I just spent more than an hour reading @loudest-subtext-in-tv’s eye-opening—let’s call it a treatise—on extremism and echo chambers here on Tumblr, in fandoms, and in online spaces in general. I started following LSiT years ago when I joined the Sherlock fandom for their fascinating meta, but by the time I joined, they had essentially been—if I understand correctly—bullied out of the fandom in the great Johnlock wars, that point in a fandom's life when all hell breaks loose (that’s my own interpretation of what happened, I could be wrong). At some point, a few years ago, they came back; the meta is still fascinating, but they have recently moved on to Substack. The reason is the extremism on Tumblr, and reading this piece squeezed my heart.
I’m here on Tumblr, and it’s supposed to be my escape, but it’s a very curated one, because some areas of this site are extremely violent. In order for it to be my escape, I have to keep many things about myself to myself. I self-censor a lot, because people who have followed me in the past have written some of the most extremist, troubling texts about the groups and communities I belong to. No, I’m not a Republican. I’m not even an American. I’ve always been a bleeding-heart leftist—the kind that’s not really relevant anymore, I suppose—and that’s as far as I’ll go.
I consider myself a complex thinker, who's open to hear other voices and opinions. But right now we're living in a period in the pendulum of history that highlights the extreme, everywhere in the world. It's a dangerous time and it's not the first time we've been here. Our peoples were experiencing exactly this a century ago, with the same chants and the same devils and the same problems.
I encourage you, and urge you, to read this. It’s a long text about political extremism from both sides of the (American) aisle but it carries a very universal message. It was also a deeply moving read. Go read it in good faith.
