bot momdad post
in the past month or so iโve dealt with:
- an organized transphobic/ableist harassment campaign that started several years ago when prominent transphobic feminist and fake internet harassment expert Randi Harper posted on GamerGateโs subreddit and invited them to dox me. this shit apparently never goes away. they have doxxed my entire living family, as well as a bunch of the dead ones.
- terfs
- getting targeted and threatened by stormfront
- a bunch of whiny babies on here who are mad that asexuals exist and occasionally get riled up and all yell at me and try to get me defined as problematic
the good thing about having social capital as a bot-maker and not a social justice activist is that being labeled as problematic doesnโt instantly remove my entire support network, which is what happens when these people go after other (usually also trans) targets who are less able to weather that. iโm lucky; i have social networks outside tumblr, so itโs not like having the Trans Community Circular Firing Squad turn on me was enough to ruin my life. iโve seen plenty of people nearly driven to suicide by that kind of thing, so having it just lead to a few bad days and a huge waste of time isnโt nearly as bad as it goes for most people who get the callout gun pointed at them.
but honestly, itโs still a huge waste of time, and iโm not even updating this bot anymore. any actual entertainment value that yโall have gotten out of it that manages to distract you from the whole global fascism stuff is pretty much tapped out, and iโve got shit to do. itโs still updating over on Twitter, because that doesnโt actually take any time for me to let go, but maintaining it and dealing with hate mail from people who heard thirdhand whatever exaggerated story a combination of terfs and ex-gamergate losers have been feeding to kids that donโt know any better than to believe it is a waste of time.ย
iโve got a lot of demands on my time lately; iโm involved in local socialist organizing, which is a lot of teaching my backwards-ass town what non-binary genders are and why itโs not okay to casually misgender people on our organizing forum. itโs similarly exhausting to dealing with a hundred faux-leftist children who listened to a bunch of terf propaganda screaming at me, but local shit actually has a chance of making social progress by getting people to learn to do better, and being the current acceptable target of whatever tumblr bullshit is going on doesnโt have that. but being a punching bag, even for poorly directed legitimate anger, isnโt actually useful praxis, and iโve got a limited amount of time on this hell planet.
so iโm shutting the bot down. iโll keep the archives up here. the twitter will keep posting. itโll keep posting for a few days as it runs down its queue.
maybe iโll come back and start updating it again if iโm less busy with doing actually useful work and making bots that are actually fun for me. if thatโs gonna happen, itโs years away, though.
iโve made over 90 bots now and itโs just the tumblr version of this one that has had responses to it that consistently make me feel like shit, though, so donโt take this as discouragement against making stuff like it yourself. bots are getting more and more accessible-- beginners can still do what i did, which is using tracery, cheap bots done quickย andย iftttย to make a twitter bot that cross-posts to tumblr. if youโre bummed to lose the posts on your dash, make a replacement yourself, or work with friends to do it.
i leave the meme bots in yโallโs capable hands. good luck.