Okay, first of all, you totally did bury the lede in this story; the fucking hashtag the story is ostensibly about doesn't come up until the last paragraph. As written, this article is "I'm going to mention furries in the first paragraph, then talk about something that is happening in the world without really making a good, concrete correction; when I get around to it, I guess I will finally (literally finally) get around to connecting the dots". And to be fair, I mean, you look at my last piece, I spend an inordinate amount of my wordcount explaining what the fuck a Doctor Who: Lockdown is before I get to the actual furry point of the article, but in my article's defense, more people are probably aware of Black Lives Matter protests than "cult TV fandom's corona-virus thing" (or at least I goddamn hope so).
Now, second of all, as a point of, uh, "ally-ship", you maybe could've linked up or even quoted a few examples of use of the hashtag? Maybe? You know, the point of the hashtag is to allow the voices of furry POCs to be heard; as it stands, this article isn't actually amplifying those voices very well. To be fair, again, on my Twitter feed, I've only seen one use of this hashtag, so I'm what we like to call "part of the problem". Because I am so insulated from the lives of POCs, I didn't even realize the hashtag was for POCs and about the only thing that kept me doing it myself was that basically I don't really have fursona, not because I realized it wasn't for me. So, this article did fulfill it's purpose of informing me of the hashtag's purpose, whatever critiques I can make about whatever.
Now, third of all, Mike Retriever is a fucking idiot who is the worst kind of fucking idiot; a fucking idiot who think's he's being smart. His objection to this article is ideological; I mean, he's going to deny it, but fucking Christ. However, kind of like the #AllLivesMatter hashtag, which is obviously technically correct, he's using the "is this opinion or is this news?" objection (which is technically a valid objection) to try and de-emphasize the real issues here (notice how we're 20 something comments into a comment section about protests and nobody's actually talking about fucking protests). A fucking bullshit tactic that would not work if you'd, perhaps, run this by, say, Green Reaper or dronon or (once again) a person of color, and maybe some of these issues would have gotten caught. And, while I'm here, Rakuen, we've had conversations before about how you sometimes worry me that you're going to fall in with the far right fringe of the fandom, and you were aghast that I would ever think that. Well, I mean, the way you instantly and predictably went right along with the known far right instigator's obvious ploy in the comment section is exactly what I'm talking about. Also, Green Reaper, I'm less worried about you going alt-right, but, I mean, come on. You fell for Mike's really obvious crap hook, line and sinker.
Finally (I know, right), recent events at the New York Times have shown ... something. I guess what, exactly is also a matter of opinion, but, in my opinion it showed that newsrooms are full of dissent and bickering and that's okay. Sonious is obviously and publicly a bit miffed about Green Reaper adding the opinion tag to this article and that's also okay. It's maybe good to get all this crap off our chest, you know? At very least, it would be hypocritical of me to chastise someone for shouting at Green Reaper.
Okay, first of all, you totally did bury the lede in this story; the fucking hashtag the story is ostensibly about doesn't come up until the last paragraph. As written, this article is "I'm going to mention furries in the first paragraph, then talk about something that is happening in the world without really making a good, concrete correction; when I get around to it, I guess I will finally (literally finally) get around to connecting the dots". And to be fair, I mean, you look at my last piece, I spend an inordinate amount of my wordcount explaining what the fuck a Doctor Who: Lockdown is before I get to the actual furry point of the article, but in my article's defense, more people are probably aware of Black Lives Matter protests than "cult TV fandom's corona-virus thing" (or at least I goddamn hope so).
Now, second of all, as a point of, uh, "ally-ship", you maybe could've linked up or even quoted a few examples of use of the hashtag? Maybe? You know, the point of the hashtag is to allow the voices of furry POCs to be heard; as it stands, this article isn't actually amplifying those voices very well. To be fair, again, on my Twitter feed, I've only seen one use of this hashtag, so I'm what we like to call "part of the problem". Because I am so insulated from the lives of POCs, I didn't even realize the hashtag was for POCs and about the only thing that kept me doing it myself was that basically I don't really have fursona, not because I realized it wasn't for me. So, this article did fulfill it's purpose of informing me of the hashtag's purpose, whatever critiques I can make about whatever.
Now, third of all, Mike Retriever is a fucking idiot who is the worst kind of fucking idiot; a fucking idiot who think's he's being smart. His objection to this article is ideological; I mean, he's going to deny it, but fucking Christ. However, kind of like the #AllLivesMatter hashtag, which is obviously technically correct, he's using the "is this opinion or is this news?" objection (which is technically a valid objection) to try and de-emphasize the real issues here (notice how we're 20 something comments into a comment section about protests and nobody's actually talking about fucking protests). A fucking bullshit tactic that would not work if you'd, perhaps, run this by, say, Green Reaper or dronon or (once again) a person of color, and maybe some of these issues would have gotten caught. And, while I'm here, Rakuen, we've had conversations before about how you sometimes worry me that you're going to fall in with the far right fringe of the fandom, and you were aghast that I would ever think that. Well, I mean, the way you instantly and predictably went right along with the known far right instigator's obvious ploy in the comment section is exactly what I'm talking about. Also, Green Reaper, I'm less worried about you going alt-right, but, I mean, come on. You fell for Mike's really obvious crap hook, line and sinker.
Finally (I know, right), recent events at the New York Times have shown ... something. I guess what, exactly is also a matter of opinion, but, in my opinion it showed that newsrooms are full of dissent and bickering and that's okay. Sonious is obviously and publicly a bit miffed about Green Reaper adding the opinion tag to this article and that's also okay. It's maybe good to get all this crap off our chest, you know? At very least, it would be hypocritical of me to chastise someone for shouting at Green Reaper.