A WARNING ABOUT WITCH HUNTS ON TUMBLR!
Not too long ago a well known streamer on Twitch.tv has accused a shoutcaster of Riot games of sleeping with a minor. Even though the streamer got banned and later apologized and clarified his lie in a youtube video, the damage was done. This is because viewers have spread the lie on the entire internet on platforms like Twitch.tv, reddit and more. And the bad jokes are still going around, troubling the shoutcaster.
Now if you thought this didn’t concern you, you are wrong! Tumblr has one of the worst habits of spreading rumors, hate and lies!
Only since the start of 2016 you could have come across people being accused of:
Tracing art
Stealing headcanons
Being racist
Being homophobic
Being cisphobic
Fraud
Sending anonymous hate
Blackmailing
Stealing/spreading personal information
Hacking attempts
Abuse (sexual, emotional, physical)
Roleplaying non-minor content with minors
All it needs is one bad person to set up a post not in order to do what they claim to be “social justice”, when their actual intent is to damage someone they are not fond of for personal reasons.
The essential issue though is the amount of people, watchers, viewers, followers, who miss to impeach what they hear and read, and instead spread the hate without hesitation. Mindlessly they destroy the life of another individual. It is easy to just hit the reblog button. But it’s too exhausting to do research. This is how lies and hate spread on tumblr.
Please keep in mind: Not everyone who tells you something negative about another individual is speaking the truth. Things aren’t true just because someone made a post about it!
Before you reblog any post, please make sure it doesn’t damage another individual! Keep your hands off posts that have any possibilities of the below :
The post going against certain and clearly mentioned individuals!
Screenshots that could easily be manipulated
Out of context “proof”
Twisted quotes and their meaning changed/abused
Poor, incomplete sources
Claims without any proof at all
Personal information spilled that has no proof and /or no relations to the main topic
General hateful speech (in most cases repeated negative lines, almost like a mantra)
The poster actually asking you to spread the negativity
The poster is only a third party / has no direct relations to the individual being accused
The poster claims to know “the truth” about the accused individual
Little neutral but mostly negative content to make the accused individual look as terrible as possible
If you come across aggressive posts directed against other individuals and their actions, do not just hit the like or reblog button. If you see or hear hate anywhere on the internet, do not just blindly believe it. People on the internet lie. Be clever and doubt what’s claimed proof.
Many have private conflicts with others and would like to damage them, and if you happen to spread their work you become tools of what is most like an intrigue. Manipulation is a thing on the internet.
People who manipulate count on you being lazy.
They count on you being shocked.
They count on your inner wish for justice.
They count on your sympathy.
They aim for it.
DO NOT TAKE PART IN THEIR WITCH HUNT!
Should you have spread any of the like before reading our post, do not fret. It happens. Countless accidentally spread rumors and lies without meaning to. It doesn’t make you a jerk. Do not feel bad because it happened. You’d only have to feel bad if you chose not to correct it and not to do better in the future. Take down what you have shared that contains any torrent of hatred. And watch out in the future.
SPREAD LOVE, NOT HATE!
Please pass this on to educate your fellows, and make the internet a better place.
Keep reading
The only thing I’ll ever reblog that is remotely political.
The only thing I find to be inaccurate about this is the fact that they say that 2016 is the first time that such accusations have been thrown around. Tracing art, homophobia, anonymous hate, hacking attempts–this has been going on on Tumblr for YEARS. The only reason we’re noticing it NOW is because we’re finally paying attention and being a little more provocative about it.
Oh, no, my dear. Maybe we failed to word that part, sorry for that. We know and do not want to hide that this has been a thing for so many years on tumblr. But we especially looked at cases since the beginning of 2016 and within the time span of six months we found so many witch hunts about all those topics mentioned above. Truly, if we had gone back even further, our list of topics would have been ten times as long.
