The creator of Your Fave is Problematic regrets making it
The creator of the popular Tumblr Your Fave is Problematic, Liat Kaplan, penned a piece for the New York Times about why she regrets doing the blog, which gained steam in the early 2010s. The Tumblr chronicled celebrity transgressions that were racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and ethnophobic.
Your Fave is Problematic, a popular blog dedicated to “canceling” celebrities, counts Lena Dunham, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga among its targets.
Liat Kaplan, the blog's creator, reflects on her quest to punish the untouchable - and why she regrets it. https://t.co/WHEKZwVbPq
- The New York Times (@nytimes) February 25, 2021
She writes, " Looking back, I was more of a cop than a social justice warrior, as people on Tumblr had come to think of me."
Key highlights and quotes behind the cut:
-Kaplan says she wrote the blog when she was in high school. Some notable moments: She got in a feud with a prominent YA author and one actor submitted himself (???) to dig up his shit.
-"The blog started, as so many anonymous online projects do, as vengeful public shaming masquerading as social criticism. I was fine-tuning my moral compass and coming into my own as a feminist. So when I noticed classmates making sexist jokes on Facebook, including some about me, I started taking screenshots to post on a Tumblr called Calling Out Sexists. My policy was that I would take down a post only if its author publicly apologized."
-Tumblr users started screenshotting statements from minor celebrities, so the creator decided to rebrand and go after public figures. She posted photos of Lady Gaga with unnaturally bronzed skin, a trip Lena Dunham had written about Japan and a homophobic Taylor Swift lyric in "Picture to Burn."
-"My most popular posts tended to be about women - which makes sense, because the celebrity press tends to be more critical of them."
-Sadly, her older sister died in a bus crash, and she went on medical leave from school. Now stuck at home, she devoted herself to Tumblr. "Mostly, I was interested in knocking people off their pedestals. I also enjoyed being popular, controversial, discussed." Then she started receiving threats and decided to stop posting.
-"In the years since, I’ve looked back on my blog with shame and regret - about my pettiness, my motivating rage, my hard-and-fast assumptions that people were either good or bad. Who was I to lump together known misogynists with people who got tattoos in languages they didn’t speak? I just wanted to see someone face consequences; no one who’d hurt me ever had."
-"There’s something almost quaint about it all now: teenage me, teaching myself about social justice on Tumblr while also posturing as an authority on that very subject, thinking I was making a difference while engaging in a bit of schadenfreude. Meanwhile, other movements - local, global, unified in their purposes and rooted in progressive philosophies - were organizing for actual justice."
Source
Your Fave is Problematic, a popular blog dedicated to “canceling” celebrities, counts Lena Dunham, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga among its targets.
Liat Kaplan, the blog's creator, reflects on her quest to punish the untouchable - and why she regrets it. https://t.co/WHEKZwVbPq
- The New York Times (@nytimes) February 25, 2021
She writes, " Looking back, I was more of a cop than a social justice warrior, as people on Tumblr had come to think of me."
Key highlights and quotes behind the cut:
-Kaplan says she wrote the blog when she was in high school. Some notable moments: She got in a feud with a prominent YA author and one actor submitted himself (???) to dig up his shit.
-"The blog started, as so many anonymous online projects do, as vengeful public shaming masquerading as social criticism. I was fine-tuning my moral compass and coming into my own as a feminist. So when I noticed classmates making sexist jokes on Facebook, including some about me, I started taking screenshots to post on a Tumblr called Calling Out Sexists. My policy was that I would take down a post only if its author publicly apologized."
-Tumblr users started screenshotting statements from minor celebrities, so the creator decided to rebrand and go after public figures. She posted photos of Lady Gaga with unnaturally bronzed skin, a trip Lena Dunham had written about Japan and a homophobic Taylor Swift lyric in "Picture to Burn."
-"My most popular posts tended to be about women - which makes sense, because the celebrity press tends to be more critical of them."
-Sadly, her older sister died in a bus crash, and she went on medical leave from school. Now stuck at home, she devoted herself to Tumblr. "Mostly, I was interested in knocking people off their pedestals. I also enjoyed being popular, controversial, discussed." Then she started receiving threats and decided to stop posting.
-"In the years since, I’ve looked back on my blog with shame and regret - about my pettiness, my motivating rage, my hard-and-fast assumptions that people were either good or bad. Who was I to lump together known misogynists with people who got tattoos in languages they didn’t speak? I just wanted to see someone face consequences; no one who’d hurt me ever had."
-"There’s something almost quaint about it all now: teenage me, teaching myself about social justice on Tumblr while also posturing as an authority on that very subject, thinking I was making a difference while engaging in a bit of schadenfreude. Meanwhile, other movements - local, global, unified in their purposes and rooted in progressive philosophies - were organizing for actual justice."
Source