My heart bleeded, girl

So, it's been quite the weekend around these parts, hasn't it?

I've learned two things from all this, one of which I already knew but it's been reinforced, and one of which caused me to rethink my position on anonymity.

Firstly, and I'm not directing this to people who were quick to follow their natural inclination to defend a friend: it's always best to know what the hell you're talking about before you open your mouth.

I didn't have thenyxie friended. The SPN people on my flist are generally people I knew in popslash and who I've known for years. That's mostly because I’m too lazy to deal with overcoming my issues with friending people I don't know, but my friending issues aren't really the point here.

The point is, I read around the fandom, and even I was vaguely aware that something untoward had gone down in Baltimore two years ago, although I had no idea what. But when things hit the fan this weekend, it didn't take a lot of effort to find out what happened.

So why were there so many posts and comments saying "I have no idea what's going on, but here's my opinion anyway"?

Or posts and comments where people have the facts wrong, or out of order, or incomplete, and they write whole rants about shit they're just pulling out of their asses?

I mean, really? I found that to be puzzling, then annoying, and then enraging.

The thing about anonymity is that I don't like it. But I realized that what I don't like are anonymous memes where people take the opportunity to talk smack about their fellow fans without repercussions.

I don't like anonymous love memes any more than hate memes, because it's just asking for trouble.

But apparently, anonymous *comms* are not memes and can serve a purpose for something other than people who don't think they get enough attention bitching about perceived BNFs, which is just pointless, repetitive and boring.

I spent a lot of time at the anonymous comm in question this weekend, and while I certainly saw some BNF-bashing, mostly I saw sane, compassionate, passionate, thoughtful, insightful coverage of the situation.

I know when I saw thenyxie's first post, my immediate reaction was *anonymous hate meme, ugh*, and I'm guessing that's what prompted a great deal of the support she initially received, although I found that first post to be intemperate at best, offensive and way over the top at worst.

But anonymity has a place, especially in a situation like this, and I won't be so quick to dismiss what is said under its protection next time.

( A couple more things, mostly about rape culture, including something I've wanted to talk about for a while, some of which may be triggering )

Okay, so I started this post last Friday, mostly just random notes, but I'm determined to finish it.

BP is single-handedly destroying the Gulf of Mexico. I can't begin to tell you how devastated I am by that. And I suppose it's not fair to say it's single-handedly, there's enough blame to go around, including all of us who, you know, drive cars.

It makes me almost as angry as the state of Arizona does.

I hope everyone had a nice US Mother's Day. It's such a fraught day, sometimes, but Erin and Ashley called me, Adam added a PS, Happy Mother's Day to his mass email about Japan, and Larry got me a basket of bath products. We had Subway for lunch (I'm actually very easy) and then bought a pressure washer, which I spent Sunday and Monday using to wash our patio and sidewalks. Since this house was built in two parts, we have two front doors and a lot of sidewalk. We're also on a hill, so there's concrete steps along one side of the house, and a patio under the deck in the back. It's all concrete, tinted and stamped with a design after it was poured, and it was really, really dirty.

When our tree fell, it pulled the power lines down with it. The poles at the top of our driveway and our neighbor's driveway are tilted, like this: / \, with the lines draped between them at the top of our yard. It's been like that for three weeks now. Friday, Allegheny Power came and put up new poles. They left the wires draped in the yard, and I assume someday they will come back and fix them. However, Saturday around noon, one of the new poles spontaneously burst into flames.



We lost power for a while, the power company came and fixed it, but the wires are still hanging around the yard. Someday...

( I know it's late, but I did have a couple of thoughts on last weeks's SPN. )