Ever notice how on massive posts with hundreds of thousands of notes, most of the time the blogs that started them mouse-over as deactivated?
That’s not because they’re old. It’s not because they’re even that controversial. It’s because once they get a post up to a hundred thousand notes, no matter what its content, they’re fucking FLOODED with hate mail.
I have around ten posts that big. Two of them at just under half a million. And I pay for it. In addition to the hate mail from my regular posts, maybe one letter for every five hundred notes, I still get hate mail for things I posted in 2012. It’s hard to tell sometimes what comes from what, other times it’s clearer. As one of those huge posts is a bunch of people asking to see my dick, it’s pretty clear when I get new requests what caused it. Every time that post gets bumped by a large blog, I get a couple dozen lewd requests of varying degrees of aggression.
This is the best thing that ever happened to me.
Growing up, I was extremely shy. I didn’t figure it all out until recently but I was shy because I was quite heavily abused. Not by any adult, but the things my “friends” did to me left me not only chemically incapable of feeling happiness, but so psychologically deranged that I could not understand compliments. I could not understand that they were anything but the set up for something mean to happen. I could not understand that anything good could happen on its own and not as a prelude to something cruel. For most of my life, I was unnaturally introverted because I was afraid of people. Terrified of them, especially the friendly ones.
I’m not like that any more. Now I’m probably known on tumblr as one of the most loud-mouthed silly braggarts ever. As recently as six years ago, I was not capable of speaking positively about myself. I could not, for fear alone, say anything good about myself. Or even think it. It went beyond anxiety, it was outright terror. So what changed?
I got fuckloads of hate mail.
And with every letter, a little bit of me died. Not the way people usually mean that. The part that died was the fear. Because everything bad I feared happened to me here. Everything I was scared to hear, I was told a hundred times. And in time, it all became as meaningless as background noise like a waterfall or rain. Years of being harassed here have so desensitized me to my old nemesis that it lost all power.
And that was before the book. When the book came out, I advertised it heavily and knew a new level of ceaseless rage from the tumblr community. From death threats to some of the most disturbing sexual messages ever to worse, I got it all and thank the blog gods I was desensitized enough to take it and reply with some solid snark. And I was lucky enough to notice that when I replied with snark, book sales rose. In time, I began to enjoy getting hatemail because it always boosted book sales.
My outlook on the constant verbal abuse of this site is very different now. It’s a tool. When people threaten and berate you, they’re giving you clay to sculpt with. You can sculpt a needle into your own heart or you can sculpt a hammer to bash their heads in. The amazing thing is, you get to choose which. It doesn’t seem like it sometimes, it seems too hard to do, it seems too cruel to shape into anything useful. But we’re not kids anymore. We don’t have to take it and absorb it. We can all use it here. There is nothing tumblr can do to you that you can’t grow strong on, and happy on.
So that’s my advice to the person I’m writing this out for. A good friend who is a damn good writer, who is afraid of what will happen when she posts her first poems on this cruel and vicious platform.
You can hide your works and never change. But I know you want to change. I know you don’t want to be afraid anymore. This is how it begins. Yes, you will get hate mail. They will tell you your poetry sucks. You cannot control them. But you have absolute control over what you make of their bullshit. There are abuses that you cannot transmute. That post saying “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent” is a lie. People can do some pretty fucked up shit to each other. But on tumblr there’s a limit. The cruelest shit this site can muster isn’t squat compared to the pettiest playground bullying. It’s the internet. You’ve survived so much in the real world, this site, no matter how mean it looks, it about as practically effective as a declawed kitten with no teeth. You can let it do its worst and you won’t get a scratch.
Sure, the hatemail still bites. So if you put yourself and your poetry out there and you get hurt, come to me and I’ll teach you what to do. How to sculpt beauty from that ugly clay. That goes for anyone reading this. But the truth is you don’t even need me. You’ll figure it out if you only try.
Those deactivated blogs, thousands of them, tens of thousands, those people aren’t weak. I think no less of anyone who leaves this often toxic blogging platform. Some people just don’t need this in their lives. But I know you do, and if anyone else has read this far, they know it too. The rewards of posting your work, publishing it for all to see, taking the hate and the love and trust me, people WILL love what you post the way so many have loved mine- Are incomparable.
You have so much fun ahead of you. You have nothing to fear. So post what you’re afraid to post. Jump in the water, and soon you’ll swim, and when the sharks come for you we’ll kick their butts together.
Yo! I just caught up on the last year of Post Crusade and Ponyville Diaries, and I just wanna let you know I love your art and your writing and these poor kids. Keep being rad, dude; I hope life's good to ya.
(Pipsqueak anon, the salt is simulated, PC is fine without him.)
Ah, alright.
Funfact: I think I attempted to bring him back for an arc about 3 times. As a sort of cameo or throwback or something. Never really got anywhere with these plans since there’s a big time problem.
I remember that being a common conclusion when I first started out and my first response was to draw a lot of them and make a blog out of it so yeah, this is serious shit. :U
It’s not like we haven’t been homeless the last three years… our birthday this year essentially marks three years of homelessness. This article was SUPPOSED to be one in homage to David Bowie in light of recent events but circumstance brings us to have to change the subject to a more personal matter. Sorry to bog stuff down.
As inactive as my blogs may seem, I’m not very inclined to call them dead or on break indefinitely. Because unlike most people who leave their blogs behind in the dust, I’m still writing and talking about them constantly amongst other people. The ideas are still very alive. I just haven’t gotten to drawing them yet. .2.‘
