I shall apply a mass spectrometer to my feelings.

[snarp]

In this manner, I shall determine whether the variety of Bad I feel when a black/trans teenager on the internet goes

"ugh white/cis people are stupid"

is of the same density and composed of the same materials of the Bad that the teenager would feel if I were to say

"ugh black/trans people are stupid"

- wait, haha, I just remembered that I'm an adult! Never mind, of course it's not, can I still get the deposit back on that mass spectrometer? ...Well, then let's truck it over to Sephora, I'm going to solve the Nars Orgasm dupe problem once and for all.

Seriously, though: If you are over the age of twenty-one or so, and you feel personally hurt by immoderate expressions of outrage coming from disadvantaged teenagers, then the problem is you. Kids can't moderate their output. Telling them to stop saying rude stuff is like telling someone who's got a cold to stop sneezing, or telling a drunk person to stop driving so crooked.

Barring some sort of mass alteration of human biology, as if we were in a book by Octavia Butler or Iain M. Banks, teenagers are never going to stop saying stuff that offends adults, particularly adults whom they view as being outside of their own social group. Part of being an adult is learning not to take it personally. Tell a kid "wow that's kind of rude," if you feel so compelled - but Jesus H., if high school teachers got upset about this crap, there would never be class. There be only weeping. Miserable, endless weeping.

The school district is drowned in tears because Jakey "Buffalo Man!" Spenser said something particularly unkind about white women. The kids are all confused and damp. They expected sarcastic offers of detention and extra homework, like usual. Does this mean they get tomorrow off? No, tomorrow is a special assembly because everyone has to get a tetanus shot. This is what your cruel words have wrought, Spenser. Also, your nickname is stupid, at least take the exclamation point out of there.

Comments

[metaphortunate]

Read the beginning of this & thought, "That...does not sound like snarp. Wait, it does, she mentioned a mass spectrometer! What?"

And then all became clear!

[snarp]

I am easily-identified by all the jokes requiring educational pre-requisites.

I have a problem.

[snarp]

(I just put this on Tumblr but don't feel it deserves a separate post of its own here, so it's going to be a reply to you, sorry.)

And yeah, this does understate the problem due to, y’know, Institutionalized Bigotry Still Being A Thing That Is Real and the two remarks not being equivalent regardless of the age of the person saying them.

I mean, it does not make sense to get upset because someone posted this,

*white person voice*: BITCOINS WOW

regardless of the poster’s age. If you are upset about that Tumblr post I just made up, then you are what is known in clinical terms as a huge narcissist. Go see a doctor. The doctor cannot fix this, but they can laugh at you, which is something you need in your life.

But Tumblr is comprised mostly of people under the age of twenty. Their brains are not done growing, they mostly cannot drive, and some of them think Teen Wolf is pretty well-written.

[metaphortunate]

*laughs*

[holyschist]

While I agree there's not much point in getting upset over teenagers on Tumblr being melodramatic or rude, and particularly not with the power differential in your scenario, I have to question "Tumblr is comprised mostly of people under the age of twenty."

Tumblr has a reputation as a site for teenagers, but the demographics don't bear that out. All the demographic stats I've been able to find have been that 50-60%+ of Tumblr users are over 24 (most of them college-educated, but not high-earning). A significant percentage are under 35, and certainly there's a large minority under 20, but I honestly don't think the generally hostile climate of parts of Tumblr can be explained by it being a teen-dominated site, because it's not.

Sources for demographics: http://brandongaille.com/26-astonishing-tumblr-demographics-trends-and-stats/
http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-demographic-breakdown-of-Tumblr
http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/jun/20/brands-know-tumblr-users-infographic

[snarp]

The conversations in question have been taking place in Homestuck-fandom-related circles, which are, in fact, mostly teenagers. If you can point out some adults who are making remarks you consider "hostile," I'd be interested in seeing it. But I really don't think that's what the people I'm vagueblogging about have been vagueblogging about.

(That is the best sentence I've typed for days. I am proud of that sentence.)

To break the toxic cycle, I'll go ahead and say that I've been making cruel fun of JumpingJackTrash, The-Real-Seebs, and VastDerp. VastDerp and JJT have themselves been vagueblogging - I have seen no names mentioned when they complain that people on Tumblr are doing activism wrong - and I think Seebs has been as well. I've only skimmed his last few posts.

So, I don't know exactly who they've been complaining about so strenuously. However, in my capacity as an experienced criminal investigator in Nintendo DS games, I fear I must point the finger at davekat/Jude and their followers. The profile fits: PoC transgender Homestuck fan with many followers; yells at the top of their lungs about racist/homophobic/transphobic stuff; also makes lots of inflammatory exclusionary statements about white people, cis people, straight people, etc etc; has been reblogged very heavily recently, and frequently by other people in Homestuck fandom whose posts my targets may be expected to have seen.

Jude is twenty years old, and when I've clicked through to look at who's reblogging their stuff, most of them appear to be that age or younger. The roleplaying of outsized anger expressed via pseudonymous Tumblr posts and aggressively-posed selfies strikes me as a relatively healthy thing for someone their age and in their apparent RL situation to be doing.

[holyschist]

Okay, sorry I did not realize to read "Tumblr" as "Homestuck fandom part of Tumblr." I move in different fandom circles where yes, I have definitely seen 20-somethings who are very into constant performative outrage (it gets them followers, after all), but I both try not to cross streams and try to avoid them entirely, so I won't be providing links because I don't save them. My personal "do not engage" list on Tumblr is a mile long and everyone on it is mid-20s+, but that is of course anecdotal. Being in a constant state of rage and engaging with people who are in a constant state of rage exhausts me and prevents me from actually accomplishing things, so I don't do it anymore.

I have felt that in general, people on Tumblr of all ages are quicker to jump to assuming bad faith in others over the most trivial, politely-phrased things, and quicker to jump to personal insults when disagreeing, regardless of what the topic at hand is. Having been on a bunch of other social media platforms over the years with similar age spreads in my corner, I'm inclined to think it's something about Tumblr's format that encourages it/discourages civil disagreement (I could speculate about a) the social impact of reblogs and b) the really high follower counts when compared to something like LJ/DW, a discussion forum, or a mailing list). But that's not something either of us can (dis)prove, so it's not really something I want to argue about.

As I said, I'm not judging the healthiness or not of performative rage among teenagers. I was simply objecting to the common assertion that Tumblr is a site dominated by teenagers, as I had no way of knowing you were referring to a specific subset of Tumblr that perhaps is.