freedom-of-fanfic:

the funny thing about bullies – especially self-righteous bullies that travel in packs, such as antis – is that 99.8% of the time they come out on top of any conflict they get into. 

and holy hell, it’s fucking infuriating when it’s not completely exhausting.

we all like to see clapback at people who don’t play fair and treat others like shit. when someone is really nasty and abusive – when they’re chronically mean and dangerous and seemingly untouchable – it’s easy to yearn for their comeuppance and want to see them know they’re beat. we want the fear and shame and guilt bullies and abusers spread around revisited on their own head so they understand how awful a person they’ve been.

but realistically: you’ll never see a bully/abuser/anti doubt or question themselves. you’ll never see them backtrack with sincerity. you’ll never successfully shame them out of their behavior or devastate their confidence with your logic and consistency, because successful bullies – by definition – will always be less empathetic, more shameless, and more self-serving than anyone they have the power to abuse.

you will never beat a bully at the shame game. bullies live that game. shaming others is the source of their social power; they know (at least subconsciously) that flinching is game over. when someone points out their behavior is something shameful, they have to excuse or deflect or dismiss it: else, they lose. They deserved it. they hurt me first. who cares what you have to say? 

and if you don’t have the direct authority to punish a bully, why should they care? abusers thrive in this world because they’ve decided the ethics and empathy that guide social rules don’t apply to them. Ethical people have lines they cannot cross without violating their sense of what’s right: abusers trample those lines, doing whatever serves them best, because they’re not obligated to care.

maybe it seems unthinkable they’d get away with it … but in general, our social networks have an inbuilt ‘get out of jail free’ card for abusers. we have to trust others are following the same social rules we are. when we don’t trust that, it’s actually worse. (we get … well, present-day tumblr, probably.) but that very trust makes society blind to behavior that crosses lines – it’s too unthinkable that anyone would do that. innocent until proven guilty. and that doubt protects abusers who are willing to pretend they too are trusting, caring people who follow the rules.

in fact, bullies care more about setting down social rules than anyone because they limit the behavior of everyone other than themselves.

Rules set boundaries for ethical people. trust that those rules will be followed blinds people to all but the most blatant rule-breaking behavior. and when bullies lay down the rules, the rules themselves are often designed to encourage and shelter abusers.

I believe this is why the worst abusers so often turn out to be the most vocal activist, the most upright churchgoer, the politician with the anti-abuse platform. Such bullies do, in fact, truly advocate for everyone following the standards of behavior they support … except themselves.* These abusers are free to jump in and out of bounds whenever it suits their needs, making them all but impossible to call out.

They harass and threaten and torment their targets, exploiting the victims’ trust and sense of obligation to protect the bully from exposure. but the moment a target retaliates, abusers are the first to call them out for bad behavior, damaging the victim’s reputation and improving their own without compunction, sympathy, or remorse.**

Perhaps the most ironic part is that the higher the standard of behavior the bully advocates for, gatekeeps, and regularly violates, the more powerful and invulnerable they become and the more blatant and open their two-faced behavior can be.  Their hypocrisy is only remarkable to people who know what standards they supposedly uphold and demand of others. To everyone else the standards themselves are absurd. so what if a person falls short sometimes? why do you care? why are you surprised?

This is the social loophole that bullies and abusers in the anti-shipping movement exploit – and there are a lot of abusive anti-shippers. As the self-declared fandom/shipping police, tasking themselves with creating rules of conduct and aiming to enforce them by shaming, guilting, and threatening dissenters, anti culture by nature attracts the best shame game players – bullies and abusers – and draws them into its ranks. 

unhampered by social obligation or a need to play fair, abusers rapidly rise to the top of policing communities like anti-shipping. already governed only by their own convenience, an abuser will never suffer from concerns of going ‘too far’; therefore, the loyalty of an abuser to a cause that gives them licence to abuse will never come into question. their gleeful eagerness to punish, lack of sympathy for their targets, and their willingness to come down hard even on other antis is both admired and feared. everyone wants to be their friend to insure their inevitable slip-ups due to self-conflicting rules are forgiven, unwittingly putting themselves in debt to a person who will never let them forget it.

so who’s left to call a hypocrite out, even when their hypocrisy is open and blatant? at least subconsciously aware that the the only real tethers on behavior in spaces where authority is nonexistent – tumblr, twitter, etc – are empathy and shame, abusers do their level best to evoke those feelings in everyone around them while being completely free of those feelings themselves. they cannot be shamed by anyone; they don’t play fair and they don’t show sympathy if it doesn’t serve their needs.

In short: as long as a bully’s opponent gives even the slightest fuck about playing fair, being kind, and giving the benefit of the doubt, they will never out-bully a bully.

the point of this long-winded post is this: 

if you’re hoping for some creator to smack antis down; if you’re sitting in front of your computer, jaw dropped, as antis flock to the dmcb fandom and set up their absurd rules despite the source material being in conflict with everything antis supposedly stand for; if you see anti-shipper victims sharing how they were driven to suicide attempts and think ‘surely this time antis will be conscience-striken’: the reality is that anti-shippers will never apologize, will never admit to hypocrisy, and will never take ownership of the consequences of their actions. 

bullies always come up smelling like roses because they know social rules are actually nigh-unenforceable. They only apply to the abuser if the abuser chooses to abide by the rules, and why would they limit themselves like that?

and if you don’t like it, there’s nothing you can do about it. 

that’s the joke. (i’m not laughing either.)

*and the louder bullies support the cause of vulnerable people, the more unthinkable it is that they would ever exploit vulnerability themselves. 

**this is a wildly successful technique abusers use for self-protection. it accomplishes many things at once:

• it feeds the abuser’s deluded worldview wherein their target is the badguy and the abuser is their hapless victim. (this is how abusers justify abuse most of the time: they have to act outside the rules to protect themselves!)
• puts the spotlight on the victim, magnifying their errors and minimizing/erasing the effect of the abuser’s provocation
• the victim feels ashamed for their behavior; even if they realize they wer provoked, they are ethically bound to acknowledge what they did was wrong (and the abuser will hold it against them for eternity)
• the victim may be successfully gaslighted into doubting that their actions were provoked or warranted
• if the victim attempts to act against their abuser’s interest in the future, their credibility is now damaged/doubtful
• if the abuser can’t pull off looking squeaky-clean to others, tarnishing their target’s reputation makes outsiders less likely to come to their aid, excusing the abusive dynamic as ‘mutual.’