When you apologize for misspeaking or being insensitive, you seem truly genuine, but whenever John does it, I feel like he's just paying lip service to the subset of his fans who might disavow him for his words, without any consideration for the actual feelings of the people who call him out. is this just my inherent biases speaking, or am I on the money? not that I'd expect you to say your brother is faking his apologies, but if I'm right, then don't answer this ask. Then at least I w'll know.
John deals with a lot more anxiety than I do. It is very difficult to not feel personally attacked when someone (or a large group of someones) calls something that you’ve spent years of your life creating and cultivating and loving and believing in “bad for the world”. Even if only some part of it, and not the whole thing, is being criticized, it’s a struggle for anyone to handle that gracefully.
John’s anxiety disorder tends to magnify that affect, and he feels attacked and so he puts up defenses. He is also a lot more busy than I am what with the doing as much as I do plus being a parent of two children. He doesn’t always have time to compose thoughtful Tumblr posts because he’s dealing with baby puke or whatever. I will say, even with his disorder (the anxiety, not the children), which I think he manages fantastically, his responses are far better than many I’ve seen on the internet. I’m very proud of John for the way he’s handled criticism, not just by changing his future habits, but by calling attention to his privilege and doing his best to be an example to others.
I can say without a doubt that he cares very deeply about having a positive affect on the world and considers his impact very carefully. When he apologizes, he means it, even if he resents being the one who is constantly called out when, like, many more people with much more cultural power are far more problematic than he is.
I’m very proud of John, and it makes me defensive and angry when people criticize him for things that he either has honestly and frankly apologized for, or things that both he and I have come to terms with as acceptable, despite the fact that some people disagree.
Also, a bit of advice. In the future, when you write or say something like, “If you don’t answer me I will know what your answer is”, that will be considered to be manipulative (because it is) and will likely scare a lot of people off from interacting with you. It almost prevented me from answering this ask, for example.
