“Where’s your carrd?”
“I can’t find your DNI.”
“I know you listed your race, age, gender, and sexuality but how come you didn’t also list your triggers, your diagnoses, and your traumas?”
“If you’re shipping to cope, why don’t you tell everyone what you’re coping WITH?”
Ah, well, Entitled Randoms, that’s very simple. See, I’m an adult. A grown-up who votes and pays taxes and is getting a master’s degree. And I inhabit reality as well as social media. So, I don’t feel the need to violate my own privacy for the amusement and satisfaction of strangers.
Wait…okay so I agree with this post except for the DNI. Doesn’t that stand for Do Not Interact? My understanding is that DNIs are a list of groups or types of people you do not want interacting with you, and that’s not really personal information so much as it is…idk, a formal statement of hard boundaries.
I vibe hard with this post, I’m just confused as to why the DNI was included.
I included it for multiple reasons:
One, many people are now becoming pushy with blogs who do not have DNIs. As in, getting messages that say “Why don’t you have TERFs DNI anywhere on your blog? Are you transphobic? You’re transphobic if you don’t put it up”.
Secondly, most DNIs I see are highly performative and ineffective. “Fuck off nasties, you know who you are” and “DNI if you meet standard DNI criteria” or “Racists, homophobes, weirdos, etc, DNI”. See how vague those are? See how unhelpful that is?
Thirdly, DNIs do not work unless the other person respects them AND knows that the DNI applies to them. What the fuck does hypothetical fancop above mean by “nasties”? What the fuck is “standard” in these things? And any DNI that includes “etc” is fucked…because that could be anyone. And what fucking Nazi or violent TERF is going to look at some loud-mouthed 16 year old enby’s DNI and go “Darn guess I can’t cyberbully this easy target, they asked me to DNI”.
Fourthly, people have been using the accident violation of DNIs as grounds for harassment. Anti-shippers will send death threats to proshippers for reblogging their posts and saying things like “Why didn’t you check through my blog and read my 4.5 page DNI list and understand that Nasty Freak includes RoadRat shippers like you??? Anyway here’s a gore spam go cut yourself”.
Fifthly, there’s just a certain point when you have relinquish the illusion of control. Tumblr is a social media site where the aim is (usually) to spread posts beyond a small group of followers. When you post something publicly, you need to be prepared that sometimes, people you don’t like will see it. Worrying excessively will only worsen your anxiety, and the block button exists for a reason.
Essentially, I do not object to them as inherent concept, but they have been levied as a tool of control and social abuse on both this site and Twitter, and much like the carrd, those who decline to have one are now being treated with hostility.
I do not have a DNI because I don’t want one. That shouldn’t be problem, and yet, repeatedly, it is.
