(no subject)

[yvannairie]

I found some new blog and journal posts written by people who were the targets of harassment by Winterfox and it's... well, it sucks to read, obviously, but it's also sort of revelatory that people whose hobby is bullying people didn't spring up from the ground in 2016 when the wrong anime boys in Voltron had shiptease with each other.

Comments

[palominocorn]

Social media gave these people a lot of ammunition (if you scroll through someone's blog long enough you'll surely find something to hate on), the anonymity to bully without fear of consequences, and a built-in archive of their bullying.

I've been on the receiving end of this sort of internet bullying before 2016, but because chatrooms are limited in scope and the forums I was on were heavily moderated, it wasn't NEARLY this bad.

And before they had internet, they were bullying their classmates, younger siblings, and pets.

[yvannairie]

I struggle to get it. Like, I understand why the internet has made it a million times worse, with the removal of even the most mild social consequences, I thought I had figured out why it got so big after people stopped recognising what they were doing as bullying and instead discovered righteous language to dress it up as, but looking at the history of dipshits on a power trip online really does make me just... baffle.

[palominocorn]

Eh, they never recognized what they were doing (or wanted to do but couldn't) as bullying, in the same way that most abusers don't consider what they do to be abuse. They recognize bullying when it's done to them or the people they like, but when they're doing it, it's ~not bullying~, it's a righteous crusade, or "friendly" teasing/joking, or punching up, or a brief lapse in judgement that won't (definitely will) happen.

(The last justification is getting less and less common, especially online.)

These dipshits have been power tripping for a long time (look at the gods and monarchs of Greek mythology, for one), alas. Dipshittery exists everywhere that people feel slighted, and people feel slighted in all times and places.