Mcyt Discourse - Tumblr Posts

Sorry, I think I sounded more confrontational then I meant to. I literally mean why does it matter if you're already engaging in content that's widely considered to be made by people who are problematic in various ways? I don't understand why fiction is being held to a standard that real people aren't held to and I wanted to understand your reasoning. Its not like you owe me an answer or anything just because I'm confused, but the question wasn't meant to be an attack

i really appreciate the clarification :). sorry it took me a while to reply i've had irl stuff going on. and ooh boy this was a deep ask, so buckle up lol.

i guess there's several things to discuss here, so i might start with how mcyt content can be problematic. i'm not going to deny the actions of both ccs and fans, that would be a discredit to people actually effected, as well as an understatement any of said actions. however, i think it's equally important not to whitewash, or otherwise strip away the diverse identities, of the creators and the fandom.

i suppose you're likely talking about the dsmp here, and yes many of the largest personalities there are white, cis, straight men. but it's problematic in another sense to let that be the overall perception of the other queer, or genderqueer, or neurodivergent, or POCs on the server. so while that is by no means a justification for any racism or homophobia from this community, i think it's an aspect we can't easily overwrite.

also, just as important is to mention the fandom itself. i have never experienced or even seen a fandom as neurodiverse, young, and queer as this one at the moment. yes, people should be responsible for their actions and should be somewhat expected to be critical of most content, but that doesn't mean when you consume media you are a "bad person," especially when you're part of the marginalised community that has been hurt before in that media. to clarify with an example- as a trans person there is very little content i can find that has content about me or is not outright transphobic. but when i've found a space where most of my mutuals are trans as well, and can all assign a character as trans too, as broad as that can be, i think that's still more important than the outside perception of a fandom in general. and even beyond a character standpoint, the very interactive nature of myct means that these creators are going to be more exposed to us in return, and be given the ability to grow intellectually as well.

i get that for a lot of white men especially, this is the bare minimum that is often over celebrated, but equally, there's also this weird moral high ground people get off on saying "google is free" when someone has reached out to try and learn something. but that's a larger cultural issue than just in mcyt. but for the sake of understanding, can we all agree that it is a Good Thing when people want to rethink what they've been taught by society.

something else specific to the "media i'm engaging in" is the massive, massive broad scope of who and what 'myct' involves. as i pointed out before, i'm more of a viewer of hermitcraft, mcc, speedrunning than dsmp. (also not trying to make more divides between mcyt fandoms etc just an observation!) so there is often very little crossover between parts of fandom people can be right to be wary of and that of everything else. like, what comes to mind, when people say "myct DNI' on their pinned post or something, that covers so much more than DSMP, it also includes anyone looking at how to use a repeater or something for their redstone build. it's just a bit odd, and once again, i think ties into this idea of moral superiority people can get by not being part of "irredeemable media" even if they don't know what that entails. (not directed at you anon, just generally)

ok, so finally, this was the bit that was most interesting to me. "I don't understand why fiction is being held to a standard that real people aren't held to and I wanted to understand your reasoning." (for context, anon asked this after i made a post on concerns i had for antisemitism in inside job on netflix) i genuinely think this is a cool point to make that involves more discussion than you'd think on ideas of marxism and means of production haha. so, firstly, a distinction of real people vs fiction is always really important in this fandom. it's true that there is a harder distinction between c! and cc! mostly because of the way in which this fandom evolved but there does need to be an understanding on actions of a character and actions of a content creator- for example, well known youtuber Dream has not abused other youtuber Tommy Innit into suicide. (for this portion i will mostly be talking about dsmp creators as they are the streamers i'm most familiar with.)

so with that in mind, let's talk about these standards.

(disclaimer: this is personal opinion developed from being involved in the fandoms of both marvel and mcyt from which i'll be making comparisons)

right off the bat, i don't think the real people- ccs- in mcyt are actually held to lower standards than fiction- such as hit TV shows on Netflix (inside job which was mentioned earlier.) the unfortunate prominence of twitter in this fandom means the smallest slip up by very young people in front of a live audience of thousands means "name /neg" can be trending in minutes, and soon people beyond the fandom circle have heard about it and formed opinions based off screenshots. i'm not trying to justify any actions, merely providing an explanation of how these 'standards' are often impossible to always meet, and cc's are punished pretty regularly by them anyway.

comparatively, creators with deals with netflix have massive teams controlling press, and carefully curating speeches that mean a lot can get by with little push back. and even if it does get pointed out, this is a massive corporation that can afford to keep a sinking ship (think about dave -the-terf- chappelle and the failure of supposedly market lead capitalism. by this i mean, free market economics say that if the audience doesn't like a product, it will not be produced. dave chappelle has instead been repeatedly defended by netflix at the cost of the jobs of several employees who spoke out. and i am furious.)

this isn't really comparable to minecraft streamers who in the past made an offensive joke, was called out on it, and so deleted all their content they felt might also be problematic. again, not a defence, merely an observation.

finally, we must also talk about the methods of earning. other people have mentioned this in a far better way than me but i still need to point out how as long as streamers are paying their mods, they aren’t exploiting anyone. they’re getting paid however much people want to pay in return for a performance. most significantly, you don’t have to pay to watch them, even. it’s entirely voluntary. this isn’t even mentioning the insane amounts of money given to charity by these creators, and the community. people say actions over words? show them the mcc pride 21 results, or the >£300,000 technoblade raised for sarcoma cancer research. like that is a lot of money for important causes. give them some credit.

they aren’t the rich we need to eat.

anyway, that was a loooong post, hope that explained a lot of my feelings anon. fingers crossed this was written in a legible way, there’s not a lot i can do to break up the massive amounts of text lol. also please bare in mind, i am young, with different opinions and though i have tried to remain impartial in my explanation, that is obviously impossible. either way, fuck dave chappelle and fuck netflix.

Quickly addressing the current HBomb94 Discourse on Twitter

CW: mentions of p*dophilia, sexualization of minors

So recently there’s been a rise of call-outs against HBomb94 for supposedly shipping a minor with an adult (Tommy and Wilbur), which was taken out of context from a very old clip of him reacting to one of SAD-ist’s animation. This wave of hate was created when H replied to Minx’s tweet about GeorgeNotFound’s stans being toxic in her comment section.

For this context, H was making an inside joke with Minx, and then calling out stan twitter for being toxic and infantilizing George, who was an adult and could handle himself if there was discourse between him and Minx. In this situation, H was not wrong in pointing out what the fans were doing (among other things like calling him and Minx very sexist things and saying that he was defending a friend of a racist, which is an entirely different discourse H didn’t involve himself in).

Back to HBomb’s discourse, you can find the main post in question here, included with the clip and transcript.

I’ve been watching HBomb94 before the events of this stream. He’s the type of guy to be fandom-savvy enough to call out on weird things that fans tend to do. That’s what he was doing there in the clip. However, there’s a context that was missing from the entire post: HBomb’s chat during that stream.

When H brought up the topic of people making weird fanfictions, and admittedly it was phrased wrong, most of chat immediately assumed that it was shipping, and caused H to quickly become confused, hence the discussion of Tommy being a minor. Once again I’d like to remind you (as I was there in chat) that H was just pointing out the weird thing. Never once did he say that it was okay. In fact, when chat started getting weird, H quickly called them out on that and scolded them for doing so.

However, taken out of the context of the chat, and shown towards people who’s never watched H to know enough about how he talks, his way of thinking, and his sense of humor, twitter quickly caught fire and started cancelling him left and right, calling him a p*do among other things. That in itself is strange, because out of all the times he’s interacted with younger people on stream, he’s been very respectful and always makes sure to create a boundary between him and them. Even in his catmaid bits where he plays a perverted character, when a minor enters the call, he always make sure to set boundaries and not say anything bad.

I am not defending what H has said specifically in that clip. The way he’s phrased it also made me uncomfortable, but I knew at that point that there was no malicious intention behind it, and that it was very much a mistake that was done in poor taste. Twitter is blowing it out of proportions and forgive me to admit this, as a fan and also a creator who works with H, who has otherwise been an upstanding creator and community member, it’s heartbreaking and frustrating.

I cannot pick a fight with twitter and win, but I know fans on tumblr are more sensible than this. I wrote this post here for a reason, and that I want to let you know that if you, individually, are affected by this and made to feel uncomfortable, it’s within your rights to feel so and to disengage, because your feelings are valid. However, I also want you to know that the sudden hate towards H was unwarranted, and he doesn’t deserve to be called horrible things for something that has happened only once and was never repeated. HBomb94 is not a p*dophile, and he’s never encouraged the sexualization of minors.