I think the biggest difference between the toxic people on Tumblr today and the toxic people on 4chan five-ish years ago is the attitude.
The motto for 4chan was always “just doing it for the lulz”. They’d dox and harass and threaten people, but they seemed to be entirely aware of what they were doing and why. They openly knew what they were doing was wrong and they were just doing it for shits and giggles. They were honest and self-aware.
The toxic people on Tumblr do a lot of the same stuff, albeit with less enthusiasm and creativity. They’ll encourage people to commit suicide, they’ll tell people that they hope they get raped, they’ll spread your personal information. But instead of doing it for fun, they think they’re fucking saving the world.
They don’t tell you to kill yourself because it’ll hurt your feelings. They do it because they think you don’t deserve to live. They won’t dox you to send pizzas to your house. They do it so you’ll lose your job and hopefully someone will go to your house and attack you. They don’t tell you to get raped because it’s an edgy thing to say. They want you to get raped because you don’t 100% agree with feminism.
These are people here who legitimately believe they’re doing God’s work by pulling together thousands of people in hopes of ruining or even ending someone’s life. And that’s much more dangerous.
What they think they're doing:
good harmless fun :)
What they're actually doing:
making me more paranoid, making me ashamed of what I like, more distrustful. More likely to hide all my interests and not want to open up to anybody.
when you’ve been in a fandom so long you no longer care about the dramas
When you’ve been through enough enough fandoms to ignore the same drama over and over again.
OMG a million times this! Especially the second one. The same bullshit starts up in every fandom given enough time. I just let it pass me by.
When you’re just doing your own thing and trying to have a good time but unexpectedly wander into the drama and now you’re just trying to avoid and survive it.
When there’s drama happening across multiple fandoms you’re in
