So, it turns out FSE was (again) unfairly maligned. It wasn't just @snow, it was *only* @snow. Nobody else cared about that list. As far as I can see, nobody has been posting it except @snow because he couldn't get anyone else to post it.

The good news is that, if you were on the list and you were worried about what it meant, it mainly meant that @snow found a trans emoji in your username and he wanted to freak you out. So, everyone on the super scary list can rest easy: @snow was just trying to upset people. The list isn't clever, it wasn't difficult to produce, it was just a mean-spirited, low-effort attempt at distressing people that @snow doesn't like, because he doesn't care if you suffer. If you let the list get to you, @snow gets exactly what he wanted, so don't.

My main regret is not spending the three minutes it took to find this when @eris / @eris was yelling at me that this was all FSE's fault; apparently she's quitting livejournal forever, so she probably won't see this. She's certainly not coming out of retirement just to take back what she said: she just wanted to try to beat up on someone that is popular to beat up on, and she does not give a shit what damage she causes, because she's decided that I deserve it, FSE deserves it, everyone she dislikes deserves whatever she can inflict on them. As far as Eris inflicting anything, I'm big, I can take an actual beating without tipping over, so an asshole lying on the internet doesn't even register. On the other hand, it is pretty disappointing. Seriously, you can't do something that you know is wrong and give yourself a cheap justification without losing something. I don't mean anything new-agey, anyone that's been alive long enough knows guilt: you can feel it, a physical sensation as real as the kind you feel from joy or love or heartbreak or despair. You know when you've been a piece of shit, it hurts. Give into it often enough, and you get used to it. Get used to it and you stop thinking about it, it stops hurting. Stop thinking about it for long enough and you end up like @snow. But aside from creating a black hole where your integrity should be, participating in this kind of thing only serves to polarize, and that causes problems for all of us, and it stings to lose a friend over this kind of thing.

But you've got a justification, right? Another disqordia admin, "changeling", goes on a rant:

> “free speech” is pure hypocrisy, everyone has a line they won’t cross, most of you just don’t consider protecting trans people important
> and if there is truly nothing anyone could say to make you dissasociate from them, how pathetic is that, you stand for absolutely nothing and care about nobody
> it's trivially easy to get banned from one of the "free speech" instances, say trans rights and see how free your speech is there

Anyone knows that this has not ever gotten someone banned from FSE, but this isn't someone for whom the truth matters, and if the truth doesn't matter, then how could you value the right to speak the things you believe are true? And there's the action item: "make you dissasociate[sic] from them". Lies and insults, an attempt to stop people from listening to the people she doesn't like, because it doesn't actually matter what's true, only whether or not you're winning.

So remember: no matter who did it, always blame FSE. No one will bother to ask if it actually was FSE. After all, FSE definitely did all those other things you keep hearing about but never looked into, right? ...Right? And hey, maybe you piled on, you complained about FSE, you blamed FSE for this, you ranted about FSE, maybe you dragged some people through the mud, then you see this, and you think "Maybe FSE didn't do it...*this* time!" and you quietly acknowledge it to yourself, but you don't bother to say anything in public, you don't say "That wasn't FSE", maybe you even join in again if you see someone else repeating the story. It's fun to participate, right? And who gives a shit that this reinforces a lie? FSE deserves it anyway, right?

That's how this snowballs: enough lies repeated over and over again, and nobody ever bothers to check, until people will believe anything negative anyone says about FSE, Neckbeard, poa.st, FCE, KiwiFarms, rage.lol, anyone. Maybe you even start ascribing things to them despite seeing that it was someone else. Don't laugh, this has happened, Eris isn't the only one by a long shot: some shitty Hitler-themed account pops up, someone posts a screenshit along with a rant about FSE, and right in the screenshat is the instance name, it's not FSE, not even close. I point it out and I get the brush off, "Yeah, well, FSE's still terrible." How much other stuff had she seen or heard falsely ascribed to FSE, how much had she falsely ascribed herself? Why would someone do that without thinking?

So people ask why I care about this stuff, why I'd spend any time addressing it. That's why. The world is massively complex. Your understanding can barely scratch its surface. We all believe plenty of things that are completely untrue even if we don't tack on needless lies, and the farther your beliefs are from the truth, the farther your actions get from those that would have the effect you want. A lot of innocent people get shit on, @snow has a laugh at the expense of the people afraid of the list, the people angry about the list, and the people wrongfully blamed for creating or distributing the list, and then he does it again, and there's another rush to judgment, the wrong people get shit on again, the rift in fedi gets wider. So fuck @snow, fuck @eris (though I hope she's doing well, I want nothing to do with someone that demands I do something and blows up at me if I want to know why), fuck everyone that piled on without caring about the truth, fuck everyone either deliberately causing a problem or trying to win without caring what problems they caused, fuck everyone that is already mentally composing a reply to divert this into some talking points you have about trans people (whether it's against trans people or in support of them or ">she" or whatever, take it elsewhere, you are missing the point, you are part of the problem, and I honestly do not give a damn if someone is trans or not, that's their own business, learn to mind yours, people can do whatever they like with their own bodies, anything you have to say past that, I don't care).

You're not going to stop people from holding opinions you dislike by antagonizing them on the fediverse. Maybe you can change their minds if you listen and speak, but you're not going to be able to force them, so it's pointless to try to compel them. Fedi fighting fedi just means that everyone using fedi has as shitty a time as we all had on Twitter, and then Twitter wins. Please keep all of these things in mind next time you get punchy and want to carry out an internet slap-fight, but at the very least, we can avoid lying or piling on or trying to force conformity or creating drama or tossing around contentious rumors. Fuck's sake, can we just tell jokes and show each other cool things and swap ideas?
always_blame_fse_every_time.png