I feel like I ought to do a final clarification here, seeing as I’ve seen dialogue swirl around my leaving Tumblr.
Very well intentioned readers have said I was bullied off Tumblr, and I’d like to preserve that verb — bullying — for more concerted efforts, more intentional efforts, more malignant efforts. I’ve seen other internet personalities bullied off the internet, and I’ve been in the midst of bullying myself, and it is a different experience than just existing on the internet as a public person.
I’m leaving Tumblr after years on it because it is a very distilled version of the things that are hard about being a person with any fame/ exposure. There are two things I’ve always found difficult about being a (very minor) celebrity:
1) people decide who you are based upon partial or third hand information, both bad and good, and build up a totally new person — a MaggieStiefvater Dot Com rather than Maggie — to react to. One of the themes in my books that comes up again and again is pleasure of being known, and the displeasure of being seen incorrectly, and the internet encourages the second.
2) You’re outnumbered. So you cannot be a polite, normal person and respond cheerfully to every kind and interesting interaction, as you would in person or even with fewer followers/ readers. Instead you have to either pick and choose, or just shout out information and never reply to anyone, which makes you appear even less like yourself, perpetuating #1.
This isn’t me-specific. Everybody with any kind of platform experiences this to some degree.
Tumblr really hones this. It has a very specific fan culture which means creators are definitely put into a Creator Box, which can be both joyful and searing.
I’m leaving it not because of any current spate of negative or critical comments, but because of many years of #1 and #2. I’ve been on here long enough that people have invented a very strange and unpleasant MaggieStiefvater Dot Com, one that I don’t recognize as having any bearing on my day-to-day reality, and they interact with that person accordingly. I’ve gotten hundreds upon hundreds of these sorts of messages, and while some are absolutely hideous, most are just minor. It is a stranger walking up to you on the street saying “I think your hair looks really awful from the back.” And then another stranger walking up and saying “I know you think you’re funny, but you really are not.” Another walking up and saying, “please just stop writing books.” Another saying “you’re a weird lady and I don’t like you.”*
None of these are soul-wrenching on their own. I like my hair. The people I need to find me funny find me funny. I’m not going to stop writing books. I don’t need to be liked by everyone — no one can be. But eventually, it just becomes stressful to walk down that particular street. Even if it’s also lined by friends, one just knows that every five feet there will also be someone whispering “you’re homophobic because Adam doesn’t have freckles.”
And as I was restructuring my life this year through the lens of my health stuff, I realized: I will just stop walking down that street. There are other paths I can take on the internet, and am taking on the internet, that are more peaceful, and that’s what I need at the moment.
So to all of you who have ridden to my rescue and have taken time to express care for me, I’m genuinely grateful. But please know the answer of why I left Tumblr as a creator is a little more complicated than one incidence of bullying. It’s a general culture that puts individual creators into the same box as studios like Marvel, and interacts with them in the same way. If you shake your fist at a 747 in the sky, no one expects the 747 to notice. But individual creators on Tumblr aren’t in 747s. We’re barely flying any higher than individual fans, we’re just floating along clutching the string of a really motivated balloon, or something. If you shake your fist, you might actually knock your knuckles on my ankles as I float by.
But I’m not asking Tumblr to change, because I think Tumblr likes Tumblr, which is totally fine. I just have to float elsewhere.
I hope that clears things up and also calms things down. Internet drama is one of my least favorite things, and I don’t like thinking my parting is at the heart of any of it.
*ETA: And to the folks who tell me “yes, these are the comments of those who are young and figuring things out.” Yes, in many cases they are. But as per #2, there are always going to be hundreds of folks coming of age and cutting their teeth on the internet, and I am outnumbered, and I have too many well-meaning bite marks on my scarred hide. :D
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