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If you've been on twitter in or around the tpot space the last few days, you may have seen Aella blowing up and deciding to go private. I won't recount the whole story, but it is in screenshots in the link earlier.
Suffice to say, apparently she searched her name and saw a ton of vitriolic attacks and discussions around her online presence. She claims that the worst part is the "overwhelming hate with nobody defending me. People are ashamed publicly to support me, they don't want to be called a simp or cringe."
Long story short she basically said that she is heartbroken, is "so sad the world is shaped this way," and decided to quit twitter and go locked for the foreseeable future.
For some quick background, aella is a prostitute. She is extremely successful, and has built up a huge presence on twitter as well as a cult following in rational spheres. She does data science work as well, and claims to be autistic. She is polyamorous and openly promotes and campaigns for that lifestyle, as well as doing drugs. Some of her stunts include things like tattooing her name on the body of men who have sex with her, having orgies while sharing details of who got to get in, etc.
A few darker claims are that she pushed her two younger sisters into sex work (one of them, by her own admission on twitter, was doing camgirl jobs before she turned 18.) She has also said some... problematic things that are edging around support for pedophilia, although she's canny enough not to come right out and say it.
Now as I'm sure many people here agree with, I don't exactly agree with aella's views or lifestyle. That being said I am still torn, the world is a cruel place. At the same time, aella has probably caused harm to a lot of others with her lifestyle and especially her approach to promoting it online.
This equivocation points to an actual underlying tension/confusion I have around liberal expression. On the one hang I think polyamory, sex work, and some of the.... encouragement aella has around minors watching point &c is quite bad, and should not be allowed to happen in the public square. I think a certain amount of shaming is absolutely good and necessary.
However, perhaps I'm frail hearted or something because it does hurt to see so many attack her so viciously, when they clearly have so much hate in their hearts. Perhaps it's Pollyannaish but I wish that we could do our shaming in a more dignified, and less clearly antagonistic way. It seems that most of the people shaming her, from my read at least, clearly enjoy looking down and judging someone harshly, seeing themselves as better than her. From my perspective, that's not just as bad as what she's doing, but still bad.
I'm wondering, I suppose, whether there's a way we can employ shame in a truly good way as a society? Can we somehow shame people without turning into monsters ourselves, in order to protect our children and especially young girls from (imo) degenerate and overall unhealthy lifestyles?
I generally try to avoid both porn stars and the anti-porn crowd online, because I always have the feeling that a lot of the more aggressive and verbose anti-porn people haven't earned the right to be so angry and so cruel. Which I think is what you're picking up on. Your modal anti-porn crusader on twitter or rat-adjacent spaces doesn't feel, to me, like someone who has lived a traditional morality. They feel like gooners, porn addicts, who out of some sense of sadism or some inferiority complex related to their own inability to stop themselves from masturbating.
If my Great Uncle Charlie wanted to criticize Aella, he would have every right to, but, well, he wouldn't because he would never have any idea who she was. He lived a pious life, and that included managing his media consumption to include only appropriate material. If he had come into contact with Aella, he would have recognized who she was and withdrawn immediately.
The people who bring up Aella constantly in order to abuse her, along with various other e-thots and porn stars, are not withdrawing. They aren't avoiding worldliness. They are the consooooomers of the content produced by e-thots, while also desiring that the e-thots be unhappy.
This is an experience I seem to run into all the time on the internet, the guy who messages me about some porn star who is hosting an enormous gangbang or made a million dollar severing her hymen on live or something, with a long screed about how degenerate this is. And my reaction is always kinda, hey dude I wouldn't even know about it if you hadn't messaged me, why do you even know who she is?
The best thing to do if you don't like Aella's values and think she should have less influence, is to ignore her.
Alas, I've fallen into the trap here.
You know the word scandal in the Greek refers to a part of a trap for animals. That's why the skandalon or stumbling block is referred to so much in the Bible.
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