Please forgive the length of my post
I’m a tenacious and uninhibited kind of person. Companies hate me. I talk to them like equals - asking questions, expecting answers. They hate me for it. All you have to do is give me a phone number to a real person, that’s all you had to do. But instead, I’m doing OSInt trying to find the office number for a random lady in your HR department, because you’ve made yourself completely inaccessible. “Send us an e-mail with this form” haha fat chance, like anyone will read that. How stupid do you think I am? How much contempt do you have for me? How much disrespect do you have for your customers and end-users that you won’t let them hear a human being address their concerns? You don’t have a spokesperson? A reception? A PR Guy? Fuck off. Sorry, I guess they’re too busy working from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM remotely from home three days a week, like the rest of you white collar freaks.
So ok, I try searching for office phone numbers. If that doesn’t work, being fortunate enough to live in a big city, sometimes my next move is just to show up at their local headquarters. I highly recommend it to everyone, that gets results. They hate that. That shit terrifies them. Nothing terrifies them more than an actual consumer of their product showing up in person. Actual physical accountability. It’d be hilarious if it wasn’t so pathetic and sad. You’re that atomized, that alienated and scared, that you’re terrified of a customer just asking a question to you, in person, face to face. What am I going to do? I am but one woman, one of the people your company needs to keep enriching itself, simply smiling in your office in a well-fitted suit. Why are you so afraid? Is it that all the police and security guards money can buy can’t stop me from being tenacious enough to ask a sincere question? That all of your money still can’t account for being annoyed by people outside of your control? Seriously, just pathetic. These people live in such constant control of their sensory environment, constantly inundated with racist crime propaganda, the idea of a friendly stranger using their product is literally impossible to them. Imagine being that misanthropic, what losers.
I made a tumblr blog at the end of last year. Was very excited, as someone who has a pathological fear of social media and was looking for a way to build connections and solidarity more. An attempt to be part of society and be less of an exclusively lurking ‘digital agoraphobe’. I considered using the new blog as a sort of professional portfolio as well. Immediately, seconds after creating it, I’m marked as explicit. I made no posts, followed nobody, messaged no users. I’m marked explicit. I reach out to tumblr support.
9 months. 9 months later they get back to me. “HMMM UMM WE’RE NOT SURE SWEETIE… ARE YOU SUREEEE YOUR BLOG ISNT SEXUALLY EXPLICIT?” “Yep” “OK WE’VE UNFLAGGED IT NOW TEEHEE WHOOPSIE!!” “Why did this happen? What did I do to trigger your flagging system? Can you please let me know what I need to do to prevent this happening in the future? I’m trying to build a professional portfolio here, and I can’t just have it randomly be inaccessible for 9 months.” radio silence Like, it’s not that big of a deal. I’m always friendly and cordial whenever I have a chance to actually talk to someone. This is why I’m such a big phone call booster. All this text and e-mail shit is exactly what the elite in charge want, because they can just sit on it forever, never have to respond. “We love to hear feedback from everyone!” and their form just gets sent to an inbox that’s never opened. But a Phone call with a human? A face to face interaction? THAT’S fucking accountability that forces them to immediately respond. Look man, I expect to be treated like a bug at this point, to be treated like a cockroach. At the bare minimum, you should be forced to actually tell me to go fuck myself. Especially from tumblr, a website that markets itself as friendly and queer and hip, to randomly be telling it’s users (many of whom have serious sexual traumas) that they’re flagged for being “Sexually Explicit” for doing nothing. I won’t even open the can of worms of them doing that to random SFW selfies of transmen and transwomen, groups of people who are already regularly told their existence is inherently sexually explicit. This is why I avoided all of this social media shit to begin with, why it terrifies me - in addition to the damage 4chan kiwifarms mfs can do if they decide they don’t like you. Complete unaccountability, everything you build online can just be instantly undone by cold, uncaring, distant, privileged, elitist freaks. No trial, no reasons given. Literally kafkaesque. And I hate how as a relatively young person, this is damaging my ability to make connections with others.
I’m not going to go to tumblr’s offices and demand answers or anything, I don’t give enough of a fuck about this, it just makes me sad and tired. Me making this post is the extent to which I care, and even this feels like too much work in regards to this. God damn, why the fuck does the SFW/NSFW distinction have to dominate the entire internet?! Most people are adults! Why are we intellectually and artistically kneecapping the repository of all human knowledge so some toddling pants-shitters can “safely” watch skibidi toilet 47?! It’s not even safe, kids are still getting groomed online! All of this shit, holding back culture and sexuality and drugs, all of that for the supposed safety of the children, and they still get groomed online. It doesn’t even work! Most of us grew up with the internet in some capacity, whomst amongst us didn’t check the “Over 18” box when we were underage? We should have entire generations of people who already know from firsthand experience this shit doesn’t work! The SFW/NSFW dichotomy allows people to marginalize subjects they don’t want to face or talk about into “NSFW” where they become filthy untouchable pariahs. The idea of making certain ideas or people or subjects “not safe” is going to fuck with people, even on a subconscious level.
Social Media, the internet, websites in general, it’s like they have active hate and contempt for their end users, because as someone who is supposedly their prime target demo, they have made their services too frustrating, patronizing, and difficult for me to use. I was an IT SysAdmin for many years for fuck’s sake, how can they design something so hostile even I don’t feel comfortable using it?!
anyways, my sincere thanks comrade for reading this far and for letting me vent this somewhere. I know it’s kind of a cringe rant, but at least I know on hexbear the posters are (mostly) actual real people with flesh and blood.
Absolutely. I want to be clear too, I don’t harass or abuse these workers and I don’t encourage others to. These quests are just quixotic attempts of trying to find some official representative of the company who can tell me in clear language the information I need to know to properly utilize their product or service. If I’m calling someone who I know wouldn’t possibly be able to help me, I immediately apologize and ask them if they know who I can or should contact, and if they can redirect me. This has worked out for me pretty well in the past, but it’s often frustrating the amount of hoops that are put in place to make it so difficult to contact someone. I understand though, I’ve worked in positions where I’ve taken inbound calls from the public. I think it’s an element of hostile design that’s made all of our lives worse, and these companies love passing the buck around from department to department, from role to role, so that oops, nobody is ever accountable! Websites, Apps, Healthcare Providers, Hiring Agencies, Insurance Companies, Utility Companies, idk, it just sucks. But yeah, generally I’m a big believer you attract more flies with honey than vinegar anyways. I personally have a feeling it’s less likely that the public’s abuse of these workers caused this and more likely that it’s the result of profiteering strategies to make customer service cheaper and cheaper.
I think it can be both. Paying somebody to be yelled at isn’t really a good use of resources, so while the motivation isn’t caring about their workers, the end result is the same. I think most of the call-ins that were major time sucks back when I used to have to take calls would fall into three categories: yelling abuse, people for whom written instructions are difficult to follow, and people who just like to have someone at their beck and call who would call numerous times to cover the exact same ground every time. The second group is perfectly reasonable to accommodate, but they’re outnumbered by the other two and there’s unfortunately no way to sort the people who just need to talk about it to properly get their mind around it from the people who want to shout or ask the same questions twelve times.
That perspective makes sense, it’s definitely a “yes, and”, not an “either/or”. And while it makes sense from a business and logistics perspective, I think companies being more opaque and being harder to access is going to have severely negative effects over the long term. I think it’s only reasonable to expect that every organization with humans behind it should have some sort of human representative, even if it’s just a doorman at the office to tell you to go away. They benefit immensely from the public, why shouldn’t there be a way for the public to communicate with them? But earnestly, maybe that’s a naive and childish expectation for me to have.
It’s not unreasonable, though that doorman should be paid a lot more given what they’d go through lol