Everyone Loves a Scandal

cw: abuse, bullying? I don't know I just feel like this might be hard for some to read.

I've gotten myself into a skirmish and I don't know why. I guess it's because art theft is important to me. I saw a lazy doctoring of an image, and decided to call them out on doctoring the image. Afterwards, I realized that if they blocked me I couldn't talk about it, or use the image to defend myself, so I retweeted the content asking if anyone was able to find where the image came from. So I was motivated by exterior forces: The desire to help the whatever artist the assets were taken from. Maybe the concept of justice. I don't know. From there I reacted to fear of some kind of social attack. These are things to come back to. Drama is more exciting that introspection. They told me that the image came from some free resources, so I took the RT down and thought that would be the end of it, but they commented on me with a RT. I hadn't considered that. So now what little social capital I have is at stake, and people are assuming that I attacked the collage maker without reason. Except I could see where the asset was erased to remove the background and there wasn't a citation of the original artist's work. I had reason. What followed was a discussion that's probably easy to find on my twitter where I do my best to explain things and find a solution that's amiable for both of us. They told me that they were a professional and that my accusation could hurt their career. My character was attacked, but seeing as I made a mistake I did nothing to fight those attacks. I offered to delete my original comment if they simply took down the RT. Was I blackmailing them or using the only leverage I had in that situation? You decide. Gossip and RT your opinion! Regardless, they didn't want a mutually beneficial solution. Instead they thought about it, (Probably to gather pictures of ALL of my posts.) and then went right to an attack on my character. I let it stand because I know bait when I see it, and they locked their account. Now I don't know if they're talking about me, but considering how much people LOVE Scandal, I can only guess that it's going to happen. I'd like to believe that I simply scared them and they left, but who can say. I imagine that some will unfollow me and others may block me and I have to consider why any of this matters. Social capital doesn't necessarily equal book sales, or even interest in me as a person. If all of my followers are turned against me I can delete my twitter without too much of a hassle, but I know that scandals don't work like that. Scandals are about stories. They're the best kind of stories because they come from a place of truth. The evil ASH came in and attacked the harmless collage maker. Retweeting their hard work. They sought to destroy their good name to elevate themselves as some kind of art hero, when in reality they were a selfish social status obsessed "writer" who isn't even that good. Here, let's laugh at X post and Y reply and Z vss off their twitter page. Aren't they pathetic? Look how hypocritical they are right here. And it's easy to buy into this narrative because I made a mistake. I tried to apologize with my actions, but that wasn't enough. They either saw an opportunity or...what? This where I struggle to come up with a reason for why they would leave them RTing a call out that was deleted. In the replies you can clearly see me trying to damage control the mistake and the worst thing I did was not delete until they deleted their RT. In my mind their RT was more damning than my comment, and I'd already shown good faith by deleting my original RT. My kindest interpretation is simply that they don't want others misrepresenting themselves. Good news for them: I'm easy to hurt. I'm just going to assume that some campaign is being built to destroy my character, but I'm not going to cave into this. I can remove my twitter account. I have plenty of stories that I've never shared as ASH so I can even develop a new penname if it comes to that, but here's the thing about twitter: outrage has to be big. I didn't insult anyone's character. At worst I acted like a police officer. Is it wrong to pursue justice? I don't know. There seem to be more and more people who fall into this belief that trying to punish others is wrong, that everyone should be allowed to break the laws if they want. I don't know if I believe that, but I know that it sucks to be an artist. People get their work stolen all the time. It's bad enough that most artists who work on commission have to drastically undercharge people to get any business at all. I've seen too much of that growing up, so when I saw photo-editing coming together I acted. I acted too fast and that was a mistake. I know that I've written before about how I'm not always in control, and I feel like it's important to show one of those moments happening. I also know that I've expressed how self centered I can be and for some of you, this might be proof of that. "Their cancel culture worked against them." Cue the memes and mirth filled laughter. I think for some this kind of response needs to start with "I'm sorry," and only take that tone. But I don't see how saying, "I made a mistake" isn't the same. Is the act of saying "I'm sorry" meaningfully different from admitting a mistake? See how much drama we can dredge up! Isn't this fun? Of course saying "I'm sorry," is different. I am sorry that I made this person upset and defensive, and maybe I didn't make that clear. If I say I'm sorry one more time will it change anything? I don't know. Ah, I can't reply because I've been locked out but not blocked. Interesting. Well, here's the reply I wanted to send: "I'm sorry we couldn't come to an amiable solution, and I'm sorry that I acted so rash. I'm not always in control of my emotions and I fell into bad habits. I'm not asking for forgiveness, but I wanted to admit fault to you. I hope this eases some of your fears." Obviously they don't ease any fears because the message won't be seen. This is what happens when we act on impulses. This is what comes of a world that silences the opposition. Without communication there can be no compromise and there can be no forgiveness. Notice my hypocrisy! Isn't this fun? This brings us back to scandals. So often an apology is considered to be "from a form," or inauthentic. I'd wanted to write a piece about how there's no way to actually apologize if you're accused of something BEFORE I'd been put into a scandal, but I guess I waited too long. Taking a look at mine, we can break it apart line by line to show I'm actually a self absorbed narcissist! (everyone favorite new pejorative!) "I'm sorry we couldn't come to an amiable solution," Of course ASH wanted an amiable solution, they were the one at fault!

"and I'm sorry that I acted so rash." Look at how they're apologizing about their behavior instead of acknowledging the pain they caused!

"I'm not always in control of my emotions and I fell into bad habits." Here come the excuses! Bad habits and not controlling emotions doesn't excuse anything!

"I'm not asking for forgiveness," No? Then why are you even bothering to write this?

"but I wanted to admit fault to you." Is that what you call owning up to a mistake? Half a sentence doesn't make up for potentially ruining someone's career!

"I hope this eases some of your fears." Do they think this is about fear? This is about a mistake that you did! None of this is a real apology. I didn't write my apology to take it apart. It's honestly what I wrote in the moment and I really did try to send it. Of course all of this could be performative, some grand spectacle to try and persuade people not to follow me, so you can't really believe anything that I'm saying unless it proves that I'm a bad person. Luckily this entire post is self absorbed, so you have plenty of reason to block me/cancel me. I'm very good at attacking myself. Don't believe me, read my post "Can I trust you?" for a small taste of the running narrative against my own mind. (Cue the self absorbed plug to their own work!) It's honestly kind of exhausting to write this way. My point is that once you're in a scandal there is no mature way out. Your best bet is to double down and try and polarize people against the people you wronged. I have no desire to do that. This penname is as close to myself as I've ever allowed myself to be online. I've opened up about my trauma and abuse and the inner workings of my horrifying mind. I'm not writing this to gain sympathy, I'm writing this to share what I'm going through and try and process my mistakes. I don't like a casual disregard for the rules, but I'm willing to tolerate it if it isn't hurting anyone. But there's something about rules and laws and order that's important to me. I don't know why that is. I think I need to dive deeper into that to understand if that's a trait that I want to keep, or if it's something that I need to work on exercising from my psyche. But then I worry about not having a diagnosis for something that could be directly harmed by my attempts to rewrite my brain and I start to freak out and despair. I have to let go of that and focus on the now. I made a mistake and hurt someone. I'm sorry that I hurt them and I feel bad about my mistake, truly. I can still improve, but this journey isn't going to be nothing but positivity. I will probably make more mistakes and I will probably hurt more people, but I'm not going to keep it hidden. If you care about knowing who ASH is, I intend to show you. As for me, I'd prefer to not be me, but I don't have any say in what I am, only in what I will become.