i admit i’m still dying to know exactly why lulz has so much sand up its ass over mel

there’s this recurring wringing of hands over what a horrible person she is, but despite the volumes of scorn and attempts to find imaginary gossip (that has little bearing on anything anyway), there’s never any coherent explanation

occasionally there’s some tale about how one artist copied another and mel insisted credit be given where due, but even if every such case were clearly bogus, that’s a pretty flimsy reason to hate someone so severely. at worst it would mean she… cares a lot about art? shocking

meanwhile everyone she knows gets lumped in too and written off as horrible people with just as little explanation.

“narcissists”, say the people who think they should get to decide who is allowed to speak about personal issues. “delusional”, say the people who think a single anon from 4chan years ago is a good source. “passive-aggressive”, say the people apologizing to everyone but the person they wronged. “immature”, say the people calling a 120lb girl fat. “autistic”, say the people who don’t understand or care when they’re unwanted.

the best one is “victim complex”, from the people literally making her a victim—and even from their perspective, it’s obvious that every post in every thread would do nothing but fuel a victim complex. same applies to “ego” (fueled by perceived victories, in battles they’re initiating) or the accusation of a “hugbox posse” (aka friends, or maybe just people who disagree with them, who of course will show up at every new report of some incident). they are directly causing the impressions of the things they claim to hate so much about her.

i will say that again: they are directly creating the caricature they claim to hate so much.

but they don’t stop, or maybe can’t stop.

and i don’t know why, really. it’s easy to write off one person as unbalanced, but a group of more than two or three people is a little harder.

maybe it’s part of the culture, part of the tribe identification. if you don’t hate who everyone else makes a big deal of hating, you become a much more accessible target for their ire. after enough time passes, no one even remembers why they hate her, but the hate remains because now it’s a mark of identity. ask why the hate, and they’ll try to recall scraps of justifications they’ve heard before. ask why the hypocrisy, and the question glides right by, because they judge their targets by whatever lofty-sounding criteria are convenient at the time, but themselves by how well they fit in the group.

or maybe not. who knows.

i’m sure they’d disagree, and chalk it up to a victim complex. because the people they try to silence can’t possibly be victims. victims only exist when someone does something wrong, and all they’re doing is reacting in kind to all the horrible things their targets have done.

if only they could remember what those things were…