edit: now it's a meme and we can all hug in the comments.
this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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Criticizing things is fine but there is in fact a line where you become the asshole for doing it too hard or in a bad faith way. Or targeting individual people (particularly minors). The PSL thing is a good example because while we can criticize the comedication of it, some of the discourse around it is really misogynistic.
I literally don't care about being an asshole, that's fine. I can criticize whatever I want
You should probably care about things like misogyny and harassing minors lol. Which is what my post was about.
Making up something I'm not doing to get mad about
I wasn't accusing you of it. We aren't in DMs right now. It was a general statement about something I think is true, that people can use "criticizing things' as a guise for assholishness and even bigotry. Not saying you're doing that.
I don't think assholishness is necessarily a bad thing, it's value-neutral. I would simply not be bigoted in my critiques, and bigotry is a separate issue entirely that can be addressed directly, and has nothing to do with the "let people enjoy things" poptimism ethos that pervades much of the internet which I think is disgusting. I dont believe anybody has a "right" to not hear criticisms of their favorite things, and mostly people have an issue with it because they've made consumption their identity and feel personally attacked by critiques on what they consume. They need to separate their identity from the commodity, not get mad at the messenger.
Really depends on the context ie who you're being a dick to and for what reason.
Like we had a "dont be a dick to your comrades" rule for a reason, for example.
I've seen the backlash to "let people enjoy things" lead to some behavior I'd consider fairly toxic in its own right. I bring up the minors thing because they tend to be the most passionate about fandom stuff, and I see grown ass adult grumpy shitheads harassing them for liking inoffensive things. Which I think is kind of the source of that attitude.
"Let people enjoy things" for me isn't about "don't criticize things people like". Its about "dont go out of your way to do targeted harassment towards people over things they like". I mean there are obvious exceptions like streamers who streamed wizard game, but even things like that can cross into harassment.
Like, if you check my post history i'm literally currently dealing with a mod of a wrestling forum who's so obsessed with bunny cop that he has alerted both his politics and how he moderates around that fact, and claims its because Judy is his comfort character. So OBVIOUSLY I think people can become to obsessed with their things and make it part of their identity in a self-warping way. And that those people can use "let people enjoy things" as a shield for that behavior.
But I think there's a middle ground here because if you think "I'm allowed to criticize things" cant be used as a shield for toxic behavior as well, you're wrong.