How can "I think x piece of media I've seen is like y piece of media I've seen" be an uneducated take?
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Lindsay Ellis drops a take so bad she has to nuke her Twitter
- Thread starter Schlorgan
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I love how Lindsay also refuses to respond to the real Asian writer that called her out in the first place and instead directs her excuses to an imagined hate mob. I get the feeling this is just how she processes large scale criticism regardless of it's validity.
If this is the amount of pressure white allies can't handle before "both sides"-ing, then we're truly screwed.
Or maybe you could stop excusing white fragility.
If this is the amount of pressure white allies can't handle before "both sides"-ing, then we're truly screwed.
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Sorry, I thought you were just looking for confirmation/clarification š
The good news is that Lindsey avoids that by just not apologizing and just burying controversy with new content because the internet has the memory of a goldfish
I was gonna say. Pretty much everyone on this site has been guilty of this.
sometimes people be weird on this this board
aka the only way to actually make a living writing.
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Guess I'm a bigot by being offended at it as an Asian. What a dumb take.
Interesting since that's how Doug Walker endured #ChangeTheChannel. Guess she was taking notes.
This is the shittiest thing imo. Like, have a conversation with that person?
So this started with a bit of a careless tweet that probably had no malicious intend behind it, and ended with doubling down, getting dragged by everyone and account deletion. Well I guess it really do be like that sometimes.
It's absolutely laughable saying not taking responsibility is a white people problem though. That shit is as universal as it gets let's keep it a buck.
It's absolutely laughable saying not taking responsibility is a white people problem though. That shit is as universal as it gets let's keep it a buck.
Isn't it actually possible she's getting a lot of hate and harassment over this? Like, she's done a presentation about the mental stress she endured while being harassed online in the past. I don't think she's faking it just so she can get out of doing an apology.
Absolutely. If she had responded calmly and respectfully this would be a non issue tbh
Can people not process that Raya... looks like Avatar? It's a totally normal, idle thought to have and I have had it myself seeing the ads for the movie on occasion. It's not a sleight against the film, it's no offense, it's not even me being funny. The latter reminds me of the former; it happens with other things all the time.
I think emotions are running high lately (perfectly understandable) and Ellis tweet rubbed the lady in the OP the wrong way, but she seems to make a big assumption of intent and then completely run away with it. The bit about Avatar being created by two white men especially sticks out to me. Ellis probably knows Avatar and Raya are both primarily products of white artists. That's probably why she doesn't mention anything about Asian culture in her tweet to begin with...
Ellis probably panicked. She should've just ignored this though. I mean, that's probably the best course to take when something is (pretty clearly imho) a misinterpretation, but arguing it is only going to make you look bad.
I do feel like everybody needs to relax. We should be supporting our AAPI members of our communities. This is just more petty twitter stuff that isn't even an issue when you stop and think.
If you screencap me and put me out in front of your followers - any number of them - you forfeit the opportunity to have a dialogue with me in that way. That's gonna be non-negotiable for most people, too. Patience is not an entitlement online anymore than IRL.
People have this idea that if they're in the right, they're entitled to be responded to with perfect decorum and it is simply not true. This person could've DMd Lindsay or even just mentioned/@'d her. If you post a screencap of someone, if anything you're indicating you don't want to talk. And if Lindsay had come to her, hat in hand, you can bet some nikber of people would've said that isn't fair of her and she's being combative.
I think emotions are running high lately (perfectly understandable) and Ellis tweet rubbed the lady in the OP the wrong way, but she seems to make a big assumption of intent and then completely run away with it. The bit about Avatar being created by two white men especially sticks out to me. Ellis probably knows Avatar and Raya are both primarily products of white artists. That's probably why she doesn't mention anything about Asian culture in her tweet to begin with...
Ellis probably panicked. She should've just ignored this though. I mean, that's probably the best course to take when something is (pretty clearly imho) a misinterpretation, but arguing it is only going to make you look bad.
I do feel like everybody needs to relax. We should be supporting our AAPI members of our communities. This is just more petty twitter stuff that isn't even an issue when you stop and think.
If you screencap me and put me out in front of your followers - any number of them - you forfeit the opportunity to have a dialogue with me in that way. That's gonna be non-negotiable for most people, too. Patience is not an entitlement online anymore than IRL.
People have this idea that if they're in the right, they're entitled to be responded to with perfect decorum and it is simply not true. This person could've DMd Lindsay or even just mentioned/@'d her. If you post a screencap of someone, if anything you're indicating you don't want to talk. And if Lindsay had come to her, hat in hand, you can bet some nikber of people would've said that isn't fair of her and she's being combative.
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People will mistakes, in this case I feel it was an issue of Lindsay putting out a perma-snark persona and some real bad word choices. Dunno why she didn't say something like "young adult fiction seems to be drawing from Asian influences more often nowadays, maybe some of that's down to the people involved growing up with Avatar?" and not whatever that was. That's still pretty silly and bizarrely ignorant of the wider world of Asian culture, but who hasn't put out poorly thought out brain farts from time to time? (altho they probably don't share them to hundreds of thousands of followers)
It's going nuclear that's painted her in a worse light than anything else, but at the same time I dunno what it's like having that huge a platform and being the target of folks repeating the same criticism over and over again, even after you've attempted to address it (admittedly poorly). I can get how that could be overwhelming and it's probably why most people, once they hit a certain level of fame and income, hire other people to manage their social media.
Locking down and running is still a bit much though, when you can always log out, take a breather, and write a proper apology statement. Can't imagine her book publishers would be happy with such a major marketing platform disappearing.
It's going nuclear that's painted her in a worse light than anything else, but at the same time I dunno what it's like having that huge a platform and being the target of folks repeating the same criticism over and over again, even after you've attempted to address it (admittedly poorly). I can get how that could be overwhelming and it's probably why most people, once they hit a certain level of fame and income, hire other people to manage their social media.
Locking down and running is still a bit much though, when you can always log out, take a breather, and write a proper apology statement. Can't imagine her book publishers would be happy with such a major marketing platform disappearing.
Here's the thing, Evangelion was heavily inspired by shows like Space Runaway Ideon, Ultraman, and Devilman, but nobody tries to retroactively claim that Evangelion fits in a genre that started in 1977 with Zambot 3.
Mobile Suit Gundam created a new genre because there was significant differences in how the story presented itself from other Robot shows at the time like Voltes 5 and the previously mentioned Zambot 3.
Yeah but people usually dont try to claim that all shonen with battles are somehow a genre, or something you can really categorize.
Just looking at the companions, in Reya you have people of various ages including a baby, a young child, and a father, while in Avatar the Last Airbender (and the Legend of Korra) the actual traveling party are people of very similar age. The only companion blatantly inspired by Avatar is Tuk Tuk.
She didn't say that because she wasn't talking about the Asian elements of Avatar.
User banned (1 month): Concern trolling a sensitive thread over a series of posts, prior infraction for similar
Do you think harassment and cruelty towards minorities justifies cruelty and harassment towards white people? What an incredibly callous statement.
But people literally do that quite frequently, to the point it constantly has to be reiterated that shonen isn't a genre and isn't all battle oriented
Right? I'm not sure why so many people are coming to her defense when she did the online version of white women tears by nuking her Twitter account. So many white knights coming out of the woodwork to talk for her.
I think it's justified against racists. Better to be callous than sympathize someone being racist.
Having empathy is white knighting?
Ok buddy I want receipts where was she racist?
Her stubbornness was on show but it appeared to me that people saw something that was not intended to be there (as often can happen with us whites) and blew the shit out of it. She stepped on a landmine and then stepped on another one with her weak apology.
Using the verb squint was a poor word choice.
Using the verb squint was a poor word choice.
She's given presentations about this. This isn't her first online controversy. She's a public figure whose decided to have a public twitter to post random shit. We are -far- beyond the point where she should have found a method of handling criticism from PoC that doesn't involve refusing to engage with the person and then nuking your account. I'm sorry, we're just beyond that point in twitter discourse.
All she had to do was take her critic in good faith. Why is this hard for her to do to an Asian woman during a recent wave of anti Asian hate crimes?
If you want to support AAPI people, how about taking the criticism of an AAPI seriously without simplifying their words into:
Just listen to her and stop knee jerk defending another white ally who thought a twitter nuke was an appropriate response.
Seriously though, how is dismissing and ignoring an Asian critic during this time "supportive" in any way?
So What happens next ..same old white knight crew will defend her, say it was a hot take, say shes under pressure what's not fair and totally justifies getting a pass again on her casual racism on twitter. Already happened in this thread.
Sorry if I am tired of giving sympathy to white people for saying racist things. A lifetime of this is enough already.
Where is the empathy for Asian people? Some of you are so quick with the empathy card for white people. Like I said, online version if white women tears.
Read tweet where she uses Asians and squint.
It'll keep happening and she'll keep doing it and never learn anything because people will be there to defend her every time she does some racist shit.
User banned (permanent): History of trolling threads about Asian representation and portrayal in media
She called a Disney movie derivative. No mercy
Saying "I guess if you squint" was the most mind blowing part of that series of tweets to me.
She should've taken the chance to talk and explain her position. The knee-jerk left her in a much worse spot then necessary.
I think there's a great discussion to be had here about the narrative structure of ATLA and Raya, Asian influences in fantasy literature and the lack of Asian voices in production. It's too late for any of that now, at least before things cool down.
I think there's a great discussion to be had here about the narrative structure of ATLA and Raya, Asian influences in fantasy literature and the lack of Asian voices in production. It's too late for any of that now, at least before things cool down.
Ah yeah just spotted that bit.
Still, that highlights it being an issue of poor word choices and it being a weirdly aimless, hard to discern, and very awkwardly timed tweet in general. At some point when you get a sizeable following it's time to stop using social media for off-the-cuff remarks because reactions like this are inevitable - everyone is ignorant about something, afterall.
I listened to her and her take seems like a misinterpretation. My support of AAPI people has to be one of substance and thought. I'm not going to turn my brain off and just nod with every sentence. That's not support, it's the easy way out. I wouldn't want it as a black person or as someone with a disability and I won't give it to someone else in this instance. I appreciate she's frustrated, I empathize, I think she's wrong.
So you're point is that because she's a semi-popular Youtuber then it's really her fault she gets tons of harassment? She's not running away from discourse with a single person of color. She's running away from harassment from hundreds if not thousands of people attacking her on social media. If you've seen her presentation you should know that it's not something you just deal with and it's not harmless.
I don't see how anything I said precludes me of empathy towards the east asian community, I'm south. however assuming that some one talking about two shows that were both made by westerners as a criticism of all asian shows being similar is off the mark.
Anyways I think she could have handled it better but I feel like people are going to bitch eating crackers mode and I'll just check myself out.
Not sure why people get so defensive over Asian-flavoured media headed by white guys either
Squinting to manually focus my eyes when I'm not wearing my glasses is such a core part of my life experience that I wouldn't have given it a second thought if it wasn't pointed out. Though I guess my Twitter account isn't notable so it matters less.
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