#response to previous problem

[damnfandomproblems]

8570

Some people think any woman who gets married and has kids immediately turns into a stereotypical 1950's sitcom housewife who has no life outside of her marriage and is totally submissive. As if marriage and children magically turn you into a completely different human being, as if it weren't currently considered normal to have both kids and a career, and as if women who DO choose to be stay at home mothers are somehow LESSER than women with careers.

People who think like that think they're being feminist, when in reality those ideas are rooted in traditional misogyny. It's the same mindset that led to many employers firing women the moment they got married and/or pregnant, and why in many time periods only single women were allowed to be employed. Sexism is the reason it's illegal for employers to ask if you plan on getting married or having kids, but they try, anyway, hoping you don't know your rights.

TLDR: The antis you described probably think they're being feminist when they're actually being mega-sexist.

Posting as a response to a previous problem.

[damnfandomproblems]

I’ve tried to stay quiet about it but 5414 confirmed that it’s becoming too big of an issue: can we just get Xtians out of fandom please lmao

Fandom is supposed to be anti-bigotry and that won’t happen with Xtians and frankly any religious freaks being allowed. It’s probably the one fandom issue where I support gatekeeping; when it protects the common good of fandom. Call me an anti all you want but the religious have no place in fandom whatsoever. People come to this blog and complain and whine about purity culture and bigotry ruining fandoms, well guess what? The Xtian vermin you let sneak into your precious fandoms are the cause of every “fandom problem” listed on this blog. Literally 99% of these issues would be gone if people stood up and drove religion-crazed delusional lunatics out of their fandoms.

And don’t pretend religious people who don’t support bigotry exist. All. Religion. Is. Inherently. Bigoted.

No one wants you or your delusion in their fandoms. You contribute nothing. Do everyone a favor and fuck right out of your fandoms, please!

Posting as a response to a previous problem.

[damnfandomproblems]

775317555668713472

I often see people with DNIs insist they're effective and work, because their interactions go down. But they always fail to recognize the simple fact that the DNIs aren't usually working because people who are on the DNI choose to follow it, and that's where the reduction in interactions comes from. No, that reduction is largely people who aren't on the DNI at all, but just don't want to deal with someone who doesn't know the first two shits about how internet space curation works, and who thinks virtue signalling all over is healthy. It screams melodramatic, high-strung, and overly controlling.

Posting as a response to a previous ask.

[damnfandomproblems]

#6552:

What I find such a weird change these days is that when I was a minor, it was a universal understanding that fandom in general was not for minors regardless of the franchise it was build on. It always was an adult space, as adults were and still are after all the people who make most fancreations, host zines, create merch, host entire conventions, and so forth. Any minors who came into fandom, like me back then, had to be mindful of that and understand that they are the ones who are technically not supposed to be there

Yet these days there are so many minors who almost act entitled and think that adults, who had been there first and had created fandom as it is today, should not be in certain or any fandom spaces. While also at the same time constantly trying to interact with the adult content adult creators make, no matter how much they ask them not to do that

Which even happens in fandoms for franchises that are full on adult content. These days I majorly create for M or E rated fandoms that depict violence and/or sex and still constantly see minors who complain about adults being there

Posting as a response to a previous problem.

[damnfandomproblems]

7342

Re Lolita.

Maybe it's because I went to an IB school that nailed critical thinking skills into you from a young age (seriously- the difference I see is night and day), but we actually read Lolita in eleventh grade English, and none of us walked away thinking it was a good relarionship. The whole reason they even taught it to us was because it bucks the pervasive stereotype of these people being basement dwelling, slobby freaks, and it shows, like domestic abusers often are, these people are often hiding in plain sight. If that's not a deeply important lesson, I don't know what is.

As far as "I'm grossed out by this, it's fucking pedophilia", good for you, I suppose? Do you want a gold star? I'm pretty sure everyone agrees with you, even the people who have certain kinks related to adult/child relationships. But we're not talking about real pedophilia, we're talking about fictional, and you can't even differentiate between the two which is telling enough of how unable you are to think with your brain.

Posting as a response to a previous problem.

[damnfandomproblems]

About 6020: You turning a white character into a black or brown character because you cannot relate to the white character unless they are the same skin tone as you is the racist take here.

BEFORE some toxic person says, “hehe, says the straight cis white man saying this,” I’m a mixed black woman. I grew up with characters who were the opposite gender or me, a different background than me, and are a different skin tone than me. And yet, I still loved these characters, because of their CHARACTER. I can relate to Peter Parker because I was once a shy and awkward geeky girl in high school who did not know how to talk to a cute guy. I am entertained by a character like Kim Possible because we kind of have similarities, having a mother in the medical field and being dorky and all goo-goo eyes around guys we like.

I don’t give a damn if a character is the same skin tone as me, all I care about is their personality traits and what they bring to the table in that world.

I have integrity. I am currently in the making of making a modern day fantasy story with my non-fandom OCs, both of whom are black characters, but their story is based around how skilled they are at magic and how they navigate their own personal demons and their adult life all while taking down a corrupt magic user. It annoys me to see racebent characters because it’s a waste of time and talent and I just ignore it. You can base a POC character off of a popular white character, but they cannot just be “black version of Popular white character” “Asian version of popular white character,” or literally any minority race version of a popular white character.

The racism in fandom and art communities is so astounding sometimes.

Posting as a response to a previous problem.

[damnfandomproblems]

Responding to 5796 as an adult who grew up chronically online from the 2000s.

I discovered the internet in kindergarten. In online spaces, we'd just play online games like Barbie, Disney, or PBS Kids. I was also an underaged kiddo on fandom as well, like under-13 underage. I was taught a lot of safety stuff like don't engage with NSFW or to hide our names and addresses. Played in the forums of FF.Net, where each fandom had a moderator. I learned what "spamming" was that time the hard way, and learned what RP was too. When I do something wrong, the mods just told me "this is bad, don't do it again" and removed my violations. I also played on fandom wikis before they were called "fandom" now, where there are specific fandom events. Sure some of them have called me weird or peculiar, even to the point of saying "you're posting too much X, can you post less?" in a direct way, but not to the point of harrassment. I even had a fandom friend who's an adult while I was in middle school whom I met through deviantART and chatted through MSN messenger, and they never did anything inappropriate in any way. We just talked about the lore, creative projects, and occasionally our lives but nothing else outside of that.

Then as we get towards the mid 2010s it seems that everyone has some sort of beef with each other. And people seem to have lacked boundaries and people seem to think the other person is hostile, making fandom less like a club and more like a battleground.

I don't know what has changed.

Posting as a response to a previous problem.

[damnfandomproblems]

https://www.tumblr.com/damnfandomproblems/773504583584628736/7213-okay-but-op-what-exactly-is-toxic?source=share

Ok, I am sick and tired of morons equating women to saints and angels, and that the whole world is against them because of their gender.

Toxic feminitity is

a women using her gender to her advantage

keying a guy's car because he dumped her

straight up murdering a guy because he dumped her and only getting a few years for it

beating the shit out of a guy and then calling the police knowing full well that the police will arrest him

throwing a drink in a guy's face and then storming off in an absolute rage all because he wanted to treat her as an equal and split the check

expecting the guy to do all the heavy lifting while dating and have him treat her like a princess

believing they have a right to a guy's money and privacy

murdering their own children in cold blood and then have the stupid feminists feel sorry for her

choosing the fucking bear while swooning over serial killers

expecting to bring nothing but themselves to a relationship but it's perfectly ok for them to change the man into who they want them to be

forcing a guy to give up his hobbies and give all his attention onto her

happy wife, happy life

fully complicit in a brutal crime but the getting a plea deal

weaponizing the family courts to hurt their ex

divorce courts where they get practically everything, even if they did nothing to deserve it

I could go on and on. Women can be just a shitty as men can, the only difference is that they are praised for it.

Posting as a response to a previous ask.

[damnfandomproblems]

772148308684800001

This actually works.

An anti (I think they were like 15 or something, surprise, surprise) had all their friends gang up on my mutual over their incest ship, and posted nasty things about them, taking screenshots of their writing, and even their vents about how the anti wouldn't leave them alone and kept sending people to their blog to blow up their inbox, even though they'd blocked them. The anti also accused my mutual of being homophobic for, and I can't make this up, not shipping a certain toxic gay ship because that type of toxic dynamic didn't interest them. Yes, an anti, making fun of someone for simply not shipping a toxic ship. I told the anti to stop and be nice. They didn't stop. They said they "were" being nice, and played dumb and acted like my mutual was overreacting. Typical anti shit. My mutual had only posted two calm but annoyed posts about the harassment, too, so... Way to misrepresent yet another aspect of the situation, anti.

After this, I was pissed on my mutual's behalf. I'd dealt with antis myself in the past, not even over "toxic" ships but just a canonical ship the antis didn't like, and I wasn't pulling punches anymore. I started taking Internet Archive captures of the anti's blog for the next couple days, archiving all of their most recent posts. Then I went into their inbox - off anon, using my well-established blog with tons of user engagement so I looked credible and they couldn't laugh me off as a troll - and listed links for all the days I captured, with quotes of the most damning lines. I told them, "Is this what you call nice? You do realize your harassment not only stays with the people you harassed for a long time, but once it's online and posted, it can also stay up there forever?"

And I kid you not, they replied with, "Please take it down. I'm uncomfortable having this stuff up there, I didn't mean it". They did a complete 180 on me; they were uncannily polite and subdued. I simply told them, if it makes them uncomfortable seeing bad stuff about them up there, how do they think someone who is having unsubstantiated bad rumors spread about them would feel? And I told them once it's up, it's up forever. I can't take it down. It's loose. Lastly, I told them that anyone else who saw the bullying probably saved captures or screenshots of their own, too, so even if I could take it down, those other screenshots are likely always going to be there anyways. (I had no confirmation that anyone else took captures, but it was a possibility given how nasty they were being.) Moreover, it wasn't just me; people don't like when people act like they did, even if their online buddies think it's cool and funny, and like me, they save receipts to know who to avoid, even in the future.

The anti proceeded to not only pull down all their posts harassing my mutual, but pleaded with their own mutuals to remove their reblogs of said posts. A lot of them didn't, because they were in full-on rage and bully mode, and it just made the anti even more uncomfortable, knowing they couldn't control what their pals were doing.

This was ages ago, but it was so satisfying. Not only did they stop cold in their tracks when they realized just how all of their bullying shit could remain on the internet permanently, but they never said a peep about my mutual again, or even me. It was an instant KO. I don't do this stuff lightly, but for people this ignorant and stupid, sometimes a healthy dose of reality and a taste of their own medicine is enough to make them realize they fucked around and found out.

Posting as a response to a previous ask.

[damnfandomproblems]

7043

Pro tip, if someone ever starts harassing you or giving you trouble on twitter, just go to the internet archive's 'wayback machine' and save the page. It helps a lot to force accountability, and saying you archives their shit can even get them to stop perpetuating the harassment (albeit with some blustering because someone who bullies others is never going to want to look like they made a booboo and are too afraid to keep going).

Posting as a response to a previous problem.

[damnfandomproblems]

Problem 7009:

I disagree with this.

This morning, I read a pretty insightful post about how someone decided to stop posting their fanfiction because they were getting no comments (after the overall amount of comments had steadily declined over time across their fics, as with so many of us), then they discovered a discord server full of people were gushing and praising one of their fics on a server, using all that energy up, boomeranging it all back and forth... but not a single person had given feedback to the author. So all the feedback might as well not have existed to the author.

And it got me thinking about how, on a fundamental level, fandom is about sharing your enthusiasm about something with other people, discussing, praising, ranting, glomping (sorry), etcetera. Authors are a big part of this. They're heavy lifters in a way, they spend hours, months, years of their lives writing. But people are so used to clicking a button for something juicy, burning through it like a cloud of locusts, then going right back to the others, and never even acknowledging the author exists beyond the slightest, bare-bones passing thought. It's like people don't understand authors aren't just content creators. We're not here chasing stats, we're here because we are trying to engage with fandom but instead of posting a ramble or something, we're posting a story as the first move.

Meet us there. Don't leave us in the dark. You don't owe anyone anything, but there's been a social contract of sorts in fandom for decades, and I don't want it to die.

A heart, commenting that you're kudosing again, there are so many things that can go a long way without using up spoons. Even just pre-write a couple comments to paste if you stumble upon a fic you enjoyed.

If you see a fic without any comments, please keep all this stuff in mind.

Posting as a response to a previous problem.

[damnfandomproblems]

re: 8138: "Why are you gatekeeping communities???"

Gee I don't know, maybe it has something to do with fandom activists who very clearly hate what media has to offer and think everything that doesn't bow to their whims is bigoted and must be destroyed or stripped of that which makes it unique and beautiful. Even/ESPECIALLY the cases where anyone with a working frontal lobe understands the work isn't bigoted in the slightest and in fact has the message of "Bigotry is bad" beaten into your skull.

Maybe it has something to do with how the next generation has become the heir to the Moral Guardians of the world, constantly offended and believing everything needs to be sanitized and censored for their personal comfort.

Maybe it has something to do with dipshit kids who go into Rule34 spaces THEY'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE IN and then complain that porn exists in those places.

The entire previous decade has been a demonstration that gatekeeping isn't just necessary, it's VITAL for the existence of fandom. Either learn the etiquette and accept that you cannot control what people enjoy or create and learn to curate your own experience, or get the fuck out.

Posting as a response to a previous problem.

[damnfandomproblems]

#5796

"All are ignorant of the idea that minors are the foundation to fandom. Fandom would not exist if it wasn't for minors being interested in it and starting groups for people to join."

What are you even talking about? That is so wrong I don't even know if I should laugh or cry about that amount of misinformation

Modern Fandom was created in the 60s by middle aged and even older women, way before the internet was a thing. Because no way that minors could have ever been able to create the classic fanzines, filled with fanfics and fanarts, that they printed off, turned into a magazine, and then send off to other fans via mail, all without the internet. Because where the hell would they have had the money from to do that? Same as hosting cons or other fandom meetups. Do you think a bunch of minors would even have the legal ability let alone the funds to do so?

Same as the modern websites like AO3 were made by adults with adults in mind

Also all the way to the 2010s it was still widely known that fandom is majorly an adult space and that minors were expected to behave accordingly and expect to see adults and adult content, and to be respectful about it and curate their own content that they want to see. It is only a fairly recent development that minors suddenly claim that fandom is a space for minors and constantly try to push adults out. They even do that for fandoms where the source material is literally 18+

Posting as a response to a previous problem.

[damnfandomproblems]

Re 7652 :

It's always seemed very ironic to me that the same people talking about "emotional labor" will say "if you don't reblog this you don't care about the plight of X and you're a horrible person". Sorry, I'm not equipped to care about all of the world's problems 24/7.

Posting as a response to a previous problem.

[damnfandomproblems]

6785 Honestly, this one has me torn. On the one hand, I'm a fic writer myself, and I know all too well the frustration of dealing with a generation that clearly hasn't gotten the memo that fandom is supposed to be a community that's kept running by the participation of everyone. I understand the frustration of constantly having to beg for engagement from a generation that's been trained by the algorithm to just keep endlessly scrolling looking for the next hit and clearly think of fic writers as little more than content dispensers who don't have anything better to do than endlessly crank out free entertainment for the gratification of a silent invisible audience and never once stop to consider that giving encouragement to writers is exactly the thing that keeps them writing.

On the other hand, the general fandom atmosphere nowadays makes me wonder whether at least part of the issue is that people aren't reviewing anymore because they're actually afraid to do so, because so many writers have become absolute divas about what sort of feedback is and isn't acceptable. If you say you can't wait for the next update, you get yelled at for "pressuring the author to update", because they can't just be happy that someone is invested in their story and wants it to continue. If you say "This isn't my ship, but I really loved this story anyway!", you get yelled at for "making it all about your ship" by an author who can't just be happy that they're a good enough writer to get someone invested in a ship they're not normally into. If you politely point out a typo or an inconsistency, you get yelled at for "giving unsolicited critique on a free fanfic". Then, if you just give up and just say "Great!" or "Loved it!" because that's about the only thing that feels safe, you get yelled at for not writing a more detailed review because the author can't just be happy that someone loved their story and took the time to say so. By this point I've written at least a couple of long, detailed reviews that I never actually ended up posting for fear that the author would bite my head off just for the blasphemy of saying I understood where the antagonist was coming from.

And that's not even getting into the general amount of policing and bullying that's been going on. When you know you could easily get ostracized just for liking something "problematic" or for having an opinion that the majority has deemed "bad", well, that doesn't exactly make anyone eager to draw attention to themselves, whether by posting fics or reviewing them. I don't think the OP is wrong to be frustrated and angry, just that if fandom wants more engagement, then it needs to do some serious cleaning up that goes beyond just pushing people to engage more.

Posting as a response to a previous problem.

[damnfandomproblems]

In response to Fandom Problem #6253:

"Not when somebody says something negative about a problematic piece of media you like"

Purity culture is, in fact, also about this. Fear over people's moral "purity" of thought leads to a severe restriction of freedom of speech and castigation of people that break those boundaries. It's the reason Henry Miller and D.H. Lawrence were banned for decades. It's the reason Republicans are trying to get the most innocuous boy love Mangas banned from schools and purging queer books from school libraries.

It's the reason fundamental Christians burned HP books in the late 90s and early 00s, and eschew even Disney movies for mention of magic today. It's the reason for the Satanic Panic and the idiotic fear around D&D and heavy metal music causing Devil worship and video games causing violence, all of which has been long since disproved. It's the reason there were groups of panicked mothers nation wide protesting the band KISS and why Fox News lost their minds over 2 seconds of blue alien side boob in Mass Effect.

It's the reason that every single public fanfiction archive before Ao3 got purged of anything queer whether it was adult content or just two teens confessing their feelings. The reason even heterosexual erotica, the most popular published genre, got banned or purged. It's the reason for the Tumblr and DeviantArt porn and erotica art ban. It's the reason Ao3 has a team of lawyers and has faced multiple online attacks over the last few years.

The same reason people in less tolerant countries are legitimately terrified of their fiction preferences being found out. It's the same bloody reason Salman Rushdie has a 3 million pound price on his head and lost an eye only 2 years ago to an assassination attempt.

Noticing a pattern of extremism that has its roots in religious "purity" culture managing to trickle into even the most insular of fandom communities isn't a misuse of the term purity culture. It's a complete understanding of its give an inch, and it'll take a mile mentality. Most "proshippers" if not all, are simply advocates for freedom in expression in fiction, usually because its a reflection of the health of a community and a nation's/culture's embrace of the principles of freedom of speech. When we notice an uptick in witch hunts over, of all things, fiction of more fiction, we aren't fear mongering to call it out, we're acting as canaries in a coal mine against something that we've seen invade our spaces over and over and over again and are trying to stop it.

Posting as a response to a previous problem.