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Here's why "call-out" posts aren't worth your time.
3 years ago
If you've ever frequented Twitter, you've probably come across something like this. It's what happens when someone with way too much free time and nothing better to do decides to start some drama by "calling out" someone else (usually someone who's relatively well known) over a supposed past offense that the poster thinks is deserving on Internet-wide attention. It can be done for a variety of reasons, whether it's a personal grudge, an ego trip, cancel culture, or some combination of all three, but the intention is always the same. The post (or thread) usually goes something like "X person is bad because I say so, therefore you must believe me or you're bad like X person too," oftentimes followed up with "so please send me and my mutuals some money on PayPal while you're at it." Basically it's a way to be a social justice warrior and feign victimhood while also using the whole thing as an opportunity to selfishly benefit from the attention that comes from mentioning someone who has more of a reputation.
Obviously, Twitter is full of these sorts of tweets, so deconstructing every single "call-out" post would be a fool's errand. However, they all have similar tactics, and my intention here is simply to show just how dishonest these tweet threads can be and how they work. Consider this journal something of a quick cancel culture deep dive.
In the example above, the "bad person" happens to be PeaceWolf, a former member of Tails and Tornadoes Fur Con and a part-time fursuit maker. She's gotten herself in a lot of hot water lately (mostly due to her openness about her political views), so she's an easy target, but fortunately for this journal, it also makes researching the claims made about her easy as well. As you can probably tell, nothing stated in the thread comes with any proof. It's just gossip.
The sexual assault story, for example, comes from one person on Twitter claiming to have been groped by someone else at Tails and Tornadoes Fur Con, but there are no details given other than that. That's because it was apparently more important to throw Peace under the bus by telling a story about supposedly being told by the con staff that a "free hugs" pin justified it while conveniently leaving out any hard proof. Who did the groping? Shouldn't that person be blamed rather than the con staff who weren't present until later on? Is there any video evidence? Were there any eyewitness accounts (aside from baseless "I was there" claims) to back up this story? Nope! None of that stuff matters. What matters is that PeaceWolf is a bad person and you should feel bad for supporting her. The other stuff is just to tug at your heartstrings and get you onboard with the idea of canceling Peace by making you outraged through a story that's most likely made up and has little to no connection to her outside of a "free hugs" pin she apparently mentioned at some point in time afterward. That's hardly justification.
But see, now that I'm doubting the story due to its lack of evidence, I look like I'm an evil monster who's defending sexual assault because that just so happened to be a subject that was brought up by the person making the "call-out" post. That's how it works. It's not about evidence, but rather how one can bring up as many sensitive subjects as possible in order to guilt people into believing whatever accusations put forth. After all, no one wants to be associated with sexual assault, right? Even if the only connection to PeaceWolf is that one remark about a "free hugs" pin (and that's only if we're assuming she even knew what the poster claimed to have experienced before, which she probably wouldn't have) after the sexual assaulting supposedly happened, it still frames you as a bad person for having doubts about the story's validity. That's how they get you.
Next up? PeaceWolf's "racism" with a story about her using racial slurs. What a horrible bigot! But wait, where's the evidence again? All that's shown in the thread is another "call-out" post by someone else claiming to have been called "colored" once (which isn't even a slur), but once again, there's nothing to back it up. It's just hearsay.
The only real "evidence" provided throughout the entire thread is the occasional screencap here and there of a few of her tweets from years ago taken out of context. It's easy to be manipulative with that kind of stuff. For example, Peace's posts in favor of self-defense against looters and rioters are easy to recontextualize by simply showing a picture of them while saying "This is what she thinks of black people." It's lying by omission. There is also the fact that she has denounced Black Lives Matter on multiple occasions, but that has more to do with the group's tactics and ideology than the color of people's skin. I'm not going to waste too much time with this, so let's keep going.
In the next part, PeaceWolf is unfairly lumped in with CaniLupine. That story is a whole other can of worms, but basically, to keep things brief, that person has gone under fire for making some tone deaf statements about transgender people recently. However, it's important to remember that PeaceWolf cut ties with CaniLupine years ago, so treating her as if she's still complicit when it comes to those statements made later on isn't a fair assessment. Plus, even at the time, Peace was only defending that person on the basis of not wanting to see people attack others for their Christian faith. It had nothing to do with "homo/transphobia" or anything else the thread in question brings up.
As a sidenote for those who may be wondering, PeaceWolf's "homophobia" accusations stem from another incident at Tails and Tornadoes Fur Con involving Tsebresos, who was a guest of honor at the time. To summarize, Tsebresos used to do SFW art commissions in the past, but after refusing to draw suggestive artwork of gay characters on the basis that she only draws platonic/SFW stuff (as laid out on her website), the commissioner, instead of simply taking "no" for an answer, decided to take to social media and falsely accuse Tsebresos of discriminating against gay people, leading to her being smeared as a "homophobe" over a complete non-issue. To make matters worse, the drama also resulted in the majority of people running Tails and Tornadoes Fur Con stripping her of her guest of honor title and publicly announcing it on Twitter, leading to a barrage of relentless cyberbullying that drove her to shut down almost all of her online accounts and abandon her YouTube channel out of shame. She's basically retired now, and it all could've been avoided if people had just done the slightest bit of research before blindly believing a baseless "call-out" post. The truth is that artists have rules for what they will and won't draw, and it's not unusual for a lot of them to stay away from NSFW content altogether if that's not something they want to be associated with. Basically, Tsebresos was canceled for not drawing NSFW content, which should tell you everything you need to know, but the Twitter thread in question deliberately leaves that important detail out in order to push a false narrative.
Going back to PeaceWolf, this is where the aforementioned thread about her ends. As you can probably tell, not a lot of effort went into "calling out" PeaceWolf herself. She's basically just getting the blame because a lot of the people around her have already been canceled, so she's basically considered guilty by association. What few grievances in the thread were specific to Peace weren't even very offensive and could easily have been simple misunderstandings (assuming they're not just made up altogether). To the people making these "call-out" tweets, however, it's not about finding actual problems to address, but rather about simply cobbling together anything that can be dug up to make a list full of intimidating grievances to demonize someone with for attention.
Another example of how inaccurate these "call-out" posts can be is this one, which paints SparkyCanDo in a negative light, so let's delve into that.
The "Trump supporter" accusation comes from a video posted back in 2019 in which she jokingly wore a MAGA hat while setting off fireworks to the Team America: World Police theme song on the 4th of July. Keep in mind that Sparky lives in New Zealand, so even on the off chance that she did view Donald Trump favorably at the time, there's no way she could've voted for him, so that accusation isn't even in the realm of possibility.
As for the "pro-life" part, I don't see how that's a problem, let alone a cancelable offense. She simply stated in a journal that she believes abortion to be unethical, and you know what? Good for her. She's allowed to have her opinions. She's hardly a fringe extremist for expressing her anti-abortion views, especially seeing as they're perfectly valid and reasonable, not to mention representative of roughly 50% of everyone (including me, by the way, in case my previous journal didn't make that clear enough already). If you personally have a problem with that, commission someone else. Don't go behind that person's back and resort to public shaming just for having a different opinion on a sensitive topic that doesn't affect you personally. That's just petty.
Speaking of which, let's now look at the "anti-LGBT" claim levied against Sparky, which originates from a rumor about her supposedly not taking commissions from gay people. Once again, this is another baseless accusation built purely on assumptions. While some of her older journals (which aren't even around anymore) implied that her Christian beliefs put her at odds with homosexuality, she never said anything about hating homosexual people or refusing to do business with them. That's as close as Sparky ever got to fitting any of the labels being thrown her way, and guess what? One look through her gallery shows that she does, in fact, take commissions from gay people despite that. Here's one example I found while looking for just a few minutes. As you can see, the whole "Sparky hates the gays" smear campaign was a total lie fabricated by a bunch of crybullies who couldn't take a silly "Murica" joke, and the the lengths to which these people went to try to paint her in a bad light, sometimes even deliberately baiting her into blocking them so that they could come up with supposed "evidence of her homophobia" and have something to complain about, show how ridiculous and exaggerated the claims put out by the people making these "call-out" posts can be.
No one in their right mind should be taking "call-out" posts seriously. Call the authorities if there's a real problem. Don't complain on social media. A bunch of strangers on Twitter aren't a reputable source.
As for how to stop this sort of stuff from spreading in the future, my advice would be to come prepared. Instead of regurgitating the same hateful nonsense that's trending from the most influential voices in this community, consider doing your own research. You'll quickly find that it's a lot harder to fall for the outrage these liars try to radicalize you with if you've got evidence to disprove it.
Obviously, Twitter is full of these sorts of tweets, so deconstructing every single "call-out" post would be a fool's errand. However, they all have similar tactics, and my intention here is simply to show just how dishonest these tweet threads can be and how they work. Consider this journal something of a quick cancel culture deep dive.
In the example above, the "bad person" happens to be PeaceWolf, a former member of Tails and Tornadoes Fur Con and a part-time fursuit maker. She's gotten herself in a lot of hot water lately (mostly due to her openness about her political views), so she's an easy target, but fortunately for this journal, it also makes researching the claims made about her easy as well. As you can probably tell, nothing stated in the thread comes with any proof. It's just gossip.
The sexual assault story, for example, comes from one person on Twitter claiming to have been groped by someone else at Tails and Tornadoes Fur Con, but there are no details given other than that. That's because it was apparently more important to throw Peace under the bus by telling a story about supposedly being told by the con staff that a "free hugs" pin justified it while conveniently leaving out any hard proof. Who did the groping? Shouldn't that person be blamed rather than the con staff who weren't present until later on? Is there any video evidence? Were there any eyewitness accounts (aside from baseless "I was there" claims) to back up this story? Nope! None of that stuff matters. What matters is that PeaceWolf is a bad person and you should feel bad for supporting her. The other stuff is just to tug at your heartstrings and get you onboard with the idea of canceling Peace by making you outraged through a story that's most likely made up and has little to no connection to her outside of a "free hugs" pin she apparently mentioned at some point in time afterward. That's hardly justification.
But see, now that I'm doubting the story due to its lack of evidence, I look like I'm an evil monster who's defending sexual assault because that just so happened to be a subject that was brought up by the person making the "call-out" post. That's how it works. It's not about evidence, but rather how one can bring up as many sensitive subjects as possible in order to guilt people into believing whatever accusations put forth. After all, no one wants to be associated with sexual assault, right? Even if the only connection to PeaceWolf is that one remark about a "free hugs" pin (and that's only if we're assuming she even knew what the poster claimed to have experienced before, which she probably wouldn't have) after the sexual assaulting supposedly happened, it still frames you as a bad person for having doubts about the story's validity. That's how they get you.
Next up? PeaceWolf's "racism" with a story about her using racial slurs. What a horrible bigot! But wait, where's the evidence again? All that's shown in the thread is another "call-out" post by someone else claiming to have been called "colored" once (which isn't even a slur), but once again, there's nothing to back it up. It's just hearsay.
The only real "evidence" provided throughout the entire thread is the occasional screencap here and there of a few of her tweets from years ago taken out of context. It's easy to be manipulative with that kind of stuff. For example, Peace's posts in favor of self-defense against looters and rioters are easy to recontextualize by simply showing a picture of them while saying "This is what she thinks of black people." It's lying by omission. There is also the fact that she has denounced Black Lives Matter on multiple occasions, but that has more to do with the group's tactics and ideology than the color of people's skin. I'm not going to waste too much time with this, so let's keep going.
In the next part, PeaceWolf is unfairly lumped in with CaniLupine. That story is a whole other can of worms, but basically, to keep things brief, that person has gone under fire for making some tone deaf statements about transgender people recently. However, it's important to remember that PeaceWolf cut ties with CaniLupine years ago, so treating her as if she's still complicit when it comes to those statements made later on isn't a fair assessment. Plus, even at the time, Peace was only defending that person on the basis of not wanting to see people attack others for their Christian faith. It had nothing to do with "homo/transphobia" or anything else the thread in question brings up.
As a sidenote for those who may be wondering, PeaceWolf's "homophobia" accusations stem from another incident at Tails and Tornadoes Fur Con involving Tsebresos, who was a guest of honor at the time. To summarize, Tsebresos used to do SFW art commissions in the past, but after refusing to draw suggestive artwork of gay characters on the basis that she only draws platonic/SFW stuff (as laid out on her website), the commissioner, instead of simply taking "no" for an answer, decided to take to social media and falsely accuse Tsebresos of discriminating against gay people, leading to her being smeared as a "homophobe" over a complete non-issue. To make matters worse, the drama also resulted in the majority of people running Tails and Tornadoes Fur Con stripping her of her guest of honor title and publicly announcing it on Twitter, leading to a barrage of relentless cyberbullying that drove her to shut down almost all of her online accounts and abandon her YouTube channel out of shame. She's basically retired now, and it all could've been avoided if people had just done the slightest bit of research before blindly believing a baseless "call-out" post. The truth is that artists have rules for what they will and won't draw, and it's not unusual for a lot of them to stay away from NSFW content altogether if that's not something they want to be associated with. Basically, Tsebresos was canceled for not drawing NSFW content, which should tell you everything you need to know, but the Twitter thread in question deliberately leaves that important detail out in order to push a false narrative.
Going back to PeaceWolf, this is where the aforementioned thread about her ends. As you can probably tell, not a lot of effort went into "calling out" PeaceWolf herself. She's basically just getting the blame because a lot of the people around her have already been canceled, so she's basically considered guilty by association. What few grievances in the thread were specific to Peace weren't even very offensive and could easily have been simple misunderstandings (assuming they're not just made up altogether). To the people making these "call-out" tweets, however, it's not about finding actual problems to address, but rather about simply cobbling together anything that can be dug up to make a list full of intimidating grievances to demonize someone with for attention.
Another example of how inaccurate these "call-out" posts can be is this one, which paints SparkyCanDo in a negative light, so let's delve into that.
The "Trump supporter" accusation comes from a video posted back in 2019 in which she jokingly wore a MAGA hat while setting off fireworks to the Team America: World Police theme song on the 4th of July. Keep in mind that Sparky lives in New Zealand, so even on the off chance that she did view Donald Trump favorably at the time, there's no way she could've voted for him, so that accusation isn't even in the realm of possibility.
As for the "pro-life" part, I don't see how that's a problem, let alone a cancelable offense. She simply stated in a journal that she believes abortion to be unethical, and you know what? Good for her. She's allowed to have her opinions. She's hardly a fringe extremist for expressing her anti-abortion views, especially seeing as they're perfectly valid and reasonable, not to mention representative of roughly 50% of everyone (including me, by the way, in case my previous journal didn't make that clear enough already). If you personally have a problem with that, commission someone else. Don't go behind that person's back and resort to public shaming just for having a different opinion on a sensitive topic that doesn't affect you personally. That's just petty.
Speaking of which, let's now look at the "anti-LGBT" claim levied against Sparky, which originates from a rumor about her supposedly not taking commissions from gay people. Once again, this is another baseless accusation built purely on assumptions. While some of her older journals (which aren't even around anymore) implied that her Christian beliefs put her at odds with homosexuality, she never said anything about hating homosexual people or refusing to do business with them. That's as close as Sparky ever got to fitting any of the labels being thrown her way, and guess what? One look through her gallery shows that she does, in fact, take commissions from gay people despite that. Here's one example I found while looking for just a few minutes. As you can see, the whole "Sparky hates the gays" smear campaign was a total lie fabricated by a bunch of crybullies who couldn't take a silly "Murica" joke, and the the lengths to which these people went to try to paint her in a bad light, sometimes even deliberately baiting her into blocking them so that they could come up with supposed "evidence of her homophobia" and have something to complain about, show how ridiculous and exaggerated the claims put out by the people making these "call-out" posts can be.
No one in their right mind should be taking "call-out" posts seriously. Call the authorities if there's a real problem. Don't complain on social media. A bunch of strangers on Twitter aren't a reputable source.
As for how to stop this sort of stuff from spreading in the future, my advice would be to come prepared. Instead of regurgitating the same hateful nonsense that's trending from the most influential voices in this community, consider doing your own research. You'll quickly find that it's a lot harder to fall for the outrage these liars try to radicalize you with if you've got evidence to disprove it.
