This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/pillowcase-of-eels on 2024-06-16 13:35:34+00:00.
Is it ever over?
Will it never end?
What accounts for this morbid fascination with the suicidal girl??
Well, you read six installments and came back for more, so… you tell me.
But yes: we are, in fact, almost at the end. Welcome to the FINAL final installment of the Asylum write-up!
(Apologies that it took so long to put out – real life was being super insensitive about my online commitments. Thank you ever so much for the kind words and anticipation - I hope the read rewards your patience. HobbyDrama mods: I will most likely end up splitting this into two back-to-back posts, because reformatting in the comments is a nightmare and I’m not doing that again. Thank you for your understanding!)
Content Warning: BLM flame wars and white nonsense.
Before you get any ideas about where this is headed (2020 was a wild year and nothing is off the table): no, EA did not come out as a raging Holocaust denier, or play Bach partitas at a Proud Boys fundraiser.
The truth is much more nuanced and stupider than that.
BLACKOUT: “WISHING YOU PEACE”
2020 had started out terrible, then quickly gotten much worse, and then a store clerk in Minneapolis called the cops on an unarmed black man over a $20 bill.
You get the mental picture. Grieving, fear, anger. Vigils. Protests. Riots. GoFundMe’s for legal fees. Difficult conversations. Google Drives with the complete works of bell hooks and Franz Fanon, “bookmarked for later” and never re-opened. Well-meaning white people and out-of-touch celebrities🔍 awkwardly trying to do their part online. Remember those few weeks when every liberal-leaning individual with “a platform” (ie 120 followers or more on any given social media, including LinkedIn) was either “speaking out” (ie hopping on whichever performative bandwagon would make them look the most not-racist), getting hounded for failing to do so, or getting cancelled for doing it ass-backwards? Aah, to witness history.
EA, who was overall pretty low-key on social media by that point, had been especially quiet whilst her country was figuratively and literally on fire. When she finally tuned in for her usual “Magic Monday” oracle reading post, she did implicitly acknowledge the current events – saying she had been reluctant to post, but that she knew her followers had always been on the side of justice and positive change, and that she was inspired by everyone currently fighting the good fight:
I really didn’t want to do Magic Monday today, because I didn’t want any attention on me or my accounts when it should be elsewhere. … I am so honored to get to share this spiritual moment with you, but I do want to honor YOU as well by saying that I *know* that ALL of you have always marched in any way you could for love and light and all that is right and just. You don’t need to be reminded or preached at to do so by the likes of me, and thus I wouldn’t dare.
This was too vague and wishy-washy for some fans, who had expected EA to be as vocal about BLM as she had been about other things in the past, like her opposition to Romney during the 2012 election, or her support of the Women’s March in 2016:
Listen. I desperately love you and I have been your fan for decades. All week I have waited … Now is the time to speak in any way and declare open support, even when the community you’re supporting isn’t one you typically focus on. Your entire brand is about giving a voice to the oppressed and not being silenced. You NEED to be posting about and encouraging others to do, to give, and to help. And anything short of that is unacceptable to the person you have created for fans to see. Please please do better if you are truly an ally to any, especially those who have less privilege than you.
In response to the above comment on her Magic Monday post, EA expressed her skepticism at the viability of social media activism, and her discomfort at people demanding shallow virtue signals from random entertainers. A valid and nuanced point, that a number reasonable folks agree with.🔍
She articulated it with diplomacy and zero hint of barely-contained fury:
You are assuming I have more wisdom and resources than you. And I assume that my friends and followers do not have to be told not to be racist. I would not insult you by telling you what you already know. And finally, you assume that what a human does online represents inaction in their real life. … I can only hope this may be a lesson to you to not look to very very very minor celebrities such as myself in this or any time, but look to yourself instead for the action you wish to see. This is a beautiful opportunity for individual responsibility. Anyone looking to Instagram for guidance is looking for lazy activism and lip service. … Wishing you peace.
Still, a day later, she caved in and Did the Thing. She posted the black square on #blackouttuesday. You know, the well-meaning online flashmob that had the unfortunate side-effect of making the #blm hashtag unusable for boots-on-the-ground protesters and organizers.
And then… oh boy. One prominent Asylum scholar and historian documented the whole thing with receipts in real time.🔍📝 This link is the source for all the quotes and receipts in this segment. Short of copy-pasting her entire timeline and the content of said receipts, it is REALLY difficult to summarize what went down without trivializing the subject matter, or over-simplifying the point that either party was trying to make.
Still, let me try and milk a readable story from the evidence folder. It went like this.
In the process of mass-deleting every vaguely critical-sounding comment under her #blackout post (as one does), EA somehow blocked one supportive, long-term fan who was actually defending her. Let’s call her Adrienne. (Adrienne had corrected another commenter that EA had not used the #blm hashtag, so her black box post was not harming the movement. A civil, constructive exchange had ensued between the two, which was deleted.)
As luck would have it, among EA’s (let’s face it) overwhelmingly low-melanin fanbase🦠📝, Adrienne happens to be a black woman. And was obviously horrified, when she checked in a week later to see if the new Magic Monday post was up, to find herself blocked by her favorite artist – after EA had spent the last few days sharing proud protest selfies in her Instagram stories, no less.
Adrienne shared the news with her good friend Poppy. Poppy was no less horrified, and conveyed her heartbreak and disappointment to EA on Instagram:
I have been a fan of yours for many years. … I have purchased so much merchandise that I think in the first year I discovered you I dropped nearly a grand on merch and events alone. I say all this because imagine how I must have felt when you blocked one of my best friends who is also black (…) Black lives matter but you block and ignore your black fans? Black lives matter but you can’t be bothered to engage your black fans who comment on your stuff but will have entire conversations in the comment sections of your white fans. I have seen it several times and I tried so hard to say it was a fluke but this just cemented it. (…) You don’t care about black lives because if you did you would not have blocked her for absolutely nothing especially when she was defending you from the person jumping down your throat. I wish I could say I was heartbroken, but at this point, all white women seem to do is let me down. I thought you were better.
Poppy, predictably, got blocked on sight.
But Poppy, at the time, had a sizable (5000+) following on Instagram. So when she posted a series of stories about EA ignoring and silencing black fans while trying to score ally points, they made the rounds quickly. In a video that would later be construed as a call to spam EA’s social with hate and abuse, Poppy enjoined her followers to go ask EA why she’d blocked her and Adrienne. From a transcript (the original video has been lost):
Go ask her why she’s blocking black fans. Demand…
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1dh7qdk/music_visual_art_emilie_autumns_asylum_pt_7_black/