It says just as much or more about them, I think

Screen shot 2015-04-25 at 5.55.02 PM

~ by Servetus on April 25, 2015.

Posted in Richard Armitage
Tags: ,

22 Responses to “It says just as much or more about them, I think”

  1. Kindness goes both ways, but has to start somewhere. There’s a saying here which roughly translated says that if you greet the world with a smile, the world smiles back at you.
    Then you’ve got those who do not ‘smile back’, and I agree, that THAT says way much more about them.

    Like

    Mermaid said this on April 26, 2015 at 10:00 am | Reply

    • I have debating about whether to write about exactly how ridiculous this tweet was in this particular context, and have been holding myself back. If he had tweeted “greet the world with a smile” he would have been saying something quite different.

      Like

      Servetus said this on April 26, 2015 at 4:41 pm | Reply

    • and yup, very next email I open is an Armitage fan preaching about behavior. I swear, he wants to ruin the fun of the fandom for everyone who doesn’t subscribe to his stupid platitudes.

      Like

      Servetus said this on April 26, 2015 at 4:42 pm | Reply

  2. I feel like I’m missing something here… what context? Don’t have to explain if you don’t want to, was just wondering…

    Like

    Esther said this on April 26, 2015 at 5:16 pm | Reply

  3. I saw this RT of his to be follow-up on his (rare) fave for the following tweet:

    Bullying seems to be one of his hot buttons, and I have no problem with that. The reader comment you just shared in the other more recent post is indeed incredibly ironic in this light… as well as obviously very disturbing.

    Like

    SH said this on April 26, 2015 at 11:57 pm | Reply

    • I wouldn’t have a problem with it potentially if he said what he thought bullying was. In my experience, his fans often think that disagreement or saying that you don’t like something that someone else likes is bullying. What I said about not liking Marlise Boland’s interviews of him was described elsewhere as “bullying of Marlise Boland.” Armitage has also favorited an organization (Anonymous) that engages in professional bullying campaigns that explicitly aim to destroy people’s lives. So: before I say I have no problem with that I’d like to know what he means by bullying.

      As far as “not tolerating bullying” on a Twitter page, good luck. You can block people who bully, but it is extremely easy to get around that.

      The thing is: no one is favor of bullying. No one wakes up in the morning and says, “oh, goody, I’m gonna bully some people in the name of my crush today.” (Unless they are mentally ill, in which case the command not to bully will have no effect.) Everyone thinks everyone else is the bully, and that’s the problem.

      Of course, now that he has favorited that, everyone will feel compelled to say they are anti-bullying. Not that that will change anyone’s actual behavior.

      Like

      Servetus said this on April 27, 2015 at 12:06 am | Reply

      • You’re right again, as usual – bullying is a term that could use more definition, especially in these times. And probably by him, if he’s going to stick his oar into it directly.

        Like

        SH said this on April 27, 2015 at 2:54 am | Reply

    • OK, this is not a page I follow very closely, but look further down the page.

      Apparently the operator of the page got “nasty” tweets for allegedly having stolen artwork (and denies it). I want to stress that I don’t know what happened, but pretty much all fan artwork that involves pictures taken by other people or screencaps from television shows to which corporations own the rights is derivative work and without a license, can constitute theft. Sarah Dunn in particular has been vocal that she does not want fans editing or repurposing her photos. I’ve more or less quit reposting derivative fan art directly on this blog because the battles over it are so vehement. Nonetheless, that whole area involves a matter of legitimate disagreement. Before I’d call it bullying I’d have to see the exact text of what was said.

      It’s unfortunate that he is getting involved in squabbles between fans. Something else I predicted, and predicted would go badly. Sigh.

      Like

      Servetus said this on April 27, 2015 at 12:44 am | Reply

  4. Exactly…. I don’t know exactly what was said, either, or exactly what posts were under dispute or why. I’m probably on twitter at some point every day, but miss a whole lot on my timeline.

    Like

    SH said this on April 27, 2015 at 2:58 am | Reply

    • I wish him good luck if he’s going to express judgment on every fan art dispute.

      Like

      Servetus said this on April 27, 2015 at 3:00 am | Reply

      • Yes, it’s quite complicated as well as a definite slippery slope, in more ways than one.

        A bit OT, but I wonder if he’s experiencing the same tension that his fans already have with fandom “expressions” that occur outside our personal moral compass, though he claims to never be offended. (Which I don’t buy.) The difference is that he can invoke his personal rights whereas other fans can’t, but at what cost? We might hope he’ll consider not only the creative cost to his fandom – but the very real possibility that if he censors fans, it could- uh oh- affect the way they feel about themselves. I’m not really trying to be funny either.

        Like

        SH said this on April 27, 2015 at 6:17 pm | Reply

        • yeah, no one is never offended. Everyone’s got boundaries. I don’t know that the fact that Richard Armitage might be offended is necessarily a reason for self-censorship — but things are going to get very interesting once Dolarhyde fan art gets going, and it definitely will. Hannibal absolutely makes art out of blood sport and there are a lot of near-naked bodies in it. Heck, there are people roleplaying the main characters in the series along with the showrunner — it’s a fandom that’s much more expressively free than ours has tended to be.

          re: his censorship affecting the way fans feel about themselves — certainly. (I’m more comfortable with affect / influence than make in this setting). A fundamental lesson one learns early on as a college instructor is that publicly reprimanding one student, no matter how deserved, always has a horrible effect on the classroom. This is because students almost always identify with each other before they identify with the professor. So if you need someone reprimanded, you have to motivate the other students in that direction, for the very same reason. Maybe that’s what he’s trying to do here, actually — get fans to police each other (if so, what a huge buzz kill). But the danger of him saying “I find this kind of art inappropriate (for me, for mums, for kids)” not only killing the creativity of that artist, but also of other artists who are watching, is huge.

          Like

          Servetus said this on April 27, 2015 at 6:26 pm | Reply

  5. Interesting… I missed all this. I tweet a lot on my personal twitter account and I also tweet on a job-related account. I think for celebreties on twitter it usually is a bit of both, i.e. personal and professional. I would very much advise any celebrity against favoriting (is that a word?) or retweeting any tweets which were not sent by official accounts (such as the BBC, Unicef, maybe even a newspaper). Official accounts usually have a certain reputation. No celebrity or their agent can keep up with what individual accounts tweet. To retweet a single tweet without knowing anything about the account in general is dangerous. You might even end up with retweeting a – let’s say – UKIP account just because it sent out one tweet against bullying…
    Twitter is futile and most tweets are soon forgotten. That is not the case with “celebrity tweets” so I would be VERY careful if I was a celebrity (which thankfully I am not 😉 )

    Like

    suse3 said this on April 27, 2015 at 4:32 pm | Reply

    • I’m guessing he knows who the CyberSmile Foundation are, as he followed their account from the beginning of his own account, and has passed on stuff of theirs (or the other similar account he followed) before.

      I think he’s broken a bunch of the basic rules for celebs on Twitter, which makes me wonder about the publicity people who arranged this for him, but hey, I’m not his mom 🙂

      Like

      Servetus said this on April 27, 2015 at 5:54 pm | Reply

  6. […] a blog post here  https://meandrichard.wordpress.com/2015/04/26/how-we-make-others-feel-about-themselves/  that, as is so common, has given rise to comments not directly related to the original point of […]

    Like

    Yes, me too. About @RCArmitage | Armitage Agonistes said this on May 1, 2015 at 6:52 am | Reply

  7. […] The message that it should be an individual’s goal or responsibility to make others happy, retweeted and reinforced, as well-intended as it might be, is a message that women have been hearing for […]

    Like

    Richard Armitage: Why praise needs to be tempered with honest criticism | Me + Richard Armitage said this on July 6, 2015 at 1:11 am | Reply

  8. […] Cybersmile was evident from the premiere of his Twitter account, because he followed it right away; a retweet in April made that connection concrete. My original discussion of how disturbing I found that choice is […]

    Like

    2015 continued (part 3): me + richard armitage + Cybersmile | Me + Richard Armitage said this on March 22, 2016 at 6:33 am | Reply

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.