there gets to a point in poking fun at someone (John Green) where it goes from being joking and funny (like putting his name on that Steve Buscemi screencap with the “how are you my fellow teens” caption) to being just fucking disrespectful and awful (likening him to a child abuser, also a bunch of shit I see about him like every day on this site) which is honestly one of the things that pisses me off about this website, where over time the criticism of Green has gotten more and more out of line, when, as celebrities go, he puts in more effort to be charitable, understanding, self-aware, and socially conscious than anyone I know of.
I’ve kept quiet about this for a while but since he basically just said he can’t associate with/be a part of the tumblr community anymore I felt like I had to say something. You can criticize his work, you can acknowledge that he’s said a problematic thing or two in the past, but Jesus Christ. Sometimes this site has a mob mentality that genuinely scares me.
That post comparing him to a child abuser had overtones of a really odd sentiment I’ve only seen on tumblr, which is that adults cannot and should not write about teens and that’s inherently creepy for them to do so. YA should be written exclusively by teens, perhaps. I’m guessing it’s based in some misunderstanding of what appropriation actually is and/or that bizarre idea that adults hit a point where they must reject everything even tangentially associated with teens and children*, but I’m not entirely sure.
*For an extreme example, see any one of those posts about how no one out of their teens should be allowed in fandom or on tumblr.