The Strange Proximity to Online Controversy and Mischaracterization (Or, The Update I Wasn't Expecting)

 

So, I wasn't expecting this update, to be entirely honest. Maybe, because I have a life, I figured this was temporary.

For those uninitiated, this is an update to an old blogpost I made titled [The Strange Proximity to Online Controversy and Real-Life Betrayal]. I'll try to make this make sense if you don't want to read that, but it does provide context.

I'm also afraid that this update may make it too obvious who those involved are, but I respect you, SpaceHey, and expect you to be respectful back.

So, my dear friend I will call Daisy (she/them pronouns) unfortunately found themselves trapped in a "drama" machine approximately two months ago. A friend and colleague made an accusation, she, of course, believed them; there was no reason not to. They were incredibly close. Turns out the friend lied, and it became pretty crazy discourse on one specific corner of the internet. It was heartbreaking, Daisy lost their friend. Literally. The person went fucking radio silent, which sucked even more because they helped draw/write/animate the animated series Daisy is known for. So work was pretty stagnant the last two months. But Daisy did post some of the completed animations on their Patreon!

Well, I was not aware of this (again, likely because I had taken a prolonged break from Twitter and because I have a life), but apparently people continued to be incredibly angry with Daisy for what happened with her friend. Saying that either her response was 1. not apologetic enough, that it was half-assed, or 2. that they "doubled down." Personally I find these two conflicting, but logic flies out the door when you can be mean to people online. For context, Daisy's apology was basically "I am so sorry for the harm I caused, I did not know and am still reeling from this." It was brief, but also, they weren't the one making the accusations. They were caught off guard, like everyone else. But because people were already riled up, the clips from the Patreon were leaked by someone, and people were tearing them to shreds. Saying they were overly adult/sexual (the series was already only for mature audiences, from the very first episode had a lot of violence/gore), saying that she wasn't making enough progress, was obviously wasting the Patreon money on drugs, sitting on her "fat ass." And then, following the trend of oxymoronic claims, people also started claiming that, since the last episode of the series uploaded publicly, Daisy had done nothing, was taking the Patreon money for a year with nothing to show for it (which was obviously not true).

So a couple days ago, after some deliberation, and after closing the Patreon so no money continued to be taken, Daisy decided it was too much, went for the nuclear option: account deletion. The entire YouTube account. The giant catalogue of their work spanning back... christ... 8 years? She gave warning ahead of time, so others could archive the work if they wanted, but to be honest, I was against the move. I told her, this is so much of your work! It's important to have this stuff, for yourself, for others. Years after the drama is gone, there will be people who fall in love with your work, like I did, 6 years ago. when I loved their videos so much I cosplayed their character at the time, and we began talking.

But watching the accusations and hate and malice continue to pour in, I just got mad. I was like, honestly? Maybe these people don't deserve all this work they've done. It's just so confusing, jarring, infuriating, to watch these hateful claims come in about someone you care about and know they're false. Like, they tried so hard, but it was just incredibly overwhelming. Daisy, at every turn, did what they thought was the right thing to do. For their audience, for their friends. Not often for themselves. But deleting their account seems to be that. So I respect the decision.

When it's someone you know like this, it truly hits you how malicious characterization on the internet has become. People speaking about someone they do not know as if they have personally wronged them. How they are a terrible person, exploited others, when that just genuinely was not the case. And even when you beg people to put themselves in their shoes, imagine how getting worn down over and over again, even before this, is not conducive to continuing to make content? You get drowned out by a lot of people who think that your friend's continued work, at their pace, making what they want, is their right. Ugh, it's bullshit. I hate the internet, especially the drama side of it. Drama has always existed, sure, but the internet has just made it so that anyone can be stuck in a nightmare that either lasts for 5 minutes then burns out, or continues burning for months, years, and there's no reason or logic behind which is which.

Shockingly, things are often more complicated than the 280 characters on Twitter make it seem.