fuzzy post-it

I absolutely do not have time for anyone who starts off any argument with telling someone how not to be a victim. Fuck that.

i was just thinking about this moments before i saw this post, and i think there’s a distinction that’s been lost in recent years

proactively avoiding being a victim (of anything), or advising other people how to do so, is all well and good. risk aversion is a thing; telling someone how not to be a victim is ok. lock your doors. back up your hard drive. don’t visit detroit.

you should probably wear a seatbelt, right? sure, telling people that is fine.

say your friend doesn’t one day, for whatever reason, and someone else hits her and shatters her spine and she’ll never walk again.

when you walk into the hospital room, is your first reaction to stick your nose in the air and say “well, that’s what you get for not wearing a seatbelt”?

probably not because only a complete twat would do that

you might lament that she didn’t wear a seatbelt, or you might be inspired to start a campaign suggesting that other people wear seatbelts. but you don’t rub it in the person’s face because what the fuck kind of person does that? you’d be taking someone else’s pain and twisting it so you could pat yourself on the back for three seconds.

but now we have the internet, where it’s super easy to express our grunting caveman urges of oneupsmanship and conceit. this brings us the kinds of people who will respond to anything negative that happens to anyone by telling them what they ought to have done to avoid it.

this case wasn’t even as clear-cut as the seatbelt. you didn’t do anything wrong. you not only signed the artwork, but also added your tumblr url, expecting exactly this kind of thing to happen. you saw problems coming and actively strove to head them off.

but it doesn’t matter to people who just want to say “i told you so”. it doesn’t even matter that they didn’t tell you so. they’re only here to gloat that something bad happened to you and not to them, and look how smart they are for knowing in hindsight what would have avoided this problem.

after all, the alternative would be that the dude they already idolize has done something wrong. unthinkable. even if he admits he was wrong, there must be something they can hold against you. so they go for the easiest possible thing: pick a random event from the story, and claim that the story would’ve gone differently if that event had gone differently. wow! you don’t say.

effectively these people are eike kusch.

anyway i don’t think victim blaming is about considering how to avoid problems. that’s just the weapon being wielded. it’s really about being the kind of numb asshole whose first instinct, when learning of a stranger’s plight, is disdain rather than sympathy.