Long live Matt Zimmer.

[classicswim]

 He’s said plenty nice things on my behalf, even today, and I’ll just state on the record that the only reason I made a blog account in the first place was to stay close by him.

The writing was pretty much on the wall that Toonzone was useless by the time I got here. And I don’t know. I could never be him. Genuinely not a pissing match of “oh, I’m not a great user, YOU are!” I mean I genuinely don’t put as much confidence or belief or effort into the things I do the way he does for himself. He’s got boundaries and standards as opposed to me and he handles any little thing with as much care as deserved. It’s an empowering headspace like none other.

Comments

[matt_zimmer]

The thing I want you to understand is I was on that site on and off for 20 years. And until the past month or so they had been very responsive to me and I had several meaningful back and forths with the mods before this. Them failing this specific thing was new and out of character. Clearly it matches YOUR experience but I'm not lying in saying this is a new problem. And I'm not exactly sure why. Most of the mods are the same.

As for people on the spectrum, I respect safe spaces. I understand their necessity. But I refuse to demand them for myself. Regardless of the fact that I am autistic, I am a grown-ass adult responsible for my own actions. Some of the Aspies on Toon Zone did not want to hear this, and believed their diagnosis gave them a free pass in posting stupid and harmful things. I'm not ashamed of being autistic. But the movement as it currently is asks other people to get used to people like me making them uncomfortable.

That's not reasonable. We all live in society with certain rules we must follow. And Lord knows my nervous demeanor in public has made strangers uncomfortable. But I will never tell them its THEIR problem, and something THEY have to accept and get used to. I live in society same as everyone else. I must follow those rules. And if I fail them? People have every right to not just feel uncomfortable, but to call me on it. I guess my problem with the current movement of autism awareness is a great deal of those advocates are asking people to let strangers that might scare them, or trigger their fears run amok, as if THEIR uncomfortability doesn't matter. It's all about soothing the autistic person. I don't agree with that, and the truth is several autistic posters on that board (including my stalker) believed differently. And me calling them on that was frowned upon when in reality demanding being treated decently is a basic human expectation in discussions and debates.

[matt_zimmer]

I used to occasionally make these exact arguments in the autism thread. Do you know who often liked my posts when I did that?

Red Arrow.

Yeah, the good guys and bad guys on Toon Zone were never clear-cut to me.

[classicswim]

Things aren’t black and white for me when it comes to Red Arrow.

He’s in his own little Belgium world where he thought he could make an asshole troll remark without me telling him to fuck his sister.

He couldn’t handle someone equally being a mean dick to him, so he cried to his Discord BFF; Pinkie the forum admin. Biased circumstances are biased, which is exactly what I said in my own letter.

Just because we kinda soft-patched the PM before my ban didn’t make me feel regretful. If my ban never happened from that, I still would think “yeah— he was a real fuckwit in that instance.” He’ll always be the initial aggressor on that end, but he’s PinkieLopBun’s little online bubble buddy so it doesn’t matter.


And I probably could find one or two stray comments from him that I’d agree with if I cared enough, but Red Arrow is someone who props down other people’s comments and considers himself his own messiah. I don’t have real contempt for him but wouldn’t ever want to be his friend. Even discounting all that.

[matt_zimmer]

You told him to fuck his sister? Remind me to never piss you off.

The way PinkieLopBun handled the ban for me made me a bit uncomfortable. She was not very responsive to my feelings at all. And I did and do still have them.

PinkieLopBun is very well-known on that site as a thoughtful administrator who cares about the people on the board. The thing is, I always got the sneaking suspicion she greatly disliked me, and I frankly don't know why, or even steps I could have taken to remedy that, or even if that was my responsibility to try and fix. She was polite enough, but I could tell my posting style rubbed her the wrong way, which I always thought was weird. And I can't change myself for a single person. I don't want to.

[classicswim]

The sister comment I just made was only metaphorical. XD

I mean I probably would say that on my actual boards, but all I truly did was clap back straight forward on his shit trolling. Basically if I never made the PM, they would still enact the ban just ‘cause they wanted to get rid of me, and the harmless comment was still juicy enough for them to huddle in.

What I previously said might also read off like I suddenly have this grudge toward Pinkie when quite the contrary! She’s simply one of the few to actually bear a grudge way longer than I possibly could have.

Can’t really single her out for much other than the fact any genuine problem I had, she wanted me to keep quiet. It was only a condescending shutdown or two. Like she could level with me on certain things if I’m that nasty to her, except gaslighting can also be her deal.

I got an anonymous note (1000% not from her lol) on the deleted Red Arrow comment that said my reaction was understood, and that was the precise level of genuine communication I needed from there the entire time. And I could only get that through an anonymous note...

[matt_zimmer]

How does one get an anonymous note on Toon Zone? Curious about that.

[classicswim]

I’m talking about just the “reason for comment deletion:” you get in notifications sometimes.

[matt_zimmer]

Oh, THAT. That is famously unhelpful. Honestly, those should not exist.

[classicswim]

At the very least there shouldn’t be anonymity attached if they’re gonna even vaguely personalize a notification. They like to think they’re equal cogs in the machine when they’re not.

[matt_zimmer]

That's actually poor form.

To be honest, I've had plenty of Mod notes telling me they understood my frustration. But they've never been thoughtless enough with me to offer anonymous support via a notification. That's not right.

[classicswim]

That’s all I could even get hahahaha.

Any type of comment that validates your stance and how you feel, even by a smidge can go a long way. It would’ve been the proper push needed to just let things go, but it’s clear they’d rather wait til there’s a spiral or blowout to finally take charge.

[matt_zimmer]

Even a year ago, it wasn't like that. This is a relatively new problem. I have no idea why.