"Gallows Humor"

Well since you so kindly offered because yes we are having this argument :D

Well before I "bitch about you" I may as well say thank you for this. Kinda wish you had left it there but they can't all be winners.

Yknow I havent talked to you much in quite a while and I gotta ask: the fuck? I've said far worse to you than what I did and you've never reacted like this. Genuinely: are you, like, good?

Okay so onto my actual argument here. I GET that you are feeling things right now. I get that you may be grieving. I think all of us are feeling shitty in some capacity right now, because it's a shitty situation all around and no matter our emotional closeness to the trigger event, it's a bad time for us all mental health wise if we're not 100% in Trump and his goons's camps. And I don't want to invalidate that. I GET that you're hurting seeing this happen to something you clearly consider important to you. That's not my issue here. You are allowed to feel those things and talk about them.

however, how fucking ever, if you absolutely feel the need to talk about this right now, you have got to find a better place to do it than a public thread on the foot of a gallows humor joke you, in my opinion, have no right to be making as a white person. I would prefer you had not made the joke at all but I'll take the above admission of it having at least be hidden.

Broadly speaking, the things you have said are far, far better off in a vent thread. Or, better yet, to a friend willing to listen and help. It's okay to feel things, it is not okay to try and control the conversation by telling us to "fuck right off" when we criticize a shitty move you made. It is not okay to make this situation all about you and what you are feeling, not on a public forum. It is. Not. About. You.

If your attempt at a joke had been about the damage to the city of Minneapolis, I'm sure people here would have understood. However, it wasn't. Your attempt at a joke directly targetted the trigger event that was George Floyd's murder. That is not your place to joke about. You are white. In my opinion any jokes right now aren't gonna land no matter who they come from since the wound is so fresh, but it is extremely inappropriate to make it as a white person. It does not come off as gallows humor, it comes off as a mockery of the murder of yet another black man by police.

But hey, what do I know. I'm just a random bystander. Yknow, despite being on this forum for nearly 4 years.

Even putting all that aside though, do you even realize that your entire handling of the situation thus far has been... bad? Like, I just genuinely don't think now is the time to gawk at the fact that the officers involved were fired and one (note that: one) has been charged with 3rd degree murder (after significant backlash this morning, I might add. him being charged came after an initial statement that they wouldn't be charging him or the others). I don't think now is the time to balk at damage to a city that will rebuild just fine. Now is the time to stand up and let the government know that we won't stand idly by while they fund the killings of innocent, unarmed black people. Now is the time to balk at our president advocating for state executions on twitter.

In the words of Ruhel, owner of Gandhi Mahal: "Let my building burn. Justice needs to be served."

 

I think I was the random bystander if that changes anything lol

 

oh yeah thats fair forgot post mod was a thing for a second

still gonna meme tho. ftr im sorry you got told off like that like that was so not appropriate regardless of who it was directed at. but like... i see you around quite a fair amount i feel? so i also def wouldnt consider you a "random bystander"

 

Another random bystander popping in here to second all of this. I genuinely don't feel that anything that was said to seebs here was hostile. It was heated, yes, but people have a right to be angry and upset right now.
I've been on this forum for years now, and this kind of communication breakdown seems to happen whenever someone criticizes a thing seebs says or does. And it's getting really frustrating.

 

I mean I would admit to being straight up hostile, because it did upset me and I feel like it would be counterproductive or dishonest to not claim my anger

but I can see the use of a conversation about forum culture re: responding to criticism, especially criticism about like real shit

 

That’s our word.
Anyway.
I found this upsetting in addition to the things people have mentioned upthread. The connotation here is that everyone who is upset with your behavior is a whiny, naggy bitch, and I don’t think that’s accurate for the rest of these fine people.

 

was the "joke" heinous and unforgivable? no. was it in EXTREMELY poor taste and made a lot of people, including me, very uncomfortable given what's going on rn? yes. it would be helpful for you to acknowledge that you understand WHY people are upset, at the very least, beyond the "gallows humor behind spoiler tag" admission.

 

Hell, I'm going to be That Stupid White Twink and say that, I can accept it is Seebs style Gallows Humor that was needed in the moment to cope with the horror of what is happening- not just the damage to the city and community, but the initial death by police and all of the fall out there linked. HOWEVER (big BIG however) that sort of gallows humor would have been best kept to private channels with people that know you, are used to and appreciative of your brand of humor and not at risk of being hurt by it, and NOT used on a public forum.

 

yeah i agree more with lizardlicks point beyond anything else i said.

 

that highlights a big part of the problem: seebs clearly regards kintsugi as a private channel with people who know him, which may have been the case when it was first created, but given how many people use kintsugi nowadays and how rarely he posts it's just not that any more

 

If you need a private channel on the forum for people you're able to vent to I don't think anyone would be mad with you setting smth up?

Or just make a thread for it, you can still use the service you moderate/created

 

hey i dont know if anyone noticed but just in case this is in fact seebs forum created by seebs for seebs and seebs friends and just because a bunch of non seebs friends joined doesnt mean it stopped being seebs forum

 

Okay sure but are we going to say "if you ended up here without a personal connection to seebs because of other aspects of the forum fuck you and your needs"

Because idk if that's what you meant but uh, hm.

 

seebs himself has acknowledged that the forum community has grown outside of that original purpose, and has since taken actions in the interest of that community as a whole, and when I joined it was because he was actively advertising the existence of the forum as a place to go for more support and community on tumblr. this point holds no water if seebs himself has (and he has) acknowledged the complete opposite as true

 

If it helps it's because I'm real bad at checking post dates spock

 

Nothing new has happened, don't worry. I think it's just a mix of things being kinda wonky right now? But I know nothing new happened.

not directly @ you:

I mean the point of this thread from my stance anyway was never to be like "this needs to be a safe space for everybody", i made it with the goal of seebs holding himself accountable for what he said in this one particular instance, since he insisted on taking it to another thread and was being very aggressive in his responses to people calling him out

 

yeah agreed to what maya said--i'm not particularly bothered about creating a completely conflict-free space. in fact, in this case, it would have been more harmful than helpful.

what instigated this whole thing, from my point of view, was that i pointed out that something that seebs said about the murder of george floyd was offensive and harmful. the response became about forum culture, who belongs and who doesn't, what it means to be a bystander instead of an in-group member, etc. that was tangential to the original point. but here we are.

surely, surely the point you are making, @boop, cannot be that one forfeits one's place on the forum if one criticizes something seebs said. that would obviously be an unhealthy standard to have, even if we were talking about a small, close group of friends.

i use this forum because i like having a space to talk about things that doesn't feel as dangerous as tumblr but that is still semi-public. if that's a problem, because i don't meet some arbitrary level of, what--number of friends? skin in the game? interest in the same things as the popular members du jour? that's...pretty bad, gotta say!

(it wouldn't make me leave, because i like my little blog space that i've created. i like it, and it would still be helpful to me, even if you regarded me as an unwelcome interloper.)

[Edited to fix some confusing phrases and sentence structures, content remains the same.]

 

It's good and healthy for people to be able to say "Hey, the thing you said made me uncomfortable for these reasons and I would like you not to say those things around me" to someone they share a community with.

But (and this is what I thought boop's post was getting) occasionally the way people take issue with seebs' behaviour feels less like that and more like someone walking into an open house and telling the host that the way they speak is wrong and they need to change it. What I mean to say is that sometimes it feels less like troubleshooting a relationship with a community member and more like policing behaviour.

And to be clear, I am not saying that people who take issue with seebs' behaviour don't have a place on the forum. Lots of people here (including me) disagree with him on a variety of topics. The fact that he's on post moderation indicates that he and the moderator team are willing to listen to criticism of his behaviour. So it's not that no one can criticise seebs or that only seebs fans are allowed. For me, it's that it's disturbing to see people in this space attempt to pull moral rank on other people in this space.

 

what for you would be the distinction between "troubleshooting a relationship with a community member'" and "policing behavior" or "pull[ing] moral rank"? tone? affect? content? previous relationship between the people in the conversation? focus on that relationship, rather than on the topic of conversation itself?

i guess what i'm struggling with is that, while "please don't do this thing in front of me" is in some ways the only enforceable boundary, it does create this weird dynamic where you can't actually engage with and criticize the content of what someone said, just with how and where they said it. criticizing what someone says becomes harmful, out of line, mean, etc.; criticizing where they said it is fruitful, productive, community-building, etc.

"please don't do this thing in front of me" is of course a good and reasonable boundary to set in a lot of circumstances, and can i think be a good resolution for conflict in many cases. i set it a lot myself. i mute, ignore, unfollow, etc. with reckless abandon, and i make my husband cut his toenails in the bathroom because i hate the sound. but i don't think setting that boundary solves all disagreements or all conflicts. sometimes it just moves them into this passive-aggressive disagreement shadow realm where everybody's still mad at each other but will only talk around the thing that they're mad about.

i dunno, maybe this gets back to what spock was saying up above about how kintsugi is meant to be an experiment in whether a forum could exist with minimal moderation, no-rules-just-right. "please don't do this thing in front of me" is an easy to identify, totally enforceable boundary that encourages two users to coexist without conflict (often by encouraging them to coexist without contact). "i think this thing that you've done is wrong/offensive/inappropriate etc." is different. it creates conflict. but maybe sometimes that conflict can be good? or at least, not something threatening?

and i feel, again, that it should be reiterated that the thing which i and others took offense to was seebs making a joke about the murder of george floyd. i wasn't mad about, like, their fandom opinions or spiritual beliefs or general outlook on life or moderation policies or whatever. it was a specific statement, made at a specific time, that i took a specific issue with.