Why conservatives hate liberals, based on Tumblr politics.
Tumblr is a great place. Its net worth is around 200 million dollars, and its users are devoted, active and creative. And there are various “pillars” of tumblr but one of the biggest and one of the most active pillars is the fandom bloc of tumblr. Tumblr fandoms can be a wonderful place where you can share mutual interests and browse pretty gifsets and aesthetics. On the other hand, where — as I like to put it — shit can go down.
I am in the Harry Potter fandom, one of the oldest and biggest fandom of all. And that kind of range gives what we liberals all enjoy — diversity. But that diversity also creates lots of conflict and you can find the scene of the debate in harrypotterconfessions.tumblr.com.
There are a lot of controversial characters in Harry Potter for those of you who aren’t familiar with it. Mostly the bad guys. No, actually, to put it more precisely, the morally grey ones. Tumblr’s debate-favourites include Severus Snape, Draco Malfoy, et cetera. But Snape usually seems to get a lot of the heat, compared to the latter.
And I don’t particularly involve myself in these debates for no other reason than the fact that I don’t really have anything to contribute, but this certain post from the admin made me think for a bit.
People. Look for crying out loud. Someday I hope you can all step away from fandom BS for a while and just. Stand in the sun. Play with some kids. Take a stroll.
“Someone said go kill myself because I said something about Snape” …..??? I mean, were you handed a gun? Was it a direct command? “Someone was mean on the internet bwaahhh!!” ….Life is calling! I know I might be older than some (most?) of you guys and you all have different real life situations but don’t you all have like, school? Jobs? Kids? Health concerns? Loved ones? Confusing emotions?
Okay I’m bitter and old and jaded but fuuuccckkk, all day it’s Snape this and Cursed Child that and ship wars all day long. Guys. Guys? You all send in confessions. I make graphics based on these words. Graphics get posted. People act like jerks. And, man oh man, do I keep my mouth shut.
But. Holy shit. You kids get to me sometimes. And you wanna know something else? Exactly what I told Tech the other day? No matter how scary the government gets, no matter how shitty my life gets with homelessness (and living with my parents and my teenage autistic sons and insane sister and getting gentrified out of my own ghetto and social services fixing to toss my kids in the system again and having them try and throw me in a psyche unit and having my building condemned…) I can always depend on fandom wank to remind me how petty people can really be over people namecalling on the internet over fictional characters.
Go. Outside. And. Play.
Now, this post reminded me of the whole debate about identity politics and how liberals lost the focus in the past year’s campaign. Now, I do realise that identity politics has much more real-life importance and pertinence compared to fandom wars. I’m just using that example so we can kind of try to understand why conservatives on twitter are going “LIBERAL TEARS!!! HAHAHAHA!”
For this article, I’ll just allow myself to put conservatives as working class rural Americans and liberals as educated elites. I know that’s not exactly 100% true, but I’m just sticking close to the general majority.
So basically, when rural Americans look at liberals, they think that their whole “morality debates” and “inclusivity campaigns” are fucking petty compared to what they have to do on a daily basis, which is wake up at 4am and get to work on the field, since a lot of rural Americans work in agriculture. I remember this one sentence in the article “why rural America voted for Trump” published in the New York Times: “Let the liberals sleep in.”
Thus the whole identity politics thing started and then people started publishing articles about “Is Trump Liberals’ Fault?” Which, by the way, is a silly argument. Times columnist David Leonhadt said in a recent Opinion newsletter, “I find this argument to be pretty silly. Trump grew out of the political right, including Fox News and the false “birther” conspiracy theory. He was able to become president because the Republican establishment ultimately rallied to him. Liberals clearly failed in their attempts to stop Trump, but they did not create him.”
I don’t despise the idea of “identity politics” — the fundamental core of it is diversity and inclusivity and, well, just democracy in general. But the way it has shifted into this “who has more privilege than who” and “who is to blame” instead of actually tackling those inequalities and unfair advantages has frankly made everyone tired.
The fact that liberals are playing the blame game now is probably making those guys as Breitbart laugh at the “liberal tears.” We liberals have to stick more true to our agenda which is progressivism, not philosophy. It’s okay to have debates, to try to include as many intersections — as long as they are fruitful and they have a certain purpose.
I’ve mentioned the two groups: rural Americans and educated elites. One of the most striking disparities within these two groups is income inequality. There’s your answer. If Hillary Clinton had focused on this more than designing pretty speeches, it probably would’ve gone much better.
So stop playing the blame game. It probably looks like tumblr wars to conservatives, and like it or not, we have to kind of learn to live with everyone.
