Thread by @JoohnChoe

There's no official NAFO meme "brand".

So, racist, misogynist or plain bad content can be planted or used to discredit the movement; both are probably already true.

I'd like to think being exemplary is enough, but let's be clear:

If you're going there, you ain't NAFO to me.
🧵

It'd be hubris in the extreme to speak for the movement or tell people how to make art.

Let me say, then, to me, at least, from experience, there's a few really easy way to tell what the lines are.

One, are you punching up or down - going with or against social hierarchy?

Examples help illustrate. We just did this with #parmesanGirl & #crayZone.

There is a male-female social hierarchy in a lot of societies, mine (America) included; we're working on it, but it's there.

Going at Alex Rubinstein pretty hard is pretty OK. With Susli, you need lines.

Go at Alex Rubinstein on whatever you want - I called him a 'trustafarian ass mayonnaise mf with a trash career writing for trash' - and you're probably good.

If I use words like "whore" - even "attention whore" - on Susli or even Simonyan, it's not going to be a good look.

Two, who's talking the most and keeping the joke going? Is it you, or other people?

This is a hard one for a lot of leaders to recognize - it's hard to recognize you are one - but healthy discourse with active participation is not the same discourse that goes just how you want.

Again, examples:

If I start on some offensive joke about like, bacon, with someone who's Muslim, and I'm the only who's making that joke, and no one is saying "Stealing!" and posting those cute little memes that tell you your memes is good...

Read the room, is what I'm saying.

This gets into:

Three, feedback.

I've made a slightly big deal about feedback before; the way I see a lot of social interactions, even in this non-anonymous activist capacity, it's feedback on getting my outcomes.

That works because I keep people around who call me on my BS.

There are two distinctions you need to make in feedback: good feedback and bad, and useful feedback and useless.

Not all feedback is useful. Usually, discerning useful bad feedback is the hard part.

Not all good feedback is useful, either, even if you want it to be.

Examples!

Useless good feedback: i like red

Useful good feedback: I like the whimsy it injects into otherwise nasty conversation

Useless bad feedback: f**k your art it sucks

Useful bad feedback: This may be slightly condescending/inappropriate in some religious contexts

Useful bad feedback is going to be the hardest not to take personally - it's actually arguably the sign of useful bad feedback, that it's hard not to take it personally - and thus the hardest to distinguish.

So, last tip's about people.

Four, and I think this is important, is you should have people whom you trust to give you feedback and make an effort to raise them up, and keep them around.

There should be people you can DM and ask, is this offensive? And they'll tell you the truth.

That's it :)

...I feel like there's one last thing I should mention:

If you're making a joke and someone tells you it's offensive...

There is no right, absolutely none, in any human society I have ever heard of not to be offended.

There are some basic rights-like things about it.

It's like this: if you're not the target of the joke, you don't have the right to decide if it's offensive or not.

Example: Sulu and George Takei, that's one that probably don't think about much. Make a Sulu joke with me and you're not the one who decides if I'm offended or not.

The "right" to decide whether or not something is hurtful, offensive, punching up or down, whatever... or whether it's too hurtful or offensive, because we ARE in a war, and up against a military information op...

That right doesn't reside with the people who make the joke.

To the extent that such a "right" exists, the right to decide whether or not something is over the line with you is always yours and solely yours as the target of a joke.

It might matter a lot, like if it's your friend.

Maybe it doesn't, like Simonyan.

It's still there.