Join us for today’s interesting conversation about ethics, boundaries, suffering, bullying, and being online/offline. There are many facets to these topics as they intertwine with morality, and we are diving into a discussion with Ellie Rushton,
Show Highlights:
Ellie’s background, work, and TikTok content about “cultivating bold spaces”
Ellie’s definition of bullying: “doing something harmful several times on purpose for the sake of someone’s suffering”
Thoughts on bullying and why people do it
Holding someone accountable vs. bullying—what’s the difference?
Ellie’s perspective on online comments to others’ content
Thoughts on the roots of inequality, oppression, and suffering—and the problem with categorizing “good” and “bad” people
People are afraid of embodying compassion.
What is effective in online spaces
Thoughts about boundaries, revenge, and retribution
Standing up for what you believe while holding yourself accountable
Resources and Links:
Connect with Ellie: TikTok
Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook
Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning
We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes.
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KC Davis 0:00
Music.
Hello, you sentient balls of stardust. I sound a little sick because I am a little sick, but I am here with you and also with Ellie Rushton here in the studio, and we're gonna have an interesting conversation today about ethics and boundaries and suffering and bullying and being online and being offline. And I don't really know what to call the whole episode, but I am glad that you're with us. You sentient balls of Stardust and Ellie. Thank you for being here on the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. So I stumbled upon one of your tiktoks that really, really put into words something that I'd kind of been throwing around in my own head. But before we dive into that, tell me a little bit about you and what you do, and you know your Tiktok channel talks about cultivating bold spaces, and kind of just tell me a little bit about all that. Yes, so my name is Ellie. My pronouns are sheher, and my life's mission has become in recent years, this idea of cultivating bold spaces. Basically what I mean by a bold space is a space in which people are safe and empowered to discover, explore and expand their authentic selves. It's an idea that I sort of spiraled out from the concept of safe spaces and brave spaces. Came up with this idea in the context of performing art spaces, and then I realized it kind of works everywhere. So I thought, You know what? Let's take this to Tiktok. Let's see what we can do. So in my everyday life, I work for an organization that supports the arts and culture industry with things related to equality, diversity and inclusion and change making work. But when it comes to my Tiktok, what I'm interested in is discussing topics and areas that I think throw up roadblocks and barriers to authenticity and connection, and that's kind of really what it's all about. So I go in a lot of different directions, and it's a lot of fun. Well, I am excited about this conversation. Can I already tell you might be somebody that might be coming back for more conversations? Well, that's exciting. Yes, because, I mean, one of the things that I've been thinking about a lot lately is just kind of the way that we behave as a species online, which is a mirror of what we see in public spaces. But I think that it brings out behavior in some of us that while deeply human and definitely something we see in offline spaces, it's like it's much quicker to be brought out. And those of us that maybe wouldn't behave that way in an offline space, and I wanted to start with this Tiktok that you made where you talked about, basically, like bullying immoral people. And I don't know if somebody brought up a question or if it was just kind of on your mind, but you talked about, you know, is it right, or is it practical, or is it ethical, or is it functional to bully immoral people? So tell me kind of your thoughts on that.
Ellie Rushton 3:02
Yeah. So this originally came about because I made a Tiktok before that, where I was basically just exploring, why do we bully What is it inside us that makes us feel like it's okay to bully people sometimes? And I wasn't really talking about immoral people at that point. I was really just talking about bullying in general. And I came to this conclusion that, you know, we do feel either because we've learned, or maybe it's just a part of being human that we have the right to correct behavior which we think disrupts the social norm. And I was thinking about, you know, children and teenagers at that point, it's like if, uh, someone in your class behaves in a way which you've interpreted as abnormal, you feel like you have the right to correct that behavior. And sometimes people feel like bullying is the method by which they can do that.
KC Davis 3:52
And this is such an interesting starting point, though, especially with when we when we hear people talk about community, like, oh, we need to build a community. We need to build a community. And we talk about how community involves holding people accountable and calling people in or calling people out, right? But really talking about what that looks like, and in what ways is that practical and or ethical? In what ways is that maybe impractical or not ethical? Let's start with kind of like a what definition are you using for bullying? Because that it's that's a word that comes up a lot with, like, Hey, you're bullying me. So what would be your definition?
Ellie Rushton 4:29
Yeah, bullying is quite complicated. I actually used to teach primary school children about bullying, and the little phrase we used to use with them was several times on purpose, so it wasn't things that were just a one off. So sometimes you can be very mean to someone, but it's a one off. And it wasn't things that were by accident, but it was repeated and it was on purpose. And I think that is a fairly good model to base this on. But of course, bullying is quite a nuanced and complex thing, because sometimes you can do something as a one off, but you can. Contributing. You know, especially in online spaces, your one off might be contributing to a bigger thing that is very much several times
KC Davis 5:07
it might be a ripple effect. I think, particularly if you have a like a large platform, right? You say one thing, and then the ripple effect is several dozen or 100 people going to either say the same thing or do the same thing exactly,
Ellie Rushton 5:22
exactly. And so what I think is important to remember it is a repeated attack on that person, and it is for the sake of their suffering. It's not necessarily with a constructive purpose. People might convince themselves that it is, but the goal is to make them suffer.
KC Davis 5:38
I'm curious what your thoughts are when it comes to like, intention versus impact. Because one of the things that I have found interesting about existing in an online space is that we haven't really caught up to what happens on an online space when it comes to like, our definition of bullying, and what that looks like and feels like, because, you know, it used to be, let's think the plague yard right where we typically think about bullying. Typically, as you said, it's like repeatedly on purpose to cause suffering. And usually when we say repeated, we're talking about specifically repeated from the same person or from the same group of people that are kind of in on it. And one of the things, and we know how damaging to mental health bullying can be, but one of the things that's really interesting about being online is that you can experience the exact same recipient experience of bullying, even though the little attacks or the jabs or the comment whatever are coming from different people, so as a user, I might be saying a one off in a comment section. Oh, that's such an ugly dress or whatever, right? But if I'm one of 10,000 people saying the same thing, the experience of that person who made that video is no different than if one person had said it 10,000 times
Ellie Rushton 7:09
Exactly. And I do think it's useful to draw a comparison to children in the playground, because, you know, as you're speaking, just then, I was thinking about, well, what if there was scenario? What if there was a scenario where, you know, a child throws a pebble at another child, we wouldn't call that bullying, but if a child sees a group of children all throwing one pebble each at a child, and they decide to pick up a pebble and join in, then I think we would consider that bullying, right? Because they are aware that they are contributing to an act of bullying. There is something that is happening several times on purpose here. And so I think that when we're on online spaces, most of the time, when people adding to an onslaught of comments, they're doing so feeling buoyed up behind that onslaught of comments that's already there, and feeling like, Yes, I'm part of this big wave of people saying this thing, and they feel somewhat of a protection within that, and I think that it's something that we have to be extremely mindful of, especially because unlike on a playground where you know you've got 30 children who all know each other and have these relationships in online spaces, you just don't have those relationships with the people that You're interacting with, and it's so easy to go on one video, comment on it, and then forget that you've even done it, because you've now scrolled on to the next thing. And so, yeah, there's a heightened level of responsibility and awareness that I think we need to be thinking about.
KC Davis 8:38
And it's interesting that, you know, you could almost see a scenario in which a person is being bullied, and yet one person making one comment would not say, Oh, I'm bullying that person. I did one thing and I moved on. It wasn't repeated. It wasn't this. It wasn't that. One of the things that I have had to contend with as my platform gets bigger and bigger and bigger is like, what is my responsibility in terms of how people react to the way that I react to people? Because I've been known to make a snarky video or a clap back, or, you know, a reply video to someone that is being rude or mean or awful to me, and there's this interesting tension of like, I feel strongly that I am not morally obligated to, like, take it on the nose every single time, because it does rise sometimes to the effect of feeling bullied, especially when you know someone is intentionally being cruel to you. And so I've sort of constructed some of my own boundaries around this. And I'm curious your thoughts and genuinely curious. Like, if you're like, Casey, that's ridiculous, you can't do that anymore. But like, one of the things that I sort of see align with is, like, if I make a video talking about something or someone, or someone specifically, and. And people will make comments in my comment section, but when people then go to that person's page and start making comments in their comment section, for some reason, to me, that crosses a line, and I think it's because I feel as though, okay, if that person decides that they don't want to see what I've said, they can block me. And if they've decided that they don't want to get notifications about what we're all saying about their behavior in this comment section, they can delete their comment. They won't get those like they have an option to opt out of us reacting to their behavior. But if you go into their space on their other videos like you push them into this space where their only way to opt out is to completely shut down their own like online account, which, to me, gets a lot closer to bullying or a lot closer to suffering or like that's a pretty big ask for someone in A world where your online, you know, account is a real part of your life, and I don't know if, if that's like a good enough place to land, or, you know what I mean, or if that's a justification for why, like, I don't want to stop telling people that they're being assholes. I'm just curious your thoughts on that. And then I want to get into this sort of difference between, you know, what is holding someone accountable, versus bullying? Or what do we consider, you know, is a creator saying something and then going, but by the way, guys don't bother this person. Is that sufficient, you know? And at what point am, are you truly, really not responsible for every crazy on the internet? I say that with love. I'm a person who can be crazy sometimes.
Ellie Rushton 11:39
Yeah, and it's a big question. And, you know, just to give a bit of context for the listeners, I'm very new at Tiktok, you know, I'm currently sitting just under that threshold of 10,000 followers, whether I might be able to start making a couple of quid a month, you know. So I, you know, I'm very much still figuring this out, and I think that it's challenging, because we can ultimately really only take responsibility for ourselves, but when we are in online spaces, we do also have to consider what the ripple effect might be, right? You know, certainly it's funny, since I started making videos, I basically never comment on other videos. Now I only ever do so to say something positive, because I'm really uninterested in getting dragged into other creators drama. I'm dragging myself by putting a comment. You know, that would be my own doing. And similarly, if people sometimes tag me in other people's videos and they want me to make a comment or make a response, I tend to ignore that. And for me personally, and I'm not saying that this is the correct solution, but for me personally, I think I have shied away from stitches or from doing discourse on top of discourse on top of discourse within tick tock, because, within tick tock, because it can get a little bit insular, right and and so I kind of try and challenge myself where, if I've seen a tiktoker Make a Tiktok about something that I disagree with, well, can I make my own Tiktok about those ideas without actually involving that person at all? Is that more valuable for me to do rather than being like, look at this person. Aren't they terrible? But of course, all of this is contextual, because it sort of depends exactly what we're talking about. You know, are we talking about someone who has got online and said something that I disagree with, or are we talking about someone who's got online and advocated for war crimes? You know, there's
KC Davis 13:42
like an ascend ascending level of, you know, okay, is there a need to sort of directly talk about this person is doing something dangerous, so this person is doing something dishonest, or this specific person needs to be addressed directly? But, of course, the interesting thing there is that not everyone is going to agree with where you draw those lines, so then you end up in those arguments. Yeah, yeah. Because as my platform has gotten bigger, you know, I've gone from stitching people to oftentimes, what I'll do now, especially if I don't think it's someone that like is necessarily doing anything dangerous, I just have some like, social commentary or whatever. Is that I started just showing a clip of the video, and then I ended up showing a clip of the video and blacking out the username. And then I showed the clip of the video black out the username and the fate like, because every single time it would just like, spin into this huge thing, and the actual commentary of what you're trying to say gets lost. And so, you know, I have a friend that literally will put it in the background and stand in front of so that you can't say anything about that person except for what they're saying, so she could address what they're saying. But I'm curious, in an online space when it comes to, like, quote, unquote accountability, and you know, you talk about the definition of bullying specifically being to cause suffering. Where you sort of draw that line between, you know, calling out behavior versus causing suffering,
Ellie Rushton 15:08
yes. So the place where I sort of came to a few different tiktoks, I mean, a few different tiktoks on this topic, and the place that I kind of came to, that I landed on, was that I am not entitled to pursue the suffering of others, but I am entitled to other things which may cause suffering to others. So I am entitled to pursue my own safety, which means, you know, I may act in self defense in a way that causes suffering, and I am entitled to stand up for what I believe in, which very much does involve calling out people's ideas and calling people in. And, you know, I see no problem with saying something like this person's values disgust me, or I'm disgusted by this person's values. I don't see a problem with that, because that is me standing up for what I believe in, and sharing my perspective. But I'm not pursuing their suffering for the sake of their suffering. I'm trying actually to pursue something that I think is morally good and right, and I think it's in the pursuit of what we believe is a moral ought that sometimes suffering is an inevitability, but I think that, you know, I am entitled to pursue those things, and I'm not entitled to just pursue someone's suffering for the sake of suffering. Where this gets complicated is that, you know, a lot of people do believe that, in quotes, bad people deserve to suffer, and therefore believe that it is a moral ought. But what I spoke about in my Tiktok is that the guiding principle of bad people deserve to suffer, and I am entitled to pursue their suffering is at the root of most systems of inequality and most systems of oppression. Whereas I think my guiding principle of I am not entitled to pursue the suffering of others is at the root of what I would like the world to be like, which is that, you know, people do pursue what they believe is morally right, but they don't pursue suffering for the sake of suffering, and they don't believe that because they have categorized someone as beneath them, for whatever reason. You know, perhaps it is because of sexism and racism, or perhaps it's because of, you know, they see them as a bad person in quotes. But you know, I don't think that we can ever hold the belief that we can pursue the suffering of people we see is beneath us, and that not leads to an extremely destructive place.
KC Davis 17:44
Yeah, it seems to me like it's not necessarily a fault of the ideal, as much as it's a reality of human beings, like, if we were to say immoral people deserve to be, you know, for bad things to happen to them, I don't know. And we truly were like to give examples, right, like of the worst people we could think nobody would disagree, like, you know, but the issue is, is that I don't want to construct a society where I could be cast as someone's immoral, beyond, beneath, you know, deserving of whatever, just because of their judgment. I mean, that's really the issue, right, like, and I think I sometimes think this way of like the death penalty. The reason that I am so anti death penalty isn't necessarily that I don't think there are people that deserve to die, or that there are people who have done things so horrendous and are such a danger to society. Society wouldn't be better if they were not alive. It's that the pursuit and the execution of that ideal in the hands of people, it's like impossible to carry that out in a just, consistent way, and we will end up causing more injustice than we could have solved if we try.
Ellie Rushton 19:14
Yeah, exactly. It's so complicated, isn't it, because you're exactly right that if you name you know, the worst people that we can imagine, I have exactly the same emotional response of, you know, fear and disgust and rage. And you know, I'm not, I wouldn't shed a tear if they were to suffer, right? But I'm just a person, and I can also be aware that, you know, my feelings about what is good and bad are from the perspective of just being this, like you say, this little ball of sentient Stardust, right? And I can't, for that reason. I can't really get on board with the idea of objective morality, the idea that there. Are objectively good people and bad people. I can't really sort people into categories like that in my mind. And again, it's not because I don't have that emotional response, but it's because that if you decide that someone is a bad person, then that raises the question of, well, how is badness measured? And who decides what the measurement is, you know, what is the percentage of bad things they need to have done in order to qualify as a bad person? You know? It raises all these difficult questions, and
KC Davis 20:33
I can't give myself the right to do that without giving strangers the right to do that to me too. You know what I mean? I can't say, Well, I'm the only one that gets to utilize that judgment without saying that everybody else also gets to utilize that judgment. I want to go back to those two statements that you made, where you said, you know, I don't have the right to pursue the suffering of someone else, but I also don't have the obligation to always avoid the suffering of someone else. I think you said it slightly differently, but it was those two principles, and that's the first Tiktok that I stumbled upon, that I really latched onto, because I'm in the middle of finishing up my second book, which is on relationships, and a large portion of the book is about what do you do when someone's best is hurting you? So they are doing their best and it is hurting you. It is damaging you. And a good part of the book is about relationships, and it's about dealing with this idea of, okay, there are people out there who are bad actors, and it's important to how do you deal with someone's a bad actor? And then there are people out there that are not bad actors, but because of their own psychology and decisions and trauma and disabilities and hurts and harms like are causing hurt in and harm in your life. And what are your responsibilities to that person depending on the relationship and and at what point do you say, you know, the harm is too harmful. And it struck me in a conversation about boundaries, that those two sort of guiding boundaries are really powerful in the way they intersect and the way that we treat the people around us, that we are not entitled to cause the suffering of other people, and we are not obligated to always avoid the suffering of other people. And it really beautifully melded what I think is kind of those two polar things that we as humans struggle with, which is like the people pleasing in us, of, Oh, I feel bad if I make them feel bad, right? And then also, like the vengefulness of us, which is like, if you hurt me, everything's game, or if you do something I think is wrong, everything's game. You know, my fear and anger justify cruelty. You know, bad behavior justifies cruelty, because those are kind of the two polar opposites. And you know, when we're talking to one side or the other, it sounds like we're just telling them to go to the other side. And it's like, well, no, you don't have to just right? And so I wanted to kind of just talk about those two principles as they relate to interpersonal and maybe give us some examples of each and how that would come up. Yeah,
Ellie Rushton 23:23
well, this is a really great topic to talk about it through. And you know, as I'm sure is the case for many people who you talk to, you know, there is a personal element of that for me, you know, I have been in a relationship where I needed to get out and, you know. So the specific words, and I am a bit of a nerd for specificity of language, and the specific words that I landed on was I am not entitled to pursue the suffering of others. And I landed on pursue rather than cause. In the end, because it was really about that intention, you know. And that's the thing, you know, you asked about intention versus impact earlier. And you know, a lot of the discourse when we're thinking about equality, diversity and inclusion is, you know, we really need to focus more on impact rather than intent, because we're over focusing on intent. But of course, really, it is a balancing act, ultimately, and I really do believe that I am not entitled to pursue the suffering of someone else for my own satisfaction, because I think that way,
KC Davis 24:24
yeah, pursue is very active, right? Like pursue is ongoing, also it's not I did a one time thing, and oops, I just realized it caused suffering. Pursue is that if I did a one time, it's like, it not only has an active component, but the active component is the intention of suffering like I am doing this so that this person will suffer, yeah,
Ellie Rushton 24:45
and so I landed on that phrase, but at the same time, I am entitled to pursue my own safety. I'm entitled to pursue the safety of other people as part of, you know, being a human being in community, and I'm entitled to. Stand up for what I believe in. And we have to be able to do that in relationships. You know, we have to be able to pursue our own safety and stand up for ourselves and stand up for the fact that, no, it's, it's not acceptable for you to treat me this way. And you know, maybe okay now I have to take myself out of this relationship, and that is going to cause you suffering, because, despite the way you treat me, you do love me, and you are attached to me, and I know that me leaving is going to have a devastating impact on you. You know, I knew that when I was leaving a relationship was that it was going to have a devastating impact. And you know, I cared about him deeply, but I had to pursue my I'm not going to say safety in this particular context, because I don't feel I was unsafe, exactly. But I had to pursue my emotional liberation, and I had to pursue my happiness, and I had to pursue my health, and by having this guiding principle of I'm not entitled to pursue the suffering of others that kept me in check, that stopped me from, you know, seeking any kind of revenge or trying to make becoming attached to the idea of making his life difficult in the way that he'd made life my life difficult. You know, that guiding principle kept me in check and kept me away from that, and I'm incredibly grateful for that.
KC Davis 26:21
Yeah, I think the way that I put it in my book was I talked about how, like, love can never be unconditional, because the condition is always my own well being my own survival. And actually, I think the way I specifically put it was that my love can be unconditional, but my relationships are not like I can love you even if I'm not in a relationship with you, and I can love you at a distance, and I can love you, and I can want good things for you, and I can forgive you or feel compassion for you. So my love can be unconditional, but a relationship with me, even with the people that I love unconditionally, will never be unconditional, because the condition is my own survival and my own well being, and because I used to work in addiction, this is a fascinating thing to me, because I talked one time about doing addiction work with families, where you have families who are you're trying to get them to talk to their loved one about the impact of their behavior. And once again, you kind of have a couple of extremes that you would often find family members fall on sides of you. Have the ones that want to say, you know, you have been the worst child in the world, and you have ruined our lives, and you are so selfish and lazy and you stole from us and right, like that kind of where I would constitute that as speaking in cruelty. And then you have the opposite, which is the family members that would be like, listen, I know that you stole my grandmother's ring because you were hurting. And I get it, honey, I get it like, I know that that is not I know that you are not your addiction, and that you really couldn't help it. And I that type of communication I call delicate. So you have people that communicate cruelly, and you have people that communicate delicately, and the goal was always to teach people how to speak the truth with kindness. And so I think that's why your Tiktok resonated so much with me. Because when you have people that speak cruelly, yes, they're having emotions, yes, they might be speaking honestly, but they are purposefully pursuing the pain and suffering of the person that hears it. And typically, sometimes it's from an anger I just want you to hurt. But more often than that, it's from a if I can just get through to you, right, if I can say something so powerful and so hurtful that it will get through to you and you will feel it. That will make you want to change, that will make you wake up and see how you're hurting everyone around you. Doesn't work ever. It just causes that person to fold up into shame and to run right back to substances. And then you have the person who's always speaking delicately, and they're always thinking about and really it's both of these people are more concerned with how this person is going to feel than just speaking the truth, right? And so the delicate people are always thinking, well, if I hurt their feelings, if I make them sad, if they have negative emotions, then they're just gonna run off and go use again. You know, I have to make sure that they never experience anything that upsets them and anything that makes them sad and like, I just love them unconditionally, and that also never works. That's how people get walked all over. That's how people get manipulated. That's how people end up. It's like, when you're almost, like, helping them continue to self destruct, that's when you get into people we talk about, like, enabling both of them are in the same situation. It's, I really think that if I can control your emotions, I can control your behavior, and so we talk about like, what would it look like for you to say you stole my grandmother's ring and it destroyed me. I don't know if I can ever trust you again, because that's how deeply this wounded me. And I don't know who you are. I feel. Like the person I used to love, I don't know where they went, and speaking about your own emotional truth, and you are going to say some things that that person will feel hurt by, that will cause them pain. But there's a difference, as you said, between pursuing that pain and saying, I don't have to avoid you feeling any pain. That's why I really resonated with you making those distinctions, because that's kind of who I always dealt with on the polar opposite ends, right? Yeah, you
Ellie Rushton 30:27
know what's interesting is, I think that so many people are afraid of compassion, afraid of embodying compassion, because they their compassion has spiraled towards that delicacy for them in the past, and they exactly. They think of compassion as permissiveness. You know what? On one video I made someone, I spoke about compassion, and they interpreted it as pleasantness, which is a very different, very different thing. And I think that people are very afraid of embodying compassion. And you know, for me, I see compassion as, quite simply, the refusal to deny someone's humanity and always holding that person's humanity no matter what they've done, no matter what the situation is between you two, still always honoring the fact that this is a human being who I do have some moral obligation towards, right? And that doesn't mean being nice, that doesn't mean being permissive, and it doesn't mean being delicate, but so many people are afraid of being taken advantage if they embody compassion. I see compassion as a position of great strength and integrity. And, you know, relating it back to the relationship situation we were talking about, you know, I consider the moment I left that relationship to be the moment that I fully accepted him as a human being, and accepted that I cannot force him to change. And therefore, if I accept that this is who he is, then I accept that the only action I can take is to leave. That is actually the compassionate thing that I can do in this moment. And I think that you know, when it comes to online spaces and bullying immoral people. You know, you had that excellent point there about, you know, I believe I can change their behavior by changing their emotions. And of course, I can totally understand why people would believe that. Because, of course, yes, our emotions drive our behavior. We all know this. And so, you know, why wouldn't we think, Oh yeah, that's a good tactic. But in my experience with online spaces, it's not effective anyway, because there's always going to be other, lots of other voices in the room, and frankly, this person doesn't actually know you. You know and you're not willing to be vulnerable with them. You're not willing to say, this is how I am impacted by what you've said. Instead, you're going you're attacking them. And I do think that if we were able to cultivate, and I have no idea if this is possible, but who knows, maybe in the future of the Internet, we can cultivate a culture where what it looks like for a mass of people to take to, you know, call on someone to take accountability is for them to actually be able to be vulnerable in the way that you just described, and say, you know, this is how your words impact me, And I want you to know that and be willing to let that be enough. And I have this whole life philosophy that everything is facilitation, right? And so when you're facilitating a situation, you're putting out your offer, but you are aware that you cannot control the outcome, and you have to be unattached to the outcome. And so, you know, could we ever cultivate a culture where we show up to the internet with that level of integrity, that level of compassion and actually just being willing to put out what we need, to put out how we've been impacted, or, you know what our view and perspective of that thing is, and allow whatever journey happens to happen, rather than trying to do it through that. Oh, I can control how this person feels, and I can make them change their behavior, yeah,
KC Davis 34:29
because that's really what boundaries is. And one of my biggest Eves when it comes to commenters that want to quote, unquote, call things out, is that, you know, like when I show up to give someone information, this is kind of like one of my personal boundaries, is that, like, if I'm gonna, quote, unquote, call somebody out, call somebody in, give somebody information about how I find their behavior either affects me negatively or sidesteps what I believe their own bound, what their own values to be. You know, if I have a relationship. With them, or what I think value should be if I don't have a close relationship with that person, right? So we're just talking to kind of people on the internet, mutuals, things like that. I get to say it once, like, that's it. I say, I don't like this. I think this is wrong. I think you're off here. I think this. That's it. My job is done. I have given the information on the platter. What is not my job and what goes beyond boundaries is okay. They didn't react to that the way I thought they should. So I'm gonna go to another video and say it again, and another video and say it again, and I'm gonna make multiple videos over and over and over about how they're not listening. See they're not listening. And let's whip up the frenzy of how we should all now punish them for not listening. And I don't mean that you know anyone who's making commentary on a public you know creator is wrong, but it really grinds my gears when I get a commenter that'll say, hey, you know, here's my opinion on something you did. Great. I see it, and then they come back to another video. Are we going to talk about this? Are we going to talk about this? You've done this, you've done this. And it's, first of all, it's this. Like, okay, please understand that you're not my friend. You're like, one in a million. There are a million opinions on something I have done or said. And I actually had a situation recently where I made a video and somebody commented and said, Hey, like, this is bad, this is wrong. This is a stupid take. And separately, I had a mutual make, a video, a friends only video, and say, Hey, Casey, I think this was a wrong take, and I was kind of hurt by it. And I, you know, responded to her and was like, hey, fair, I trust your insight on this. I'm gonna take it down. That's whatever. But what was funny is that other commenter continued to come into my comment section of my other videos and go, are we not going to talk about it? Are you not going to take accountability? Are you not going to it? Was like, dude, you've said it. I get it. Like you've done your part, continuing to move on to, I have to force you to have this conversation with me personally is like, beyond breaking boundaries, particularly with the awareness of like, you're a commenter in a comment section, not somebody who kind of knows you, but even people that I know, a mutuals, or somebody that I call out, like that's to me, that's a very clear boundary where I say it, I'm not responsible for whether you change.
Ellie Rushton 37:21
Yeah, and you know, something that I think is important to consider in all of that is that people are very, very invested in the idea that there are good people and bad people in the world, and the idea of that binary, to the extent that which, if I say that I don't buy into that binary, people will only hear that I won't label people as bad. They think that I think everyone's good, when actually, no, I'm rejecting the binary entirely, right? And it's so funny, though, because then they will list out examples of who they think I should label as a bad person. They will never list out examples of people who I should label as a good person, right? And what that tells me is that people are measuring their goodness by through how they respond to what they perceive as bad, right? And so this person in your comment section. You know, she's perceived something that she feels is bad, and she feels that her job as a in quotes, good person, is to keep responding to it in that way and to pursue, pursue, pursue, pursue retribution, pursue revenge, even. And it's funny, I was talking to my husband about this before we got on the call, and my husband is one of my greatest inspirations in life, and he was a he said something really interesting. He said retribution and revenge is narratively satisfying, that's why we pursue it. But we're pursuing it for satisfaction and to satisfy our egos and to satisfy the idea that we're a good person, and we get so caught up in that that we're not actually doing the steady work of what we might consider to be goodness, right, which isn't about how we respond to things that are bad necessarily. It's actually about creating the energy of the things that we perceive as good. And I think that in online spaces, there's very little of that going on in comparison to the, you know, the process of, you know, discovering wrongs that can be righted. That's what people are very interested in online
KC Davis 39:39
I'm thinking back to, you know, the way that I respond when people are purposely cruel. And I will say, I think I probably, I mean, I let, like, probably 85% of it go, right? You go, oh, that, wow, right. And then you just kind of like, or like, I personally kind of hit my limit before I'm like, hi, you know. Need to go f off. And I do have an internal sense of boundaries when I do that. I don't I've never, like, explicitly said them out loud online or any of that. But like, I think people will find like, I specifically do think about holding that person's dignity. Like, I don't talk about what they look like or what they you know, their identities, or any of that, right? I've been known to be snarky and sarcastic and probably insulting at times. And when somebody, one time asked me, like, I thought that you were such a compassionate person, like, why do you sometimes respond this way to people? And I said to them, you know, I do feel like I'm like, try my best to be compassionate and at the same time, like I would, like, insulting me to be an uncomfortable experience for you. Like, I'm not necessarily interested in, like, you know, pursuing your suffering, but like, I'm really comfortable with, like, my reaction to your purposeful attempt to wound me, to be uncomfortable for you. Like, to not be a fun time for you. And it is something that I have to, like, keep a constant check on, and sometimes make the decision to just like, you know, I probably just need to, like, step back for a few days or a week from even just interacting on the internet to like, to feel as though I can operate in a space where I'm not, like I'm not, never defending myself, and I'm not, you know, grasping at just trying to stroke my ego, as in response to feeling really hurt, because, like that Dance is really difficult, but that is also really helped me in person, like, if someone is really awful to me, it's easy for me to be like, Okay, let me just smooth it over. Let me just like, as opposed to, in my I had an old therapist that used to call it return awkward to sender. Where, like, if someone makes an inappropriate comment and you it, you feel awkward, so you're trying to, like, kind of cover it up or or not draw attention to it. And she was the one that taught me, like you're not the one that made an inappropriate comment. So it is not your labor to make it not awkward. That's their labor to deal with the awkwardness, right? And so you should respond honestly and authentically, without fear of, oh, they might have to deal with the awkwardness of their inappropriate comment, right? Or, you know, and it could be as simple as, you know, someone saying something to you that is insulting, but they're trying to, like, kind of laugh it off, like, oh, it's, it's funny to say things like that. And, you know, instead of going, Why would you say that? Or like, wow, that was rude. And so it's not like we're saying, you know, tell them to, you know, fall off the face of the earth or something. But we have this fear sometimes of like, forcing or creating, like, I'm not going to take on the labor of the moment you just created. Yeah,
Ellie Rushton 43:01
yeah, a phrase I really like is, I don't know why you think I'm a person you can say that to. Or I don't know why you think I'm a safe space for that kind of comment. You know, if someone's making a derogatory comment about someone else, for example, or just, you know, I don't know why you think it was okay to say that to me. You know, I think that, like, again, like it's pursuing, it's that pursuit of standing up for what I believe in. And yeah, of course, people are going to feel uncomfortable, but you know, if I wanted to make them feel uncomfortable, there's a lot of different ways I could do that, right? But if I am just willing, if I'm willing to hold space for their discomfort. Essentially, if I'm willing to create an uncomfortable environment in the process of pursuing, you know, what I know to be right, then that's, that's a very different, a different thing. And I think it's just, it's what keeps us accountable. You know, I've said in another video, actually, that the way that I hold other people accountable is by holding myself accountable. And I really try, and I'm not perfect, but I try and use that I language, you know, you know, starting the sentence with I and offering them a window into what I am perceiving and what I am experiencing, and then letting that be the information on which they then make their next decision, right? And it's up to them what they take from that. You know, I try and do that because I see that as a process of holding myself accountable. If someone says something that I, you know, feel insulted by, then I do have an accountability there. There's a process of holding myself accountable in that moment and modeling to them that behavior, rather than trying to make them behave that way. If I'm trying to teach someone the lesson or impart the lesson that it is not okay to treat people like that, then obviously I can't mirror their behavior, because that would be ridiculous. And so sometimes people in my comments who are like, Oh, well, an eye for an eye. Me, it's kind of like, you know, I really do believe that I should be modeling the behavior that I want to see in others as much as possible. And again, that doesn't have to mean that I'm treating everyone's feelings really preciously and making sure that no one ever feels uncomfortable. It just means, you know, holding myself to a high standard and showing the people this is the standard I hold myself to, and therefore that's the standard I'm going to hold you to as well. Yeah, the
KC Davis 45:26
phrase, you know, an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind is what comes
Ellie Rushton 45:30
to mind. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Well,
KC Davis 45:35
Ellie, this has been an excellent conversation, and super helpful and beneficial, and I really appreciate it. Where can people find you online if they want to follow you,
Ellie Rushton 45:43
so you can find me on Tiktok, and my handle is cultivating old spaces. Thank
KC Davis 45:48
you again. Ellie,
Ellie Rushton 45:50
thank you.