QPR Misinformation Is Not an Appropriate Vehicle for Aro Community Building

[kernsing]

1 hour ago, Lokiana said:

On 3/26/2020 at 12:39 PM, Coyote said:

*squints* ......I wish I could understand how you're coming to these conclusions. If I turned to one of my friends, linked to this thread, and said, "So as you can see, people listened and were cooperative," they'd think I was being sarcastic.

 

Was this part really necessary? Like truly, really necessary? All you did was discourage me from continuing the conversation.

 

I think this part was just to point out that people seem to have very different impressions of how the conversations in this thread went down. While I don't think I see the reception as negatively as Coyote does (many people just seemed to be tired of the topic, which I wouldn't call a hard yes or no to the "were people mostly willing to listen" question; and I do agree that one thread is not a good heuristic for how this conversation might go down in the wider aromantic community anyway), I also don't seem to have as negative of an impression of Coyote either, e.g. while I understand being wary of callouts and such, I do think there's a difference between that and saying "there's a worrying trend going on, here are some examples to show you what I'm talking about/establish that I'm not just making things up." It's a fine line, to be sure, but I do think the article & thread were more of the second situation. Mostly I got the impression that a lot of miscommunication went around.

 

As for the factions on aro tumblr, yeah, I think you have it right ('you' as in Lokiana). I'm not exactly sure which of those would be more prone to misinformation, though, if we're asking about where we should spread a post about the origins of QPRs.

[Tarantulapaws]

4 hours ago, Lokiana said:

*squints* ......I wish I could understand how you're coming to these conclusions. If I turned to one of my friends, linked to this thread, and said, "So as you can see, people listened and were cooperative," they'd think I was being sarcastic.

 

I'm not sure how to articulate this but something about how this is worded is getting to me. I haven't been able to 100% follow this thread, and even if I did, it's quite a bit to read through. From what I understand, this whole thread is meant to be about how qpr misinformation is not an appropriate vehicle for aro community building. Accusations of people doing this on purpose aside, has that goal not been met? Have we not been informed of the problem?

1 hour ago, kernsing said:

Mostly I got the impression that a lot of miscommunication went around.

Yeah. There seems to be a bunch of miscommunication here.

[Coyote]

4 hours ago, Lokiana said:

Was this part really necessary? Like truly, really necessary? All you did was discourage me from continuing the conversation.

 

....I don't understand the objection.

 

1 hour ago, kernsing said:

I think this part was just to point out that people seem to have very different impressions of how the conversations in this thread went down.

 

Yes, thank you. That's what it was meat as, at least.

 

4 hours ago, Lokiana said:

I won't name any specific people, or any specific blogs, but as far as I can tell the divisions are mostly defined by:

(and some people fall into multiple factions or associate with multiple groups)

-purely positivity blogs 

-identity (ie: aroallos, aroaces, non-SAM aros, greyromantics, romo aros)

-how people prioritize and group identity (ie: some aroaces prioritize aroness or aceness, some aroallos consider their identities inseparable, etc. and i could go on but...)

-Discord servers (people in the same small groups tend to organize, so you can usually tell who's chatting outside of Tumblr)

-shipping discourse

-discoursers and former discourse blogs (generally very combative blogs)

-when they began to id with the community (flags and terminology are generally a big indicator of this)

-a couple more "official blogs" (the AUREA blog, for example, or the ASAW blog)

-and some people are really just ~vibing~ trying to follow whoever they find interesting

 

Hm. Thanks for the rundown. Would you (or anyone) happen to know how strong the followings are for the AUREA and ASAW blogs? Conceptually, those seem like they'd be the closest Aro Tumblr has to a general "aro community space" -- in terms of where to go for this purpose -- but I'm not sure if that's necessarily the most efficient tactic in practice, in terms of reaching the most aros all at once.

 

(Tangential, but to me the term "discourse blog" remains the blogging equivalent of "this is a area," and I'd probably be less resentful if that weren't a word I have to use professionally at my job.)

 

(Also tangential -- I'm curious about what you mean by flags & terms as a big indicator of when people began to identify with the community.)

 

1 hour ago, kernsing said:

I'm not exactly sure which of those would be more prone to misinformation, though, if we're asking about where we should spread a post about the origins of QPRs.

 

Or more willing to address misinformation, too.

 

Speaking of, I'm not sure what exactly to send/ask them to post in the first place, either.