Why I Made My Accounts Private
Dear Blog, Recently, I did a deep dive of essays. The first was written by writer and Youtuber Lindsay Ellis, the next by trans game designer Charity Heartscape, and the next about the tragic story of Isabel Fall. All were about what I think of as modern witch hunts. Not cancel culture, I think of cancel culture to just not buying a person's product or watching their content, and that is very different than suffocating them with hateful messages (I don't know who or why the two concepts are mixed together). I read these essays and was inspired to write a little about my own experience this year. I think now that the wounds are scars, something deep inside me has changed, and that's very disturbing since other content creators surely have had it worse than I.
This year I had the joy of becoming a features writer again. It was around the time Squid Game came out, and I figured I would write about the show by tying it in to games like Dangan Ronpa and Zero Escape. Personally, I liked the end of Squid Game more than the other two (though the games are dear to me). However, this take was not popular online and before I knew it someone commented disapproval on my Instagram, where I never post anything about my work. As usual, I looked up how my article was doing online and more people had read it than existed in my hometown. I saw threads on Reddit and 4chan saying I must be on drugs, that I'm a fat white woman, an NPC, and every single word was in me like poison.
I had a panic attack at home, as its so hard not to look at the reactions. Something central to who I am is to never look away. Never censor. Always look so that I can learn. Always see so that I can understand. However, I had trouble breathing that day. I had trouble writing the next day.
Trouble is all though, as writing is my life. So I stumbled but returned to the usual. Then it happened again, this time when I wrote about J.K. Rowling's connection to Hogwarts Legacy. People tagged me on Twitter, hoping for a fight. One commented on an article saying that I am basically shit who writes for a shit website. Another contacted me through my very own website. Eventually I stopped reading and handed it over to my husband and he did what I could not, shut it all down.
It felt like shutting all the house blinds and locking all the doors. I do not look up reactions anymore, but I see the views, the clicks. One person said my article was just for "hate clicks" like I want to be hated, that I get more money for it. I don't control that though, the readers do. What I see in the clicks is everyone clicking on what they know is spicy, what they know could make them mad. My lore dives, character highlights, and all else get fewer clicks. When I see the numbers go high up, I no longer think its because my article is good, I instinctively think its getting these clicks because I accidentally kicked a wasp nest again. I'll never find out either, because I don't look up the reactions anymore. Positives reactions are found, but only by chance now.
This made me see people's reactions to my writing in a far more cynical and bitter light as well. Everyone is a critic, and lock onto any fault they can. It makes them feel good. Other writers are usually kind though, they know what it's like to put yourself on a plate and be torn apart for both a passion and a living. I have realized now more than ever I need a writer community. Working remote from home is hard in that sense. On the positive side, I am already building that community in grad school.
Society has felt more alien and cruel to me, which the essays from others who have gotten hate mail for their content touched upon. It really does show the sins of social media, that people can just act like they know you, understand you, reach into your heart, and claw at its muscle.
My mother, when hearing about what happened, sent me a quote.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
This quote now sits at my desk, and it helps a lot. The windows and doors will stay shut, and I'll send messages in a bottle to the unknown.
