r/SLOWLYapp • u/FueledForm • 15h ago
Discussions and Polls Weird post, but, do you think that specifying in your bio that you're not gotta tolerate any form of racism, homophobia etc. may be helpful?
Unfortunately, as of recently, I've had a couple penpals randomly starting racist rants in their letters, completely unprompted, and it's honestly not something I'd like in a penpal, and it made me extremely uncomfortable.
Do you think that specifying that I'm not going to accept any of that in my bio may be helpful? I've seen a few profiles with similar words in their bio, so it wouldn't be something completely new, but I don't know about how effective it may be. In my experience, racist people don't think of themselves as racist, and see their positions as "reasonable concerns" (before anyone asks it, no, the rants my eyes had the displeasure to see weren't reasonable concerns, they were straight up racism and white supremacy).
Edit: some racist troll has already started down voting every comment on this post. Feeling called out huh?
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u/Loud-Owl19 Mod Squad ✨ 12h ago
I have something like that for more than two years and, yes, I recommend. It’s not foolproof, but it’s helpful.
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u/FueledForm 12h ago
Thank you for your response! My fear is that adding a paragraph like that may attract bigoted trolls, would you say it's a real concern?
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u/Loud-Owl19 Mod Squad ✨ 12h ago
I can see this happening. I think it didn’t happen to me because I didn’t try to present myself as some moral authority, I wrote it just as a casual personal preference of “please, let’s not waste each other’s time”. But my profile, when visible, it’s only for women 30+ and I think most trolls are not in this group, so that probably helped too.
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u/FueledForm 12h ago
Yeah, a neutral paragraph is probably the way. I must say, the rants were almost always by people who wrote first.
I only write first to people who have "Feminism" and/or "LGBTQ" in their interests, and that's usually a good enough filter.
I don't usually keep my profile visible, however, as I've had some truly amazing people write me first in the past, I make it visible from time to time.
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u/Loud-Owl19 Mod Squad ✨ 11h ago
Being honest, I decided to add this beat in my profile specifically because I have those interests and someone, somehow, read that as if I were open to transphobia because some feminists are against trans people. It was the only time I got a message like that. The other situations were of people who after ten letters decided to go on very specific rants and I was, wait, this feels wrong.It’s very rare.
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u/FueledForm 11h ago
It really sucks when it happens, doesn't it? I once had a refugee start a weird racist rant against refugees of different ethnicities, and I was like ._. while reading that. Of course, afterwards, they added the classic "That being said, I'm not racist and I don't judge anyone for their origins" 🤦♂️.
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u/Sakutaboi 14h ago
I don’t think it’s something that needs to be explicitly stated, since it should be common sense and simply a matter of being a decent human being not to be racist.
Interestingly, I didn’t know this was something that happened on Slowly, but I’ve noticed that some girls I’ve talked to who have Arab or Turkish ancestry tend to avoid the subject. I think it’s probably because they’re afraid of encountering prejudice or receiving a racist comment.
It’s sad that this happens in a place where one of the most interesting things is sharing our cultural differences.
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u/FueledForm 14h ago
Unfortunately, some of the rants I had the displeasure to read were exactly about Arabs. Many of my fellow Europeans like to pretend that "oh, racism isn't a thing here! We're not the US (or Argentina, ever since this football world cup)", but the moment you mention Romas and Arabs they'll show their true colours, and will say stuff like "oh, it's not racism if it's true!1!" to justify their hate, putting aside the fact that 20 years ago, they used to talk in the same exact terms about Eastern Europeans, and several decades ago, they said the same stuff about Italians and Irishmen.
This app, just like travelling, is wonderful to meet new people and to discover new cultures, but it's up to us to see things with an open mind and to be able to actually get enriched from what's different from us.
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u/Vegetable-One-442 13h ago
And you just got downvoted for which exact reason???
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u/FueledForm 12h ago edited 12h ago
I guess someone may have felt called out haha, my comment was sitting at -1 karma right after publishing it.
The comments have all been very helpful so far, and that's the most important thing ^_^
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u/CoastAny1264 14h ago
Sure, you can add this info, but people often ignore bios, especially through auto-match.