An author took it upon themselves to fight me over something I said a month ago to someone they don’t know.
PokeLeaf14You’re a bitch, you know that, right? I’m talking about BlueLeDinah02’s story. How could you be so harsh? Can you do better? Like they say, if you can’t say something good, don’t say anything at all. If you didn’t like the story, you shouldn’t even go there in the first place. Asshole. But you go, read it, and then actually have the cruelty to insult what someone else has done? You’re a bastard. At least, before criticizing, you could’ve said something like ‘good effort’ before suggesting ways to improve it.
A word of advice:
i suggest you go to a recycling company to recycle your mind to a fresh one, because you’re nothing but trash.
And go see a doctor to get the screw out of your head, because it’s clearly affecting your way of thinking. Do this before typing anything else on this site.
Asswipe.
secs ago[But you go, read it, and then actually have the cruelty to insult what someone else has done? You’re a b***.]
But it’s okay when you do it, I see.
This is a public website with a public comment feature. If an author can’t handle that fact, there are many alternatives that will let them write stories without having to interact with anyone at all.
And you’re like half a month late, you know. I already went over this with BlueLeDinah02. Do you have so little faith in your friend you think they can’t defend themselves?
Really? I’m not sure she’ll forgive that so easily.secs agoI never said she’d forgive it, just that she talked about it.
Look, why are you talking to me? If you care so much, talk to your friend and ask what she wants.
8m agoOh, she’s not my friend. I don’t know her. I just want to put you in your place for insulting someone so harshly, because you would not like it if someone did that to you.
Or would you?
secs agoOkay, so firstly, it’s not your place to speak for others or act on their behalf. Authors are capable of defending themselves, and as I said, the two of us already worked this out.
Secondly, my review was not a harsh insult. If you think it was, you need to get out more. Try looking at the reviews on my most recent stories if you want to see what real flames look like.
Well, I’m SORRY if I don’t write crap stories like you do. Those things are absolutely rubbish! You completely deserve any flames you received.I deserve to be told to kill myself. Really.Okay, CHILL. Your stories aren’t THAT bad.secs ago…You think I’m talking theoretically? Seriously, read the reviews. Here are a few highlights from Blood is Thicker Than Water:
“your reviews are not needed. go rot in hell you don’t-know-it-all grammar nazi”
“hey you h*** moron are you having fun copypasting you stinky garbage spams on other people stories? ew what a nasty turd you are. you are nothing but waste of space in this planet. people like you should get their fingers chopped off with a giant axe. i feel sorry for the dolts who mindless follow you.”
“I HOPE YOU DIE !”
If you want to crusade about people insulting authors, maybe start with these guys.
You know what? I stick with my previous opinion. You DESERVE that hate with every single damn cell in your flaming body.Do you want me to die?Why are you asking this? Are you trying to kill yourself? I’m sorry, but I’m sure as hell not going to contribute to your suicidal attempts.secs agoJust checking to make sure you haven’t completely lost your mind.
Kid, go outside. No one deserves to get death threats for fandom opinions. If you truly believed in the cause you claim, you’d understand that.
4m agoLook, I didn’t mean any of what I said from my third message down. It’s just that I wanted to see if you actually are the person you seem like in your reviews, and i wanted to discover why people hate you and some user called Farla so much.
I’m never gonna speak to you again, since you seem to despise me so much.
secs agoOkay, so for future reference, you can just ask people. Most people are more fluent in direct communication than passive-aggressive mind games.
With that in mind, what is “the person I seem like in my reviews”? No games this time. If you don’t truly believe I deserve the hate I get, then I don’t despise you. I chose to talk to you because I am interested in understanding people.
Well, when you review, you just sound cold. Like, you don’t care about the feelings of the writer, and like I said before, it’s like you don’t even acknowledge that he/she has taken the time and effort to make people happy. The motto of FanFiction is “Unleash your imagination”. People are going to be reluctant to do that if they get flames in reviews, pointing out every single flaw. Honestly, it’s not supposed to be perfect or ideal; there will obviously be some mistakes. And flaming could be quite shameful, because if the flamer’s stories get checked out and they also have a lot of flaws, it makes you a hypocrite. So all I’m asking is: don’t be too harsh in your judgments. Sure, you’ve noticed mistakes, but have you tried to suggest ways to improve the story? If you haven’t, you don’t even have the right to troll on someone. And do that in a nice manner as well, because being TOO blunt is what stirs up the dislike from people.secs agoAnd as I already said, I’ve done nothing you accuse me of. The reviews I showed you? The ones that have nothing to do with the story, and are just telling me to die? Those are flames. Flames are personal attacks designed to demoralize the author. They are not the same thing as critical reviews. Nor do I ever expect people to be perfect. I only expect people to have proper grammar, and I’m well within my rights to do that, because that is the absolute bare minimum level of quality we expect from all writing.
This is a public website with a public comment feature. I have a right to express my opinion on stories, just as authors have a right to ignore that opinion if they disagree with it. Once again, I say to you: if you can’t handle that, this is not the site for you. Go somewhere without a comment section and leave us alone.
But hey, you want to talk about hypocrisy? How about taking it upon yourself to attack and insult someone just because you didn’t like something they said? Two wrongs don’t make a right here. If “hav[ing] the cruelty to insult what someone else has done” is fundamentally wrong, it’s wrong. Full stop. Not “wrong unless they do it first”. Not “wrong unless I really don’t like them”. If you really cared about this and wanted me to change, you should have talked to me like a reasonable adult, not called me names and played mind games. You forfeited the moral high ground the moment you embarked on this childish attack.
And if you really care, if you’re really certain in your rightness, you should have no problem discussing this publicly. Read this thread, and if you still have an argument to make, make it there: https://www.fanfiction.net/topic/11834/24493256/1/NaRe-Review-FAQ
Instead they blocked me, because this never, ever, ever has anything to do with actually protecting authors.
it’s like you don’t even acknowledge that he/she has taken the time and effort to make people happy
This is interesting! I’ve always had the impression that most writers, fanfic or otherwise, write primarily for themselves. I mean, since so much of fandom is centralised around fanfic nowadays, I’d argue most fanfic writers don’t write to please others, but to gain acknowledgment from others in the fandom (and, ultimately, please themselves; perhaps there’s an argument to be made that a good-quality story gains more positive acknowledgment and therefore making one’s interaction with the fandom more pleasurable, but I’d still say that the ultimate, underlying motive isn’t to please others.)
But then again, I’ve not been active in fandom for years, so maybe I’m wrong.
(And I’m very sorry if this is a strange thing to comment on. I usually only lurk, but this statement struck me as strange, so.)
(And I’m very sorry if this is a strange thing to comment on. I usually only lurk, but this statement struck me as strange, so.)
Eh, I once wrote an essay about how Pokemon are a modern day interpretation of youkai and another on how come China would never be able to match Russia on a military technology level. It’s no big deal. Besides, you’ve got a point.
I write 100% for my own enjoyment, and post it basically just because I want my personal friends to enjoy it as a side-benefit to that, but for like three years before I was in a position to post things, that didn’t stop me from writing. Because I was writing for me. The fact that other people might like it was completely irrelevant. It would not at all dissuade me if I did not have a single view on my counter.
So when someone says that they only wrote this for their own enjoyment gets huffy about a review like this, I tend to not believe them. As someone who does write for his own enjoyment, and is only interested in his hits/likes/bookmarks/whathaveyous because he’s interested in statistics, I’d LOVE a review like one of these.
It only bothers me that my lowest read story has so few views because it’s original fiction that I like the most out of anything I’ve written, and it has literally a tenth of the views that the appendix of characters for my my A Song of Ice and Fire fanfiction series. Why does the hit counter jump up every time I post a new appendix? Who is interested in an appendix without being interested in the work that it’s an appendix of? It’s baffling!
Ah, would it be all right if I were to respond to everyone in a single comment? I don’t want to clog up the thread too much.
Eh, I once wrote an essay about how Pokemon are a modern day interpretation of youkai
Oh, I read this! It was really interesting, actually; I have it bookmarked. All I know about youkai comes from playing Perfect Cherry Blossom far too much (and Imperishable Night to a lesser degree), so I found it really interesting to read. And, for what it’s worth, I thought it was really compelling theory too.
I write 100% for my own enjoyment, […]
I would expect most people to write, if not entirely for their own sake, then at least mostly — either to improve their writing, or as a de-stressing exercise, etc. I mean, perhaps it’s different for people who predominantly write fanfiction, especially people who write not so much for the sake of writing, but as a way of interacting with fandom. Even so, the only instances I can think of where one literally writes for the express purpose of pleasing another are fic exchanges (are those still a thing, or did they die off with LJ?) and requests.
Who is interested in an appendix without being interested in the work that it’s an appendix of?
Perhaps they’re misclicks? Honestly, that really is baffling. Maybe some people just get really excited about appendices?
@St. Elmo’s Fire
People usually have multiple motives for what they do, most of them subconscious. I do think that being aware of one’s motives, no matter how uncomfortable they are to realise, would help one react more appropriately to a given situation. That’s perhaps not the best phrasing — I suppose what I’m trying to say is that a lot of people have different motives underlying their ‘conscious’ motive — someone writes with the conscious motive of ‘I want to tell this story; it’s an interesting idea that I want to explore; I’m writing for my own sake’ but also the subconscious motive of, ‘I want people to acknowledge how great my idea is/how great my writing is’ which quickly projects to ‘I want people to acknowledge how great I am’ because it’s easy to conflate one’s work with one’s self. If that’s the case, even innocuous comments on grammar can make the writer feel hurt, because their subconscious motive has not been satisfied.
@Farla
Ah, guilt tripping, of course! That does make an awful lot of sense. Incidentally, whole mindset of “someone did something in fandom, be nice/grateful” has always struck me as a bit odd, but it could be explained if we see fanfic as the ‘default’ way of interacting with fandom. In this view, fanfic becomes less of a writing project and more of a way to contribute to, and discuss, fandom. That would also explain why people get inordinately huffy about having their grammar and spelling corrected — the fanfic ceases to be about writing, but rather about interacting with fandom at large; any sort of criticism then represents a negative (or maybe not even negative, just non-positive) interaction, leading to hurt feelings. In your (and St. Elmo’s) experience, does this theory seem to hold merit? I’ve noticed that forums and such have fallen out of vogue recently in favour of platforms like Tumblr, which I don’t feel facilitate dicussion so much as the sharing of content, so it increases the pressure on people within fandoms to produce content (art, stories, etc.) in order to feel included. Of course, it may just be that I don’t understand Tumblr.
Anyway, I hope this doesn’t come off as too creepy or too incoherent; I’ve never studied psychology in English, so I’m having a bit of trouble formulating my thoughts. Still, it’s an avenue of thought I wanted to pursue because Farla’s and St. Elmo’s indexing of reviews is the best resource I’ve found yet for gaining insight into the mind of fandom, and I think Farla’s experience as a reviewer is unparalleled, so I really want to pick your brains about this. Hopefully this avenue of thought doesn’t turn out to be a cul-de-sac, though it might — I’ve been known to overthink things.
That would also explain why people get inordinately huffy about having their grammar and spelling corrected — the fanfic ceases to be about writing, but rather about interacting with fandom at large
This is an interesting observation, and I wonder how much this is a recent phenomenon. Now there’s a proliferation of online fandom hubs, but Back in the Day fanfic by and large went on FFN and then if you wanted to discuss you moved over to a BBS, so fic definitely felt more about writing because the discussions went on elsewhere.
I also think there’s been an increased push to Contribute in order to bypass the gatekeepers in general, so you may get a lot more people who don’t really care about fanfic as a medium but just want to be able to say they did something. In the past I felt like even people who were shitty writers at least aspired to be good ones and got upset because of that, whereas it does feel now like many fewer care.
I also think there’s been an increased push to Contribute in order to bypass the gatekeepers in general
Hm, I wonder if that’s also interacting badly with the fact so many don’t seem to have a proper computer. “I can’t edit because I wrote it on my ipad!” has somehow come up multiple times. They’re doing something they aren’t interested in, so they don’t get the proper tools, so it’s unnecessarily hard even for the terrible result. It’s like drawing all your fanart in Paint.
(…also, I wonder how this connects to anti culture, where often the only content is callout posts and removing other people’s content? Is it a different framework where they aren’t concerned about generating content or is it a way of being “productive” and a valid part of fandom without having to produce fanworks?)
In this view, fanfic becomes less of a writing project and more of a way to contribute to, and discuss, fandom. That would also explain why people get inordinately huffy about having their grammar and spelling corrected — the fanfic ceases to be about writing, but rather about interacting with fandom at large
I think you’re right that sort of attitude makes up a chunk of it. Back before the great tumblring, before even Livejournal, it was private websites or FFN, and FFN took down their original forums not too long after I joined and only introduced PMs many years later, so they were solely a fanfic place for quite some time even as they were also a fandom hub. People often tell me that I’m doing it wrong because people won’t want to be my friend after getting a review and even magnanimously offer to be friends anyway despite my messing up the review overture of friendship. At the same time, it’s not exactly like getting huffy someone corrected your grammar when posting in a thread on a forum or something, because even the very bad stories required more effort than just typing a few words and hitting post. It’s sort of like the idea the amount of work you put into something automatically makes it worth something. Even people who really are just posting their effortless brain vomit still put the effort in of signing up, uploading a document, navigating the weird interface, and filling out all the information to post, so however little effort went into making it, they still strongly felt other people should look at it. Being told it sucks is like being told their taste in cool/funny/clever stuff sucks, and being told to fix the grammar is like being told we’re holding attention hostage until they do meaningless busywork.
An important piece of this puzze is can be seen if you look at the review posts and click the links. Most of the fic is gone. People delete fic constantly because either it isn’t getting the attention they want or it is getting attention but they no longer care about that attention. And it’s not “taking down” fic in the traditional sense, where the author keeps a personal copy, because people regularly say they decided to repost but they don’t have the original any longer so it’ll take a while. The story appears to be viewed as disposable to many/most people on the site. (And the kind of people who get concerned about fanfic and other fanworks disappearing also tend to be of the proper spelling and grammar, let’s trade tips on writing stories, I have five betas class of fan.)
I do not understand tumblr really and suspect no one on tumblr does, but there is something similar to this particular thing where there’s the occasional vagueblog about low effort “…imagine X is some cliche thing. Imagine more cliche bullshit that has no connection to the character. Imagine how this exact post is being made a million times over with random nouns moved around. Imagine me insisting this is super original and insightful.” posts or those ones that tell a completely cliche romance but they’re both girls, or the ones annoucing random headcanons for characters or just pointing out that keysmash misspellings for excitement get old, and then there’s counter-vagueblogs about how SOME PEOPLE are ELITIST ASSHOLES who HATE JOY.
Come to think of it, it’s commonly argued that the big division between boy and girl sides of fandom is boys are all vicious nitpicking of fannish content because socialization differences, and maybe it’s more that centering the fannish experience around forums and discussion of canon makes fan content something that has to earn its consumption by fans, while having fandom revolve around fannish content means people are very sensitive to any barriers to content-making (and policing of content is dressed up as a moral thing where those people can’t be allowed in fandom at all).
I’ve never studied psychology in English, so I’m having a bit of trouble formulating my thoughts.
Well, no one properly uses technical psychology terms in English anyway. The words all end up being misunderstood and misused or just having the meaning drift rapidly away from what it originally meant, and then the poor psychology people try to make new words so they can communicate with each other and the internet steals those too.
Thank you so much for the long reply!
It’s sort of like the idea the amount of work you put into something automatically makes it worth something
So in your view, does it seem as if the action of creating content is given more value than the content itself? That the action of creation has inherent value, so that what matters isn’t the story itself, but the fact that the story was written at all — ‘I did the thing, give me attention!’ Or do you think that the intent to interact with fandom, and the effort put into interacting with fandom, supersedes the quality of the story itself and must therefore be acknowledged positively? Signing up, navigating the site, etc., all represent some kind of effort one puts into interacting with the fandom at large, and this effort must be politely (and thus unambiguously positively) acknowledged?
they still strongly felt other people should look at it
But is this because they think the idea itself is worth being looked at, because they wrote something and feel as if whatever they produced is entitled to be looked at, or because writing fanfic is just ‘the done thing’ in fandom, just the standard way of interacting with other parts of fandom? (Might this perhaps be the difference between people getting upset when you point out their plot is clichéd versus people responding with ‘omg it’s JUST fanfic don’t take it so seriously, jeez’?)
it’s commonly argued that the big division between boy and girl sides of fandom
Hm, I wonder if this ‘if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all’ mindset came about due to the fact that fandom spaces tend to be relatively female-majority? Tumblr, at least, seems to have a stereotypically feminine culture, where directly criticising or critiquing someone or something is considered aggressive and is generally frowned upon, but vague, passive-aggressive whinging about others is entirely kosher.
I have noticed (during my one, ill-fated foray into Tumblr fandom culture, so do take this with a grain of salt) that it seems as if any fan content, no matter how objectively terrible, is (and must be) acknowledged positively — the dominant culture seems to be that fan content does not need to earn its consumption, but rather the creation of fan content of any kind is seen almost as a favour to the community. I’m not sure if this is due to the demographics of Tumblr or because fandoms are ranked by the popularity of tags (and as we all know, social media is just another vehicle for high-school popularity dynamics). Furthermore, I’m not sure if this culture projects quite so neatly to FFN writers either. In your experience, does it seem like the nature of the huffiness elicited by your reviews has changed must within the past decade? Has the proportion of people going ‘how dare you criticise my idea’ versus the proportion of people going ‘how dare you not say anything nice to me’ changed?
(This is neither here nor there, but I’m a little concerned about the broader implications of the whole be-nice-or-say-nothing culture so endemic to some of the more mainstream progressive areas of the internet (such as Tumblr, Buzzfeed, etc.), especially since a lot of teenagers are socialised predominantly online nowadays. It troubles me that repression and simmering resentment masked by superficial politeness might become the dominant culture of the next few decades, because these are deeply unhealthy behaviours that oughtn’t be glorified or promoted as virtues. I really hope I’m just overthinking it and this won’t actually come to pass.)
Well, no one properly uses technical psychology terms in English anyway.
Ah, okay, good to know!
I’m a little concerned about the broader implications of the whole be-nice-or-say-nothing culture so endemic to some of the more mainstream progressive areas of the internet (such as Tumblr, Buzzfeed, etc.), especially since a lot of teenagers are socialised predominantly online nowadays. It troubles me that repression and simmering resentment masked by superficial politeness might become the dominant culture of the next few decades, because these are deeply unhealthy behaviours that oughtn’t be glorified or promoted as virtues.
This is one of my least favorite things about tumblr, and I’ve thought a lot about it because I think it’s really dangerous, too.
I think it ties very deeply into the militant, almost extremist progressivist culture of the site. A lot of the content that’s being created there is being created by people who are part of marginalized groups as a way to see themselves in fandom — which is great! However, because of tumblr’s callout culture mixed with ultraprogressivism, everyone is fucking terrified to criticize anything with any group in it for fear of having to spend the rest of their lives explaining that they aren’t a horrible bigot, they just didn’t like a certain piece. Mix this in with standard Cult of Nice stuff, and you have an environment where no one feels like they’re able to actually express their feelings, because if they do, they get harassed off the site.
Stepping back further, the average tumblr user is under 25, and I think is something like 15 or 16, which is a huge huge huge contributor to this. 15-year-olds are still feeling out their identities, learning about society and life, and, importantly, see the world in very black-and-white terms. 15-year-olds have learned that racism is bad, which is great! But they don’t yet have the experience or prefrrontal cortex development to see nuance and long-reaching consequences, so this lesson warps into ‘anyone who has ever said or done anything racist is a bad person, because racism is bad.’ This is how callout culture started. As you get older and your brain finishes growing, you learn that people change, and people make mistakes, and the world can’t be that easily separated into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ people, and sometimes good people say and do bad things and sometimes bad people reform and become good people because we’re all constantly growing and changing. But teenagers don’t know that, because they can’t, and that’s why we don’t let them make long-term decisions. But because of platforms like tumblr where they congregate have gotten so powerful, we’re in the very dangerous position of letting 15-year-olds pilot sweeping social movements, and because they’re kids, the thoughts are very black-and-white, very me-first, and in that world saying ‘this story about lesbians is terribly written’ is the same as saying ‘this story is about lesbians which is terrible’ because of course it is, they’re 15, that’s what 15-year-olds do. All teenagers are, were, and forever will be like this.
The issue is that adults have started to get swept up in this instead of being a moderating factor, and that’s what’s troblesome for the long-term. When a 35-year-old is so afraid of a 15-year-old calling them a bigot they won’t level criticism at the 15-year-old, everyone needs to stop and check themselves. It is vitally important that adults become mitigating factors in all aspects of teenagers life, but because they internet is as a whole so young things got way, way out of control before that was able to happen, and now we have kind of a mess.
I think –and hope– that as the first tumblr generation ages they’ll realize the same thing all people who grow up realize, which is that they didn’t have it all figured out at 15, and we can stop trying to explain to them that it isn’t feminist to wear eyeliner just because you want to. But in the meantime, there is this dangerously repressive antibullying culture that bullies people into silence and doxxes them and just generally tortures other kids because that’s what kids do, and right now parents are still just too old to really understand. I think when millenials start to have children you’ll start to see more nuane in kids’ online interactions because parents will understand the pitfalls, so this won’t last forever, but in the meantime it can be very dangerous, and as a result we have a whole generation learning to placate and acquiese in order to not be attacked, which is emotionally traumatizing and dangerous.
Unfortunately I think all that can be done in the short term is for the actual adults in the room to speak louder and not be afraid of a brigade of 17-year-olds, who admittedly can be scary online, but who can’t do you any actual harm and by and large are just trying their best, if misguidedly.
In my experience, it’s actually been the opposite. Tumblrities criticize progressive media vehemently, to the point that a lot of other people have started to complain about it. A lot of the adults may have tapped out, but the teenagers are still at it. Nobody seems afraid of offending anyone; all the discussions I’ve seen look like bare-knuckle brawls. (The exceptions are, indeed, fanfic stuff, but I think that’s likely a holdover from general fanfic culture rather than something that originated on Tumblr.)
The main problem I’ve seen is the lack of discussion. Tumblr is just not set up for proper long-form communication, and I think this more than anything is why the culture has become so black-and-white, or perhaps why the black-and-white thinkers have dominated. Lost of people do make opinion posts, but either no one picks them up and they’re swept away in the tide, or everyone dogpiles them all at once. A blogger can maybe respond to one or two replies, but typically discussion ends there. This creates an environment where no one can ever be shaken of black-and-white thinking, because their only options are to shout into the void, sit in an echo chamber, or defend themselves against all comers. None of those are good.
(Callout culture likely makes this even worse. Because discussions can get so aggressive, it’s hard for someone to know you’re arguing in good faith and not just spearheading a harassment campaign; better to take the nuclear option and wall yourself off any time anyone tries to talk to you.)
In my experience, it’s actually been the opposite. Tumblrities criticize progressive media vehemently, to the point that a lot of other people have started to complain about it.
I’ve seen both, and the difference IME has been personal likes/dislikes (holy, no room for disagreement) versuspop media crit (everything sucks and you suck too). I think this goes back to the same black-and-white mentallity you see in that age group (dominant culture has issues = EVERYTHING IS ONE GIANT PROBLEMATIC FOREVER EVEN WHEN EVERYONE TRIES THEIR BEST), and yeah, the bullying and dogpiling is equally bad.
The fact that tumblr’s format actively discourages discussion is indeed one of the problems. I think the fact that you’re inundated with notifications and responses all at once and all on the first thing people see instead of the last thing that was said means people feel hugely overwhelmed very quickly, whereas when everything was on forums it was necessarily linear and someone who ignored a whole thread was treated as being rude. Plus you could take responses one at a time and didn’t receive 5500 emails from all the people who think you’re wrong, immedaitely have a panic attack and want to crawl in a hole and die, a thing that has definitely never happened to me nope.
So, I saw the following post on a tumblr:
I was curious, so I threw my line in the water to see what might bite it:
And their response:
Why are you talking to people on Tumblr. Do you hate yourself.
Anyway, yes, that isn’t very surprising. It’s in line with the culture we’ve seen so far.
The issue is that adults have started to get swept up in this instead of being a moderating factor, and that’s what’s troblesome for the long-term.
Yes, I absolutely agree! I think a contributing factor to this is that, because social media sites determine so much the esprit du temps, we end up with, as you said, political movements being lead by teenagers with a very black-and-white view of the world. Add to that the fact that, as Tumblr-esque progressivism becomes the mainstream, it becomes profitable for progressive news-sites and online spaces to market themselves (and their products) to these teens. Of course, in order to appeal to this consumer base, they have to adopt their values (often in a watered-down form) and hence facilitate the spreading of certain toxic ideas. The problem is, this implicitly validates a lot of the toxic ideas, such as Tumblr’s one-strike-you’re-out system, so many people might not even realise it’s a problem. (And because any outsider criticising the system can be shouted down as problematic, we end up with a system wherein moderation of the community becomes a Sisyphean task.) I think you’re very right in that many of the adults that should be stepping in and preventing a lot of the bullying that happens on the platform are instead either swept up in the culture or silenced. More cynically, it seems that some of the adults who should be attempting to moderate discussion have instead seen this extreme with-us-or-against-us mindset as a marketing opportunity rather than as a problem with potentially far-reaching sequelae.
I think one of the things that frustrates me so much about Tumblr is that a lot of the kids, bless them, have their hearts in the right place but the actual execution of their ideas tends to be so backwards. Which, as you said, is because they’re kids, and they aren’t capable of nuanced reasoning the way adults are — but they’re kids growing up in spaces where the dominant culture encourages this way of thinking. I suppose my biggest fear is that this phenomenon is self-perpetuating — this generation grows up in a culture that vacillates between self-flagellation as a placating tactic and and extreme, concerted bullying, then subsequently imparting the same values to their own children.
Tumblr-esque progressivism becomes the mainstream
Don’t forget, Tumblr also isn’t interested in its views becoming the mainstream, it’s interested in its views being progressive. So as their views become more and more mainstream, they latch onto even more extreme platforms. Everyone on Tumblr is oppressed somehow if they think about it hard enough and compartmentalize the average joe into specific enough subsets.
Apparently, the queer umbrella is so fucking massive now that even I am under it, according to some people. Which was news to me.
@St. Elmo’s Fire: Ahah, well, to be fair, it was a post made by a friend of my brother’s, and not just some random fandom weirdo on Tumblr.
(I’m actually aquainted with this fandom weirdo. Which is different.)
Tumblr also isn’t interested in its views becoming the mainstream, it’s interested in its views being progressive.
You’re right that progressivism for the sake of progressivism is certainly endemic to Tumblr, and it does lead to treadmilling of progressive platforms, which could ultimately lead to extremism. With that being said, I think that’s mostly a vocal minority though — in my (admittedly limited) experience, it seems that most people do want progressive views to enter the mainstream.
Everyone on Tumblr is oppressed somehow if they think about it hard enough and compartmentalize the average joe into specific enough subsets.
Hahaha, yes! I usually chalk that up to the typical teenage persecution complexes and attraction to the counter-culture, but it’s also a way to build a group identity. If the dominant members of society are white, cisgender, heterosexual males, then it stands to reason that non-white, queer, non-males make up the counter-culture; the aforementioned groups have been, and are currently, oppressed; ergo, being oppressed is ‘good’ (in the sense that it gives you Tumblr-cred) so in order to fit in, one has to become an oppressed mass, thus perpetuating the cycle. Don’t get me wrong — there are a lot of marginalised identities who find their voices of platforms like Tumblr, which is great! And this does allow for the building of a strong group identity, which has its own positives and negatives. But it also leads to this rather ridiculous situation you described wherein everyone on Tumblr is somehow oppressed.
the queer umbrella is so fucking massive now
Oh my goodness yes. I once got into an argument with someone on Tumblr about my own sexuality. It’s well-intentioned, of course — it stems from the idea that all sexualities/sexual identities are valid and deserve representation, which is something I agree with. The problem is that everything must be labelled and classified, so then you end up with this huge, confusing taxonomy of human sexuality. And because one’s sexuality is such an individual experience, you still end up with people not feeling seen/acknowledged, which then leads to an even broader system of classification, and so on.
in my (admittedly limited) experience, it seems that most people do want progressive views to enter the mainstream
My point wasn’t so much that people don’t want a more progressive mainstream, especially as far as Tumblr goes, but so much that it is ancillary of their true desire. They want to be seen as progressive, so they try to force the mainstream to become more progressive, which leads to them getting even more progressive in response. The fact that they make the mainstream more progressive is irrelevant.
That said, progressivism will always tends towards more extreme forms of itself (in the most neutral sense I can use the word “extreme”). What would be seen as progressive in 1960 would be a moderate conservative view now, and what would be seen as progressive in 1860 would be downright racist.
I’m a bit pressed for time in writing this right now, so I’ll leave out a tangent about the different in socital context between the interracial kiss in Star Trek TOS and the gay (and, if memory serves, interracial) kiss in the current Star Trek series. Long story short, that gay kiss is nowhere near as radically progressive as it’d have been ten years ago, let alone if it had been Kirk kissing a black man, or even a white man.
Don’t get me wrong — there are a lot of marginalised identities who find their voices of platforms like Tumblr, which is great!
In theory, true. In practice, I find this to not be the case as much as you’d think, at least for the people who aren’t the gold and silver medallists in oppression olympics. I’ve seen tons of anti-polyamory stuff on Tumblr, for example. All my forms of possible oppressed-by-tumblr-standards oppression are like that.
Tumblr also has the common problem with safe places, though: It’s not a place where people can talk without fear of reprisal (for lack of a better word) so much as a place where no one “unsafe” can talk without fear of reprisal. Someone on this site summed it up better than I did once, along those lines.
It’s well-intentioned, of course — it stems from the idea that all sexualities/sexual identities are valid and deserve representation, which is something I agree with.
Here, it gets into kinda “so specific it’s vague” territory. It’s like… yeah, it’s more complex than “straight”, and “not straight”, or even “same/both/other”, but what Tumblr does is like… making your folders so insanely specific that only one file fits in each folder, but there are as many folders as there are files.
That said, I’m personally fine with a lack of representation for my sexuality, because my sexuality is asexuality. I’m not against seeing asexual characters (or any other non-straight characters), but I’m not really chuffed if everyone is fucking but me.
Both my current series on AOOO feature asexual characters, but I bet you’d never be able to tell who they are, because I didn’t do it to increase asexual representation for representation’s sake, and at this point, haven’t written anything where it was important to explicitly call attention to that yet. Even though one of the asexual characters is a participant in an M rated bondage fic. It’s just… it suited the character, so I wrote them as asexual.
Asexual representation is just… personally, not that big a deal to me, ya know? I dunno, maybe there’s some reason why, but… If I wanted to bother with sexual identities, I wouldn’t be asexual, ya know? I’m just not interested fucking. Not men, not women, not either, not neither, not anything else you’d care to name. Don’t matter who you are, I don’t want to fuck you, so it doesn’t matter to me. Sexually, it’s just “I’m not interested”. Sociologically, it’s “nope, staying out of this one”.
But that’s just my take on it, though. I’ve been so trained by Tumblr that I’m actually kinda leery posting this, even though I’m just saying “I’m not interested in having sex and I don’t particularly care that I rarely see characters explicitly like me”, even though this site is not even a tenth as far-left as Tumblr is. I generally refrain from talking about sexuality and politics here, because I’m very argumentative but don’t want to start an argument here ’cause y’all are good peoples, and even my largely free-market economics and pro-gun stances seem a bit too conservative to avoid getting into one here.
Maybe I’m just an aphobic asexual.
But is this because they think the idea itself is worth being looked at, because they wrote something and feel as if whatever they produced is entitled to be looked at, or because writing fanfic is just ‘the done thing’ in fandom, just the standard way of interacting with other parts of fandom?
I think a lot of them aren’t thinking this out consciously.
No one posts something they think has no redeeming value. If you share a joke and someone tells you it isn’t funny, they’re insulting your taste! Why do they have to be so picky??? The harder you worked to share the joke, the more annoying it is when someone doesn’t appreciate it and worse, calls into question your own judgment about what’s cool. And if someone says out loud, “No that’s lame lol!” then everyone else who looks at the situation might decide that’s the cooler response and they’re going to say that instead, so everyone thinks your joke is stupid now just because that one person had to be an ungrateful jerk who wanted to look cool by tearing you down.
People who put in no effort are offended because they think the idea is cool and why are you telling them they have to jump through hoops when they were just trying to share this cool idea they had. And the more effort they put into it, the more obvious it is that they thought this was a good idea and spent a lot of time working to make it good, so the more its failure is a reflection on them. I know even people crapping out no-effort stuff care deeply about what it means to their brand or whatever, because they’re constantly deleting it for reasons like moving to a new fandom and not being interested in the old one.
I just saw this epic rant about how all concrit is garbage because who the hell do you think you are, you dumbass reader, to think YOU know ANYTHING about how stories work???? When the author WANTS opinions, the author asks SMART PEOPLE, who are NOT YOUR STUPID ASS and have ACTUAL USEFUL THOUGHTS. What makes you think the author could possibly care about your thoughts? SHUT UP YOU ENTITLED IDIOTS!!!!!!!! DON’T YOU REALIZE HOW HURTFUL IT IS TO BE TOLD SOMEONE DOESN’T LIKE YOUR FIC WHEN YOU THINK THEIR JUDGEMENT IS MEANINGLESS AND YOUR FIC IS GREAT??? from someone who of course would love to hear comments about how great their story is ;) from these same drooling idiots and of course will be deleting if they don’t get enough driveby kudos because that means their story must be bad.
People have no clue why they do things. They have feelings, they don’t examine those feelings, and then they shout whatever in the moment will make it seem like those are just the product of common sense and/or logical reason.
In your experience, does it seem like the nature of the huffiness elicited by your reviews has changed must within the past decade? Has the proportion of people going ‘how dare you criticise my idea’ versus the proportion of people going ‘how dare you not say anything nice to me’ changed?
This is actually hard to map onto general fandom culture, because over the years reviews have plummeted. It used to be you got a dozen reviews for posting something that wasn’t a blank upload or a bunch of unreadable html coding.
A lack of reviews over on FFN means less puffed-ego authors (if you’re told you’re awesome then being told you’re okay is a stab to the heart) and a greater interest in doing things that might get you reviews, and that seems to be way more powerful than any broader fandom trend.
In the AOOOOOOOOO/tumblr/megafandom/fanart sphere, there’s definitely an unpleasant interaction between NO BULLYING EVER and callout culture, where leaving any sort of criticism is monstrous and possibly triggering/ableist, but if someone does something that’s possibly wrong you have to flame them off the internet and then dox them to be sure they can never return. So the only point of criticism is to hurt people who deserve it, and if you are giving criticism, it’s because you explicitly think the person should kill themself for being *ist garbage and you will not stop until they do.
…the only good news I can give here is that Cult of Nice used to be how things were run in fandom. What you’re seeing now is the nearly lapsed We’ll Show Up For Christmas and Easter of Nice. I just wish it hadn’t been replaced by Cult of Literally We Have Driven People To Suicide And It Just Encouraged Us To Work Harder.
Unfortunately I think all that can be done in the short term is for the actual adults in the room to speak louder and not be afraid of a brigade of 17-year-olds, who admittedly can be scary online, but who can’t do you any actual harm and by and large are just trying their best, if misguidedly.
The problem there is they preemptively protected themselves against adult moderation by declaring all women should be off the internet knitting and doing taxes because they’re ADULTS and fandom is for CHILDREN and if you’re here it’s just because you’re a pedo trying to exploit children’s innocent trust and/or ruin fandom forever.
That’s why you have to put your age on your profile and say anyone older than X age isn’t allowed to look at your tumblr at all, you creeps! Only people who have “I am definitely fifteen.” in their profile can be trusted, because no one would ever lie about their age on the internet.
Cult of Literally We Have Driven People To Suicide And It Just Encouraged Us To Work Harder.
If you’re referring to Zamii with the “literally driven to suicide”, I’m fairly sure she’s said that that the bullying wasn’t as big a factor as people make it out to be, and also not to use her as a bludgeon against fandom.
She was neither the first nor the last, and it’s pretty worrying anyone would feel the need to explain that actually they’re just so clumsy and fell into a lot of doorknobs.
I think it’s important that the full story gets told instead of the telephone game of “SJWs made this girl try to commit suicide”, especially when the girl herself doesn’t want that to be the only known version of events.
The full story is, some people said, “Holy shit, this is horrible! They’re bullying people into suicide!” and some other people said, “Holy shit, this is awesome! We’re bullying people into suicide! This is good because anyone we bully is bad!”
This seems relevant to what you have to say. I think this correlates to the male/female fandom distinction you mentioned. By and large, it seems that male fan communities have stuck to their classic way of doing things (hell, I still personally use IRC for god’s sake) while female fan communities have pretty much entirely migrated to Web 2.0 style websites like Tumblr and AO3. Male fan communities still have moderaters with their power rooted in administrative abilities, whereas female fan communities have moderaters with their powers rooted in peer pressure and groupthink.
It’s weird to think about why it happened, though – why did female communities have issues with moderating? Were they more likely to get harassed by outsiders or was it an internal problem? Did individuals just prefer being in control of their own space? It might be that some of this is an artifact of male fandom defining themselves by closeness to canon, so they generally all agree on the goal and then fight each other to the death about who was right there on the forum, while female fandom is more likely to view multiple options as equal choices, so many small spaces works better than one big one. (I wonder if there’s anything similar in waifu-type fandoms, where the group breaks apart based on who their preferred character is?)
Actually, hm. Under what circumstances do male groups divide? Right from the start fic communities fractured on lines like which ship would be canon. If female groups make their own separate communities around any major division and male groups stick together despite quietly/loudly hating the other camp, then individual male communities will be larger and more long-lasting than female ones. That alone would means more churn, meaning people get frustrated and end up seeking personal spaces, which ends in tumblr.
(I think maybe GG might be a time when male communities did this. I know there was a lot of chatter about people leaving this website or that website based on which side was taken, but I don’t know if that was unusual.)
It’s weird to think about why it happened, though – why did female communities have issues with moderating?
I don’t think it was an issue with the moderation, so much as what you say later in your post, about how the format that just so happened to have less formal moderation was the one more condusive to content creation and splintering. If women had a problem with the fact of moderation itself, they probably would’ve just splintered off into their own forums where they were the moderators.
Because it’s not as if they don’t have moderation, it’s just informal moderation based on force of personality and peer pressure rather than formal power invested by a codified power structure. For me, interacting with female-fandoms feels more like trying to sneak my way into the hirearchy of power of a clique of pretty popular high school girls who hate the main character in a shitty Young Adult novel than it does arguing about whether or not female dwarves have beards in Lord of the Rings at a D&D table.
Did individuals just prefer being in control of their own space?
This is definitely one of the things. I definitely get a stronger sense of community arguing with my (largely male) friend group of RPG players than I do trying to interact with fandoms. When I try to do something fandom-ish, it always feels like I’m just shouting into the wind, and I’m always surprised when I get a response. It amazes me how some fics on AO3 have literal tens of thousands of views in the same time it took my entire library of work to get less than 2,000. I write fanfiction for myself, and only myself, because I feel as if I am the only person who is even reading it in the first place! I take an identical approach to writing original fiction that I do fanfiction, so there’s not much fandom bait to entice in readers.
Hell, I feel a stronger sense of being part of a community here, because here feels a lot more like a Web 1.0 forum for actual discussion rather than just making a thing and throwing it into a pit of wolves to devour like a hunk of meat.
When I respond to one of Mini-Farla’s pokemon review blocks, I could get into an argument with Illhousen or Keleri that Mini-Farla has no part in. With fandom (especially on Tumblr), it feels like I’m interacting with community based around a single fan rather than with a community based on the work the fan is a fan of. There’s no way to have a group discussion. It’s all Commenter to Poster. There’s no way to really effectively do Commenter to Commenter discussion based on the same post, because Tumblr is explicitly designed to discourage that.
It might be that some of this is an artifact of male fandom defining themselves by closeness to canon.
Probably. Even when you get into theorizing and what female-fandom would call headcanoning, you get people arguing over who is right, rather than splitting into groups where everyone can be right.
I think a way to put it would be, like… male fandoms do alternate history scenarios by trying to find the most probable outcome given a specific change in a story or setting, whereas female fandoms… try to find a specific change that would result in the outcome they want?
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen alt histories far more radically changed than my own ASOIAF alt history series (where I took an event, changed it, and tried to come up with what would happen after that) that seem to have radically changed as many points as needed to justify a ship-pairing, no matter how illogical the pairing or premise is.
One that comes to mind was a story where Viserys Targaryen basically sent a letter to the Iron Throne saying “hey, you stole my throne, the at least you can do is give me one of your daughters as a wife in payment” so he ended up married to Sansa Stark and everything was shippy.
I think you might see a similar thing in people explaining why trainers start older than ten?
(I wonder if there’s anything similar in waifu-type fandoms, where the group breaks apart based on who their preferred character is?)
Oh, gods no. The harem anime threads are some of the most divisive things on 4chan’s anime board. Go on /a/, start a thread with a picture of a girl from a harem anime (I suggest Infinite Stratos), and make a comment like “[girl in OP] a best, [any other girl from the same anime] a shit”. They’ll take the bait.
Literally the only exception to this rule I’ve ever seen is the series High School DxD, because /a/ kind of agrees that pretty much every girl in it is best girl. You wouldn’t expect a series where the main character gets an upgrade to his dragon-themed suit of magical power armour by poking his girlfriend’s nipples would be the topic of the most civil threads on the entire board, would you?
Oddly enough, this sort of mentality (which isn’t specific to waifu wars by a long shot) makes me feel safer to express my opinion than supposed safe spaces do. When I know my opinion will be treated as terrible and immediately challenged, and I will be forced to defend and validate it, I feel like my opinion is being treated far more seriously than if everyone just agreed everyone is valid and didn’t challenge anything. Acquaintances agree, friends argue, and a sword is only good once it’s been tempered.
I think maybe GG might be a time when male communities did this.
GG?
Because it’s not as if they don’t have moderation, it’s just informal moderation based on force of personality and peer pressure rather than formal power invested by a codified power structure. For me, interacting with female-fandoms feels more like trying to sneak my way into the hirearchy of power of a clique of pretty popular high school girls who hate the main character in a shitty Young Adult novel than it does arguing about whether or not female dwarves have beards in Lord of the Rings at a D&D table.
But that’s widely regarded as a problem by female fans as well, not something we intended. Same for the shouting into the void problem. People complain constantly about how much they want things that often sound like forums and how much they hate mean girls clique rules and isolation. And there’s also an enormous amount of effort spent on tearing down anyone who is or might be one of Those Popular Girls.
It might just be my lack of familiarity with all fandom platforms, but LJ’s post system was pretty good – the way threads split meant you were allowed to have digressions. The main problem it had was the combination of privacy settings and links between communities and personal journals, which could end up with a fic community that was nothing but links to locked posts by people who wouldn’t reply when you tried to get access. AOOOOOOOOO pretty much fixed that one by having their privacy settings divide between public and archive members only. Despite its overlap, AOOOOOOO is actually really different fannishly than tumblr – it’s built on the LJ and earlier assumption all fic is precious and doxxing is wrong and oh.
Anonymous vs namespace. Boy fandom turns into adult jobs – the ascended fan. Girl fandom gets you fired from your job. So there’s less point to fighting for your place on the “official” forum, or even the semi-official one, and that’s going to be another thing pushing toward decentralized chaos.
Bluh. There’s just so many things contributing. Everyone agrees the current state of affairs sucks, but like with reviews and concrit, they don’t really know what the solution is or even how we got here.
But that’s widely regarded as a problem by female fans as well, not something we intended.
I didn’t intend to imply that. See, this is my inexperience with fandom platforms showing: I didn’t know if that was the typical feeling or not so I just said what it felt like to me personally. Though I will add that I don’t think it’s intentional rather than a byproduct of the content creation platform congregation lacking a way to prevent it. The cliquishness pops up in the content creation platform fandoms for the same reason the cliquishness pops up elsewhere. That said, I didn’t even really mean that it felt like trying to get into a Mean Girl Clique. Most of the people I’ve personally interacted with on tumblr fandom have been pretty nice to me. The tone was cliquish but cordial, I suppose it is?
LJ’s post system was pretty good – the way threads split meant you were allowed to have digressions
I have absolutely no interaction with livejournal at all, save for reading a few posts on George RR Martin’s about fanfiction, so I wouldn’t know. Hell, the bulk of what I know about FFN comes from this site.
As far as content creation fandom platforms go, AO3 definitely seems like it’s about as good as you can find right now, and it’s primary problem is the userbase.
Boy fandom turns into adult jobs – the ascended fan. Girl fandom gets you fired from your job. So there’s less point to fighting for your place on the “official” forum, or even the semi-official one, and that’s going to be another thing pushing toward decentralized chaos.
… Eeeh, I disagree with this, if only for the simple reason that the official discussion forum model still works off the Web 1.0 concept of “why the fuck are you even considering connecting this with your real space life in the first place?” Girls in Boy Fandom circles can become ascended fans too, because no one knows they’re girls until they ascend and their identities become public. But, male or female, comic books fans don’t ascend to be comic book writers when an editor comes into a forum and goes “hey, big name fan, wanna write comics?”
Perhaps it’s possible that Girl Fandom is more likely to get you fired from your job because Boy Fandom is less likely to produce Weird Fanfiction, and when it does, it’s far less likely that you can connect someone’s Weird Fanfiction back to their Real Life Name?
Also, from here on, I feel as if it’d be better to refer to Boy Fandom as Discussion Fandom and Girl Fandom as Creation Fandom, ’cause of gendered stuff and whatnot?
I don’t think it’s really fare to just communities by the ascended fans. It’s not indictative of what someone can reasonably expect by being part of a fandom.
Also, from here on, I feel as if it’d be better to refer to Boy Fandom as Discussion Fandom and Girl Fandom as Creation Fandom, ’cause of gendered stuff and whatnot?
You’d think you can escape the gender, but you cannot!
Game fandom is all about creative additions. People code new videogames and they write new TRPGs and then they novelize the both of them, and they’re male, shouty, and centralized. (And they do put a lot of stock into actually having X suppliments and into working in accordance to the guidelines set out.) Meanwhile, plenty of manga fandom has been discussion heavy and squabbling over canon, but the great Bleach wars over which girl Protagonist Whatshisface ends up with literally splits fandom into two different sets of communities that both go private and start trying to find spies in their own ranks while sending spies into the other community. You can even see this in how super different brony fandom was despite being enormously based on fic and art and having little interest in keeping strictly to canon.
Welp. I tried. Fair enough.
Yooo, do y’all mind if I clip a few pieces of this conversation for my teaching-of-composition class (specifically the discussion about why people seem to care less than they used to). This is apparently a discinpline-wide thing instructors are trying to cope with and I’m fascinated that we’ve noticed it way out here is basically the exact same terms as people who do this for a living have, so I think it’d be useful to bring up.
You certainly have my blessing.
It depends on the person. Some care very deeply about the approval they get, others don’t care at all. I do wonder if they might become a bit less high-strung if they realize it’s okay to have multiple or different reasons for writing fanfic.
It’s an exaggeration of the original, “Why are you so ungrateful for free entertainment that someone else made in their spare time?” It doesn’t matter what the actual reason for the author doing it is. It just keeps getting pumped up to sound more dramatic and guilt-trippy. In another decade it’ll be about how for all you know this person selflessly wrote this fic as a gift for you specifically and died in the process! It’s just about piling on qualifiers to take this from media, where opinions are allowed, to not-media, where if you don’t have anything nice to say about it don’t say anything at all.