I suppose I should respond to the fighting that’s going on between Shakesville Kool Aid and Melissa.
For those that missed it, on Monday 7/21 a journalist from a reputable news outlet sent out a request via the Help a Reporter Out (HARO) organization for a psychologist who could discuss abuse and toxicity among online social justice activist communities and leaders. The journalist cited Shakesville and Hugo Schwyzer as examples. Melissa wrote about the incident here, dismissing this still unwritten article as an armchair diagnosis and “disableist garbage.”
Despite the firm, terse tone of the post, it’s clear Melissa was shaken by the incident since she immediately took a week long vacation the next day, from Tuesday 7/22 until Monday 7/28.
On Monday 7/28, Melissa wrote a lengthy post ”pushing back” against Shakesville Kool Aid, a series of tweets under the #NotCriticism hashtag, then a follow up post the next day reiterating her main points. She said that the reason she finally decided to address SKA was that its contributors and commenters were harassing her husband and friends. She wrote, “I do not and cannot ignore when people decide to go after people about whom I care, in order to get to me.”
I think Melissa is being disingenuous here. I believe the HARO inquiry and the prospect of having some of her bullying depicted and dissected in a national forum frightened her. She felt an urgent need to take control and reframe the conversation. She was bracing herself and her few remaining readers for whatever attention the article might bring. This is speculation, of course, but I grew up in an abusive household and watching this whole thing play out feels really familiar. It’s predictable, almost boring.
SKA has written extensively in response to Melissa, and I recommend you read her other posts since this conversation is largely focused on the content of that tumblr and not my own. I don’t condone any form of threatening phone calls or emails if they are coming from participants of that blog, but I haven’t seen evidence of any such behavior either.
The thing is, I’m not particularly interested in engaging with Melissa. I don’t collect these stories for her. I’m not trying to convince her or her devotees of her abuse. That’s a hopeless cause. I’m here for the regular commenters and contributors who have lingering, sometimes gnawing suspicions that something is rotten in Shakesville. The ones who self-harm after one too many emotionally manipulative flounces from Melissa, who suffer from anxiety attacks before posting, who sob relentlessly after an undeserved pile-on, who are asked to sacrifice their family’s well being to donate to Shakesville, and who feel a deep sense of despair because of Melissa’s cruel disregard. This blog is for the people who are just beginning to realize that they have fallen into the same walking-on-eggshells behavioral patterns at Shakesville as they did in their abusive homes as children, and that they have come to define their self worth by Melissa’s ever-moving goal posts and sunk deeper into depression because of it.
I’ve been a member of various online communities since I was twelve or thirteen, and I have never witnessed anything so perverse and disturbing as the dynamic at Shakesville. One or two survivors’ narratives can be easily dismissed by Melissa’s sycophants, but in aggregate all these stories paint a very telling picture that no amount of gaslighting from Melissa can hide.
I’m here to tell you that you are not alone. It’s not you. It’s Shakesville.