911 Discourse - Blog Posts

Sam/Vampirebuckley and Racism

So it has been recently brought to mine and other people's attention that a prominent 9-1-1 content creator was exposed on Twitter for racism. I want to be upfront and say that I have not personally seen these posts or Sam's supposed apology that they posted shortly before deactivating all of their social media accounts. I am not on Twitter (X), nor do I intend to use the platform ever again. If any of you have screenshots of these posts that you could send me, I would be happy to add them to this post so it is easily accessible to those who want to know what was said. Update: I received a message with screenshots of Sam's racist comments and response. I have added them to the bottom of this post with the n-word censored. The individual who sent me the photos also pointed out that Sam has a blue check on their account, meaning that they have paid money to have their content pushed on a platform owned by a known Nazi.

From what I understand, Sam made a tweet back in 2013 in which they used the n-word. This is racist and completely unacceptable. If there are any other racist tweets or posts that Sam has made, I am unaware of them but condemn them all the same.

I do believe very strongly in rehabilitation and that people can and do change, especially over the span of a decade. However, Sam's actions in response to this information coming to light are very telling and that they still have work to do. Words can only get you so far if your actions don't reflect what you say. Posting an apology (which, from what I hear, was poorly done, seemed insincere, and contained excuses for the past behavior, but please correct me if I am mistaken) and then swiftly deactivating their accounts shows an unwillingness to engage and listen to the hurt that they have caused to the Black community. It also makes their apology essentially meaningless if the people that it affects cannot even directly access and respond to what they had to say about their past actions.

I also want to address some comments that I have seen under other content creator's posts regarding this situation that pull attention away from or are expressing undo sympathy for Sam. Some of this is paraphrased, but I will do my best to accurately represent what has been said.

"It was so long ago, a person can change a lot in that time". Sam's comments happening a "long time ago" mean nothing when what was said has caused and continues to cause so much pain and suffering to an entire group of people based on their immutable characteristics. Yes, people can change, but that doesn't change the damage their actions cause. They should still be held accountable for their actions and be willing to listen if they genuinely care about these issues.

"Sam is already going through so much right now, I don't blame them for deactivating". No, we are not going to do this. You can feel bad that they are going through something shitty in their personal life, but that has nothing to do with the situation at hand. We are all going through our own personal struggles, whether we share them online or not. That does not excuse the way Sam reponded and ran away from the situation. If they needed a moment to be offline until they were in a better headspace to engage, they could have done that without deactivating their accounts.

"The timing of this being released seems suspicious [because its following them talking about their recent struggles with a breakup]/The person who exposed them was trying to kick them while they were down". There is literally nothing to suggest this is the case, and I find it very, very hard to believe that someone would hold onto this information about Sam and only reveal it once they were at a personal low point. I find it far more likely that this is a coincidence and nothing more. Either way, this should not pull attention away from the main point of concern here: Sam's racist actions.

I strongly encourage content creators in this community, especially those with sizeable audiences, to speak up and address this situation. I know a lot of us join and engage in fandom to have fun and to escape the horrors of the outside world, but the reality is that we live in a deeply racist, white supremacist society and fandom (and society at large) will never be free of that unless we start to actually acknowledge it.

I also want to encourage folks to be respectful and refrain from engaging in harassment, death threats, etc. towards this content creator and anyone speaking up about the situation. We can hold someone accountable and not fall into harmful behaviors ourselves. From what I understand, Sam is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns exclusively. Please be respectful of this. Misgendering and other forms of transphobia are not excusable just because the person it is directed at has engaged in other forms of bigotry.

The most important point that I want to make is this: If you are not Black, you do not get to accept an apology from Sam.

If there is anything that I have stated here that is inaccurate or false in any way, please let me know so I can correct it. Thank you.

oh Christ shut the fuck up with your holier than thou shit, pretending you're not just another toxic buddie shipper while parroting their favorite lies and bullshit at the same time. block shit you don't like and shut the FUCK up. y'all been showing your asses for literally years, being misogynistic and racist to every single female love interest that gets in your way and adding some violent homophobia for the actual queer rep, all because you fetishise straight men kissing. y'all are the ones posting child rape fics to the archive and to inboxes. y'all the ones harassing people because you're blocked. y'all the ones trying to dox people and fail because you're just that pathetic. I've been in this fandom from day one and there's a reason buddie shippers are infamous outside this fandom for toxic bigotry. shut the ENTIRE fuck up I'm so goddamn sick of y'all. I'm genuinely embarrassed to ever have BEEN one of you. entitled, pathetic, friendless trash, every single one of you.

Hey, so what is this supposed to accomplish?

To be clear, I DO block content I don't want to see. I DO filter for ships I don't usually want to regularly interact with. The point of the post I made was to address a pattern I was noticing with anti-Eddie and anti-Buddie sentiment that I had seen multiple BIPOC creators also talk about.

Now, to address some of your points because I feel like you are projecting SO MUCH onto me.

Misogyny. I never made a single comment on my feelings regarding any of the characters' canon past relationships, but since you seem so sure I hate them like every other Buddie shipper supposedly does, I will make my views of them quite clear. I like most of Eddie and Buck's previous girlfriends/wife. I really liked Shannon, Abby, Anna, and Taylor. The other past relationships that I don't actively like I'm pretty neutral about. There are various reasons why I didn't think those relationships would work out, and they didn't, but I don't hate any of their past partners. I think people are free to dislike their past relationships if they want, but misogyny directed towards them isn't okay.

Racism. Any and all racism targeted towards the characters and their actors is unacceptable, full stop. Any acts of racism that any of those actors themselves have engaged in or excused is also unacceptable, full stop. Both are true statements, and I find it really shitty that in response to a post where I was attempting to respectfully point out behaviors directed at a character, which I found may have had racial bias underpinning them, I got this kind of response. As a community, we should all be concerned about racism, queerphobia, ableism, etc. regardless of who it's coming from and regardless of who it's being done to.

Harassment/Threats/Innappropriate Behavior/Etc. To be very, very clear. None of the horrendous behaviors that you have described BuckTommy shippers receiving from Buddie shippers and/or anti-BuckTommy shippers is okay. I have never and will never defend anyone doing those things. Those are examples of behavior I was referring to when it comes to toxicity I would like to see weeded out of fandom spaces. From BOTH sides of the shipping discourse. I feel like I made that clear when I acknowledged that Buddie shippers can and do engage in toxicity and racism as well. Literally NO ONE is exempt from criticism.

Fetishization/Fetishizing Straight Men Kissing. Um. What. To be clear, I am queer. I read, write, listen to, and engage with content that is almost exclusively queer or made by someone who is. I am just as concerned and interested in queer rep as the next queer person. I also have just as much right as any other queer person to critique that rep if I am unsatisfied with it and think it could be improved upon. And you do, too. I am not saying there is NO issue of some folks fetishizing mlm relationships, but I do think this narrative is incredibly overblown and lacks nuance, but I digress. The specific comment about wanting two straight dudes to kiss is what I am particularly concerned about. Buck isn't straight. He was initially written and acted that way throughout the majority of the show, but he ISN'T. Plus, as someone who is themselves bisexual and relates a lot to his character, I always kinda headcanoned him to be as well. There is also no reason why we should assume Eddie can't be gay. Personally, I headcanon him as a repressed gay man. For many, many reasons. What I find very interesting is the way you throw that statement out there like that as if Tommy wasn't introduced into the show initially through "Hen Begins" as, presumably, a straight man. Of course, we learn later that he was repressing his feelings and had previously dated and been engaged to a woman before he accepted himself fully and started dating men. He is still a gay man despite his past experiences. And at the very beginning of the show, when we are introduced to Michael, we get the reveal that he is gay and had recently come out to his entire family, who he had hid this from for over a decade. The presumption of straightness/cisness until explicitly stated otherwise annoys me so much, so I wanted to address that point specifically.

I have absolutely no ill-will towards you, and I hope you receive this well. I am sorry it seems you have been on the receiving end of a lot of negativity in the fandom. I would like to encourage you to keep an open mind that not everyone online and in this space is a person that hates you or is acting in bad faith just because they diagree with you or have expressed a critical view about something you like. I wish you well.

Okay so I'll just say it because I've been thinking it for a while, but the weird dislike or sometimes even hatred for Eddie Diaz (and Ryan Guzman) that is present in this fandom feels (at times) incredibly forced at best and downright racist at worst. And he's already a pretty white-washed character as it is. This is not in any way meant as a call-out to any one person in particular, and certainly not me saying he's a perfect character above critique, but my god, I need people to inject a little bit of nuance into their views of these characters. I love Buck as much as the next 9-1-1 fan, but he is not this perfect angel who can do no wrong like some people act like he is. Likewise, Eddie has made a lot of mistakes and done a lot of shitty things (some of which Buck himself has done, too). But at the end of the day, I think he is a very complex character who is doing the best he can with what he has and means well. I don't know why some of you are in this fandom if you dislike these characters as much as it appears you do.

And the SHIPPING WARS MY GOD STOP IT. I usually stay out of shipping discourse because I think it's ridiculous and unnecessary most of the time. Ship and let ship is always an option, and I think most people would benefit from choosing it. And listen, I will admit my bias and say I am primarily a Buddie shipper. But I have no issue with Bucktommy shippers as a whole nor the ship itself being popular. Do I ship it? No. I don't even particularly like Tommy as a character, but I don't care if other people like him and the ship. What I do have an issue with, however, is the way some of y'all act with such vitriol towards Buddie shippers, Buddie as a ship, and, specifically, Eddie Diaz as a potential love interest for Buck. This is where I think some people's underlying racial bias really becomes apparent, and no, I'm not talking about all BuckTommy shippers, only those that are explicitly anti-Buddie because they don't like Eddie. Because why, WHY are you so insistent on seeing these two white men together, who have had so little time together on screen and, in my opinion, have been shown to have very little in common with each other other than the fact that they care about and are interested in each other romantically, but so against Buck potentially being in a relationship with a different man who he has been best friends with for the better part of a decade, who wrote him into his will, cares deeply about him and who he cares about just as much, spends a lot of his free time with, and who also happens to not be white? Look, I'm not gonna sit here and say every single one of you is a raging racist or anything. I don't know you. But I think a lot of y'all would benefit from a little bit of introspection as to why you feel the way that you do about some of these characters and ships. Also, yes, Buddie shippers can be toxic and racist, too. I am not saying Buddie shippers are above those behaviors as well, only making an observation specific to some people's anti-Buddie and anti-Eddie sentiment.

Also, this is an aside, but the way fandom and shipping culture in general has gravitated towards strict adherence to canon content is.... weird. Like, why are some of y'all so allergic to engaging with or creating content outside of the confines of what the canon material has offered you? Have fun, be creative, go wild, and also be respectful to the folks around you who see things differently. We all share this space, and we should all care about making it as positive and welcoming of an experience as possible.