Monthly Checkup #15: I'm just... exhausted.
Added 2022-05-02 03:47:40 +0000 UTCHey guys... I don't really have much to report at the moment. Everything is going fine, I'm just mentally and emotionally exhausted.
Check this Tweet thread for more information.
It's just getting exhausting to keep up with news or reports that every other week, someone is either some sexually harassing chaser, or a predator that the owner of FurAffinity itself has sheltered. It was enough that I had to block or disown friends in the past, either because they were an artist who did commissions for an alt-right furry, or someone is a serial sexual harasser. Sigh... Like what am I supposed to do? Do I quit FurAffinity? Like, I don't like Twitter for art, it is really garbage with its literal single column art and media management.
We need to hold people accountable if they say or do something awful. It's just so exhausting and painful. I want to stop them too, and hold them accountable, but how many times do I have to hear that Dragoneer sheltered a predator and protected them? How many times do I have to hear that Babbs is a sexual harasser in real life, a chaser? Like, I had to cut ties, years ago, with Marie the fox for doing business with Orion ( doing commissions for him ), who is supposedly an alt-right shitlord... but apparently there is evidence that all he did was vote for Donald Trump, then defend that choice, yet never actually said anything racist or bigoted. People just mobbed him and destroyed him. But, there is likely evidence that he is bigoted ( or there really is, I just haven't seen it ). Same with other infamous members of the furry fandom, such as BetaTyson. It's like, it started with JonTron years ago and I had to cancel him personally. Then ProJared. Then so many others, like JK Rowling, which I personally don't care for anyway and I don't care about Harry Potter ( Wings of Fire any day compared to Harry Potter ).
I'm doing everything I can to be a better person too, and to make the furry fandom a better place. But it's so depressing to hear about shit constantly and wonder if it's even worth it to go on anymore. Dragoneer is my friend, is he really that awful and shelters predators? Should I just quit using FurAffinity in protest? What do I do?
Comments
It was very helpful and sweet of you, even if it was just a stream of consciousness.
Arkveveen
2022-05-03 15:12:29 +0000 UTCHopefully any of that is helpful dear. Ended up kind of being a stream of consciousness as I was writing it just after waking up
Fen Longpaw
2022-05-02 19:23:58 +0000 UTCYou do what you can, nothing more, hopefully not less. "What you can" also means mentally and emotionally, and that varies person to person, even day to day. There's a piece on PhilosophyTube about active vs passive ignorance, and to a certain degree we all need to engage in a degree of active ignorance because our personal moral obligation compels us to act on certain new knowledge. I actively don't ask my father and sister very specific questions because I know that depending on their answers, I will never be able to repair my relationships with them because I won't be able to not respond and still have a clean conscience, but I'm not in a place in life where I have the luxury to be able to afford that rift at the moment. What I DO have is a support network including two professionals in the psychiatric field that I can regularly vent to so I can better handle the BS of the next week, and friends that I do trust, who will tell me when I'm being an ass or unreasonable, in the day to day. That's how we get through. We lean on those around us who haven't betrayed our trust yet. We can't try to actively filter everyone, we can't take all bad hearsay at face value. All we can do is reach out to people for help and change our behavior when we've seen someone deserves redemption or rejection. And if we don't have the emotional energy for that today, we don't engage, and turn to something that helps us recharge to be better equipped for tomorrow.
Fen Longpaw
2022-05-02 11:19:18 +0000 UTC
