@kistaro i meant the most recent bout of whatever invisible vitriol all the "otherkin are valid actually" posts on my feed are reacting to

@kistaro (good answer though)

@typhlosion
Ah, probably a result of the Tumblr migration. I don't browse global timelines enough to notice, though.

Tumblr culture is weird and passive-aggressive due to its "quote reblog only" interaction model, which produces mob behavior; it's literally impossible to disagree privately with someone, everything is posted to your own feed so your audience gets to join your arguments.

The upshot to this is that you get a culture where anyone with a slightly edgy or questionable take can expect to create big arguments fairly regularly, and you are expected to contribute to the arguments people you follow get stuck in, as it's the only way to keep up. So you have this norm of mass yelling and mandatory participation, where you can't privately disagree or ask questions because you are unavoidably publishing your criticism to a new audience and making it rebloggable by people who are likely to use it to taunt whoever you are trying to have a civil conversation with

So it produces Otherkin who develop some odd, extreme views because any questioning or discussion decays immediately into The Worst Of Twitter, because The Worst Of Twitter is the *baseline* for Tumblr. And, in turn, it develops a countermeme of extraordinarily reactive Otherkin defending positions objectively detached from reality because Tumblr basically forces that.

So the result is a bunch of people with severe damage to their ability to communicate in good faith or assume good faith in others are getting dumped onto Mastodon, and we need to be ready - they will bring their damage with them and we need to be ready to help them heal, lest they recreate Tumblr culture somewhere else.