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#often it's better to tell people off in private or block them. but callout culture is encouraging us to just.
semi-sketchy · 6 years
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Sassy I'm a bit curious but feel free not to answer this question if you don't want too. Why do you think the webkinz fandom is so bad lately. I've probably had my head in the ground the whole time because I haven't seen anything that bad recently. I have seen bad things before on kinztube and kinztagram but what part of it recently is so bad. I'm only asking this to get a new perspective not to tell you you're wrong. you've known this community longer than I have.
Don’t worry, I understand what you’re saying. Curiosity and wanting to learn is a great thing and I’m always happy to help, so hopefully I can explain this well.
The Webkinz fandom isn’t just bad lately; it’s been for awhile. I touched on it slightly here, but I’ll go more in depth below.
I guess the simple TL;DR is that I have never seen a community more willing to put someone under the chopping block to “spread awareness” or simply to engage in callout culture. (I’ve reblogged a few things on callout culture if you wanna read them.) Now for the actual part that’s long.
WAIT. I said I understood and I didn’t. I thought you were asking just what’s wrong with the community and not just recent drama. I’ve already spent over an hour typing all this and only caught that proofreading it. It still stands for today, but recently, since I’ve basically said “bye not dealing with you” to everyone, I haven’t really seen any drama. I don’t watch KinzTube anymore, I don’t follow members of the community, so I’m not really the best one for this. It’s really past experiences that set my opinions, although from what I’ve heard, it hasn’t gotten better. Alright, back to the post, carry on.
Being on KinzTube 8 years, I’ve seen a lot of things. Trends, secrets, scandals, but I took it as normal. I figured “every fandom is this bad. This is normal” until I saw it wasn’t.
I’ve seen people go on about Starrystar33 saying how she was a mean person and no one should have looked up to her, their main point being that she said “please don’t use my name” even though that’s just the thing nearly everyone said back in 2010. People used to get very defensive and angry back in 2007 and 2008 when someone wanted to be queen or king of a Webkinz (for real though, people stopped caring in ‘09 and this isn’t a thing anymore. Everyone making rants like it’s still a thing…no. No one has cared about it in a decade.) I used to see videos saying “block this person!!” although now it’s gotten a lot dirtier.
See, the Webkinz community has stepped aside from yelling “Billy hurt me!!” and has turned instead to “I wish I could give you my pain just for one moment. Not to hurt you, but to make you understand how much you hurt me~ ♥” And people praise them. Praise them for posting an “inspirational quote” and “keeping drama out of this” when really, the person is going to read it. Their friends will show them. It will hurt like the dickens. And because the original poster is so highly praised, they’ll keep doing it. The fallout is public and everyone knows who the post is about, but because there’s no names mentioned, it’s taken as acceptable and keeping things “drama free” when really it’s just a dirty trick to hurt people. It gets even worse when someone asks “what’s this about?” and they answer “I’ll message you” and the talking behind others backs happen. It spreads from person to person in private as it travels through friend groups. Everyone slowly gets turned against the other party because it’s a lot easier to trust gossip from a friend and have it taint your views.
To someone on the outside that’s not tuned in, it looks harmless, but pay attention to the subtle details and you’ll begin to notice a pattern. To eat my own words a bit here, there was a video made about me awhile ago. I think it’s been taken down, but the user and I had a spat. My friend sent me the video saying “look what they did.” It was a video where a Webkinz that represented them pushed through the crowds, above all the haters, but took special time aside to push down and diminish a Signature Siamese Cat; a Webkinz I use to represent me. To others, it was about standing tall, to my friends and me, it was about them going out of their way to say “fuck you.”
Through the addiction to gossip, hatred is born. Unbeknownst to a user, an entire community can be turned against them. The amount of back-handed exchanges and how people thrive off of it is sickening. And it’s happened to me.
This isn’t even the end of it. One of the reasons I had to disable comments on my channel was because of Webkinz users overall being salty. When I got my third Signature Siberian Husky, Karma, the comment section was a bloodbath. About 4 people sounded genuine saying she was cute, the rest were passive aggressive “I want one” and “oh yay good for you I don’t have one” along with flat out “you’re so spoiled lord you already have two huskies and you had to buy a third and keep someone else from buying it!” I kind of wonder if that video is what sparked the KinzTube trend of making rants on getting doubles.
I was prepared for the messages and when I got Timber, my second Signature Timber Wolf, so I went on the offense. Flat out spewing what I had learned and seen. I made a full on rant that I still stand by. Webkinz fans are salty. If they didn’t have something and they deemed someone had something they wanted, that person was a devil and needed to be put in their place. If they disagree to give/sell it to you, they’re even worse. I was surprised when rather than getting hate messages, I actually got a few people praising me for speaking up. I’m far from the only one affected by this issue.
As I said in the video, I believe this is due to the general age range for Webkinz fans being 11 - 16, a tough time in life where they’re learning social skills. Hormones are raging and I believe this is the time when people are most self-conscious. Low self esteem paired with a community that has hate and gossip knocking on every door leads to a pack mentality, or how I see it, a mob mentality. A confusing and hard time when you’re so angry, anything can set you off. That rage is often directed at whoever is the most recent target, whoever your friends have told you about, who hurt someone you follow.
Not everyone will be like this, I’m speaking mainly from my own experience and what I’ve seen, not any studies or anything. I don’t fully blame them, I was in that exact spot a few years back, but it’s toxic and shouldn’t be normalized.
The worst part of this being normalized and just “something everyone does” is that some don’t grow out of it. I hate to be this way, but you need the punch in the face to realize and learn. No one can tell you social skills and you acquire them like moves in a video game; you have to learn through life the hard way.
I understand I’m highly biased here, but this has been my experience.Has there been good in the community? Of course. There’s also the “village idiot has the loudest voice” thing, so the bad are always more vocal than the good. You just gotta pick your battles and push through, that’s the only way you’ll make it in this community.
-Sassy
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