#im really sorry i put vents here i know it ruins the vibe :(

[bakujho]

Strap in folks, it’s rant time.

So, let's talk a bit about manipulation and abuse present in fandom. It’s uncomfortable, but fuck it lets go, I’m tired of the “good vibes only” push that sweeps all this shit under the rug. I’m not pretending to be an expert by a longshot here and I’m happy to discuss, but I have dealt with enough abusive and manipulative people personally and professionally to spot em a fucking mile away and generally keep my distance. Unfortunately, I’ve noticed a gross trend where there are people being attacked, then are guilted into keeping quiet because the Abusers make it seem like it’s not worth mentioning or that it doesn’t really matter... Unfortunately, the Abusers know exactly what they’re doing, they’re really fucking good at it, and they know exactly the kind of response they’re going to receive (because in some cases, this isn’t the first fandom they’ve pulled this same shit in). 

Right off the bat though, lets get some basic facts about fandom out of the way. No one in fandom owns any character: be it interactions, personality or anything else about said character. No fandom creator owns an idea, or has any right to tell people off for having similar ideas/techniques/styles etc. There’s no such thing as a completely original singular thought, and pretty sure if you think of something ‘original’, there’s inspiration from another source. No one owns a hairstyle, a costume, a backstory, a colour scheme, an item, a scar etc etc. If someone has a similar thing, neat, clearly you’ve got similar tastes. If someone has a carbon copy of your creation on multiple points, ABSOLUTELY question it, but having the same hairstyle isn’t copyright infringement, and having a similar history isn’t ripping someone off, it’s coincidence. 

Going to put the rest under the cut, CW for manipulation tactics, abuse, and all those sorts of goodies.

So, I’ll start with the Abusers here. Everyone knows who they are, they know who they are, unfortunately the victims of them are worried about speaking out because, for the most part, the ones abusing people are in a position of perceived power and speaking out against them can put the victim in a tricky position. No one wants to be ousted from a fandom they enjoy for speaking out against someone that’s been around fandom since its inception. Which brings me to my first point.

Power: Abusers LOVE the feeling of having power (be it follower count, general clout, perceived hierarchy etc) and get really uncomfortable when they feel someone new comes to threaten their position. So, what do these people do in that situation? Option A is to completely ignore and hope they’re not dethroned, Option B is befriend immediately and subtly manipulate the person to keep a close eye on their actions. Keep your friends close, but enemies closer amirite? 

So how the fuck does a person subtly manipulate another person, shouldn’t it be obvious? Fuck man, I wish. But there’s a lot of different techniques used to keep people reigned in and submissive: guilt tripping, evasion/diversion, attention seeking, lying, intimidation, playing the victim etc etc. So obviously these will all present differently based on the abuser, but the goal of all of them is the same. To stay in power, and keep control over everything they can. 

So how would all of these present online? (of course these examples leave some wiggle room for context lost in text/translation/cultural differences etc, but for the most part it all fits the same pattern that the abuser would use in a face to face situation). 

Guilt- tripping: “Well you wouldn’t be here if not for me” “You owe me for your place in the fandom” “well if we really were friends you’d do this for me…” etc etc. Things that pit your emotional attachment to the Abuser against you, the closer you are, the easier it is. Suddenly the Victim finds themselves indebted to the Abuser for their ‘friendship’ that the Victim didn’t realize was conditional. 

Shaming: Invalidating the victims feelings by saying things like “even a child knows better than this”, “it’s okay you don’t understand, you’re probably young”, “I’ve been around fandom longer so I know how things go” etc etc. It makes the Victim feel like they’ve done something wrong by drawing boundaries for themselves, or sticking up for themselves. Remember, the Abuser doesn’t want to lose their crown so they will talk down to their Victims to make them more unsure of their stance, second guess themselves, and feel bad that they spoke up in the first place. 

Projection: “Others have done X to me, I would NEVER do the same” It’s a simple yet effective tactic. The Abuser takes the things they’ve done to people, say it happened to them, and shift the blame to the now faceless enemy so the Victim feels obligated to side with the abuser because, yea, those things mentioned fucking SUCK and no one wants to experience it. No one wants to be that asshole saying “no you deserved it” (because no one fucking deserves to be doxxed, swatted, hacked, etc etc)

Playing-the-victim: Abusers LOVE playing this game. It’s their bread and butter to set the stage for manipulation. “Having a really hard time rn, sorry im such a fuckup”, “struggling with mental health”, “this is all so hard for me” (legit though, if you are struggling please seek help where/when you can, mental health is important). So any of these statements alone can be harmless, and overlooking someone's mental health can have dangerous outcomes, HOWEVER, when these sort of statements are paired with the other things mentioned, it’s no longer simply a vent or a way to work past personal demons, it’s a way to gain sympathy and support, and it is very intentionally done to garner that emotional response from those that will listen to them. 

Attention-Seeking: can be as simple as “no one interacts with me anymore”, making a dramatic vague post, deleting that same post and making a newer, more dramatic post but this time seeking affirmation from the good responses of the last post, posting cryptic messages that ooze “ask me what happened” (vaguebooking is a plague), basically anything that is asking for a response without asking. How is it manipulative though? Guilt. If you’re aware of the Abuser, these types of posts are meant to abuse the Victim's sense of empathy, the natural response to these sorts of posts is “what happened, I’m sorry that happened to you”. 

Diversion/Evasion: straight up changing the subject or switching the blame to anywhere BUT the Abuser. The Abuser says “change X you’re copying me”, the Victim responds “I feel I didn’t copy you”, and the Abuser presses “well the fandom might not think so” and changes it from a personal issue to a larger, more aggressive problem. In this case, the Abuser is the ONLY one with a problem, but are purposely misleading the victim to take the blame off themselves. It’s not THEIR problem, it’s the FANDOMS problem...now making it the Victims problem. 

Blame: Abusers love to blame everyone BUT themselves for their perceived problems. Fandom isn’t interacting with them as much? It’s the fandom that’s dying. More drama in the fandom? Well there’s too many people here now. Getting called out for bad behavior? That’s the problem of the person who CLEARLY doesn’t understand how fandom must work. It’s the age old tale of “I’m perfect, it’s obviously everyone else who is wrong”. At what point does the Abuser realize that they may be the cause for their own misery? They don’t. 

Intimidation: This is a fun one that’s usually a last resort because if the Abuser is pretending to be a sheep caught in a snowstorm, it doesn’t look good for them to publicly announce they’ve been the wolf the whole time. It looks like “well I have X on you”, “if you only knew what I could say about you”, and “I could ruin you” type shit. Of course, in most cases, the Victim hasn’t done anything to warrant this sort of aggression, but the queen is losing her pawns and is now grasping for anything to fight back with. And who knows what sort of lengths the Abuser has gone to to gain information on the victim. It’s pretty easy to find out a lot about a person online, so the Victims back down due to the threat of the unknown.

Avoidance: refusing to talk about the problem, which is an issue I have with fandom itself, in this case. The “no drama good vibes only” is so fucking detrimental when there are problems that need to be addressed. An Abuser will push the narrative that they’re only here for a good time and don’t want drama, while actively creating drama in the shadows. Its not a problem if we don’t talk about it, right? If no one knows, it’s fine. It’s fine. No, it’s manipulative, and if there are problems they NEED to be talked about, because that’s how you find resolutions. 

Denial: This one ties in with avoidance and blame, in that the Abuser will straight up deny that they’ve ever been, or have ever created a problem. The Victim is making a big deal from nothing, they can’t control how others feel about them, so they’ve done nothing wrong. The Abuser will claim they had the best intentions when approaching someone, so clearly they have done nothing wrong. 

Lying: Including omitting any information from arguments that may paint the Abuser in a bad light. The Abuser absolutely doesn’t want anyone to find out what they’re up to, so they’ll say exactly what they need to to change the narrative surrounding them. It could be minor changes to conversations to complete fabrications. Ex “I only approached X to make sure they were okay after X happened”, but X screenshots tell a completely different story. It’s not always easy to catch an Abuser in a lie, especially when there’s the push for “no drama” so no one talks about their personal experiences and can confirm/deny what was/reported to be said. 

So bringing all of those points together and bringing it back to the Abuser wanting to have the power to control what they like/don’t like in fandom. Once they have that feeling of invincibility, they may coyly ask people to delete posts that could lead back to them looking bad, politely ask another creator to change their creation because the Abuser doesn’t like it, or them asking nicely to stop interacting with another member of fandom the Abuser doesn’t like. It may not seem like much at a first glance...after all they asked nicely. However, once you look a little harder and a little longer, it becomes very clear that the intention is to stay in control. The Abuser will do ANYTHING to stay on top, and will employ every trick they have in their arsenal to sew discord and mistrust amongst other members of the fandom to keep the fingers pointed anywhere but at themselves.

So, sound familiar to anyone? My inbox is open for anyone who wants to chat about the topic. If I’ve now made you uncomfortable and you’re going to unfollow/block, cheers, wish you the best. And if you’re feeling called out and attacked by my post? GOOD, stop being a fucking shitty person. 

A few last reminders before adding some resources:

Setting and enforcing personal boundaries is not abuse.

Choosing not to interact with those who make you uncomfortable is not rude.

It is important to call out abuse when you encounter it, it could save someone from becoming a victim themselves.

Always stand up for yourself, you’re your own best advocate. 

Now for some resources: I used a few of these while researching along with my old textbooks from my psych, abnormal psych, and human relations classes I took back in university.

Manipulation tactics

How to recognize a guilt trip

How to spot an attention seeker

#deep breath #i think that's all i have to say about this right now #for now at least #when i get salty i get real salty #fandom is the worst sometimes #though people in it can be worse #discourse

[revol-lover]

gotta vent.

so we live in an apartment, well a two family home but the same thing. We live on second floor. for the past 3/4 years the people who lived below us were the people who owned the house and they were really nice, we were all as considerate of each other and whatnot and we had literally no problems. not a single one. well last fall they bought their retirement home, a single family. so they rented the first floor out to new people who moved in in february. literally they have caused issues since almost the beginning. theyre super loud and inconsiderate with their music but we figured, like we’re not going to be here forever (or much longer hopefully) so we just dealt with it. until we started hearing them mock our child. ok. thats frustrating. but what can we do. we dealt with it. julia does wake up at 6am most days which is early, but we do our best and pretty much successfully keep the noise level down in the morning by letting her watch cartoons and what not. the girl who lives down ther works but the guy is home all day playing video games in the back room, blasts his games, swears and bangs his feet on the ground all damn day. its fucking annoying. but we dealt with it. because again. we’re hoping to move soon.

then the day before last night they were super loud. starting as soon as we put julia to bed (which they know exactly when that is because i’ve heard them mocking me singing you are my sunshine to her. really mature fucking assholes) they started stomping their feet, banging furniture, yelling and screaming noises and shit all night until literally 11 pm when they went to bed (their bedroom under ours) and were talking loud and laughing. opening draws and closing them. i had an anxiety attack that lasted literally hours and didnt fall asleep until after midnight.

then LAST night was the fucking worst. it started with music at 5:30 pm. ok cant complain about that. it wasn't late. then they had friends over. who were yelling and screaming. then the music got louder. stomping. yelling. banging on table. literally the music was so loud our floor was vibrating. completely inappropriate. this went on at max volume until 9:30 when i finally had enough. kevin was frustrated and loudly said something about them being fucking animals. so they started howling. great. they were very clearly extremely drunk or high by the way they sounded so we didnt feel comfortable even confronting them (they were being so fucking immature that i dont how anything would have come of it). 

so at 930 i texted our landord. i didnt know what else i was supposed to do. i let her know whats going on. she asked me if i thought they were doing it “purposefully” i mean? yes? tf? anyway she said they would come over and talk to them. an entire hour passes. they dont show up. music/screaming/banging gets louder and louder. meanwhile julia has woken up numerous times through this, clearly isnt able to stay asleep with the noise and vibration of the music. so an hour after i texted my landlord. their music stops and it sounds like the girl is on the phone. suddenly shes got the phony professional serious voice and says something about they stopped at 930 (not true). hung up. music back immediately along with screaming profanities and banging shit. this went on until 11 pm. landlord never followed up with me and i figured well shit they waited an entire hour to even call them not show up like they said they would, clearly they dont fucking care. 11pm came, their friends left, screaming in the hallway before they did then they were silent. i was so riled up on anxiety i got literally like no sleep last night before julia of course woke up at 5:40am because she had a horrible nights sleep.

this just fucking sucks. 

like why. i dont get it. are they seriously trying to retaliate for us having a KID? a 2 year old? who is stuck in the house for way more than she used to be since the quarantine shit? like she’s honestly not even that loud. yes she sings. yes she dances around and runs back and forth sometimes but like i’m sorry shes a fucking kid. how sick do you  have to be to try to punish a little girl for being a damn little girl? and its not anything else because kevin and i do not make noise. we never play our music or tv loud. we have always been considerate. i just cant believe that there are people like this out there that are this fucking immature.  and you know if you have a problem with a kid being a kid then idk maybe knock on our door and talk to us? see if theres ANYTHING we can do? dont just be an asshole and intentionally try to ruin her sleep at night. like i have never been a violent person in my life but these people make me so unbelievably angry with how cruel they are being. like yes it would bother me if it was just me and kevin dealing with this. but a 2 year old? theyre trying to bother a 2 yr old? like seriously?

anyway. if you have any spare good vibes to give i’d really appreciate them. im literally terrified to go to our laundry in the basement because i dont want to face these fucking assholes. i dont feel safe here anymore. 

we have some potential moving options MAYBE coming up. so if you have any good vibes at all i’d really appreciate it. i just want my kid to have her own space so she can be a kid without this bullshit.

[lizzz-xo]

Rape.

I’m not telling this story for pity. or to make anyone look at me differently.  God knows how much I dislike people pitying me and attention... But i’m telling this story for me... so if you read it, please don’t act any different.

Three weeks after me and my ex boyfriend broke up, he somehow found his way back to me. I guess the grass wasn’t greener on the other side.

“I want us back.” He said. 

You already left so don’t you dare come back.  I was an emotional wreck after i received this call.. .So I called the only other male I could count on besides my father and my brothers.. He was always there to listen to me vent about my relationship with my ex.  I trusted him.. When I called him he was at work. He told me he would call me later. We worked in the same facility except he was a lifeguard, and I was a barista inside the cafe. He would come to my job for coffee and breakfast and I would always give him my discount, because I had his back like that...

.. I thought he had mine too..

It was 9:55 when my phone rang. It was him. He told me he had just gotten off of work and he was by my house, if i wanted to meet up and talk.. It was 5 minutes to my curfew. Theres no way I could go out  this late. He told me we could only talk for 5 minutes. Hesitating, but i left anyway. it was summer who cares.  

If i knew what would’ve happened that night, I would’ve stayed home...

Once i got into his car, I suddenly did not want to talk about anything anymore. the vibe was off. Something had been weird....“I thought you wanted to talk?”  He said.

Nevermind, I don’t feel like it anymore. I need alcohol I said jokingly.. He goes into his trunk and takes out a bottle of fireball. We started passing the bottle back and forth. He speeds off and goes to dunkin donuts. He gets a black coffee. How he always drinks it.. 

When he got back in the car, I was already tipsy..  He asked if i wanted to go somewhere and let him play with my pussy. He always flirted but i never took anything serious. He was much older and engaged, I laughed nervously and said haha yeah whatever, The next thing I know hes driving past my house. Taking me to this dark side street cars don’t really pass on.  I looked over and he had already started touching himself... His fiance called him a couple times but he let the phone ring. 

Could this really be happening? it felt like a movie scene. 

I asked him to stop. He ignored me, continued going. and next thing I know he was using his free hand to touch me. I tried pushing it away a couple times. But he kept going..

“Lets just get in the backseat.” No. I’m not having sex. He begged and pleaded, until he realized I wasnt budging. He decided to just deal with it. instead he reaches over my body and begins to press the button to lower the passenger seat. 

He climbs on top of me. and  begins kissing me. no no no no this is wrong, this is wrong. you’re engaged. I said so many times. But my words meant nothing. 

 I can’t just put it in your too tight, he impatiently looks for a condom.. and doesn’t find one. Come on lets just do it. 

no. im not having sex. 

okay then lets just do it through your pants.. before I can do anything, he begins thrusting into me with my pants still on.. 

no no no  this has gone too far now. this is too much. too soon. too fast. too wrong. 

 But I couldn't move, I couldn't run, where would I go? Who could I call?  It was like i froze.

No. I said as sternly  as I could.  stop. I don’t want to do this. Take me home. 

he gets off of me in defeat. “are you sure?” 

 Yes, take me home. 

I got out the car and when i went home, I was stunned. Walking in like a zombie, like what the fuck just happened to me Like everything felt different.Like I was not the same person I left as. I went straight to sleep. 

The next morning, I woke up to a text to him.  “ sorry for attacking you last night, I’ll explain later. Coffee was good ;)”   He tells me that. “ my fiance and I  got into an argument last night I had feelings for you and I just couldn't help myself.Nothing was holding me back anymore. 

“Its ok.”

But it wasnt.  I tried telling my close friends what happened but couldn't muster up the courage to say the whole story.  “He took advantage of you” These words repeated in my head over and over again, and haunted me..

I knew it but I refused to believe it. It wasnt his fault I said, I was flirting too. 

“You were raped.”

Raped? Rape?! me? raped?  Rape was something I never thought I could've happened to me Rape was something I heard about in movies, in TV shows. Other girls, but not me. But because of him... It was me. It was part of my identity. And that night changed my life forever.

 Being in a car with another male was the scariest thing for me now. What used to be normal. Even if it was my brothers or my dad, what if they decided to attack me?  I was attacked by someone who I  trusted. Who’s to say it wont happen again? I panicked in cars when guys got too close, I cried whenever guys tried to pull moves on me in a car for a while.. Because it always brought me back to that night.

And i hated black coffee. I used to be able to drink my coffee black with no problem. The smell of black coffee lingered around me that night. The smell on his breath.. 

,, I wonder how different my life would be now If I would've stayed home that night...

I used to cry every time I told this story. This was the first time I didn’t. If you’re wondering what happened after, Him and I did not stay friends. He told me he would tell her what happened that night, but he never did...   I wanted to fuck with his head so I texted him I miss  you. Which sent him into an angry rage and got him in trouble with his fiance. After getting him back, we stopped talking. Sometimes I think about telling her, sending her a message on Facebook. But I don’t have  the courage to ruin her life. She has this fantasy about the man she is in love with, and I would hate to be the person to tell her the truth... 

They got married. He has a child on the way.

 It’s a girl.

 I pray that babygirl never goes through what I went through with her father.  That bastard doesn’t deserve to be happy. but he is.

and i’m here. still broken, and trying to smile.