Incivility in unrest

Last week, someone I was once close with died of cancer. 

I say "once close" instead of "a friend" because we'd drifted apart over years - they were part of a group that was formative to my youth and to my young adulthood, but which turned quite toxic and eventually I quietly left. (At least I thought it was quietly.) The last thing she asked me was advice for making skirts out of the elastic-smocked-top crushed velvet yardage from Joann's, and that was more than a decade ago. She was medically obese, and was working hard to be seen as a woman. The skirts were an easy way to get an infusion of femme without trying to also tackle the toxic women's diet industry at the same time. I can only vaguely recall her deadname at this point, because her nickname was what we all called her. I hadn't really spoken to her since before her transition. I had cut off that entire part of my life like one cuts off a decaying branch.

I realized that I stopped doing Faire in 2006 (or 2009), and Dickens in 2013; it's been fifteen (or twelve) and eight years I've been outside those groups, respectively. While I miss the camaraderie and I miss the absolute joy of the places and experiences we created, I do not miss the toxicity of the people involved.

Dickens Fair is having its #metoo moment, simultaneously as it's facing criticism for it's casting policies, business practices around the volunteer staff, and acknowledging the hurt and harm that cast members receive at the hands of both patrons and other members of the cast and crew. There needs to be a change, that much has been acknowledged - even by the people who run the event. They've promised many things before and been caught short, so the performers are right to hold their feet to the fire. However, I do not think that the timeline set out in the demands are reasonable, and I believe one of the demands in particular is unreasonable. Others agree, but several of the leaders of this movement cannot abide others who don't agree wholeheartedly and are actively sealioning and dogpiling other folks who raise the slightest objection. I'm seeing signs of a cortisol/dopamine cycle addiction that I find really troubling. To quote something extremely relevant:

Self harm that is rewarded by society looks like: 

5. Social media ‘outrage’: social media outrage occurs when we (without breaks) consume content that puts us on a cycle of emotional addiction. These platforms are designed to use our dopamine + cortisol hits to keep us using the product. They can lead us to feeling helpless + have a narrative of the world that doesn’t necessarily reflect reality.

I've been trying to write this for an hour and I keep looking away. 

My brain does not want to talk about how traumatized I have been by people who I thought were my friends, who enjoy beating others down on the internet, and who have done it to me with a shockingly casual and final cruelty. Before it was Facebook, it was LiveJournal and Tribe, before that it was forums, and before that usenet groups and mailing lists. I have had these righteous types who I thought were my friends do real and lasting harm to my self-esteem and mental health, to say nothing of my social life and emotional connections. These are people who see themselves as good people, and who are blind to the harms they do, be it in the name of The Cause or on a personal whim. I will not abide this treatment, and I leave. For better or worse, when I disappear from their sphere of influence it doesn't even register.

I have been fortunate enough to not need Fair or Faire in the economic sense, and so cutting them out has impacted my social life but not prevented me from thriving. We talk about "drama is as drama does", but the reality seems to be that people who cannot control their external lives spend much of their time enforcing their views on the internet instead. I am all for moving the Overton Window in the direction of Social Justice, but I am not for magical thinking when it comes to social organizing. I get that people have been pushing these objectives for months and years, but it has been (slowly) getting better. I get that the time for BLM organizing is now, but I also think that timelines for demands should take into account that we're only just now starting to emerge from a global pandemic in which the things which shut down first, and most-thoroughly, were special events. 

There seems to be a thread of "we can rebuild this on our own if the Powers That Be deny our demands" and to that I just have to purse my lips grimly. If your main method of building consensus is to shout down people who hold other opinions, you are only going to have people join who already agree with you lock, stock, and barrel. And I doubt that will be as many people as you think. Facebook is the wrong place to organize, because it enables and normalizes building and maintaining the type of filter bubbles that enable other magical thinking movements, like Q-Anon. 

I want change for the better. But I also want to stop people from spending their entire days writing thousand-word rebuttals to people who say they disagree with any part of a plan. It turns out, arguing these things at this length, in person or especially on the internet, does not have the persuasive effect you intend. But keep chasing that dopamine.

I want change, but I also want people to stop being assholes.

I guess they're people, so maybe that's not entirely possible.