Wait what happened to Thomas Sanders???
Basically, Thomas Sanders (who, btw, is gay) used to be basically the celebrated Unproblematic Fav Uwu of Tumblr and Vine. Everyone loved him, everyone praised him for being inclusive and positive, making fun and unique vines that were appropriate and enjoyable for any age group.
Then one day he got an aphobic ask (I honestly donât remember what this was even in response to, I think it was some really innocent one-off âI hope asexuals have a good dayâ type of post or something like that, idek), to which he wrote a long and sincere response that basically summed up to âHey, thatâs not a nice attitude to have, please take a moment to think about how other people must feel and why itâs so important to you to shut them downâ
Within literal hours (and this is something I witnessed myself, I was online when it all went down), a smear campaign against him had started. Suddenly even people who had previously been huge fans of him were shit-talking him left and right, declaring him cringey, and grasping at straws to make âcallout postsâ for him. One popular argument I remember hearing was- And I shit you not, I am not making this up- He was a âpedophileâ because he made videos for a family demographic and has a young-looking face, but was 29 or whatever and therefore âpretending to be a kidâ or whatever the fuck. He even, gasp, made vines about high school, despite not being a high schooler himself! (Dan Green voice) Thatâs called âactingâ, children!
His popularity never really recovered, and these days heâs mostly considered âcringeyâ by a large portion of the internet due to the main demographic most of his fans fall into, because you know itâs hip and cool to shame young girls and queer kids for the things that bring them joy.
So yeah, TL;DR used to be pretty well liked by the majority of Tumblr with nobody really having anything bad to say about him, expressed support for aspecs one day, immediately fell victim to exclusionist harrassment and is now at best considered just a cringey teenage girl thing.
Also part of the âpedophileâ smear campaign included:
1. He has tags for not quite safe for work selfies on his blog (#nsfw and #tsbutt) (not nudes or even lewds, just pictures including his clothed butt.)
2. He accepts nsfw fanart from fans, but ONLY if the artist is 18+
3. There was ONE time where an underage artist submitted a nsfw art piece and Thomas posted it, because said artist removed their age from their bio, so Thomas had no idea it was made by a minor. He deleted the post as soon as this information came to light.
But exclusionists took all of this, mashed it with their âoh but heâs so childish, he acts like a kid even though heâs nearly 30, he must be hiding something!â And ran so far with it that Thomas Sanders severely suffered for it. Even his fans got shit for liking him. A lot abandoned him out of fear that a similar campaign would start against them.
So yeah. Fuck exclusionists, honestly.
He got smeared for videos he made With high schoolers as well, high schoolers from a drama club from his old high school, whom he was asked back to help out by his own teachers. Which is commonplace, and not sketchy in the slightest. He made wholesome, age-appropriate content and STILL got âcancelledâ because exclusionists canât handle it when good queer people who donât share their dumb views are successful.
