“Where’s your carrd?”
“I can’t find your DNI.”
“I know you listed your race, age, gender, and sexuality but how come you didn’t also list your triggers, your diagnoses, and your traumas?”
“If you’re shipping to cope, why don’t you tell everyone what you’re coping WITH?”
Ah, well, Entitled Randoms, that’s very simple. See, I’m an adult. A grown-up who votes and pays taxes and is getting a master’s degree. And I inhabit reality as well as social media. So, I don’t feel the need to violate my own privacy for the amusement and satisfaction of strangers.
Wait…okay so I agree with this post except for the DNI. Doesn’t that stand for Do Not Interact? My understanding is that DNIs are a list of groups or types of people you do not want interacting with you, and that’s not really personal information so much as it is…idk, a formal statement of hard boundaries.
I vibe hard with this post, I’m just confused as to why the DNI was included.
I included it for multiple reasons:
One, many people are now becoming pushy with blogs who do not have DNIs. As in, getting messages that say “Why don’t you have TERFs DNI anywhere on your blog? Are you transphobic? You’re transphobic if you don’t put it up”.
Secondly, most DNIs I see are highly performative and ineffective. “Fuck off nasties, you know who you are” and “DNI if you meet standard DNI criteria” or “Racists, homophobes, weirdos, etc, DNI”. See how vague those are? See how unhelpful that is?
Thirdly, DNIs do not work unless the other person respects them AND knows that the DNI applies to them. What the fuck does hypothetical fancop above mean by “nasties”? What the fuck is “standard” in these things? And any DNI that includes “etc” is fucked…because that could be anyone. And what fucking Nazi or violent TERF is going to look at some loud-mouthed 16 year old enby’s DNI and go “Darn guess I can’t cyberbully this easy target, they asked me to DNI”.
Fourthly, people have been using the accident violation of DNIs as grounds for harassment. Anti-shippers will send death threats to proshippers for reblogging their posts and saying things like “Why didn’t you check through my blog and read my 4.5 page DNI list and understand that Nasty Freak includes RoadRat shippers like you??? Anyway here’s a gore spam go cut yourself”.
Fifthly, there’s just a certain point when you have relinquish the illusion of control. Tumblr is a social media site where the aim is (usually) to spread posts beyond a small group of followers. When you post something publicly, you need to be prepared that sometimes, people you don’t like will see it. Worrying excessively will only worsen your anxiety, and the block button exists for a reason.
Essentially, I do not object to them as inherent concept, but they have been levied as a tool of control and social abuse on both this site and Twitter, and much like the carrd, those who decline to have one are now being treated with hostility.
I do not have a DNI because I don’t want one. That shouldn’t be problem, and yet, repeatedly, it is.
The thing about a DNI list on tumblr is that unless you put your DNI list on the post itself, I’m never going to see it. I’ve always been curious: do people actually expect people to check out the OP’s blog and see their header before reblogging a post from a mutual? (Do people expect others to check out the OP’s blog before following them?)
I pretty much never go to the OP’s blog. For any reason. If something crosses my dash that I like, or that I want to comment on, I do that and go on with my day. Because that is how the platform is designed to work, and that is how the vast majority of people use it. On the very rare occasions when I follow someone new (my dashboard is long enough already) I generally don’t go to their blog then either. I just go “oh, this person has been reblogged a lot by people on my dash recently, and I’ve liked their stuff, I will follow them and see if I like that!” and then if they turn out to not be interesting to me for whatever reason, I’ll unfollow them again.
So to me, DNI lists are irrelevant because they’re never in places that I will see them. And if you’re expecting me to investigate every person I reblog … I don’t pay that much attention to investigating people I interact with in real life.
If you want me to respect your DNI list, it has to be on any post that I’m thinking of reblogging. Not because I’m not willing to respect it, but because otherwise I’m never going to see it.
I find it very difficult to respect DNI as a concept because… Well… Frankly, I find it dreadful to only engage with people who already agrees with me. This doesn’t mean I am always picking a fight. This just means that I don’t think people need to agree with me on my stance on shipping if we’re talking about queer culture. Or agree with me on the definition of cultural appropriation if they wanna read my fanfics.
In real life you’re gonna smile at some people in the elevator and they might secretly be a Nazi or a TERF. You’re gonna have some conversations with racist relatives. You’re gonna share a class with a proshipper or anti. What are you gonna do? Barricade yourself the instant you find a disagreement? Yeet yourself from the room? No. You just learn to deal and find common topics and maybe you’ll learn something about each other eventually. (Also almost nobody has ever reconsidered their opinions by debating with a stranger, but people do reconsider it when it’s brought up by a friend or acquaintance.)
I have seen PSA posts about baby formulas which goes like “OP is a freak so I am reposting”. Okay? So? Does having a weird kink or writing RPF or whatever it is people gets called a freak for damage the legitimacy of the information? No.
Sometimes I find myself on people’s DNIs and… They interacted with me first and we’ve had no issue. Why would I make this an issue now that I’ve seen it?
I just don’t think we owe each other our stance on everything in order to interact. If I post something that offends you, you’re free to block me, that’s what the function is for.
