Cow crossover: Ana Valens talking about an early version of the Zoepost:
It's been five years and it blows my mind no one in the online media world has actually stopped to, like, examine how thezoepost was created. Its first, unpublished draft was a tumblr-esque call out post that was workshopped into its final state, published 8/15/2014
think the post is better understood -- esp in a 2019 context -- as something that was supposed to be a call out and morphed into a dramatic story with a narrative arc and the memey Five Guys thing. If the original version was published we would be in a very different world
GG would have happened regardless -- TZP is better thought of as a match sparking a powder keg that blew up when Adam Baldwin came up with the name -- but it continues to blow my mind that no one thinks of just, like, breaking down the oral history of how this thing came to be.
The reason why I bring this up is because 1) I don't think it's actually helpful to gloss over how it was created when writing about GG 2) it became a memey story out of fear no one would care about a list of perceived wrongdoings 3) it shows why the call out system doesn't work
everyone around its author was basically a leftie or a liberal libertarian. its worst qualities came from a bid to get someone to care about its allegations. an ideal version of the post would have discussed the mental toll of alleged emotional abuse, which is what
actually sparked the entire situation -- his friends noticed he was unraveling. i think 5 years ago we didn't have the language to even begin to talk about that. men can't be abused, right?? so it became a story about cheating and ethical games journalism
i think tzp is a really good case study of why calling for the public to support/defend you doesn't help and it should have just been a post asking about restorative justice and accountability. which would have always made more sense and prevented the situation from blowing up
of course to do that you have to acknowledge that abuse can happen anytime someone has power and that means cis men can be abused too and we're still trying to get people to even believe Zoë can be accused and yet still harassed & abused because of her gender
Anyway I hate talking about this bc my feelings on call outs and restorative justice and accountability are nuanced and I feel like anyone who isn't some form of marginalized (esp queer/trans) really doesn't get why journalists need to actually unpack TZP's creation
A ton of things just like it happen all the time and we're only just starting to understand why we need restorative justice. But then high profile cases pop up and we go back to what's safe -- looking for a bad guy, looking for a good guy, looking for someone to punish
