What if they revealed one of the contestants had said "nigger" on the internet?
Still harping on about this when I intended to make a post about the show being over checks with the thread, I guess. I've let sleeping dogs lie on this topic but this is an inherently broken comparison.
What does says nigger directly lead to? Hating black people? Grooming black children? The slaughter of Africans? The answer is nothing. Nigger. Nigger, nigger, nigger. Nothing fucking happened. When I scream nigger in an empty room, it leads to nothing. When I scream nigger on the street, reactions will vary but every action taken by outside parties is purely their own and has nothing to do with me. If a black man whips out a knife and stabs me to death because I yelled nigger at the sky, he's a fucking psychopath who had likely been looking for an excuse to stab somebody. This is before we bring in details like outward appearance, gender, time of day, location, and so on. But even in a situation like that, the likeliest victim is not a black person but whoever said nigger in the first place.
Saying nigger is not even a crime, my nigger, especially on the fucking internet. Being scared of people saying nigger and treating it like violence is fucking retarded. Anyone who pearl clutches over the use of nigger in any context based purely on the race of the vocalizer does not give a fuck about black people; it is performative hogwash that demeans African-Americans and paints them as waifish, thin-skinned idiots. If the black people they were protecting from this word lived in such a harsh world, a mere word would not phase them: they'd have bigger fish to fucking fry in life, like providing for their families and staying alive. If things were really bad, I think they'd be more concerned about getting a bullet in their skulls than a scary anonymous figure saying the no-no word on Twitter.
This is why saying nigger is not a big deal and anyone's alarm over it being said on the internet at some point is ridiculous.
Now, what is the purpose of children in drag?
The left claims it is for self-expression. The child is not expressing themselves by wearing what their parents bought for them. The child is not expressing themselves by going to shows, events, and participating in activities their parents specifically chose to take them to. The child has no agency in a situation where mommy or daddy buys them a drag costume from an online merchant and tells them to wear it.
Self-expression or sheer childlike curiosity would be taking what they already have at home and putting it on themselves. Rummaging through mom's closet and throwing on a dress to pretend they're a princess, parading down the hallway at home wearing dad's top hat whilst in their diapers and claiming they're Stooge. The reason this is okay at home is because if the child is actively looking to present themselves in some or other way in the safety of familiar faces, this shit is fine. To the child it's not about drag, it's not about gender politics, it's not about sexuality: it's a child experiencing the world and being a child.
The moment mommy opens her purse to make her son dress like an older man pretending to be a woman, this stops being about a child being a child. Maybe mommy is taken by the mind versus and doesn't know any better and truly just thinks their child in a dress would look cute, maybe the child really did want a pretty dress and mom is just fulfilling the child's wishes and plans to have the kid parade around at home this Christmas. That's sketchy and a bit weird but somewhat harmless if we assume the absolute best of the mother in this scenario; I assume this is what the bulk of the people in the house believe or want to believe child drag is: a woke label for the simple act of dress up and playtime. As far as they knew, Brandon was a designer, sold a product, and caught flack for it.
I agreed to disagree with the cast for this. I really enjoyed Star and did not like her fanning the fag's farts and tears nor worrying over his safety near Burt considering Brandon was the one making an effort to look younger and appealing towards potential mates (TTD), but I let it go because she had not been shown anything from production and everything she knew, as far as I could remember, came directly from Brandon himself as a counter to what Luke said.
I took issue with Tony and Kawan because they loudly proclaimed to have an issue with what Sam showed them then pussied out for the sake of social points with the women. That's flaky and dumb, but they were flaky and dumb bros, which added to their personalities and made me want to watch them suffer even more. Having their opinions on something like this added to the experience of watching them on the show and painted a broader picture of how they at least wanted to come across to different people.
It was largely Brandon, Payton, and Brandon's bodysuit wearing fag hag that seemed to know about the slippery slope of children in drag. However, two of them were villains (Breezy had been conspiring and acting up since she got there, she was ready to Head Bitch her way through this show if she had the chance) so them having morals that counted those of the audience was a bonus: now we are even more invested in watching these people sufferer, awesome! Slimeball was in a similar boat, where he was presented a continued path to redemption and instead went all in for a pack of hyenas that tossed him out the moment he outlived his usefulness. From an entertainment perspective, I ate that shit up. It was poetic watching the lion put to sleep that night.
Payton, Burt, and Binx were the only people whose opinions on this issue truly mattered to the audience because these were the fuckers we had been rooting for since day one, AND because they were given the opportunity to see and learn more about this situation.
- Slimeball got put into the villain category with Luke on day one and had only really started to garner respect despite his villain status during FishTank Proper, so him falling back to his old ways wasn't a surprise.
- Binx torpedoed her popularity with audience members that weren't simps because she failed the assignment despite getting a head start with Sam giving her instructions to make Brandon an outcast; her stupidity and insistence to continuously go to bat for Brandon painted a portrait of a woman who was fine with this shit even outside the scope of "playing the game".
- Burt did what everyone assumed Burt would do: fawn over the nearest white male in the hopes he could shove his cock inside an asshole. The details around him were foggy at the time but he's an overtly sexual sex-crazed autist who jerked off within hours of being in the house and openly stated he wanted to play a rapist and didn't do back shit largely because of the consequences attached to such actions; I don't think anyone is really looking for Burt to be the moral guide here. Burt was content and throughout the Brandon fiasco, he provided content.
- Payton was on the cusp (again) of growth and then reminded everyone she was the boring girl doing nothing most of the time who considered herself a lesbian and was a model in an industry basically controlled by gay men. Cue shock, disappointment, and becoming irredeemable in many eyes because she tattled on Sam and clearly did not see what was wrong with the situation despite arguably knowing the most from the remaining contestants. Fucking Ron knew this shit wasn't right; the bar was not high, Payton.
When production shows you an image with a child's head uncomfortably close to a man's penis and alarm bells do not start ringing, there is no saving you. Context? It's a child in drag standing next to someone from the drag community with his head near the man's penis. The 'drag' in this situation doesn't even become the focal point: THERE IS A CHILD'S HEAD SUSPICIOUSLY CLOSE TO A GROWN MAN'S PENIS. WEE WOO WEE WOO WEE FUCKING WOO.
Brandon posted this and was okay with it. Alarm bells. That's it. That's how deep it needed to get for these people to get the switch to turn on and it did not. Everything else, like the slippery slop and the abuse and the horrors and the multitude of connections Brandon has to vile and despicable people, did not need to be brought up for the picture to be incriminating. The issue is this: a grown man was being creepy with a child, Brandon does not see why this is creepy. The fish failing to see why themselves is what caught them flack.
Again, La'Ron is as gay as the nine flaming hells and chimped out over the word nigga but my nigga knew Brandon's shit stank. The rest of them did not have an excuse. Period.
To circle back to an earlier question: what is the purpose of children in drag?
Entertainment. Who is being entertained by the thoughts of young boys and young girls dressing up as flamboyant and overly exaggerated examples of the opposite sex? Adults. Adults in night clubs and adult settings, adults trying to normalize an adult hobby/lifestyle as something children as young as five (if not younger) should have access to. Adults advocating for children to be swallowed into yet another branch of an industry that spits up, chews on, and abuses even grown adults in the same space.
Wee. Fucking. Woo.
The most annoying thing to me is painting the fish as pedo supporters or enablers, disregarding the fact that the fish don't see it that way.
Brandon is a potential pedo/pedo enabler and likely a grooming victim who perpetuates the cycle or at the very least turns a blind eye to the horrors of the community he's in because he hid the full truth from those not in the know whilst providing people with access to goods and services that might feed into the machine, and he has a skeevy history with terrible connections. Breezy is friends with Brandon outside of the tank and is okay with that; not a good look. Payton, who seemed to know of the child and this incident before Sam even brought it up, is an orbiter of this scene and does not see the issue with it; even with that said, it's likely she doesn't realize the problem because she's been forced to drink too much of the cool-aid. People had a huge issue with Brandon, accepted Breezy as she had already shown herself to be of dubious moral cloth from a reality TV show perspective and wanted to see her fucked with, and felt disappointed/let down by Payton and likely upset over her failing to clinch her growth arc on the show despite having numerous opportunities to do so.
The Famous House 2 fish outside of them are largely liberal-leaning and do not get the problem, as painted to them by Brandon. This very thread more or less stopped giving any of them flake about what happened a few days after Brandon left the house because they had flaws and personalities that could be hounded on, mocked, and enjoyed as entertainment outside of the Brandon incident. For some of them - Tony, Kawan, Turbo to a lesser extent - Brandon was a single sprinkle of shit on their sundaes. They had more to offer/other things to be hated for.
Binx, Burt, and Slimeball's opinions were seen as a betrayal and probably taken more personally considering we had been with them for weeks by that point and they had been given ample information and opportunity to get more information, strategize together, and figure out a way forward when dealing with this. Quietly literally all they had to do was SHUT. THE FUCK. UP. But Slimeball, being who he is, claimed it wasn't his problem because him winning was the most important thing. Unsurprising. Burt wanted sex and couldn't see past his penis. Unsurprising. Binx went up and fucking down being a flippity floppity cunt about the issue even after saying "That's horrifying!" whilst in Sam's presence, then saying she would totally fuck with Brandon when out of his company; no, this doesn't mean she's automatically a pedo enabler, it means she's a piece of human vaporwave and a chameleon that will change on a whim to satisfy whoever she believes her audience is at the time; in other words, a Twitch thot.
Burt and Slimeball's reactions fell directly in line with the people we had seen throughout the show. Binx and Payton were especially disappointing I think because people wanted to believe there was more to them than there was, and there simply wasn't. After making it through Fish Tank Proper, this revelation hits hard. Binx got wishy washy about it, Payton went on the attack for the 'other team' over it. Of course people got pissed over it and of course people will stay pissed over it, even though there continued to be other reasons not to like them. Binx going through an entire era of NO, YOU DUMB BITCH! directly after the Brandon saga proves this.
Are these people actually enabling pedophiles? For the most part, no.
Are any people dying because they got called nigger? No.
Do people still want to lynch any person who isn't black enough for saying the N-word? Yes.
Do viewers of Fish Tank still want any person who didn't BTFO Brandon, particularly those with 'insider knowledge', to suffer the consequences commonly associated with Fish Tank and its contestants? Yes.
Welcome to the Fish Tank.