Previous: The Postman Always Rings Twice
We got back in w/ our Chinese takeout, & called for our cat. Imagine our surprise when she came running to greet us w/ yet another letter in her mouth! After some tug-of-war, we rescued the letter, & pried it open. Through teethmarks, we read:
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Dear Drosselmeyer,
As long as your poorly-researched, slanderous, disrespectful, bizarrely long site stays up, I’m afraid we do have a big “connection” between us.
— A Citizen Who Is Connected to You
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We are, as mentioned, out of stamps. We will instead respond to this citizen here, in hopes that she, in her somewhat-thorough perusing of our site, may read it.
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Dear A Citizen Who Is Connected to You,
We like this. This is a straightforward request— perhaps a request you’ve been keeping in your back pocket all this time.
Our only q. is: why did you not make your request sooner? You could have saved us both a lot of time, & a lot of stamps.
Our answer to your request is no. We won’t take the site down. We, like a goat, or like a donkey, don’t follow ultimatums. We said that all the way back in our first letter bc we had a feeling an ultimatum was on its way.
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You have had 6 letters in which to show us how our site is “poorly-researched”. You have showed us— w/ specific examples— only one thing: that we put Jessica’s & Ophelia’s relationship in the ¿Dubious News bucket, rather than the New News bucket.
Btw, to our regret, it is still in the ¿DN bucket: normally your word would have counted for much; but, given the overall context of your correspondence… we just dk. We will give it a think.
According to you, our ¿DN bucketing of this relationship ipso facto negates everything else that we have to say (IFNEETWHTS). Well, to be specific: according to you, we’d assumed Jessica was cis, & this IFNEETWHTS.
We denied this to you, corrected some vagueness on our part which might have led to this misunderstanding, & we’ll further say here: at no point in this “bizarrely long” story have we felt that Jessica’s transness was relevant 🤷🏻♀️ Thus, we have not brought it up.
We have not heard of transphobic bullying towards her, we have not seen her posting abt trans self-defense, & we have, mercifully, not seen the press playing tricks like calling her [Redacted] “Jessica” Taylor, or saying, “who was assigned male at birth, but used female pronouns online”.
In hindsight, perhaps we could have called attention to the press’s good manners (TPGM) towards Jessica, but TPGM only made us feel gloomy. TPGM showed they were capable of good manners— & selective in whom they lavished them upon.
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Anyway, we felt it would be “BIZARRE” to announce Jessica’s transness for no reason. You, apparently, wish we had. If we had, you say, this might have redeemed our whole project. We have our doubts. Call us a cynic: we feel you would have landed on some other small detail (SD), brushed off our offers of context, & held up this new SD as proof that one should disregard everything else we have to say 🤷🏻♀️ C’est la vie. Just last week, we were passionately explaining to our gf our philosophy (OP) for this site. Here is our OP:
Those reading in bad faith will always find some SD to object to. They will stage a big reaction to these SDs, & use them as a pretext for why they must denounce you & storm away, never to return. The fact is, they wanted to denounce you from the start. This is why we will never, knowingly, fib on this site, or soften our true beliefs, in hopes that our fibs & fuzzy statements may mollify hypothetical bad faith readers (BFR). Such hopes are a fool’s errand. They leave you w/ fib-riddled, fuzzy writing, & do nothing to win over BFR. Btw, do we want to win over BFR? We do not. They are not our target comrades, they are not our target audience.
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Returning to you, Citizen… Next you say our site is “slanderous”. Specifically, you said it “slander[s] many good people I care about to defend [a] violent cult”. The first time we read this, we clutched our heart.
Have we been slandering good ppl? Have we been slandering Gwen, Somni, Emma, etc. etc.? We thought long & hard abt this, & decided that no.
The entire purpose of this site is to counter-balance the slander which has been slathered upon them, & we, if we may say so, feel we have stuck to our mission. Who have we been slandering? Well, we have been critiquing Rationalist figures, & the press. Btw, even tho we just said “good ppl”, we do not like to call some ppl “good” & others “bad”. We try instead to pass judgement on their actions.
If you, Citizen, are referring to our critiques of certain Rationalist figures, or of the press: we will have to agree to disagree. You are more than welcome to build your own counter-site in which you defend those whom you feel we treat harshly.
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Next, is this site “disrespectful”? This seems to be an extension of whether it is “slanderous”. If you believe that our critiques of certain Rationalist figures & of the press are unwarranted, then yes: you may regard this site as failing to respect them. We are indeed cautious to give out our respect, & in our estimation, these figures have yet to earn it.
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Finally, is it “bizarrely long”? This you have said already, & we have responded to it here.
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Citizen, this is our q. to you: if our site is everything you say it is— if it is badly-researched, slanderous, disrespectful, & too long— if it will be “of no benefit to anyone whatsoever”, & if it is written by a catty, unserious, “drama mongering”, “antic”-loving “dogshit” “scholar” of comparative literature who is “incapable of reading the room”, has “no idea what they are talking abt”, & who is simply making “deranged outbursts”… why does it trouble you so? Why not just sit back & wait for zizians.co to collapse under its own absurdity? 🤷🏻♀️
Instead of sitting back & watching us dig our own grave from afar, you have pulled out all the stops. You have tried to scare us. You have tried to insult us. You have tried to make us feel illegitimate. You have appealed to our sense of sympathy for you, which, btw, was def your most effective tactic, but which still does not convince us to close up shop bc you have not shown how this site negatively impacts the work of your acquaintance’s defense team. We doubt v. much that they even know who we are. We have been online for one (1) month, & are just one small voice in an ocean of— well, an ocean of what it seems you would like to see: “violent cult” accusations & all that.
Why not turn your gaze instead towards the vast ocean of coverage you enjoy? Why not bathe & frolic in its “violent cult” waters? You will be in good company! There are many more beachgoers on that side of the bay than on our side— so far. You claim you cannot. You claim an invisible thread still ties us together. We do not feel this thread ourself. We have clear memories of pulling out the scissors & snipping it, then brushing its remainders into the trash. Yet you claim it persists, & you have a right to your feelings.
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We suppose the next q. is: if you remain “hooked” on our little site (OLS), if you cannot detangle yourself from its lure, how do you proceed to lead a rich & fulfilling life regardless— even while peripherally aware of sthng which you cannot control? For both of our sakes, we do not want OLS to remain such a bee in your bonnet.
You may try noticing the thought: “As long as zizians.co remains in operation, I’m not okay (ALAZRIOINO).” You may try labeling it: “I’m having the thought that ALAZRIOINO.” You may try repeating it until it loses some of its sting.
You may try radically accepting your distress: “I am furious at Drosselmeyer, I loathe zizians.co, & that is okay.”
You may ask yourself: which values are you upholding? Integrity? Justice? How can you live out these values— how can you “let your life speak”— even if zizians.co remains up & running?
Once your values are clear in your mind, you may ask: “what are small, practical steps I may take right now that reaffirm my power & agency, & which don’t depend on the actions of that ruthless Drosselmeyer?”
Even if this site stays up forever, Citizen, who do you want to be?
Sincerely yours- That Ruthless Drosselmeyer
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Who do we at zizians.co want to be? We want to be a site w/ plenty of time to respond to all of our readers— not just to our Citizen. W/ this value in mind, we have taken the practical step of reaching out to one of our friends at the post office, & making a bribe. We have bribed him to intercept all future Citizen letters, & change their delivery address to Santa at the North Pole 🎅🏻 We feel lighter already.
Part of why we feel lighter is that, once we posted our first 5 letters of Citizen correspondence, we received another letter from a reader. We munched on an egg roll as we read:
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Dear Drosselmeyer,
I see you & Citizen have become acquainted. Just so you know, Citizen has been banned from Wikipedia for repeatedly adding inappropriate/inaccurate/against Wiki policy edits to the Zizians article. Citizen responded to this ban by hiding her IP, & making lots of sockpuppet accounts. Here is a screenshot as proof. I do not doubt her grief is real— but I have also had to learn to disengage. Hope you keep writing.
— A Blissfully Disengaged Reader (ABDR)
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ABDR’s screenshot shows one Wiki editor posting link after link of Citizen’s sockpuppety contributions, then throwing their hands up & saying, “And more but I got tired of finding all the links.” Another editor adds: “Semi-protected for six months; thanks for the report”. A third editor then @s the 2nd editor & asks, “Hi, can we have a very longterm protection please? They keep socking.”
ABDR included w/ this a cartoon that made us chuckle v., v. hard:
😂 W/ that, goodbye for now 👋 We will indeed return w/ more catty, deranged outbursts for you all. In the meantime, enjoy basking in the warm waters of Counter-Narratives Bay! We hope you find many interesting shells, & hey— next time, why not bring a friend? The more the merrier 🏖️
******