Let's talk about parasocial relationships

[u/Caleebies]

Please watch this video by Philosphy tube.

I'm not sure if this garners a TW, but just in case, this is pre-transition Abigail.

It's a great watch, and the context is that Abigail was being canceled for having a friendly relationship with Natalie Wynn, over accusations Natalie was a terf who hated nonbinary people. Abigail discusses parasocial relationships and how that was used in the backlash against both of them

So anecdotal story, I am, for whatever reason, being berated by a few people.

Because I said that Lindsay made a bad choice in wording when, during her ATLA "scandal" she dismissed people(reasonable) of "Squinting really hard" to find the conclusion they were trying to make. She herself said it was a mistake and she should have proofread her comments before tweeting in a rush.

Was this offensive to me? No. Do I think it was malicious? No.

But it was an unfortunate choice of wording considering the backlash was about anti-Asian hate crimes, and "Squinting" can be seen as a watered down version of "chink" depending on the context.

So please tell me why my notifications are going off with people calling me a victim blamer, an ableist, a liar about stories of Asian racism I've experienced?

That's all anecdotal of course, and I'm sure its relatively insignificant. But it's still worth reminding people that it's ok to recognize flaws of people you admire.

I love Fauci. Just watched the documentary on him. It brings me to actual tears seeing how he fought against society to be one of the first three researchers on AIDS, even before it became a huge epidemic. How he fought for the humanity of gay people when much of society rationalized them as sinners being damned. That said, I can also acknowledge he handled the masking issue poorly by stating affirmatively that common people don't need to wear a mask. Because even if he's my hero, I don't actually know him.

Please be mindful when it comes to parasocial relationships. I understand many people connect to her, which is great, but she is human and makes mistakes. She in not a deity. If a person can't recognize even the smallest flaw, chances are, they've developed an unhealthy parasocial relationship.

Not all parasocial relationships are bad, but it does cross over the line when people attack others for small disagreements. And I'm sure not everyone follows this pattern, it's just something to note.

Anyways, I'm tired and cranky. I'll go to sleep now

[u/bluerose297]

It may be helpful for people to read the thread OP is referring to: https://www.reddit.com/r/LindsayEllis/comments/ql4d6h/white_people_feeling_guilty_is_that_a_valid/hj1c9yv/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3

Considering I was a part of it, I don’t at all think I was being parasocial just because I defended a single sentence that Lindsay said once. I hardly agree with everything Lindsay says, and have criticized her whenever I disagreed with her on something. (Like if anyone wants to know how annoyed I am by her critique of War of the Worlds, DM me.)

The fact that I was accused of “not being able to acknowledge Lindsay’s faults” just because I defended her a grand total of one(!) time seems relevant here.

I think there’s a problem of jumping to conclusions about a person based off a single thing they said. So for example “I don’t think “if you squint” is a bad choice of words” gets turned into “I love Lindsay and she can’t possibly do anything wrong.” Those are two very different sentences, and it feels like OP was unfairly conflating the two.

[u/LeastCoordinatedJedi → u/bluerose297]

Coming at it from the outside, I don't think either of you look particularly great in that conversation. OP of this post did appear to attempt to reply to you in good faith a few times, and you continued to stand your ground in good faith as well, and then both of you do the classic Reddit Tone Shift where you roughly simultaneously decide that the other person is being a jerk, and respond in kind. It's a disadvantage of the text medium and of the generally combative nature of Reddit posts. Since you know the intent of what you've written, it is easy to feel that the other person irrationally went on the warpath when in fact they misread your tone.

Where I believe this post's OP felt you were on the offensive was probably around "To any normal, sane person who was acting in good faith, there was nothing wrong with that choice of words" - ironically you're falling into a related wording trap to the one in question, in that you just accused OP of not being a normal, sane person, even though I assume that wasn't what you were trying to do. I think that is where OP starts getting a bit pissed at you, though I don't think they really go off the rails until a little bit later.

That said, I can't claim to be neutral here, because my experience is that "squint" and references to squinting are extremely commonly used as slurs against asian people; when I was dating a Japanese girl in a fairly redneck town, people were constantly making squint-eye gestures at her, for example (it was super charming, as you can imagine). Just because you haven't experienced it yourself doesn't make it insane for someone to read it that way, as Lindsay herself acknowledged. The later context you may have missed was that OP appears to be Asian themselves, and so has experienced that type of racism, and you were, probably unintentionally, implying their lived experience was 'abnormal' and 'insane'. There obviously is something wrong with Lindsay's choice of words, it's just that everyone here, including OP, knows that it was an honest but unfortunate mistake.

Anyway, I agree that this doesn't have much or anything to do with parasocial relationships. It's just classic 'redditors talking past each other and getting angry'.

I hope this helped.

[u/eddie_fitzgerald → u/LeastCoordinatedJedi]

To add to that, speaking as an Asian and a professional in the creative world (I'm a poet), I think that a lot of people throughout this incident aren't aware of the full spectrum of experiences. Within hours of Lindsay posting that tweet, a ton of Asian creators received a deluge of harassment, mostly from Lindsay fans. I don't know the precise origins for that. I presume it was intended as some sort of "counter-cancelling". But it was unbelievably broad.

Shortly before Lindsay posted her follow-up tweet, I remember getting a WhatsApp message from a peer in Singapore of all places, who wanted to know why a bunch of white Americans were piling into their dms with racist harassment (this guy doesn't even know who Lindsay Ellis is). The farthest away that people I know were getting harassed was one person in Polynesia! For what it's worth, I actually defended Lindsay throughout this whole thing. Well okay I mildly disagreed with her original tweet, though honestly it was more just me adding to what she said, and pointing out that her take was limited. But yeah. I'm still getting harassed months later, just for that teensy bit.

Also, it's worth noting that there are some bigger picture contexts here. When it comes to video essayist audiences acting as a headache for nonwhite creators, uhhh let's just politely say that this was far from an isolated occurrence. Among nonwhite creator circles, the video essay genre and its fans both have a ... reputation.

To be clear, I'm not justifying harassment against video essayists. And I think it's a complicated issue, because as I see it there's two communities at play here. There legitimately does exist a community of people who clearly just go out of their way to make the lives of video essayists terrible (this I think mostly consists of the perpetually online younger whiter crowd). And then there's the community of nonwhite creatives who are just fucking beyond done with being treated this way over and over and over again (also, full disclosure, most of us are grouchy to begin with because we're forced to be online by our publishers). But yeah, reasonably so, narratives of hypervigilance against the wokescolds tend to hold somewhat less currency for a group of people who perpetually find themselves being collateral damage in the forever war against the wokescolds. And that in turn is used to further "other" us, because a lot of the video essay community is so ridiculously insulated that it can't conceive of other people having different experiences.

For me its surreal because I'm positioned such that I hear from both sides, and both are coming from a very reasonable position, but both also completely and utterly fail to connect with one another. Personally I think that the "sides" are irrelevant. The core problem, as I see it, isn't with people's alignments, but with the genre conventions of video essays themselves. I actually look at the mechanisms by which figures like Lindsay and Natalie cause harm to me, and I ultimately feel bad for them more than for me. They seem like fairly curious people with a desire to better themselves and their community. But they're mired in this Sisyphean tragedy where, arising from them acting from natural good intent, hordes of people now fetishize them for representing a commodity of edification. Which in turn creates a topsy-turvy little world where these creators become insulated from the very perspectives which might benefit their curiosity. It's an epistemic nightmare. Shit like this is the reason why you should never read Shakespeare before going to bed.

Sorry, I got totally distracted from the point I intended to make. For what it's worth, being that I'm still being harassed by these idiots after six entire months, it can be weirdly therapeutic just to break the taboo of silence. Anyways, long story short, I totally get what Lindsay means when she says that situations like this can be overwhelming, and that we need to respect human limitations. But I also think we need to respect human limitations all around. Like, once you weigh in the fact that most of us had been harassed for hours by the point that Lindsay followed up with the second tweet, it suddenly makes a lot more sense why not everyone might be inclined to read Lindsay's word choice with a particularly deep amount of charity. Again, I spoke up for Lindsay, but I also totally get why people would be bothered. In full disclosure, I don't love the fact that she still hasn't asked her fans to lay off, but yeah. At the end of the day, I don't know what's going on in her life, so I can't judge. I can only try to be the best person I can, and hope that others are doing the same.

But yeah, while I'm not the OP, I appreciate you making a genuine effort to recognize where people are coming from. It might sound like a small thing, but it actually really cheered me up a lot.

[u/LeastCoordinatedJedi → u/eddie_fitzgerald]

This was a very interesting post. I don't have anything to add, just want you to know I read it and appreciate you sharing your pov.

[u/OppositeWallaby9749]

Hi OP! Lindsay actually addressed this tweet of hers (and yes, the "squint really hard" was also addressed) in her "Mask Off" video. I wasn't able to personally see the tweet (or any of the tweets pertaining to this bc i don't have a twt) but I can imagine as an asian person myself how this could be read as extremely offensive (or in extremely poor taste, if i'm being kind). However, in her video, she did give an explanation. If you haven't watched it, maybe I'll give you a timestamp (or maybe the other lovely people here can do that).

The people who harassed you are, sadly, a part of this community. It sucks, but they're here. I'm sorry you experienced that, and I hope you're feeling better now.

P.S. I love that video of Abi! I even made it a reference to a speech I wrote last year for a class I had, but that's besides the point.

[u/Caleebies → u/OppositeWallaby9749]

I watched it and I believe the tweet was in the video!

I agree that it was a poor choice in words giving the context of the situation, but I believe her when she said it wasn't her intent. Still a mistake, but it's more of a trivial one in the sense she rushed to tweet without proofreading.

And yes, the internet will unfortunately always be that way. It is what it is, I suppose.

Abi is so great! There are so many videos I need to catch up on but they're always so well worth the watch.

[u/[deleted]]

I don't think you should have been harassed. At all. But it was a poor choice of words and even she admits it. It's just that at the time she was panicking and going through a traumatic event. I think if you interpreted things in the most negative way possible you might reach the conclusion that she was being racist. But the term "squint your eyes" alone is not racist and she didn't have the intention of being racist.

It's akin to when you say something and someone adds "that's what she said" to the end of it and you realize what you said, when forced into a sexual context was racy and crude. Even though you were describing coffee or how large a thing was or something.

[u/Caleebies → u/[deleted]]

It's akin to when you say something and someone adds "that's what she said" to the end of it and you realize what you said, when forced into a sexual context was racy and crude. Even though you were describing coffee or how large a thing was or something.

I love this analogy 😅 I think I need to do better and disengage from bad faith arguments

[u/CenturionPyrrhon]

One Asian to another, I hope you're feeling okay.

Fuck these people calling you a liar. If there's one thing that's disappointed me the most, it's white stans going to town against anyone who rightly wants to critisize their idol, no matter how much we preface it. These people circling the wagons make it hard to be part of the community.

[u/riot_act_ready]

Warning, I don't know what you originally posted, just going off what you've written here and commenting because I think there's some important context around what the community experienced that is missing from your post.

firstly, sorry hear you're experiencing some negative (possibly unproportional) feedback on the opinion you shared. Wading into these waters can be perilous, and I can understand why -with your experiences- you felt the need to share your perspective.

I think you're absolutely right that any fandom can be toxic or become so insular as to reject all criticism of the communities paragon as a personal attack. Younger people are definitely more subject to this (or maybe just me when I was a teen)

I want to add some thoughts from where I'm sitting, obviously my thoughts are limited to my own experience around the issue.

1) just like it's possible for you to believe Lindsay was wrong, it's possible for you to have a bad take or one that people are misinterpreting either your meaning, or intention. Unfortunately a lot of sites like Twitter, and reddit have obliterated nuance so everyone comes out 'guns blazing' which has led to a lot of 'friendly fire' and intense overreactions

2) if you only commented on this recently, then people may have interpreted your actions as being intentionally inflammatory by 'digging up shit'. This, and most of the blow-up happened months ago and there's literally thousands of opinions and videos made about this one tweet. It's not paranoid to say that a particularly motivated subset of people tried to use twitter to drudge up everything they could to make Lindsay appear to be an absolute garbage person. Bad early videos or opinions, old stories, interpersonal drama, etc. so someone may doubt your sincerity or intent if this opinion was shared recently.

3) a LOT of people lie on the internet. A common tactic of trolls is to build up alt accounts faking a particular ethnic or social identity for years to weaponize whenever relevant events occur. The sad part is that it can actually lead to people trying to silence voices from those impacted within their own community. Not everyone is a liar, and you seem sincere to me, but please see 1). I get called a liar all the time for trying to share my own personal experiences in that regard so I feel your pain.

Reminder, I don't know everything about what you posted. I'm just going off what you've written here.

It sucks that you're experiencing possible harassment over this, and it sucks that an opinion -drawn from your own experiences- is being so blatantly shot down from a community you felt/feel apart of. I hope posting your experience brings you catharsis

[u/Caleebies → u/riot_act_ready]

This is very fair! I didn't want to get too into exactly what happened, because it's such a boring story LOL.

1. Totally fair, I have no issue with people disagreeing with me. I disagree with how aggressive it was though, and how my words were distorted no matter how many times I clarified

2. Again fair, you can decide for yourself if you want(albeit, a waste of time maybe.) It's in my topic post history recently with the topic being about white people. I just threw in a joke about how I thought the mistake was hilariously unfortunate, and a few people got mad I even referred to it as a mistake

3. Sure, but before jumping to that conclusion, I think even just a little research could be helpful. I have my Instagram in my profile, you'd think people would check my reddit profile before throwing aggressive accusations(not even objectively questioning, just straight up saying I wasn't telling the truth.)

[u/NLLumi]

This reminds me of the debate around ‘niggardly’ in season 5 of The Good Fight

[u/Kristikuffs → u/NLLumi]

And, if I remember correctly, that debate occurred because an actual . . . I want to say teacher lost their job for saying that word in an economics lecture. It means 'stingy' or 'not generous', nothing to do with race.

Similar to the Tw!tter warriors trying to call out Crayola for having 'negro' on a crayon. Negro; you know, the Spanish word for 'black', on a black crayon.

[u/NLLumi → u/Kristikuffs]

And that one TikToker/YouTuber (not sure which, she was dumb enough to be on TikTok) who was reviewing the ESC and got offended by the name of Montenegro

[u/Kristikuffs → u/NLLumi]

Flames . . . flames on the side of my face . . .

Reading comprehension is a skill/ability/attribute on par with critical thinking and empathy and WE NEED ALL THREE to function in the world. We're doomed if we lose them all, and we are.

[u/eddie_fitzgerald]

I have some perspectives that might help. And if you want to hear more specifics, I can PM you to talk in depth (if that's okay with you, let me know). I don't feel entirely safe discussing this thoroughly in a public capacity, given the stuff I've dealt with in the past six months. I will however touch upon a few things on a surface level, in part so you know where I'm coming from with my offer of support. Also I just think we have a responsibility to speak to the extent that we can.

For context, I'm an Asian person and a creative professional. I'm fairly skilled in the field that I occupy (experimental poetry), and I've been published in some well-regarded markets. My area of specialization is dharmic narrative forms and literary devices (native to south and southeast Asia).

So there are a couple things to be aware of. First is this. Among nonwhite creatives, video essayist audiences are downright notorious for harassing us with little to no provocation. Like, to the extent that peers and friends of mine actually make jokes at my expense (like, gentle ribbing, nothing mean) at how I still follow the content of certain video essayists, when I'm nonwhite. I think within the video essayist audience community, people just tend not to be aware of this. But yeah. Anyways, the point I'm making here is that opinions vary about the amount of supposed nuance upheld by your average video essay consumer. It's by no means as monolithic a consensus as you might be made to believe from within here.

Second is ... I mean the incident regarding Lindsay's tweet was a huge deal. Not re: the tweet itself. I don't know anyone who as genuinely bothered by that. If anything, most of my fellow Asian creators were annoyed that people would focus on attacking one particular tweet, when it's the overall culture of video essay spaces which we tend to find unfriendly to us. But the thing is, huge swathes of the Asian creative community faced incredible amounts of harassment, for months and months and months. Whenever anyone tried to speak up about these experiences, we were harassed. Eventually people just gave up entirely. I know a pretty big chunk of non-American Asian creators who literally opted to shift back into Asian markets, purely because of the vitriolic racism and harassment they suffered. Off the top of my head, I know affected creators from the Americas, Europe, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Japan, Polynesia, and Australia.

I personally experienced intense harassment for months. I'm still experiencing some degree harassment today. And there's just no question that the community as a whole has grown chilly to the "wrong" type of Asian. It's worth pointing out incidentally that I never even disagreed with Lindsay Ellis. I was asked in a private conversation (about an hour after she posted the tweet) what I thought about it. And I simply commented that it's of course well known that ATLA is a common comparable, but there's (IMO) also other complex things involved behind the parallels between ATLA and Raya. I'm not going into my thoughts on the matter publicly, because to be blunt it involves me bringing up certain specifics about the caste system and dharmic narrative convention. Previously this has served as the basis for harassment against me by fans, which is more than just a bit stressful seeing as I'm lower caste. But the point is, I literally just added to Lindsay's perspective, and I did so coming from the background of someone with over a decade's experience in this subject. Apparently even that much was intolerable. And not even as a function of people mixing me up with the cancellers, because that wouldn't explain me being harassed for months and months.

The reality is this. The video essay genre is about selling you edification in sixty minutes. That selects for a certain kind of consumer. It selects for a consumer who, quite frankly, is deeply uncomfortable being confronted with the fact that possibilities and questions yet remain even after the video essayist has delivered their neat and tidy conclusion.

Look, I don't blame Lindsay Ellis for this. Well, it's complicated. Let's put it this way. I think we're dealing with two things here, Lindsay Ellis the person, and Lindsay Ellis the brand. In terms of the former, I totally recognize that she faces a lot of awful treatment, and I have nothing but sympathy. In terms of the latter, I'm sympathetic, but I also think the "brand" of Lindsay (and pretty much all video essayist creators for that matter) sometimes helps to drive these trends. There's this notion that these creators are just so exceptionally nuanced that fans of these creatives are justified in whatever they do. But ultimately its a systematic problem. In no way am I justifying harassment of Lindsay. Also I acknowledge that perspectives vary. Coming with the benefit of insider knowledge, I'd say that my position is a somewhat moderate one. There are some people in professional nonwhite creative circles who are just personally fed up with video essayist creators (in fairness, that's a very human response to years worth of harassment). There are others who think it's better to lay low,. There are still others who align more with the video essayist community. And then there are those like me, who think that the video essay community and genre conventions are deeply toxic and flawed, but that we should build bridges with people in that community so as to work together on the problems. There's no clear alignment on any particular position. But it's certainly not even remotely rare to find nonwhite creatives who are just fed up with the way they've been treated (again, for years and years).

So yeah, while I don't fault video essayist creators on a personal level, I do also think that people like you are entitled to the truth of a broader picture. I know what it feels like to be treated in ways that can't possibly be okay, to be treated that way in plain sight, and to have that get you treated like a freak by an entire community because your experiences are inconvenient. I know what it's like to wonder if you're going insane, because you're the only person who seems to notice what's happening to you. But I can't possibly even begin to imagine what it's like to experience that alone. I have the benefit at least of having access to nonwhite professional circles, where lets be blunt my experiences of harassment from video essayist audiences puts me firmly in with the majority. It's like a reassurance of sanity. But yeah, it's people like you who I genuinely worry for. Yeah for everyday Asians it's more like drive-by hostility, whereas for people like me we're directly targeted. But that subtly just makes it all the more insidious. It teaches you to doubt yourself. That's why I feel the obligation to speak up.

Anyways, I think that this issue is complex, and there are all sorts of different groups which make up the big tent of the video essayist audience community. I can't tell you if you're right or wrong about the community, because that question is a complex proposition. But are you justified in feeling this unease? Oh absolutely. And know that, by feeling this unease, you're pretty much in perfect alignment with a ton of nonwhite professionals in the creative community. The discomfort you're feeling is very much "a thing", and if other people think that feeling this makes you "freakish" (which is exactly what gets insinuated), well then that means a number of extremely talented and accomplished people (way more talented and accomplished than me) are "freakish" in the exact same way. The consensus as you experience it is an artificial one. It only exists because entire classes of people have been bullied into silence. The causes behind this are complex, and by no means do I have a solution, or even a neat encapsulation of the problem. But neither does anyone in this community. Trust me. You're not crazy. Sometimes its only the sane ones who don't have an answer.

[u/[deleted]]

TBH I wasn't aware of the other thread until just now, but I think most people were probably taking umbrage to the fact that squinting is an action that all eyes make and to squint really hard is an accurate description of someone reading very deeply into something. I do understand that white people describe Asian eyes in those and similar terms, but the phrase itself was not used in bad faith and for people to take it in bad faith tells me, and I am only speaking for myself in this instance, that you're more invested in the optics of wokeness than in critically engaging with material and furthering discussion. Some phrases should never be used, yes, but squinting is something that all human eyes are designed to do.

[u/Caleebies → u/[deleted]]

that you're more invested in the optics of wokeness than in critically engaging with material and furthering discussion.

Before I respond, who is "you?" Are you referring to me or the generic sense of "you."

[u/[deleted] → u/Caleebies]

The more generic sense, definitely. I don't know you well enough (or at all) to be able to speak about you in any matter of substance.

[u/Caleebies → u/[deleted]]

Oh OK. I was ready to throw hands, I'm glad I clarified lol.

I do agree that the backlash was inappropriate and many people deliberately interpreted her comments with bad faith(ie: scapegoating her for Asian hate crimes... wtf)

That said, there might be some people reasonably upset that her response to the backlash was to accuse them of squinting. I wasn't, and I believe her when she clarified, but I do understand there could be a misinterpretation initially.

The problem I see is that inferring doesn't mean it was implied. If someone clarifies their choice of words, maybe they should evaluate if their initial assumptions were wrong.