#remember what groups of people actually DO get false accusations (poc and queer people esp trans women)

[monsterqueers]

You know, I can see why sometimes people think callouts are necessary;

When you are in a communal space and being harmed, or have suddenly become privy to serious harm, you want that harm to stop. One of the first things you learn on how to do that, once asking them to stop doesnt work, is to ask for help.

In small communities like forums or discord servers, you ask the community leaders for help. They talk to the person to make them stop or ban them from the small, non life-essential community. If the harm was bad enough they might encourage you to bring it to court (such as an adult soliciting nudes from minors in DMs).

Often this is done without the details being aired to the rest of the community (if the issue was in private).

But bigger websites like tumblr or twitter or youtube are not these kinds of small communities. Banning someone from a huge swath of the internet materially effects their livelyhood and ability to access community and care. The support staff for these websites usually take time to get to the case and often do nothing about it when they do because its not what they consider a TOS violation, even if its harm done.

This means if it cannot be solved by blocking, and you cannot leave because the space has things you need, your final tool to make harm stop is by airing the dirty laundry so social shame hopefully does something.

HOWEVER THE VAST MAJORITY CALLOUTS ARE NOT LIKE THIS

Most callouts are petty drivel attacking minorities (but especially trans women in particular) and filled with lies.

The person making the callout though, often genuinely believes that they are making harm stop like above though- because their definition of harm is much wider and includes things like 'trans woman having sex with consenting adults in a way I dont like', 'I was in conflict with my ex a lot because we could not communicate', and 'reblogged a fanart shipping naruto and sasuke once'.

They think that things that personally upset them out of disgust count as real harm. They think any conflict is always abuse.

Or at least, that is what the people making them will claim, and its hard to sort them from the true victims.

I think a notable part of why callouts are such a plague is because of the structure of social media as a whole. We dont HAVE the usual tools to curate our spaces well enough anymore and protect our communities from bad actors and people know this. Its the drawback of being so connected. They cannot see another way to do this, so they are loathe to let go of a tool that -in theory- can.

I think its something that is overlooked in conversations about this.

Its rare a plea to abandon callouts altogether has a feasable answer for 'what do we do with the confirmed serial abusers, scammers, and cult leaders that DO exist? How do we prevent them from hurting more people? They already had community support and love and they did harm with it. You cannot give them a rape babysitter a la the missing stair essay (of which the story shows works badly) over the internet. You cannot make them go to therapy over the internet and ensure it works. You cannot still act like nothing happened without making their victims feel unsafe and unsupported. What is there left to do?'

And honestly, I DONT have a good answer to assuage these concerns.

With new social media the way it is, with site moderators that only step in for TOS violations if that, how CAN we keep known serial bad actors with no true commitment to doing better from harming others except by warning people to not trust them?

Internet safety tip PSAs only do so much, and not using the megasites is not an option for most people either.

Trying to make callout posts be more accurate by trying to educate what is a calloutable offense has done nothing to reduce erroneous callouts.

People already commit to 'only spreading REAL callout posts', but they still spread bunk posts regardless.

It just... sucks all around.

-This post is not a perfectly worded and cited essay, do not treat it as such-

-This post is saying all the callouts crying wolf have ruined one of the few tools left to oust actual unrepentant serial abusers and scammers from communities without cop involvement, not that one should spread callout posts, dont clown!-

#remember what groups of people actually DO get false accusations (poc and queer people esp trans women) #and that DARVO is a common tactic for a reason #wayward rambling #long post #callout culture #discourse #sj #this is rebloggable but like if theres clownage ill lock it #abuse