K/S because you want to canonize "the hot"!
What they're saying: This person's probably been in fandom awhile and, odds are, they've seen shipping wars before. If you're not involved in fandom you might say "How can people get so upset over a pairing?" It's because a few too many people make wild, spurious claims about authorial intent and morality based on people's ships.
Did you ever read the Harry Potter books and think "The fact that Ron and Hermione spent their early childhood arguing means that Ron will be an abusive husband and anybody who enjoys Ron/Hermione in the Harry Potter books is supporting domestic violence"? No? Because that's insane, right? Well a group of people (http://wiki.fandomwank.com/index.php/Harmonian) have believed it and even sought out and attacked other fans who enjoy Ron and Hermione's relationship in the Harry Potter series on those grounds. (I was there. I saw it happen. It was a small but aggressive subset of fans.)
Fandom has developed a natural reaction to minimize this kind of behavior by hitting it hard and nipping it in the bud. The reaction you're getting isn't just a reaction against what you said, it's a response to a whole massive history of events across multiple fandoms that leave people in the Star Trek XI fandom craving never to hear the words "Bones obviously hits Kirk when he drinks and if you ship Kirk/Bones you support domestic violence!"
Everybody hates shipping wars because the whole fandom loses. So if somebody's fired shots at you for the (now former) K/S angle of SEE, remember that they're just trying to protect their ability to enjoy their favorite ships un-harassed in fandom and even though you may not be one of the crazies, they can't know that from reading a couple comments by you and are working by what they perceive as their own best interests. (Bruising the feelings of one person whose innocence is indeterminable is quantitatively better than losing your fandom to gangs like the Harmonians.)
What they say: You are appropriating LBGTQ issues for your shipper campaign!
What they're saying: Well, okay, that's exactly what they're saying. But why are they saying it?
Here, our friends the Harmonians are once again a great example. They justified Harry/Hermione as the only viable ship by appropriating the serious issue of domestic violence and telling other people that if they supported Ron/Hermione, they supported domestic violence.
In keeping with not wanting K/S to become the only acceptable ship, the fans who are reacting to you have no desire to start hearing that if they don't read/write/fic/support K/S they don't support LBGTQ equality.
Once again, it's in their best interests for the preservation of their enjoyment to stamp out any chance of this becoming common rhetoric. Fandom's reaction is to put its foot down hard to try and make it clear that K/S has no inherent connection to LBGTQ rights. This is why you'll find posts of K/S shippers reacting negatively to SEE.
Good, normal decent Harry/Hermione shippers did everything they could to put distance between themselves and Harmonians (who were hardly the first or last group of their kind in fandom). So those K/S shippers who seemed to be reacting against K/S were generally having the knee-jerk reaction of asserting to their friends that they would never take up those attitudes.
Once again, because they don't know your background or your intentions it's a bigger risk to trust an unknown outside influence than to make a show of solidarity to fandom harmony against one of it's traditionally biggest pitfalls. (Shipping wars.)
What they say: I am embarrassed that these people will be sending off letters about K/S to the studio and to gay rights organizations.
What they're saying: One time, at an early Supernatural convention, a girl jumped off a staircase onto Jensen Ackles's back. He ended up hitting the floor and scrambling to safety while security hauled her away and threw her out of the convention.
Fans are crazy.
So, maybe you're going to write a nice decent letter about how having gay action leads in cinema would be a huge, progressive step for LBGTQs everywhere. What they think you're going to write when you say you're going to write it is "CP AND ZQ ARE SO HAWT. I WANT TO SEE THEM TOUCHING EACH OTHER. NAKED. I WOULD LIKE ZQ TO LICK CP'S NIPPLE. PLZ TO BE HAVING THIS HAPPENING IN STAR TREK XII."
The distinction is, obviously, subtle. The problem? People have written that second letter plenty of times in various franchises and no one has any way to know or reason to believe you won't be the person writing that letter. (If only the odds against people being crazy in fandom were better!)
What they say: I can't believe they'd try to break up an interracial couple/take a black woman out of the picture to push their slash agenda.
What they're saying: This a particularly sensitive issue for a lot of people. When you think about how hard and how long the LBGTQ community has been fighting to get queer characters to be a norm mainstream media and to expand the roles written for them, remember that PoC have been battling a parallel fight to be represented as lead characters and not reduced to a few stereotypical roles.
Spock/Uhura was a victory to some, and it may not be your victory, but we want people who aren't LBGTQ to care about LBGTQ issues, and that can only be helped if we pay attention to and invest ourselves in the struggles of other minority groups. The white-Anglo-Saxon-protestant-straight-male norm is a norm oppressing all of us. The underlying societal unhealthiness that allows it to perpetuate affects each disadvantaged group differently, but ultimately the insidious mechanisms that allow society to still see it as acceptable to disadvantage us after all these hundreds of years of growing and spreading awareness are the same.
Originalpuck has some important corrections on this issue related to intersectionality, bellow (http://www.seetreklove.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3824&postcount=9).
Phew!! Alrighty, so, you said "I think we should petition to canonize K/S to show queer people can be leads in mainstream media" and people heard…all that – and more! I'm pretty sure I didn't nearly cover every response.
But the point of this demonstration? There is absolutely no way that in the sixty seconds it takes you to read somebody's negative response to what you thought was a simple statement that you can figure out every reason they might have to be negative, or upset, or hostile. Hence, get the soda. Give it twenty minutes. Ask yourself if there was anything in your own phrasing that may have been unintentionally offensive that you weren't aware of. And, ultimately, we're back to this: Thank them for their input.
When you're operating for a cause and/or in a professional capacity, you're opening yourself to the criticism of the public. However, that critical, sometimes angry and reactionary public is your audience and exactly who you want on your side. Tuning them out and/or arguing with them isn't the constructive response, whether they're right or they're wrong.
Instead of defending yourself, look for the middle ground you almost inevitably share. If they've misunderstood you, find a point to concede before you make a correction. "I agree with you that ____, but I also feel ______." Always use the "I," never the "you." If you're starting a sentence out with a sentiment along the lines of "You obviously think that _____," delete that sentence. It's impossible to make accurate assumptions about that person on the other end of the intertubes, but you will always know what you yourself are thinking and feeling.
If you just have nothing to say, if they've riled you up, if you're angry or upset and just can't formulate a response, then literally put down: "Thank you for your input, I'll definitely give your thoughts consideration" and go drop kick some pillows.
Don't pass go, don't collect $200, don't bitch to a friend where somebody can come by and read it. Accept that there's a solid chance they've misunderstood you and you've misunderstood them and that every action may be exaggerated or influenced by the fact that you're both relatively anonymous and whatever you say to each other doesn't have the burden of real world consequences you have to live with behind it.
To restate the moral of this really long story: There is no reason ever to have an argument on the internet. There's not even a reason for a heated discussion. You always, in every single instance, have the time and freedom of choice to step away and that is almost unequivocally the right choice.
http://pics.livejournal.com/calicokat/pic/000z470r
SEE's had a hard bump with internet drama, or what is colloquially referred to as "wank" within fandom. Having fourteen years of experience with fandom, I still can't purport to be an expert in fandom. The rules of conduct can be different in different fandoms and on different boards, but there are some common elements that will help you navigate the individuals who may be disinterested or hostile to your cause and opinion.
In regards to SEE, although I'm open to correction, I strongly believe the first rule of Fight Club is this:
Do not talk instigate talk about SEE until the relaunched website is up and running.
I don't care if they've insulted your mum, your dad and your gerbil, impugned your integrity or even called you slurs. We'll get to why none of that is important in a second, but what's important for SEE is to relaunch with a totally new face that shows the broad concerns that have been raised in the various internet forums have been discussed and successfully met.
SEE needs to say "We value your opinion and have made some changes, please come take a look" but ONLY when those changes have been made. Otherwise there's a real chance of getting off message or people not being willing to come back and look a third time when content is actually up!
The most you want to say is "Your concerns are being addressed and the website will be relaunching in a few days, we'll be making an announcement and inviting you to take a look, then."
People that are distrustful of you don't want to go digging through forums to figure out what's going on, so the best way to make a positive change is to have something to really show them later this week! This will also give everybody a chance to cool down.
But, wait!
You may still be running up on a problem with some of the people you're talking to and have talked to. They hate you, and they hate the bands you like! They think you're a misogynist, racist, slash-goggle wearing fan child and they will be happy to tell you about it. At length. They have submitted their thesis for your review!
Thank them for their input.
There is no reason, ever, to have an argument on the internet. (Unless it gives you pleasure to argue on the internet, in which case you are a troll (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)) and are already emotionally detached from negative feedback, anyway.)
You may feel hurt. You may think, "How can these people think this about me? I'm nothing like what they're describing. I made a simple comment and they've extrapolated hurtful things that are completely baseless!" Your first instinct is to defend yourself and your reputation and try to set things straight.
This is a first reaction that will almost always end up hurting you further when you're dealing with strangers on the internet.
Instead, go get a soda. Wait!—I'm going to go get a soda right now.
Okay. I'm back. (With some A&W root beer.)
Alright, now take a look at what's been said to you. This person doesn't know you. This person probably has no personal feelings about you whatsoever.
Even if they've just said the most horrible thing that's ever been said to you in your life, for them, it's a typical response in a lifetime of responses to statements similar to whatever statement you just made that they disagreed with. It may or may not even be custom tailored to you, because it's a lot more difficult to put yourself in somebody you disagree with's shoes when they're just text on a screen. This person may feel a lot of people have been pushing a similar issue at them in a hundred permutations.
However, you're the one in the position of wanting this stranger whose face you can't see to be your alley and get invested in your cause. So, put yourself in their shoes.
Since it's the matter at hand, let's the recent case of fans immediately writing off SEE because it focused around K/S. Hopefully these won't be the issues that SEE runs up against in the future, but I think there's plenty of good examples to show the kind of analytical framework you want to set up to face any controversy on the internet with.
What they say: You're pushing K/S because you want to canonize "the hot"!
What they're saying: This person's probably been in fandom awhile and, odds are, they've seen shipping wars before. If you're not involved in fandom you might say "How can people get so upset over a pairing?" It's because a few too many people make wild, spurious claims about authorial intent and morality based on people's ships.
Did you ever read the Harry Potter books and think "The fact that Ron and Hermione spent their early childhood arguing means that Ron will be an abusive husband and anybody who enjoys Ron/Hermione in the Harry Potter books is supporting domestic violence"? No? Because that's insane, right? Well a group of people (http://wiki.fandomwank.com/index.php/Harmonian) have believed it and even sought out and attacked other fans who enjoy Ron and Hermione's relationship in the Harry Potter series on those grounds. (I was there. I saw it happen. It was a small but aggressive subset of fans.)
Fandom has developed a natural reaction to minimize this kind of behavior by hitting it hard and nipping it in the bud. The reaction you're getting isn't just a reaction against what you said, it's a response to a whole massive history of events across multiple fandoms that leave people in the Star Trek XI fandom craving never to hear the words "Bones obviously hits Kirk when he drinks and if you ship Kirk/Bones you support domestic violence!"
Everybody hates shipping wars because the whole fandom loses. So if somebody's fired shots at you for the (now former) K/S angle of SEE, remember that they're just trying to protect their ability to enjoy their favorite ships un-harassed in fandom and even though you may not be one of the crazies, they can't know that from reading a couple comments by you and are working by what they perceive as their own best interests. (Bruising the feelings of one person whose innocence is indeterminable is quantitatively better than losing your fandom to gangs like the Harmonians.)
What they say: You are appropriating LBGTQ issues for your shipper campaign!
What they're saying: Well, okay, that's exactly what they're saying. But why are they saying it?
Here, our friends the Harmonians are once again a great example. They justified Harry/Hermione as the only viable ship by appropriating the serious issue of domestic violence and telling other people that if they supported Ron/Hermione, they supported domestic violence.
In keeping with not wanting K/S to become the only acceptable ship, the fans who are reacting to you have no desire to start hearing that if they don't read/write/fic/support K/S they don't support LBGTQ equality.
Once again, it's in their best interests for the preservation of their enjoyment to stamp out any chance of this becoming common rhetoric. Fandom's reaction is to put its foot down hard to try and make it clear that K/S has no inherent connection to LBGTQ rights. This is why you'll find posts of K/S shippers reacting negatively to SEE.
Good, normal decent Harry/Hermione shippers did everything they could to put distance between themselves and Harmonians (who were hardly the first or last group of their kind in fandom). So those K/S shippers who seemed to be reacting against K/S were generally having the knee-jerk reaction of asserting to their friends that they would never take up those attitudes.
Once again, because they don't know your background or your intentions it's a bigger risk to trust an unknown outside influence than to make a show of solidarity to fandom harmony against one of it's traditionally biggest pitfalls. (Shipping wars.)
What they say: I am embarrassed that these people will be sending off letters about K/S to the studio and to gay rights organizations.
What they're saying: One time, at an early Supernatural convention, a girl jumped off a staircase onto Jensen Ackles's back. He ended up hitting the floor and scrambling to safety while security hauled her away and threw her out of the convention.
Fans are crazy.
So, maybe you're going to write a nice decent letter about how having gay action leads in cinema would be a huge, progressive step for LBGTQs everywhere. What they think you're going to write when you say you're going to write it is "CP AND ZQ ARE SO HAWT. I WANT TO SEE THEM TOUCHING EACH OTHER. NAKED. I WOULD LIKE ZQ TO LICK CP'S NIPPLE. PLZ TO BE HAVING THIS HAPPENING IN STAR TREK XII."
The distinction is, obviously, subtle. The problem? People have written that second letter plenty of times in various franchises and no one has any way to know or reason to believe you won't be the person writing that letter. (If only the odds against people being crazy in fandom were better!)
What they say: I can't believe they'd try to break up an interracial couple/take a black woman out of the picture to push their slash agenda.
What they're saying: This a particularly sensitive issue for a lot of people. When you think about how hard and how long the LBGTQ community has been fighting to get queer characters to be a norm mainstream media and to expand the roles written for them, remember that PoC have been battling a parallel fight to be represented as lead characters and not reduced to a few stereotypical roles.
Spock/Uhura was a victory to some, and it may not be your victory, but we want people who aren't LBGTQ to care about LBGTQ issues, and that can only be helped if we pay attention to and invest ourselves in the struggles of other minority groups. The white-Anglo-Saxon-protestant-straight-male norm is a norm oppressing all of us. The underlying societal unhealthiness that allows it to perpetuate affects each disadvantaged group differently, but ultimately the insidious mechanisms that allow society to still see it as acceptable to disadvantage us after all these hundreds of years of growing and spreading awareness are the same.
Originalpuck has some important corrections on this issue related to intersectionality, bellow (http://www.seetreklove.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3824&postcount=9).
Phew!! Alrighty, so, you said "I think we should petition to canonize K/S to show queer people can be leads in mainstream media" and people heard…all that – and more! I'm pretty sure I didn't nearly cover every response.
But the point of this demonstration? There is absolutely no way that in the sixty seconds it takes you to read somebody's negative response to what you thought was a simple statement that you can figure out every reason they might have to be negative, or upset, or hostile. Hence, get the soda. Give it twenty minutes. Ask yourself if there was anything in your own phrasing that may have been unintentionally offensive that you weren't aware of. And, ultimately, we're back to this: Thank them for their input.
When you're operating for a cause and/or in a professional capacity, you're opening yourself to the criticism of the public. However, that critical, sometimes angry and reactionary public is your audience and exactly who you want on your side. Tuning them out and/or arguing with them isn't the constructive response, whether they're right or they're wrong.
Instead of defending yourself, look for the middle ground you almost inevitably share. If they've misunderstood you, find a point to concede before you make a correction. "I agree with you that ____, but I also feel ______." Always use the "I," never the "you." If you're starting a sentence out with a sentiment along the lines of "You obviously think that _____," delete that sentence. It's impossible to make accurate assumptions about that person on the other end of the intertubes, but you will always know what you yourself are thinking and feeling.
If you just have nothing to say, if they've riled you up, if you're angry or upset and just can't formulate a response, then literally put down: "Thank you for your input, I'll definitely give your thoughts consideration" and go drop kick some pillows.
Don't pass go, don't collect $200, don't bitch to a friend where somebody can come by and read it. Accept that there's a solid chance they've misunderstood you and you've misunderstood them and that every action may be exaggerated or influenced by the fact that you're both relatively anonymous and whatever you say to each other doesn't have the burden of real world consequences you have to live with behind it.
To restate the moral of this really long story: There is no reason ever to have an argument on the internet. There's not even a reason for a heated discussion. You always, in every single instance, have the time and freedom of choice to step away and that is almost unequivocally the right choice.
http://pics.livejournal.com/calicokat/pic/000z470r