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Early MCYTblr Interviews: ilyuqi

today's interviewee is ilyuqi, who joined both MCYTblr and dreamlying after quitting twitter. below, under the cut, is a transcript of their audio messages responding to the questions.

Q: You were on Twitter before you moved to Tumblr– was there a specific reason for that change?

A: Yes! I got canceled! (Haha, very funny). Yeah, that’s kind of the crux of it, I got canceled pretty hard (to a point where, even though I might have had a chance to maybe regain my reputation and continue using my stan account, I just didn’t want to at that point.) I’d already been in so much drama before that (some warranted, some unwarranted), for example one of the things that people got on me for was that I wasn’t Sapnap-focused enough on my twitter account, and there was just an element of responsibility I felt, harboring a stan account with that many followers, as pretentious as that sounds.

It was just no longer fun for me anymore. And now people were creating these multi-thousand-liked cancel threads against me citing my friendships with other people, and then also harboring real-life kind of things on me, for example, like, someone was accusing me of mlm fetishizing, and although I don’t think that’s the most serious accusation (Within the realm of internet discourse. Over the internet specifically, that’s a pretty “eh” thing to get canceled for), I just felt like – I was like, I didn’t do that, though! But I felt like my words were purposefully twisted and misinterpreted just because y’know, a lot of people also didn’t like me on that platform. So I just found it easier to go “yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and quit twitter, this isn’t fun for me anymore, the point of having a stan account is that, you know, I want to feel a part of a community” and I just didn’t feel that anymore, so I found it reasonable to just go ahead and like. Quit being a stan account.

I think I might've privately stanned them on, you know, private accounts for a while, but then I one day ended up randomly answering someone’s question about dreamlying on tumblr, and then that spiraled into me actually becoming a critblr account. I never really intended that to happen, I thought it would be a fun thing of answering a couple of asks, but then suddenly it was, like, hundreds of asks and I was just like “woah!”. If you scroll back far enough on my tumblr, you’ll see that this really was never supposed to be a critblr. Like, I think you can still find my essays about, like, y’know, Girl Meets World from 2017? 2018? I have no idea, there’s no concept of time. But what I’m getting at is that, you know, the shift– the getting off twitter was definitely intentional, but the shift to tumblr, it was kind of just events. Y’know? It just kind of happened, but the main reason I left twitter was because of the cancellation, and I guess it just ended up transitioning into me moving onto tumblr.

Q: What was your experience being in the “fringe” of MCYTblr?

A: My experience being on the fringe of Minecraft Youtube tumblr– I guess I should say that I didn’t really feel, like, a difference in my experience, which is illogical– I am perfectly aware of the fact that my blog and the community I participated in was very different from the minecraft youtube tumblr community as a whole.

But I guess because I was never a part of the [larger] minecraft youtube tumblr community in the first place, I didn't really feel that lack. So for me, being on critblr was just– for me, that was minecraft youtube tumblr, you know? And I think that’s a very unique experience. I think many critblr blogs had the experience of being on minecraft youtube tumblr and then transitioning into being critblr, but for me, it was just immediately critblr. I never had the “idolizing my content creators” stan period while I was on Tumblr– I say that in heavy quotes– I never had that on Tumblr, I had already done that on Twitter. So I think it resulted in me not feeling a difference, I was just like. “Yeah this is– critblr is minecraft youtube tumblr for me, this is the only context in which I would want to talk about minecraft youtube on tumblr”.

So I guess for me, my experience was just being on tumblr. I enjoyed answering the asks, I enjoyed making jokes, I was perfectly awake that sometimes I was saying crazy things, but for me it was just fun, so I just did it anyway. It should be noted that, for the majority of the time I had my blog, I think I was like sixteen, seventeen? So that might explain a lot of the stuff I said. But for me, again, it was normal. I did not feel a lack from being on critblr. For me, that was minecraft youtube tumblr.

Q: Were you ever harassed for being part of critblr?

A: I would say no. I never really felt harassed for being on critblr. At that point, I wasn't– like, my friends, they were all aware that I was on critblr, and none of them really had anything mean to say about it. At the time, those were the only opinions that mattered to me, so it was just kind of like. Eh.

I think if I received any harassment ever, I– I don’t even think I can count it as harassment, it was just people who disagreed with my opinions, and were like, “this is crazy of you to say”. And in hindsight, I'm sure I deserved some of it. But harassment? No. While I was on twitter, I had adults attempting to cyberstalk me, doxx me, create these insane cancel threads on me (all while I was like fifteen years old), and to me, that was harassment. I would see familiar faces popping up in my dms to send me gore, send me death threats. I never experienced anything like that on tumblr. I think probably the craziest thing that ever happened to me on tumblr was some friend of mine sending an ask littered with slurs because they were mad at a critblr opinion that i had. That's probably the craziest thing I've ever had happen to me. I’m not friends with that person anymore. But harassment? No. I don't think I ever really, you know, got harassment. I think I had people who definitely didn’t like me, but I don't think I would count that as harassment.

Q: Do you remember any specific discourse/drama from that time?

A: I will say that a majority of the really really old discourse stuff, I experienced through twitter, not tumblr. So for example, the “Dream Native American war cry” situation, the “r slur” stuff, the spreadsheet, those all came through twitter for me. I experienced those while being active on twitter.

The ones that I remember that I experienced through tumblr were specifically the “Dream kkk edit”, and then there was also an internal critblr affair where this account called mctruther or mcyttruth (I can’t remember, one of the two) made this giant callout post dedicated mostly towards Jason lmanburg. I remember this pretty vividly mainly because I wrote a callout, like, a response to the callout post, and uh, personally I found the post to be very silly. They were criticizing Jason and other people for using stuff like kiwifarms and being a part of ebblr, I think, and it was just very odd, and I didn't vibe with it. So I made a callout post, and I was just like “I don't agree with what you’re saying”.

But yeah, no, so personally the Dream kkk edit is what kind of made me go “okay, I don’t think I want to talk about Dream discourse anymore”. Because before this, for me, my critblr account was mostly dedicated to talking about the relationships that Dream had with his family, and George, and Sapnap, and other content creators, the internet in general– sometimes, I talked about Ranboo, and y’know like, what I thought his fans were doing for his face reveal? As in, y’know, they were hyping him up too much and he was getting visibly more and more insecure. But for Dream, you know, I think I was able to always maintain like, “yeah, I think he’s done a lot of shitty stuff in the past, but I think he’s perfectly capable of growth and learning, because he’s always owned up to his mistakes”, but the Dream kkk edit was one where he gave lies so quickly to try and cover his ass, and then gave this halfhearted apology in which he really rubbed me the wrong way.

I obviously had no problem saying this, obviously I’m going to find a kkk edit pretty despicable, but I had people in my inbox arguing with me whether or not a kkk edit is really a mark of someone being antisemitic, or racist. They even debated whether or not the edit itself was racist or not, and I just kind of had to take a step back cause I’m like, “C’mon guys, like, I think if this happened in real life, y’know, this would Not be the conversation occurring right now, but you guys are giving so much leeway to this, like, random white guy over the internet.’ Like, I don’t want to have to debate with people whether or not racism is real. I wanna talk about GeorgeNotFound’s visa, and I wanna talk about Ranboo’s face reveal! I don’t want to talk about like– I don’t want to try and convince you that racism is real, that is not what I want to do. That is very exhausting, honestly. Cause, like– I don’t know, it was just very disheartening to see this community go down that route. And I was just kinda like “Okay, no,” and I think I made a big post that was just like “Hey. I’m no longer going to address Dream’s controversies, because they seem to be going down a route where I'm going to have to defend things that I know to be true, basic things I know to be true, and I have to defend them like I'm already wrong. And I don’t wanna do that, that’s too much for me.'' So yeah, that’s kind of the biggest discourse that I remember from critblr from when I joined it.

Of course there were other things too, from the very very beginning. Like, I don’t know if any one of your interviews has talked about it, but misogynap was one of my favorite things on tumblr in 2020. Because like, I fully agreed, I was like yeah! Sapnap does give off misogynistic vibes! It’s really weird! And I vibed with that– but you could never say that on twitter.

I think what made me the angriest about this whole thing– there were tons of things that made me angry, y’know, I didn’t vibe with the argument that he was, like, 15 years old therefore he was a dumb fifteen-year-old. I was like okay, I've been fifteen, I've never done anything like that before. But what definitely pissed me off was the fact that he immediately tried to deny it, and I was like dude, c’mon. Like, these are some pretty serious allegations and accusations, and you just decided to deny them, and you’re like “Augh! It’s just my stupid antis!” and it’s like, no, you made that edit!

And then when he owned up to it, he basically said something along the lines of “some people grow up with kindness surrounding them… I was not, and I grew up with hate… and therefore, this is the byproduct of that :(“ and I– I dunno. I don’t wanna say I get what he’s saying, but I think that is an incredibly, incredibly privileged take, to be able to say that. Like, I grew up with hate, therefore I also started hating. There are plenty of people in this world surrounded by hate all the time, and they don’t grow up to do that kind of stuff. And the fact that Dream’s stans took that and they were like, “oh my god he’s such a good person, I love that he apologized so well!” I was just kinda like guys. Come on, like this is a white guy being like “It’s just not my fault, it’s not my fault that I was so freakin racist as a kid! It’s just not my fault!”. Like, we’re all capable of making choices. Sorry. Sorry, does that sound too harsh? I’m sorry.

But that definitely was kind of my breaking point, to be like “Yup! I’m not gonna be debating dream controversies anymore, because if this is the kind of person he is, this isn’t someone I want to playfully speculate on. This is some serious stuff, this is not my forte, no.”

Q: How do you feel that the overall culture and in-jokes of critblr differed from “main” MCYTblr?

A: Like I've said before, I don't know if I'm the best person to make the differentiation between main mcytblr and critblr, only because I never felt the difference because I jumped right into critblr. Even before, in like 2020 when I was a lurker, I was lurking on georgeeehd’s blog, wormweeb’s blog, etc etc. I never really interacted with normal minecraft youtube tumblr. I guess maybe the closest I might've gotten to that is endercores? But we actually ended up meeting over twitter, and that’s where we became friends, we never really interacted on tumblr. So honestly, I don't know if I'm the best person to ask that question.

I just kind of would say that, going off of vibes alone, it’s that critblr was a lot more okay with poking fun at content creators for their jokes and making jokes at their expense, while main mcytblr jokes definitely lined up with more traditional stan culture, praising and uplifting their CCs. That’s kind of the most basic generalization I can give, but I personally would have no interactions to give you in main mcytblr.

Q: Similarly, how do you think the culture of MCYT tumblr differed from MCYT twitter?

A: So this is something I can definitely give you a lot on, the difference between minecraft twitter and tumblr. I think that the main difference between the jokes and the culture, honestly, between twitter and tumblr, was in direct correlation with the fact that the content creators being discussed were on twitter, but weren’t on tumblr.

On twitter, you were faced with the possibility that these men might respond to your tweets at any time. You might make a harmless joke, but they might come after you for it. You might give valid criticism that’s meant to be shared amongst stans as kind of like a thinkpiece, you know, like “what do we think of this?” and you could get the men themselves in your replies, and completely change the trajectory of how that post was supposed to be taken. I have direct experience with this, so I can tell you firsthand, there were times where I made tweets and I had people kind of going like “Yeah, I do agree with you, I do agree with that!’ and then Dream (or whoever) replies, and they immediately go “oh, that’s so true Dream! Good job Dream! Yeah, yeah, yeah!” and I’m like guys, c’mon. Come on. You know? It was like that for me.

But on tumblr, you really didn’t have to fear that! You knew that your post was going to remain in stan circles. Back then, I barely remember anyone screenshotting from tumblr to take onto twitter– I don’t remember that happening very often. I know it happened, just not very often. So you could really say whatever you wanted on tumblr, and not be absolutely crucified for it. For example, misogynap! Like, people were just calling Sapnap a casual misogynist on tumblr, and no one got in trouble for it. But, on twitter, Sapnap got super offended at someone saying “Eh, I think Sapnap might smell like cheetos and weed!” and he actually went through the process of making sure all of his friends blocked that one specific person, just because they said “Eh, I think Sapnap smells like cheetos and weed.”

So there was a very very different culture. They kind of made it so that twitter had to have that stan, like, idolization going for them, because if you didn’t, if you made jokes at their expense, they would come for you and they would get their stans on you, and you had to just pray that they also see what you said as a joke, otherwise they’re gonna pounce on you, too. I don’t know. I think that’s probably the biggest difference, the fact that the content creators were on twitter and not tumblr changed a lot of how you could make jokes and how you could act on those platforms. I don’t know, you can take that however you’d like.

Q: Looking back, a large amount of 2021 critblr culture revolved around doxxing and sharing personal information– what was that like? What’s your current perspective on it, looking back?

A: So, doxxing. Very interesting topic. I guess what I first want to start out with is: do I want to call it doxxing? No, probably not. I don’t think what anyone (or at least, what I saw anyone doing) was doxxing, or would be ever considered doxxing. I think if you really wanted to put a label on it, you could say “being invasive”. But is that illegal, or a crime? No, it’s not. Everything that I know that people found was just, you know, public information on the internet, and it wasn’t obtained via illegal means, no one was hacking into bank records, no one was– [laughs] I don't know, stealing house papers? This was all just stuff that was online, available for the public to see. You just had to know how to find it.

I would say for a while there– this was not on tumblr, this was on twitter– there was almost a competitive aspect to it, to see who could find what, but this was very strictly on twitter. This was– or, at least in my experience, this was on twitter. But on tumblr, it was just kind of like “Eh, if you know, you know”. Y’know? Like, it’s not like anyone’s making these blogs, and they’re like, uploading bios of Dream, George, and Sapnap, and have their addresses, and like their parents’ names and everything, it was just kind of like “if you know, you know”.

I guess the big thing is like, do you regret it, how do you see it looking back. And while I can say “Y’know, probably not the best thing for a bunch of teenagers to be doing in their spare time”, I cannot say that I fully regret it, because these are men who are known to take the fact, like– known to take people’s lack of information and twist it and try to use that lack of information in their best interests.

To kind of give you a feel of what I’m trying to say, think about Manatreed, right? That was a straight up abuser that Dream was housing and trying to platform onto the dream smp, which is a fandom composed of mostly minors and mostly teenage girls. Dream tried to do that! Dream might have gotten away with it, if people did not dig into his life and figure out who Manatreed was, and therefore figure out what this guy had done in the past, and then been able to put pressure on Dream for it. I cannot see something like that and say “Ooh, but being invasive is bad!” Like, I don’t know, I don’t wanna say they brought it upon themselves, because that’s a bit much, but at the same time, what would have happened if people hadn’t doxxed them? Manatreed would have just been on the SMP forever, like, no one would have known that! That’s kind of scary to think about. Like, in a way, yeah, sometimes things like that are important. And you know, again, everything was found through perfectly legal means, nothing was done illegally, and at the end of the day, the Dream SMP was free of an abuser. (In the end, considering recent events, does that really matter? Since half of the Dream SMP were all, like, abusers or allowed abuse to continue? Whatever– we’re not gonna talk about that.)

But you get what I'm saying. I can’t look at a situation like that and say “Yeah, I regret like, doxxing or being a part of that community”. Cause at the end of the day, these men were hiding a lot of things, and they would have gotten away with a lot more if people weren’t so… I don't wanna say vigilant, but you know what I mean? I feel like you understand what I’m trying to say here. There was definitely an element of necessity, when it came to situations like those.

Q: Which criticisms do you think hold up? Which didn’t?

A: There is one criticism that I think has held up very very well, and it’s the fact that I believe that Dream is no longer going to change his behavior or make any real efforts to become a better person from his last mistake, because he has no real reason to. Because he now has stans that will enable and back him up through basically anything. There have been– I mean, I stand by that. I totally stand by that. He is able to basically do anything and kind of be untouchable for it.

Even when the grooming accusations were going on, and the Gumball beef was going on, and most of the internet hated him, he still had stans backing him up. And those exact stans are the reason he was able to come back onto twitter, and now has his platform again, and people praise him and say like “Yeah, yada yada, Dream made a response video,” when that response video really did nothing! It was genuinely nothing, it was just a bunch of– like, he just talked into the mic for two hours. He didn’t prove or disprove anything for me. For me, it was just like, okay? You’ve given me nothing here. The thing is, though, his stans will take it, they will enable him basically through anything. And when you have people that, even at your worst, still see you as being the best, why would you want to change? Why would you feel the need to put in the effort to change your behavior if the people that give you your money don’t care about that, you know?

So that’s something I still stand by, that Dream isn’t going to change anymore, even if he says that he is, it’s going to be very disingenuous. Because at the end of the day, he knows he has stans backing him up. He has no personal gain in changing, and therefore, he won’t.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add, or have archived on the blog?

A: I’ll say that I joined dreamlying in August of 2020, so a few months after it was created. I would say that it’s definitely insane to me that dreamlying has managed to keep its infamous status in the minecraft youtube sphere, just because we are all so vastly different from when it first began. So to see people still refer to us that way is just a little insane. I don’t even know if I’m really included in the “us” cause again, I joined a little bit late, but to me– that’s the thing, though! I think when other people think of dream lying, they think of these massive critblr blogs, but when I think of dreamlying I’m like, “these are the guys that I do movie night with”. Like, “haha these are my best friends”. You know?

That’s another thing, I think people were genuinely surprised to find out that we were a friend group. Like, yes? [laughs] These are people that I genuinely love spending time with, and not in the context of minecraft youtuber-ing, it’s just like– yeah, these are my friends, and I love them dearly! And I don’t wanna get all like [various noises conveying sappiness] but these are my friends, that’s kind of how I see them. My experience as a member, like, boils down to “these are my friends! I did stuff with them that I would do with any other of my friends!” And I think it’s like a weird concept to people, because again, they view dreamlying as this kind of– they regard dreamlying with a lot of mystique, but then me, it’s just “friends :D”. “My friends, awesome friends”. I don’t know, I don’t think I’m very good at being articulate about, like, being perceived and how people perceive other people, but I guess the only word I could really use is just “insane”, that dreamlying has continued to keep its reputation, even after four years.

#waaaahhh 🥹🥹

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gayminecraftmen · 1 month

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When every dreamlying members interview has been posted we will release a comprehensive list of every single dox we ever did #JOKE #LYING #FIBBING #HUMOR

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gayminecraftmen · 1 month

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Early MCYTblr Interviews: georgesoot

today's interviewee is georgesoot/dreamwasfound, who, in his words, "emerged from the senior living center to tell all". under the readmore is a transcript if the questions and answers.

Q: What was, in broad terms, your experience in MCYTblr? Are there any experiences/events that stand out to you?

A: Well it was primarily an outlet to channel all my obnoxious thoughts about Minecraft at the time. I had started watching Minecraft videos during the Pandemic, and came across [they who shall not be mentioned] and noticed there wasn't really a community on Tumblr yet. I just knew that someone had to show up and make it gay. It was easy to slot myself in, start making posts that I will never understand how I thought they would be funny, and slowly built up some sort of a following due to my sense of humor but also due to my ability to soberly ~critique~ the Minecraft Men as content creators, micro-celebrities, and as people. I never really fell into niches or was much aware of what other people were doing, until I was kind of folded into this idea of Dream Lying. I don't mean to sound self obsessed but I didn't really care about anything beyond my immediate sphere of friends?

For instance, you mention with other interviewees the Elections. I did not pay attention to those for a single second. I do remember we were saying "stop the count!" because we thought Georgeeehd should have won. And I dubbed Wormweeb the Prime Minister of Mcytblr, but I don't even remember who was running? Or why this even happened?

But as for other events, if they were funny or I could wring something out of them, I do remember them. For example, the mass migration of Kpoppies to Tumblr after it was suddenly "legal" to ship content creators. That compltely shifted the "culture" if it can be called that. I remember all the fake stan accounts, but I never attempted to interact with them. Obviously I remember the Tapeworm post, all the Discourse, the Controversies, how I was able to get hundreds of notes by summarizing events of the DreamSMP, my great shame in life.

But yes, most of the time, I was not there to take things too seriously.

Q: More specifically, what was your experience being in Dream Lying/early critblr? Do you think your experience differed from “main” MCYTblr?

A: As for my experience in what has been dubbed Critblr, well I've been credited with helping to start that whole movement. I think it's funny, because truly the kind of reaction to [censored]'s warcry scandal just wouldn't play out today the way it did back then. But I think it's a function of being an adult, that I could look at [censored] not as an idol, like at all whatsoever. It's easy to swept up in the emotions of things. But as a veteran of Discourseblr, and multiple fandoms, I could see through [censored]'s lack of media training and awareness of the average center left teenage perspective on these issues like it was wet tissue paper. People were mad at for that, but I didn't care what people thought of me.

Maybe by coincidence the other members of Dream Lying also had similar worldviews to mine. Everyone could look past the stanning of it all and recognize when something "canceallable" occurred and discuss it frankly and succinctly. Well I couldn't discuss it succinctly but others could. So to answer your question, yes it was a different experience from the rest of the "community." And it got to the point that it wasn't just "holding creators to account" it became fun. It was fun being the buzzkill in an ironic sense, and also fun in an unhinged way to just create these ludicrous scenarios of [censored] the Young Republican cornering you in the hallway and asking you so how does gay sex work actually though? And again, shipping was a component of this too.

And we turned out to be right. At the risk of sounding arrogant, this will become a theme.

Q: In previous interviews with DLying members, we’ve discussed that misinformation/in-jokes were a big part of the culture, one of them being that Dream sued you for libel. Do you remember any others? Did you expect so many people to believe you?

A: As I mentioned, I didn't take things too seriously. I enjoyed doing a little light trolling, such as when I infiltrated a [censored] stan tumblr server and showed everyone his dogs, and then reveled in the drama of them acting like I killed their families. People also turned on me because I abandoned The Ship for a ship that comprises of two… perpetrators of sexual misconduct as of March 2024, though that would also be true of the Popular Ship as well.

Anyway my personal computer died sometime in early 2021, so I, as is per the usual for my personality, made it into a joke because it really was quite stressful. I mentioned to Reese Georgeeehd and Ozzie ohge0rge (sp?) that [censored] must've sent a virus to kill my harddrive. This evolved into [censored]'s legal team sending me a cease and desist letter, as I'm sure I was being extra ~critical~ on Tumblr at the time.

They asked if they could make that The Official Narrative. I cautioned against it, it leaked anyway, because their "Private Twitters" had hundreds of followers, and this enabled this joke to become a full fledged rumor. And then my "ops" as the kids call them, got wind of this too. Most didn't believe it, but some had this "If it did happen GOOD!" attitude.

But some other examples… let me think. We did try to heavily imply that Ranboo was a former member of our organization. We rarely outright lied about the creators, but we did usually distort or exaggerate things when it came to us, for comedic effect. Frequently someone will say to me "Oh so and so mentioned you again," and my go-to answer is always "Tell them I got hit by a bus," or "Tell them I'm withering away from my dementia in the nursing home."

I did not expect people to believe me, because I did not spread the rumor because I had completely disappeared from the "public" by that point. I purposefully devised a very unrealistic joke in the first place, so I really don't know who would believe that. Especially since I was known to be friends and enemies with doxxers, who could find that information out if it existed.

Like the thought of [censored] being so hurt by a single anonymous loser calling him a Trump supporter and a bad voice actor and someone who was going to hold his British friend captive in his basement and force him to go on a keto diet to the point that he starves to death, or that he had offshore bank accounts to evade Taxes, or that he paid his brother to be his body double (this turned out to be true), that he was pretending to be bisexual for clout, that he had 100% cheated on his speedrun (also turned out to be true), that he had enslaved his mother as his maid, that he and his other friend from Texas would engage in a little frottage as bros do… well the list is endless. But the thought of him being so offended that he gets his lawyer, whom he pays, to send me a cease and desist letter… well it's one of the few things I came up with that was actually funny.

Uh but no, anyone with a healthy attachment to reality would never believe that.

Q: I understand that you were also in EBblr and its surrounding communities. What was that like?

A: I was never in ebblr… all I did was watch a few Tubbo streams, realize that he was probably gay, and I was right. Because what do you expect at this point?

I pointed out publicly that Tubbo and Ranboo were engaging in some light queerbait, except that they were obviously both queer. The point was I thought they (or at least Tubbo) were trying to engineer a New [censored], because that gets you attention which gets you money… like Kaceytron was right about everything? In these spaces, being Queer is a commodity. But I'm letting the point get away from me.

In private, I mostly reacted with bemusement, and we did have some genuine enderbabies, as I called them (mostly derisively), in our server, who took it all so literally and that it was so kawaii desu. I thought it was cringe. Like, Tubbo pretending to be coy and saying Ranboo's foot was bigger than his forearm. That took me RIGHT back to my days as a cringy 19yo baby gay trying to flirt. Oh I'm getting embarrassed thinking about it. But there were a few moments that Tubbo and Ranboo manufactured together that I thought were pretty cute and wholesome.

On the whole, I'm still confused as to why I'm included in this sub-community. I approached Enderbees as a marketing thing, or something of the sort. I never read fics, I never looked at art, I never really cared. I especially didn't care about their "characters" on the SMP, which also set me apart from the genuine unironic shippers. Some thought this was worse than shipping because I was committing that dreaded cardinal sin: speculating on CC's sexualities.

And yes, I popularized the word Truthing in this context. I explicitly modeled it after 9/11 Truthers, because the JOKE (hi remember none of this was meant to be too serious) was that we were deranged conspiracists who were probably best kept away from normal society.

Q: Is it odd to be regarded as infamous within the MCYTblr niche?

A: No it's not odd, I at least partially strove for infamy. Any attention gratifies the ego after all, not just postitive attention. Then there was the absurdity of it all. Here I was, in the Pandemic, having multiple degrees, looking for jobs, getting a job, going to work, paying taxes, and theater kids in high school were probably drawing devil horns on my pfp and throwing knives at it. All because I said everything I said about [censored], or "speculated" that Technoblade was gay because he had drama kid energy, or called Tommy annoying that one time in 2020, or babied [censored] too much. There's really no end to the list of nonsense I was spewing.

And I'd argue that I'm not infamous. Gayminecraftmen had to tell me about your blog and your interviews. I'm doing this because my friends think it would be funny. And the Drama of Georgesoot emerging from the senior living center to tell all is the kind of stupid humor I like. But aside from this, I haven't thought about Minecraft in a while. I have to be spoonfed lore about these annoying content creators who don't even make content anymore. Anything I learn about the "community" now is against my will.

At the time, maybe I was infamous, but now? I don't care. To even dignify my "infamy" would be to admit that Minecraft Youtube is even relevant anymore. How pathetic! I just filed my taxes and got an oil change last week. Me and the homies are having Dune watch parties and writing elaborate screenplays for Timothee Chalamet to star in in our heads (shout out to Ciara). To reminisce on my Tumblr infamy for a community of mostly teenagers about Content Creators who made content for said teenagers and later preyed on those teenagers… is so opposite from the adult problems and adult interest I have. Not to be condescending but that's just how it is!

Q: What are some common creator criticisms that you remember from 2020-2021? Do you still stand by them?

A: The common criticisms have held up in my opinion. [censored] and [censored] were queerbaiting. [censored] was cultivating an audience of loyal vulnerable teenagers and he took advantage. So did [censored]. And [censored] who literally bites people? Oh… okay then.

Dream Lying was right about [censored]'s friend whom he invited into his home and whom he tried to gift a career, only to be outed as an abuser. We were right about [censored] coming from not just a conservative background, but a bigoted one, one that he refused to actually grapple with. We were right about MCC being rigged. We were right about the cheating scandal. We were right about so many things.

The only thing I was definitely wrong about was the [censored] really did hop off the plane at LAX with a dream and a cardigan. I thought he for sure would just put off the [censored] team hype house meetup forever. My psychic powers don't always work I guess. That wasn't a criticism though, just my coping. Oh and I was wrong that Ranboo was an industry plant, but I was right that he's annoying and has no talent. And Dream Lying said from day one that Tubbo and Ranboo's little relationship would not last the summer and we were right! In fact during that whole thing I also speculated that Tommy would start queerbaiting and then he did! I felt like Cassandra at times.

Anyway back to the point. I mean the criticisms of [censored] were just all encompassing, and basically stemmed from the fact that he was like all these video game boys- a white man from a republican household who was not properly media trained because Streaming is not a real industry career and none of them were prepared for fame. And that has borne out over and over again. They all have shady pasts, they all abuse their fame and take advantage of fans. So I do stand by these criticisms.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to speak on or have archived?

A: Not really, I've already said far too much, so apologies to whoever edits these, I hope you enjoy the novel I wrote for you. I don't know, I have dementia, none of this is real. Karlarmy forever. Also who even knows if I'm the real Georgesoot.

#Gwampa :D #Really good one he remembers far more than I do

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gayminecraftmen · 1 month

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Early MCYTblr Interviews: wormweeb

our interviewee today is @wormweeb, author of the cowboy au, nominee in the 2020 MCYTblr election, and overall MCYTblr veteran. below is a transcript of the questions and answers!

Q: What do you remember most fondly about “Early MCYTblr”? (2020-2021)

A: I think early mcytblr had the perfect mix of being an insular, small community with enough people actually posting (whether it be shitposts, art, fix, etc.) to keep the community alive. Perfect reblogger-creator ratio, I think. I loved seeing the familiar notifications from blogs that frequently RBed my stuff and familiar Urls in the tags (which I probably checked daily lol). There was this infectious energy that made being in the fandom so fun, with all the inside jokes and interactions and inter-blog familiarity.

Q: Do you recall your experience in the first MCYTblr election? What was it like?

A: Honestly, there was a lot of anxiety. I didn’t have many friends in the fandom in the sense that I didn’t often DM with people or talk in discord servers. I was kind of reclusive, so having to reach out to find running mates was nerve-racking! And then being thrust into a huge discord server with a bunch of other people I didn’t really know at all… It was all bizarrely anxiety-inducing. I didn’t really care about the results that much, since it was kind just a popularity contest (no hate, just true). I think the elections were cute and fun, another sort of fandom activity that I think only could’ve worked in an insular but involved fandom.

Q: Building off the last question– in my time archiving, I’ve seen people both hold you in high regard and condemn your blog wholesale. Is it odd to be talked about as a pseudo-historical figure in MCYTblr culture?

A: It’s mind-boggling! When I did all my posting as wormweeb, roughly July 2020 to august 2021, I was 16/17 and literally never left my house due to quarantine. It’s bizarre to think I was influential in that microcosm of a fandom, because I was truthfully just Some Guy irl. It was weird to see the extremes of how people treated me, with some users (much younger than me, I should add) treating me like a cc, with other people acting like I was a toxic supervillain.

At the time, I was deeply concerned with my image in the fandom. I reveled in the shocked reactions to some of my more… avant guard posts… but I was also really bothered when people talked badly about me. I wanted to be liked and popular, but I also wanted to be shocking and critical. I had contradictory motivations behind my posting, which I probably lead to such polarized reactions to my presence in the fandom.

Ultimately, I think it’s super interesting to see how people talk about me — whether they remember me as ‘that one crazy truthing blog’ or the cowboy au author or a proto-critblr poster or a toxic bad takes poster, etc. I don’t take any of it too personally any more, thankfully.

Q: Do you think that MCYTblr’s cultural shift away from crit and ‘truthing’ has been an overall good or bad thing?

A: I can’t really say. I think it’s natural that as a fandom expands, the most palatable takes will become the dominant ones, and any unpopular criticism / trutherisms will be pushed to the fringe. I can see why some people thought criticism was toxic and truthing was intrusive, but truthfully, I don’t think it reflected any poster’s moral character. I’m not involved in mcytblr anymore, so I don’t know exactly what the state of the current fandom looks like.

Q: Do you ever find yourself missing 2020-2021 MCYTblr? If so, what do you miss the most?

A: I often do miss that era of my life. Truthfully, I miss the attention and (infinitesimally small, microcosmic) cultural import I had. There was an exciting thrill that came with getting notifications every second of the day — that’s not an exaggeration either. I liked having people leave deranged asks in my ask box, or ask my opinion on some random streamer micro controversy, or people asking me when the next chapter of my fanfic would come out (lol). I, of course, miss the other elements of being in an active fandom — the fanfics, the fan artists, the familiarity between blogs,

However… I also know I was mentally unhealthy during that time. I was isolated, so it was fun and exciting to be an ultra-micro celebrity, but at the same time, I took it way too seriously. Because I painted myself as some sort of moral guardian, the great Intellectual Critiquer of content creators, I was terrified to make any bad takes… which, ironically, I made a lot of. I had painted myself into a corner both being dteam critical and (unfortunately) a genuine dteam stan at the time.

Q: Several in-jokes have lost their context (jewge, ancap dream, tradwife george/dream, homophobic dream and sapnap, republican dream, mega milk sapnap/george, etc). Would you like to provide their context, for archival and media literacy purposes?

A: Here’s a rundown for all of them!

“Jewge” was actually sparked by warpedfungusonastick, which I helped popularized. There are a few old videos where George’s friends called him jewge, and that combined with his ashkenazi last name led me to speculate he was jewish — for what its worth, im also jewish. Unfortunately, I think those videos of baby jewge have been lost to time. But nonetheless, that spawned a mini-jewge fandom, which jewge fanart!

Tradwife George and dream… I don’t know even know. I think the idea of “male wives” was trending on general Tumblr at the time. There was already this fandom idea of Dream being a “needy top” and George being the sugar baby/bitchy/uninterested love interest, which I just transplanted onto the idea of tradwifery. Dream as the doting tradwife, George as the unloving tradwife, etc.

Republican/Anarcho-capitalist dream — Ah, this one is kind of embarrassing!! I was really into jreg, and I was, for the first time ever, exposed to political ideas outside of the generic democrat vs republican dichotomy. I was really fascinated by right-wing libertarian or “ancap” ideology, and I already saw dream as a kind of self-made capitalist success story. At least, that’s what he portrayed himself as. My critique of dream and calling him ancap/republican was kind of a baby’s first leftism moment for me… but I nonetheless think the jokes were mostly funny.

Homophobic dream / sapnap — They gave me republican vibes. Dream especially, with some of his older, unsavory tweets, reeked of edgy gamergate humor.

Megamilk sapnap — I didn’t really pioneer this one! I believe this was mostly a Tumblr user who I think was pandascanpvp, or it was Plates gayminecraftmen (or both).

I’ll use this opportunity to catalogue a few more obscure wormweeb-pioneered AUs.

Homestuck au! I think I imagined it as dream = dirk, George = Jake English. Colournotfound (rip gone but not forgotten) did so much of the sustaining of the au.

Scott Pilgrim au. Dream = Scott, George = Ramona. Fundy = envy. This one got fan art!

Q: What was your physical, mental, and emotional reaction when kaceytron pulled up your crit post on stream?

A: Baffled. Excited. God, I wish I had clipped it! I still have a screenshot. I desperately hoped she would read it to dream (who joined the stream later). That felt like I had peaked as a cc stan blog… having a C-list streamer pull up my post on stream. Literally google searching “dream queer baiting” because she didn’t even know what she was accusing him of, or how to support her argument.

Q: Is there anything else you particularly want to share or talk about?

A: I was just want to say that although I don’t watch or support any member of the dteam any more, I still am proud of the cowboy au. It’s kind of a relic of the time (especially the gnf and Maya mxmtoon stuff). The general response to the fanfiction was… wow!! Everyone who commented on that fanfiction was so exceedingly kind. People even drew fan art. I am still happy to have written something that, despite the inherent cringeness of it, positively affected so many people.

#WOOHOOOO WORMWEEB MY FRIEND WORMWEEB!!!#i share a lot of these sentiments especially when it comes to the sort of high of getting notifications constantly #etc etc

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gayminecraftmen · 1 month

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Honestly I see a lot of people getting upset at Dream for mentioning he’s of Native American descent because “he’s white”

and uh

you don’t know that.

I feel like people just assuming he’s unreasonably exaggerating by mentioning he’s of native descent are making some pretty big assumptions here. Like. Cause they have his entire family tree printed out on a piece of paper right in front of them and know exactly what percentage native he is and are the ultimate judge on at what point your native blood stops counting I guess? Like? First off show me the definitive number- the exact generation at which someone’s ancestory stops counting (my mom is like 1/16th germen and she still talks about her german ancestory i feel like putting an exact number on at what point you need to stop talking about certain direct ancestors is a little weird anyway.) And second off, show me the proof of exactly how native he is. Show me the dna test you got done on Dream. Show me your print out of his entire family tree. Show me literally anything except “his hand pale” please (and by the way, he spends like all his time inside and people’s hands tend to be very pale, often even compared to the rest of their bodies, so even then we don’t actually know what his complexion is??)

Look at this picture of a woman who’s half native

She’s literally paler than Dream is, you can’t just go off of how pale someone is and decide they’re probably being racist by saying they’re of a certain descent.

People being white passing- or even mostly white genetically- doesn’t mean they don’t have a right to be in touch with direct ancestors and their family heritage?And. Like. Even if you are one of those people who are like “after ¼ or 1/6 or 1/8 (or whatever number you think is the limit at which people’s heritage stops counting) then you can’t talk about that part of your family” you don’t fucking know how Native Dream is? Because he’s pale? He’s tanner than the woman I showed above who is HALF Native. Even if you’re putting a limit on how many generations in actually ‘count’ you have zero clue if he’s even failing to meet your perimeters because for all you know he could be half native or a quarter native, which I don’t think anyone would say isn’t actually native.

And I mean, I get why, from the way he’s described himself, people would assume he’s white, obviously (dirty blonde hair, freckles, green eyes?) but like. Genetics are weird and messy and look at these twins, both of them have the exact same parents, the same possible genetics, just deciding that someone’s probably lying about their ancestry because of how they look is ludicrous because genetics are fucking crazy.

I mean I get why his description sounds like he’s white, right? But then when he says he’s of Native descent fucking believe him because genetics are weird and you have zero room to judge, especially when you don’t know AT ALL to what extent he’s actually Native.

I also saw some people saying “Well clearly he isn’t native enough because anyone who’s really native would have known the war cry thing was offensive and only white people can be ignorant like that”. And like? I disagree? He didn’t know the r word was offensive either, does that mean his literal diagnosis of adhd no longer exists and he’s somehow neurotypical? People can be in a community and not be educated on what is/isn’t offensive to those communities.

Overall, I feel like a lot of people who automatically talk about how “he’s super white and obviously not native at all and him saying he’s native is a lie/exaggeration” or even worse “he needs to tell all 11 million of his subscribers exactly how native he is and we’ll be the judge of weather or not he counts!” are being fucking ridiculous. When someone tells you something about them, believe them. I see a lot of people accusing him of queerbaiting because he’s very blatantly questioning his sexuality and demand an answer right here and now on what exactly his sexual orientation is so they know weather or not to crucify him, I see a lot of people who are angry that he didn’t tell us sooner that he was neurodivergent or are assuming he’s LYING about having adhd now, and, well, I see a lot of people who are demanding to know just how native he is or who are insisting loudly that there’s no way he actually ‘counts’ as being native. And. IT’S NONE OF OUR FUCKING BUSINESS. He isn’t obligated to give us an answer on his sexuality, he’s obviously questioning, let him figure it out, assholes. He didn’t feel comfortable telling us he had adhd until now, that’s fine, let neurodivergent people share their diagnosis only if/when they’re okay doing so. And, well, he doesn’t have to give us a detailed report on his dna structure so we can all decide if he’s native enough for our tastes. Fuck off.

#THIS FUCKING POST

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gayminecraftmen · 2 months

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Early MCYTblr Interviews: gayminecraftmen

today's interviewee is @gayminecraftmen, a mcytblr veteran and member of dreamlying! below is a transcript of the questions and answers, today under a readmore for your scrolling convenience.

Q: What, to the best of your recollection, was your experience in early MCYTblr?

A: This is going to be very longwinded - I would say that I had a pretty unique experience during that time. I joined in early July of 2020 after being inspired by georgeeehd/tommyofcolor/lmanburg - all the same person, Reese's blog. Can't for the life of me remember what his first url was. I got my kickstart in the fandom through him, I started out as one of his anons and when I decided to make a blog of my own he gave me a shoutout. The dream team fandom was still very small at the time, so i'd say a lot of my "popularity" was only because I was one of the firsts. There was nothing truly special about what I was posting at the start of my blog, it was basically all dnf. This eventually went hand in hand with truthing, the thing I'm sure most people remember me for, and something I'll go into more detail on later.

Now, as for the more unique aspect of my time; I never looked at my dashboard. I mean, I didn't need to! All I ever needed to do was look at my notifications and people were feeding me information about what was happening in the fandom. I was 15 during my time in mcytblr, I had no real interest in building a community in the fandom if the community was seemingly being built around me. I felt like a celebrity, people in my ask box were concerningly parasocial towards me - I've got some old screenshots of asks that still creep me out a bit. It was all a huge unhealthy ego boost that made me very manic at times. Anyway - because I rarely even checked other people's blogs at the time, I'm a pretty unreliable source when it comes to anything but my own experience. I ended up deactivating on March 13th 2021 because I hadn't been genuinely into mcyt since.. I want to say October or even September of 2020 and my blog had been losing traction since the start of 2021. It just wasn't fun for me anymore.

Q: What was the general fandom attitude towards creators? More specifically, has the attitude around "boundaries" evolved since then?

A: Like I said I can't really speak on the general fandom, but I can say that in my circle the general concensus was "they're celebrities, they'll never see us, who cares?" I mean, it was tumblr, there were no creators around to see us talk about them. There was truly no worry of any consequences. For my truthing circle specifically, if you saw gay, you said gay. Later on down the line I realized that no, dream and george are not planning their honeymoon in Barcelona, but it ended up being funnier to continue the bit than denounce it altogether.

Q: I recall that you were part of "dreamlying". What was that like? (and, as an aside; is it odd to be considered infamous within a tumblr fan community?)

A: Dreamlying was, and still is, just a friend group. That's literally it. Yes, it's a friend group infamous for doxxing, and truthing, and starting a number of rumors, but still, it's not like we were constantly scheming the next big heist. You can find a number of posts detailing the origins of our group on roxytonic's blog, all conveniently tagged as "#dreamlying" so I won't get into all that at the risk of being redundant. And yes, it's incredibly weird to me that people still consider us to be infamous. Myself, especially as I actually only had a bit over 500 followers. (granted, I am aware that many people checked my blog without following and even more had me blocked). I think my least favorite part about it all is all the lies that other people tell about us. Like, while going through your blog I saw a post where someone had said I was the one who wrote the SBI crit post, a post i hadn't even known existed until I saw you talking about it! As far as I know, whoever wrote that post never had anything to do with dreamlying, and they certainly weren't a member at any point. Yes, we are partially to blame for spreading a bunch of lies about ourselves for fun, but to see just how much that spiraled out of our hands is astounding.

Q: Are there any specific dramas/discourse that you remember from the "dreamlying" era?

A: The dreamlying hijink that I think is the most infamous was the leaking of the fact that dream wasn't registered to vote. This was veeerry early on, and wasn't even a group effort, (as far as I remember nothing pertaining to doxxing ever was. It was usually just one member going off on an internet excursion on their own and sharing with the class as they went). I don't even think dreamlying had even been formed yet, or it was incredibly early. Either way, that can be attributed to Reese, as I'm sure many people remember. Finding this out was as simple as going into Florida's voting records and searching up Dream's name, something that had been doxxed by others beforehand. Frankly, I still don't understand why this was such a big deal to people.

My personal favorite dreamlying happenings were the more absurd rumors that we had started. My personal favorite being that dream's legal team sent a cease and desist to dreamwasfound/georgesoot for defamation of character, which was what we told people was the reason for his deactivation. It's insane to me that anyone ever believed that for even a second. Another favorite, one that never really caught on with the public, was that Ranboo was an ex member of dreamlying. That one was never stated outright but I remember a few subtle hints being thrown out. Sadly, I don't think anyone took the bait on that one.

Q: Moving on from dreamlying-- you mentioned being part of "ebblr" [enderbees tumblr]. Was that different from your experience in previous fringe communities?

A: Not to stroke my own ego, but I do think I had a large part in the creation of ebblr. A lot of the larger ebblr bloggers were my anons at one point. I would say the main difference in my time discussing enderbees, was that I never watched a single tubbo or ranboo stream. Every single piece of information that I had to go off of was sent to me through asks. I barely made any original posts on the topic, again mostly just responding to asks. I remember when people were first trying to think of a name for the ship, I jokingly proposed the name "boobees." I got sent death threats for that.

Q: What do you remember from that time?

A: The enderbees timeline is endlessly hilarious to me. I can't remember all of the specifics but I do recall there being a decently specific timeline of their relationship that people agreed upon. What I remember the most though was when Ranboo came to live with Tubbo for awhile on a visa (unrelated: I believe there was also serious talk of him committing tax fraud with said visa). At the point of the visit, people were already convinced they were dating. It seemed that Ranboo was a pretty ungrateful guest and I believe he ended up leaving early. That's when people started theorizing the breakup. It was later revealed on a stream that Tubbo had Ranboo muted on twitter - this really cemented things. I think people even outside of ebblr could see that their relationship was rocky after that trip, they weren't doing streams together much at all and their friend groups seemed to divide. Again, all of this information was fed to me secondhand, so I may be missing a few beats or be hyperbolizing some things, but this is how it seemed to me as far as I can remember.

Q: Is there anything else you'd like to speak on/about?

A: Don't believe anything about dreamlying that doesn't come directly from a member's mouth (roxytonic's blog being an outlier in this case). Second-hand accounts are essentially useless here, considering how much we lied, or "poisoned the well" as roxy put it. So, unless you're specifically looking to gather information on how we were percieved, most of what you're gonna find on us is simply untrue. If anyone happens to be reading this interview and has more questions, I am probably open to answering them as long as they aren't too prying! My inbox on gayminecraftmen is always open, and I really do love talking about my experiences in this fandom.

#hehe yaaay!! i had so much fun with this!!!

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gayminecraftmen · 2 months

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only @sootytub knows the context but context might be worse

#interesting to see this post now

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gayminecraftmen · 2 months

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i exploit male friendship to propel my sick twisted fantasy

#iconic

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gayminecraftmen · 2 months

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Early MCYTblr Interviews: Anonymous

our interviewee today is the anonymous author of the "SBI Crit Post". he's asked to both remain anonymous and not to be sought out; he's been incredibly helpful and polite through this entire interview process, and i would ask you all to leave any residual feelings you may have from that time at the door. If you think you remember who posted it, please keep it to yourself. that said, let's begin!

Q: Before we begin talking about the ‘Crit Post’, I’d love to hear what your experience of MCYTblr was like before it was posted. Do you have any standout memories from this time?

A: Not particularly. There's some things that I guess looking back on nowadays is kind of wild, like how in the groups I was running in, shipping of any kind that wasn't DNF was super frowned upon (as in, I trigger tagged for IRL shipping)…but truthing wasn't really? Or, how back then the lines between 'critblr' and main mcytblr were super fuzzy. I hung out with both groups before the Crit Post to no issue. Oh!!! And this is a wonderful piece of MCYTblr lore that you may not know, but when I posted the Crit Post, I was apart of a MCYT art exchange themed after MCC called MC Creatives. I think it only happened once, and I can't exactly remember who ran it. They were a really nice DNF (? or just DTeam) blogger. I think it's cool to see that even back then the community was pretty tight knit and had overarching community activities like we see today. It's interesting to me that our fandom has missed out on some of the more important parts to being a fandom… not many big bangs, only one or two that I know of. It's very sad, but we are a weird fandom in general, and definitely a Modern Fandom, if you understand what I mean by that LOL. There is one memory that does stick out, completely irrelevant to this interview though. The fake Dreambur meetup. I pulled an all nighter for it. I was shaking. I drew fanart (though never posted it). Everyone was hysterical. And then it was faked and everyone went WHAT.

Q: As you let me know in your dms, you were the user who made the original “SBI Crit Post”. Would you mind giving a quick rundown of what it was exactly, for anyone who may not know?

A: I would, but frankly I barely remember anything about it. It was like… I saw someone being like "weird that we aren't as critical of SBI as we are of DT" and I thought, "Well, I can probably try?" and made shit up. It was nonsense. I can't even remember what I said about Philza. The points against the others were "Tommy is too young to be in this business" "Wilbur queerbaits" and… "Technoblade needs to be less honest about his ADHD he's glorifying it" or something like that. Again, it was nonsense at its best.

Q: What was your reasoning at the time for making the post? Did the overall culture around you play a part in it?

A: Here's the part no one knows: At the time of posting, I was 13 by maybe… one, two, or three weeks. And I'd spent almost the entirety of my time as a 12 year old in a community that was like "we need to be Critical of our Favorite Creators because this is Righteous and the Only Good Way To Engage With MCYT" and I was like "Everyone here is older than me and therefore endlessly smarter than me," and therefore just accepted it. You can see it very clearly in the part that was "critical" of Wilbur Soot. He was queerbaiting for what? Acting like he wanted to kiss men? Dressing nice? Ridiculous! But if we called Dream a queerbaiter (and never GNF, because everyone was convinced he was gay), then I thought surely Wilbur Soot could also be a queerbaiter! This made total sense to baby 13 year old me. It's not fair to really call that indoctrination: it's not like I was falling down an alt-right pipeline or anything. I was just a stupid kid with too much internet access who liked minecraft and knew nothing about like Dan & Phil or Septiplier (kind of thing that would make me suspicious of this activity--especially truthing). I thought I was fufilling some honor by saying "and yes, my favorite minecraft boys aren't without fault either!" The people that stayed friends with me after that… some of them were my closest normal non-Critblr friends, who refused to abandon me (shout out to you guys you know who you are), and the rest were the people in Critblr who were… okay with my behavior.

Q: I understand that the backlash to the post was very intense– what was it like from your perspective? Did it have any affect on you?

A: Lots. Lots and lots and lots. I lost a bunch of my close friends who weren't okay with what I'd said or how I'd doubled down, and it really messed with me as a kid in the middle of quarantine. There were times where I genuinely considered hurting myself irreperably as either a way to "apologize for what I had done" or just a way to stop worrying that everyone I knew was going to block me one day. Those feelings lasted for a long time, I still struggle with them to this day, over three years later (? I think). And I was kind of lead to believe that was an okay response. I recieved asks the night that it all went down where I was told I should hurt myself. Of course my own behavior wasn't cool, but neither was that. I know there was a post out there by a popular (at the time?) Technoblade blogger that detailed the faults in that post, but I never read it. All I knew about it was that people saw it, and harassed me because they saw it, and that the OP of that post hated me. It got to the point that seeing that blogger's URL caused me to have panic attacks, a ridiculous thing because that blogger as far as I know never actually did anything wrong. I don't know. Every once in awhile, someone in the server I'm in (hi some of you are definitely reading this :3 i love you guys) will bring up the post in passing and I'll have to mute the channel for 24 hours because I'm scared. Or even when we're discussing normal drama, if something feels too close to the Crit Post, or like it might come up, I'll get shaky and nauseous and have to mute the channel for 24 hours. It's weird, the shit being told to kill yourself because you did something dumb as a 13 year old can do to you.

Q: As a follow-up: What, if anything, do you wish had happened instead?

A: I don't know really. I guess the obvious answer is "I didn't make the post" or "I didn't double down", but I think the real answer has to be that I wish the community I was in hadn't taught me that what I was doing was an okay move.

Q: Do you have anything else to add about the Crit Post, MCYTblr, or the community as a whole?

A: Not really. I "retired" from MCYTBlr in I think 2022, but kept a passing interest in it for a long time, and I'm still active in a discord (hi again) comprised entirely of fans and retired fans. I loved MCYT, and in some ways, I still do. When I'm sad, I put on old Technoblade videos. When I'm really sad, I put on old Purpled videos. These things are my comforts, things that I haven't ever been able to give up. And that's good! Even if I don't talk about MCYT anymore, I'm glad it's there for me.

#this is a really good insight into the cultures of mcytblr #i can't really put it into words eloquently right now #but the two extreme sides are very prevalent here #very good interview - and I'm proud of this person for giving their side of the story

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