The Kids Are Alright: Solving The Terminology Problem With Responsible Communication
The Kids Are Alright: Solving The Terminology Problem With Responsible Communication
“The neo generation of otherkin-identifying people – the so called “tumblrkin” – often call out the older folks for gatekeeping.
They feel like older ‘kin are imposing arbitrary standards on who gets to call themselves otherkin based on who appears respectable – elitism, essentially. Are they right to say that? Probably not, but honestly? I can see where they get the idea from.”
I used to do this. I used to advocate for this, in fact, encourage others to follow suit.
IME it doesn’t work very well on Tumblr. It may work better in IM*, but not everybody has the spoons/ability to IM all or even any of the people they encounter. It may be that the reason people react so badly on Tumblr is they take badly to being publicly “called out”, but regardless of the reason I’ve seen it work only maybe a couple of times on the site, and that’s after a lot of attempts from myself and others. So mostly the reaction I’ve seen to being nice and trying to chat to people about why they think what they do, and what alternatives there are, is to get screamed at. On a good day perhaps just told to fuck off or that it’s none of our business or that we’re ableist elitist gatekeeping scum. For asking questions like in the post here.
So I no longer advocate for this, unfortunately, although what anyone else does is their business.
*Or in chat clients, as per the image in the post.
I had an initially awkward, but ultimately productive conversation with someone under 18 just this morning about terminology and whatnot. They had decided to start using a label without properly understanding it, and when I told them that’s not quite right, and something else would fit better (based on the information given), they were unsure, but reasonable enough to process it and accept that rushing headlong into a community because they want to wasn’t smart or respectful to that community. This wasn’t a fight or a series of petty insults, just an exchange of information as politely as two incredibly different strangers could be. And at the end of it I assured them that they were welcome to mingle in alterhuman spaces and ask all the questions they could want to help figure themselves out, because that’s what we’re here for.
And for tumblr, that’s super rare. I more or less respond to everyone the same way, and they’re either stupidly hostile and rude, happy to know there are explanations for how they feel, or just neutral and willing to look into things further before making any decisions. The former is unfortunately the most common, because this is tumblr, where being aggressive and preforming this weird detached holier than thou shtick is what gets you attention, especially if you’re under 18 and wanna make an adult you don’t like look like a bullying predator by provoking them and being inflammatory.
We adults do have some responsibility in not falling for every piece of bait a kid throws out there (the block button is my favorite feature), but we don’t have to be welcoming to those who would sooner spit on us for having boundaries either. Especially when we have younger folks already in our communities who need defending from this hostility. If I had a dime for every young mutual of mine who has been harassed and publicly humiliated for daring to upset a tumblrkin’s notion of “kinning” properly, I could buy something nice. I don’t care if they’re busy “finding themselves” in that case, personally. There’s no excuse for certain behaviors, only explanations. I was a jerk when I was a teenager too, and people told me the fuck off for it if I stepped over the line.
tl;dr Tumblrkin are not the innocent, well-meaning kids who are confused by alterhuman terminology and just wanna understand themselves and have fun doing it. Fuck, let them have fun. Tumblrkin are (usually kids, but not always) who were spoon-fed the same information, and decided to throw it in the trash and act like disrespectful twerps instead. And when they take it a step further and start abusing each other over it, my patience has long run out. Indulging it is not helpful to them or anyone else.
