Hmm, can I link to a tweet from here? Let's find out!
Top tweet contains trigger warnings for rest of thread. But this is basically a snapshot of some of the abuse in my mentions in the last 24 hours.
What for? Well I tweeted photos of an Amazon battle outfit from Wonder Woman and Justice League side by side.
That's... literally it. And this is why I have one piece of twitter advice:
NOBODY IS OWED A RESPONSE
https://mobile.twitter.com/thalestral/status/930552511542505476
To be clear - this abuse doesn't bother me. At all. And to be clear - that's extremely fucked up.
Y'see, when I began writing about comics online I'm 2011/12 this was my daily intake of abuse and harassment. In fact, this is pretty light compared to what I got then.
And it was awful. It contributed to one of my smaller breakdowns. Not least because comic pros and critics often joined in.
This was 3-5 years ago. And that was common.
It's one of the reasons I moved to working in print. Just before my current breakdown I was thinking of going back to some online stuff as now a lot of sites don't have comments. Which is GREAT.
So I probably will do some online writing when I come back. But I will never ever engage with people I don't know about it.
A presence on twitter is kinda mandatory for a writer. But people see "journalist" and think somehow my tweets are the same as paid articles 🤔🤔 NOPE.
Within the comics industry, the more obvious abuse towards critics from fans, fellow critics and creators has died down. Yes even when taking Nick Spencer and Dan Slott into account.
Today I would not get a high profile artist throwing a misogynist slur at me. Or a high profile artist threatening to punch me (hat tip to Mark Waid for keeping that threat alive to a male critic this year though!).
Comics as a whole has got smarter. Which is one of the reasons that gang of eejits has arisen.
But I'm not gonna talk about them. They're nobodies.
Fact is, comics has got more pleasant - on the surface. The gaming community didn't fare so well, and subsequently the "geek" parts of the film community have turned into a vile cesspit of utter shitgibbons.
I saw a fellow journalist this week have to delete a tweet asking if any women liked Batman v Superman because of the abuse just asking that question resulted in.
And twitter, ofc, does nothing. I report a lot. The action rate is ~2%.
This is the shit that puts women and non-binary folks off of engaging with geek culture in any way.
Why would someone subjected to the abuse I linked above, even dream of going to a comic con?
This behaviour hurts everyone in comics. Movies don't care, they've got their money. Comics though? Comics should absolutely care.
Men. When you see this stuff, report it and verbalise that it's Not Okay. The people doing this think they're the majority. Educate them 👌
Everyone else? Block abusers. Block people who waste your time. Don't answer anybody that YOU DON'T WANT TO.
And uh, move to mastodon 🐘💨
thal