Anyway, I'm a nosy bitch, so I've been watching @/jbaggles has been doing for the last couple of weeks with increasing curiosity, and while I think it's a step in the right direction, IDK if positivity is really the cure all to the venom of gossip blogs.
But it got me thinking, what I'd actually like to see in this community is three things:
Talk things through before venting
Accept disinterest
Learn to mind your business (or at least your tongue)
I think one of the massive appeals of gossip blogs in the community isn't anything to do with bullying or negativity at all. My theory is that heaps of people in the RPC are neurodiverse and those blogs market themselves as a safe place to vent.
However for many types of neurodiversity, sending an ask there gives you a dopamine hit. It makes you feel like you did something. Maybe it even makes you feel like you did something productive (IDK I'm not a neuroscientist). So, maybe it tricks you into thinking posting there is a solution when it's not.
If you're upset with what's happening in RP, the actual solution is to talk to the people you're playing with, but that can be really anxiety inducing, so the gossip blogs are also easier to turn to.
And if you look at the posts on burnbook where people name drop, most of them are because people are allegedly flakes, cliquey or write content someone doesn't like.
The thing is, if someone's flaking on you, or getting cliquey, then that's because they're probably losing interest in your character or plot. And when you go to talk to them about it, they'll either say they're just really busy right now, or if you're lucky they might say they're not feeling it. Unfortunately, to some of us "I'm not feeling it" sometimes sounds like "You're boring, your character is boring, your plots are boring, I never want to write with you again."
We all need to learn to accept disinterest, though. If someone's not interested in writing with you (or interested in a particular plot), that's their choice and they don't owe you a reason.
Also, sometimes people just aren't coming at the hobby from the same perspective as you. My perspective is that I can write about insane shit that I would never do in real life, but I've written against someone who had strict moral code and turned down a plot on the basis that it required her character to lie. And that's fine, I think it would've been a fun plot, but she had other priorities.
The other thing people get name dropped for, as I said above, is writing content people don't like. If you're on a site where it's allowed, and it's tagged, and it wasn't directed at you, then mind your own business. And if you can't do that, leave the site. I have been on a site before where child sexual abuse was framed as consensual bdsm. I left that site because while I'm okay with both bdsm and csa content, I'm not okay with the implication that a kidnapped child secretly wants to be raped. However, it was fully within the rights of the people on the site to write that. Sometimes people have to be bad writers before they can be good writers.