I cannot stress enough that I fundamentally distrust callout posts, and I will distrust you if you send them to me.
Don't get me wrong: I investigate warnings, and I act on them if they're true and relevant. But callout posts are, on a very fundamental level, not about what people say they're about. There are exceptions, but generally speaking they're made for one or more of the following reasons:
- OP didn't like the subject to begin with (often for bigoted reasons), and they wanted a reason, and a following, to justify and validate that.
- OP wanted to gain popularity, so they made themselves look like either a victim, a hero, or both.
- OP wanted to claim victim status in a private falling-out in order to preserve good standing with their own friends/their community.
- OP didn't like what the subject was saying, and wanted to silence them (often for bigoted reasons).
- OP genuinely just wants "revenge" on the subject, or otherwise wants to ruin their reputation and have them sent harassment.
Again, there are exceptions: there are "callouts" that just unravel a subject's lies, or point out problems in already public actions. If OP is claiming to have been personally victimized in a legitimately serious way, and especially one that indicates the subject might be a danger to others, I'm definitely more willing to believe it- one obvious example being sexual violence.
But oftentimes, callouts are incredibly personal, misleading, emotionally manipulative, blatantly untrue, or all of the above.
This person came to me on anon; I have absolutely no way of knowing what their motives are or how trustworthy they are. There is no credibility or accountability here.
And I did read the post. Lo and behold, it's riddled with emotionally manipulative language, false accusations, and the biggest reaches I've ever seen:
- "DON'T READ THIS CALLOUT, IT'S SO TRIGGERING TO EVERYONE, JUST TAKE MY WORD FOR IT. But the proof is here if you REALLY don't believe me"
- "Proof" is a scarce handful of screenshots taken out of context that contain emotionally evocative language, but do not support the accusations at all.
- Some accusations are genuinely just weird logic leaps with no support, others are matters of personal opinion obviously driven by bigoted motives.
- OP themselves expresses very publicly that they believe people who are marginalized in the ways the subject are, who speak on that marginalization, should be silenced.
I try to assume good faith here, and I want to believe this anon was just guilt-tripped and manipulated by the post in question. I don't hold any ill will here.
But anon, I want you to ask yourself:
Are the accusations you're making something you have personally investigated and found to be true?
Does this person deserve the harassment and ostracization they will likely receive as a result of your accusations?
Will you hold yourself accountable for the damage you've caused if you're wrong?
And if you're absolutely certain you're right, come off anon and talk to me as a human being; because I can't believe you're ready to be accountable for these accusations if you won't even put your Tumblr blog behind them.
I've had actual, honest-to-god callout blogs reblogging this post like "yeah I research all the claims here!! they're real and you can trust me (:" as if the entire purpose of their blog is not to encourage their followers not to check those claims themselves, not to think critically about why those claims are made in the first place, & to just rely on random strangers to tell them how to think and who to completely ostracize from potentially vital communities, support systems, and resources.
I cannot emphasize enough that if you spread "callout posts" as a fucking hobby, this post is explicitly about you.
This apparently is a REALLY old post, but it hit me again with something that's going on on YouTube at present. Not going to identify who, though it's likely obvious--and it started as the usual: a girl claimed she was assaulted by a guy she trusted. And really, how often have we heard iterations of that? "Believe the victim" is a good belief to have.
But in this case, the accused decided to tackle it head on. He brought receipts. He emphasized where his records of the time she said he r'ed her were only his side of the conversation, because she'd deleted hers. He ALSO went over Reddit posts they'd made back and forth, that were from locked communities that now cannot be changed, deleted or altered. "Don't just believe me, look it up." He revealed things about himself that I hugely doubt he would have EVER revealed had she not doxxed him, things that, generally, I do not personally believe a young American male would lie about. But again, he said don't just believe him, look it up.
I did. It tracks. And I wasn't the only one it tracked for, a lot of people came to the same conclusion (namely, that for whatever reason, she lied about the event happening at all). I didn't follow the herd who went to her DMs and asked for proof, but a lot of people did.
Her response was not to defend her claim. Her response was to delete all social media.
And the worst thing? There will be people who will believe her no matter what. His YouTube career is potentially over in a lot of ways. And it further harms the people who will believe him, and then treat every OTHER case of SA or r*pe as false because hers was. It's beyond enraging.
If you think you have proof, check again. If you think it's really sound, check AGAIN. Because the internet is forever, far more forever than even a published story in a newspaper or magazine.
