"Internet drama is like a tornado. It'll wreck your shit if you're in the damage path, but it's pretty easy to keep away from."
I said that on Cohost last April shortly after the federiefederi drama started going down on the Neocities news feed. The idea I was trying to get across there was, it's quite easy to not get involved in social media drama, insofar as you just carry on scrolling without engaging. I had accidentally started some drama on Tumblr in late 2022 and learned very early on in that process that traditional de-escalation tactics simply do not work there. I knew that something would eventually divert the public attention off me and so I just stood there, wearing the clown makeup and juggling the bowling pins until people got tired of it and moved onto something else. Incidentally, that something else happened to be Goncharov. Yes, that Goncharov. So, when the F+F drama started going down, I knew well enough to keep out of it. I silently unfollowed the site so my feed wasn't getting clogged up with Meme Hell, made some cryptic references to it on Cohost, and that was it.
However, returning to the tornado metaphor, 1.5-mile-wide EF5 tornadoes are things that exist. When I was in high school, an EF5 tornado hit the city of Greensburg, Kansas, effecting 99% destruction.
In case you were not aware, this is transgender awareness week. Some trans-hating Neocities users decided to take the opportunity to broadcast their mouth diarrhoea on people's profiles, including that of one fairly prolific user whose name I shall not mention. This particular user spent a great deal of time over the past several months following as many active Neocities users as possible, presenting a grandfatherly persona and sense of community that would be easy for others to follow. While I don't imagine this was done maliciously, he began some drama yesterday when his profile was subverted by 1 transphobic user who preyed on his liberal sense of fair play, thereby turning it into an active demonstration of free speech absolutism. Fortunately, Neocities' userbase tends to be wary of this, having come over from the fascist stronghold of greater social media, where every single network's CEO, from Elon Musk on down to Matt Mullenweg, claims to be a "free speech absolutist". I'm not going to recount that entire post again here, but suffice it to say, this Neocities user's following revolted and are largely blocking him for his action.
What action? As I mentioned, a noted trans-hating hostee interacted with this man's profile, taking the opportunity to decry poor treatment and false claims by the userbase at large, eliciting a sympathetic reply and a call for everybody to just get along. "Divisiveness is destroying our culture" is too "cancel culture" or "callout culture" adjacent for my liking, so, rather than engaging with the drama, I simply blocked him and moved on. Here. To my blog. To vagueblog about him, I guess. To be perfectly honest, I had considered engaging. I had a reply all typed out and ready to send, but I didn't send it. Back in 2022, I could tell that most of the people commenting on my tumblr post were riding the endorphin high of being right, having pages and pages of people agreeing with them. Some even started combing through my older posts trying to provoke me into replying. I didn't want to be that girl. Was I right about this Neocities thing? Possibly. Would I have had tens of people liking my reply? Probably. Would I have gotten followers over it? Most likely. I already saw the same pattern emerging here as in 2022, so I just left it lie and walked away.
Understand, this is not a defence. I'm starting to see anti-transgender discrimination in my everyday life, compounding the same online. I'm starting to notice parents reconsidering their decision to come down the same aisle as me at the store, as well as seeing people I'd thought of as friends get zapped off Tumblr by a trans-hating moderator. I'm noticing police being called on people who "look trans" in public spaces, as well as seeing the richest man in world history lead a doxxing effort against a single trans woman on his social network. I'm noticing an uptick in trans-hostile laws being passed through state legislatures at an alarming rate, as well as trans women artists being bullied off online storefronts by credit card corporations. At this point, mostly everything that can be considered "the internet" has become a trans-hating stronghold of the far right and I refuse to see the same thing happen to Neocities. These 2 users, plus 4 others who I've noted display nascent FART tendencies, I have blocked at this stage. In so doing, I have added to their Jerk score on the backend, lowering their rankings in the "special sauce" algorithm, thereby limiting their reach when it comes to spreading their Rowlingian brainrot on this host.
So, while I would have liked to stay out of this particular dramatic episode, doing so would have meant complicity in my own destruction. I am not exaggerating when I say that Neocities may very well be the last transgender-safe environment on the entire internet, so unless you want to see Neocities become another fascist stronghold on an internet full of fascist strongholds, you will speak out about this. Make noise. Declare your allyship for the entire queer spectrum, not just lesbians and gays. Read about trans-hostile legislation on Wikipedia. Make your own blog posts about it. But do not allow the "free speech absolutism" brainworm to plant itself in Neocities. This is ancient knowledge amongst forum operators on the old web: once fascism is allowed in, it is impossible to remove.
Internet drama is like a tornado. It'll wreck your shit if you're in the damage path, but sometimes the damage path is too wide to escape.