things to remember when reading a callout post

lenyberry:

unconventionalbrain:

sybil-ramkin:

• screenshots can be forged easily in photoshop

• how old is the person being called out? adults hounding a teenager over saying something dumb they’ll regret in two years… it’s not cool, folks.

• there are xkit mods that let you modify someone else’s post in a reblog, but most people don’t know about it, so make sure that you view any “incriminating” posts on op’s blog

• does the person who wrote the callout have any reason to lie? (for example, a personal disagreement)

• what’s the context?

• ^^ a couple months ago i saw a post calling out someone for “fetishizing trans men,” only to check the accused person’s blog and see that he was a trans guy himself, who made a lot of positivity posts about his body type.

• how old is the post?

• did the accused person have a chance to apologize or address the concern before the details were exposed to thousands of strangers?

• what’s the purpose of the callout post? is it just to say “this person is bad and you should hate them,” or is it to say “this person has been sending slurs and violent death threats to bloggers in [x] group, here’s some reasonable proof, please block their url for your safety”?

Also, I have seen callout posts where the caption for a screenshot says something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from what was actually shown in the screenshot. So don’t just take what it says at face value and go “and it has a screenshot that must be proof”

Similar to “how old is the post,” how recent are the events getting talked about? Has the person since apologized and changed their behavior?

Also “is the content of the thing the person said actually as objectively harmful as the person doing the calling-out is claiming?” 

Because sometimes someone sees a thing that upsets them for valid reasons, but the thing is not actually objectively harmful in general, just upsetting to that particular person, but they react as if it’s objectively harmful in general because humans are kind of notoriously bad at telling “this upsets me” apart from “this should upset everyone” unless they’ve made a special effort to learn that skill.