#webmaster irl

[seepweed]

unrestrained summer fun 😎☀️🏎

[neocitrus]

Does anyone wanna start a neocities club with me?!

Sorry, I know, but all my IRL friends are normal (lame!) and think that coding is far too much trouble sob. Now that communities is a thing maybe this could be a cool way to for us webmasters to gush about each others creations outside the usual, one popular blog?

If you can't get in please feel free to reach out (messages, inbox, notes) don't be shy you we welcome all

Join link below! (it works now)

[guardianasdelrpg]

Me tomé un descanso de una semana del rp y literalmente, de la nada, el foro en el que estaba murió. Vuela alto, Sensitive Content. Me quedaré con las ganas de terminar las historias que tenía pensadas ahí. ;w; // Vengo aquí como webmaster de ese foro porque he visto muchos asks sobre nosotros. El foro estaba bien, iba perfectamente, pero nosotros como administración comenzamos a tener ocupaciones IRL que nos impedían estar presentes de la misma forma como lo estuvimos al principio. Incluso nos costaba postear nuestros propios roles y nos limitábamos únicamente a revisar fichas, actualizar registros y responder dudas por privado.

Tomamos la decisión de cerrar el foro, pero avisamos con una semana aprox de anticipación para que los usuarios tomaran sus fichas/roles si querían. Desconozco si este ask se mandó hace una o dos semanas o si es reciente. Lo cierto es que nosotros como staff dejamos un aviso por mensaje privado a todos los usuarios, así que no fue un cierre "de la nada", y esa semana que dices haber tomado, usuario anónimo, en realidad no fue una semana.

Tomo este ask para hacer una reflexión: No miremos al staff de los foros como máquinas, nosotros también tenemos ocupaciones en la vida real, los admins también tienen todo el derecho de sentirse agobiados con las responsabilidades externas, y es completamente normal. Somos seres humanos.

Nuestro foro tenía pinta de ir para largo, incluso estábamos planeando un evento global para dar más regalos a los usuarios y celebrar otro mes en línea, pero la vida nos alcanzó, y creemos que tomamos la mejor decisión. Pensamos en la posibilidad de nombrar moderadores, incluso dejarlo como privado y quitar reglas, pero eso hubiera sido contraproducente.

Agradecemos a todos los que nos acompañaron en ese proyecto, y esperamos tener la posibilidad de retomarlo, o bien volver con algún otro proyecto en un futuro cuando nuestro tiempo nos lo permita.

Gracias por el espacio, Guardianas. Y a los usuarios les deseamos todo el éxito en cualquier foro donde estén ahora, ¡un saludo!

Mucha suerte chicos y nosotras os entendemos perfectamente 💜

Syndra ⭐️

[possibility-left]

10 Questions For Fic Writers

I wasn't tagged by anyone so this is a free tag to anyone else who wants to do it!

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 146! I have written way more stories than this but the old stuff (2006-2015 lol) is all on my old fic journal.

2. What's your total AO3 word count? 310,292. Wild to think about tbh.

3. What fandoms do you write for? Right now only Good Omens but prior to this dip back into fandom I used to be very multi-fannish and I won't be surprised if I slip back into that eventually. Of my 146 fics on AO3, they are for 56 different fandoms and I've written for over 150 different fandoms since ehhhh 2003.

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? Yes I really try to, even just with a thank you. I love writing comments too so I feel like I should respond!

5. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not to my knowledge.

6. Have you ever co-written a fic before? I used to co-write a lot with my IRL bestie but we haven't been in the same fandom probably since we both terrorized the Professor Layton kink meme together. And I used to co-write a LOT with my ex but that is long in the past.

7. What's your all-time favourite ship? This is such a hard question because like I said I have liked to write everything. Right now it's Aziraphale/Crowley, but I have also in the past been very into Toph/Aang from ATLA and Pearl/Garnet from Steven Universe, and I also get really interested in family dynamics and any characters I can write femslash for. This is baby's first slash fandom lolol. Yes. In 21 years.

8. What are your writing strengths? I think the main one is tone. Usually I am trying extremely hard to capture the vibe of a book or a show and I like to write a lot of canon-compliant stuff generally. I also think I do good dialogue. As a contrast to below I do think I write well in short format.

9. What are your writing weaknesses? I do not plot shit which is probably why I never write anything long. I do have an unpublished (I am going to finish it) Good Omens fic that is sitting at about 12k words right now that needs an expanded ending, but besides that I have only written 2 fics that are longer than 10k words.

10. First fandom you wrote for? I am a middle-aged person in fandom who wrote Cardcaptor Sakura fic and emailed my favorite webmaster and asked them to post it up on their Geocities website and they did!! What a joy that Geocities no longer exists although I bet I still have that fic on a flash drive somewhere. (It lived on a floppy disk before that!)

[next-life-online-rpg]

¡Saludos! Aprovecho la sección de dudas para dejar más de una.

¿Foro abierto, semi cerrado o privado? Estoy volviendo a foros y últimamente me he topado con sitios semi cerrados o privados. Para tomar en cuenta esto a la hora de unirme o invitar amistades.

¿Y tendrán límite de cuentas/personajes?

Ahora, tengo curiosidad sobre esa separación con lo virtual y el mundo real. ¿Habrá ficha para el personaje virtual y luego el que se lleva "irl"?

Es una idea interesante la que llevan con el foro, ¡ánimos al staff para su construcción!

Saludos jugador Nos alegra oir que estas volviendo a los foros de rol, por nuestra parte, el foro será totalmente abierto para cualquiera que desee entrar o sea invitado a este.

si, habrá un limite de 8 cuentas, ya que sabemos que uno llega a tener inspiración para mas de un personaje sobre la separacion del mundo real y virtual, estamos pensando usar de esos codes de fichas con doble personaje, sino, que sean dos fichas en el mismo post, uno para describir a tu personaje como es y se ve en el mundo real, y la otra ficha para describir como tu personaje se ve y es dentro del juego, ya sea la raza que escogió para su avatar en el juego, su aspecto, habilidades con debilidades, y otras pequeñas cosas (espero entenderme en esta parte) Te agradecemos mucho los ánimos, nos motiva bastante ver gente interesada en este proyecto!

Esperamos verte pronto iniciar sesión!

Belle (Webmaster)

[spookoku]

redoing my intro post. everyone celebrate

hey howdy, i’m airy (he/him). i’m a canadian artist webmaster fucked up boything. i’m used to using much smaller sites, but i hope i’ll be able to find my own corner of tumblr. more shit is under the cut :)

special interests: my ocs, tally hall, vocaloid. been freaking out over fullmetal alchemist lately too

tumblr specific: graphic collecting, frutiger aero, oldweb, heritage posts/tumblr history

hobbies: drawing, collecting plushies, scouring the wayback machine

fun fact about me: if you try to walk up to me & start a conversation irl, i wont respond unless i have a floating exclamation point over my head that indicates i have a quest for you

blog tags

#airy chats - textposts/rambling

#airy creates - art, graphics, photos, etc

#airy finds - internet finds

# airy reblogs - what it says on the tin

where to find me

toyhou.se - @/spookoku

artfight - @/tallyhall

sheezy.art - @/tallyhall

for everything else, my linktr.ee is @/tallyhall

happy blogging … or whatever

[blackchantilly]

I want to document the story of the ARG for Silent Hill fans who maybe either can't or don't want to play it themselves, but are still curious about it. I had a whole lot of fun with it despite some plot holes and corniness. Spoilers will be under a cut.

The historical society web site at face value:

Is written as if Silent Hill Historical Society is a real place you can visit in 2024.

Contains many articles and "artifacts" related to the history of the town.

You can take two Silent Hill quizzes to test your knowledge of the lore. The advanced one is ridiculously hard. You can find most of the answers in the articles on the site, though. Some of the details it tests you over are almost certainly going to be found in the SH2 remake rather than in the original game.

There is also a portion of the site with historical society staff profiles and short blog entries written by the staff members.

One of the tabs makes reference to the historical society collecting submissions of historical materials from the public for its collection. They specify that they want SH travel brochures from the 1960s, with a certain serial number. It says the timeframe for submissions is over.

If this was all the site was, it would be great marketing on its own.

Now on to the ARG aspects. The official name of the game translates roughly into English as Red Reaper: Declaration of Crime from the Dead.

Spoilers from here on out. Also this is LONG. 😬

Secret content can be found by clicking on certain words on some of the pages, clicking on specific parts of certain images, or in one case, highlighting text on a page to reveal white-on-white text. There are also a few really subtle "stain" marks on some pages that you can click to find secret pages. Most of the hidden pages can be found on the staff blogs, but some are found in the historical articles, etc.

I found most of the hidden links by examining the page sources. The text ones are easy to find. The ones embedded in images are trickier, but most of the images that have links embedded in them have something written in the "class" field in the code. Finding the right place on the image to click makes this even trickier.

There are 36 hidden pages in total.

The basic story found in the hidden content involves the mysterious death of a former staff member and network administrator at the historical society, Felix Crain. He died from falling from the roof of an apartment building. The authorities ruled it an accident, but the remaining staff members clearly have their doubts. Witnesses reported hearing an argument coming from the roof before he fell.

Felix's staff page URL can be found by determining his birthday through clues on the other staff pages and putting the date in his URL (to match the format of the other staff pages). This reveals the fact that he wanted to talk to the historical society director, William, about something important. It also reveals that he had romantic feelings for his coworker Ruby, who succeeded him as webmaster after his death.

Hidden page 1/36 allows the player to submit images of historical artifacts to the website; it can be found by navigating to the artifact registration page from the Material Preservations Activities tab and removing the underscore from the URL. (The underscore trick was hinted at on Ruby's staff blog.) Originally if someone submitted an image with the form, it told them the page would be "under maintenance" until Sept. 26 at a certain time. This was the date and time that the Tokyo Game Show occurred.

IRL attendees at TGS received a travel brochure with the serial number that the historical society web site said it was looking for. The inside of the brochure had the letters "RE," the number "7/17" and the alchemical symbol for Jupiter written on it in bold red ink.

If someone submits an image via that page after the date and time of TGS, it takes them to a page with a link to download an app.

(It's implied that you're supposed to take a photo of the brochure you (theoretically) received at TGS, but the guidelines page that appeared on the site that day says you can use someone else's photos if you weren't there. In fact, people have apparently submitted random images and have been able to progress in the story.)

When you download the app from the link, this allows you to accept "emails" from different characters in the RPG, mostly from Ruby. She asks for the correct serial number on the brochure to verify that it's the right one.

(Note: the image of the brochure I found didn't include a closeup on the serial number. The number was located on the sample brochure on the web site prior to Sept. 26, but was removed after that date. You can find the correct version if you use the Wayback Machine to visit the site prior to that date.)

Once the serial number is verified, she asks for your mailing address so they can send you an envelope to send them your brochure.

(I thought for sure this was actually going to be a thing, but now that I've progressed in the story and read the guidelines page, I don't think this is going to be the case. I still haven't received any physical mail from them six days later.)

You receive additional emails in quick succession from 1) an unknown sender telling you to submit a video of yourself destroying the brochure, 2) a detective saying he is aware that a shady individual whom they've been tracking has sent you an email, 3) William, the director of the historical society, urging you not to follow the directions of the unknown sender, and 4) "an expert in new religious movements."

The religious experts says that the unknown sender is allegedly the leader of a cult called Twilight of Jupiter, which is supposedly using the travel brochures in one of their rituals. Having possession of the brochure supposedly is putting you in danger. He tells you to perform a ritual involving mentally destroying the brochure in order to neutralize the threat.

Ruby says William has been acting weird about the brochure since she mentioned it to him. Thinking something is amiss, she asks you for the email addresses of the detective and the religious expert. After awhile, she emails you back and says that she looked into it and neither person exists. William apparently sent all of those emails himself.

She sends you a link to a web page he asked her to remove; the URL ends in "walterishe" and contains information about the Walter Sullivan murders mentioned in SH2 and fleshed out in the story of SH4. There were apparently more ritual murders linked to the Walter Sullivan case in 2008. Each of the 2008 murder sites were accompanied by a similar travel brochure with the victim's initials and death date written on them, plus the symbol for Jupiter. The names of the known victims spell out "Walterishe."

This is where, if it's not totally obvious from the awkward phrasing of the URL, you're supposed to insert the letters found on "your" brochure to the URL, giving you "walterishere." This takes you to a spooky page with the Jupiter symbol.

William immediately emails you once you've found this page, accusing you of snooping around. He says he knows where you live (because you provided your mailing address earlier) and is coming to kill you.

Ruby tells you the only way to stop him from gaining access to your information is to log into Felix's old account on the web site and manually delete all of the information within 24 hours. She provides her login info (which has been deactivated) as a template. His username is easy to determine -- his first name, last initial, and the year he started working at the historical society. She says he told her his password was "the name of the thing he desires most." Typing "Ruby" into the password field gives you access and allows you to delete the information.

Once you've done this (actually I had to do it a couple of times to get it to work), she confirms that you were successful. However, she says she got lost in the fog that mysteriously manifested when she attempted to flee and that she will get back to you if she makes it through.

(I had to break this up here because apparently a bulleted list can only have so many characters, pfft.)

After 48 hours, Ruby has escaped from Foggy Silent Hill (as opposed to regular Silent Hill, I guess?) and sends you a link to a video of her detailing the rest of the story. To summarize, William's real name is revealed to be Oliver King. Raised in a sheltered household, he heard about Walter Sullivan's case on TV in the early '00s and was inspired by his "abnormality" (I took this to mean that he felt a kind of kinship with him, but I am definitely editorializing here). William/Oliver was the one who committed the copycat murders in 2008. He intended for the last victim to have the initials R.E., but he made a mistake and killed someone whose initials were M.P. instead. He became incredibly embarrassed that his victim's initials now spelled out "Walter is hemp" (lmaooooo) and, hoping to cover up the drug associations (I am not making this up), he sunk the body into Toluca Lake and attempted to destroy the evidence -- referring specifically to the tourism brochure that had the wrong initials on it. Police found the body but didn't connect the murder to the others. When William/Oliver found out the brochure still existed, he made efforts to attempt to acquire it from the player so he could destroy it. He is now in police custody.

William/Oliver was also responsible for Felix's death after Felix discovered he was using an alias.

It's worth mentioning that Ruby does not talk at all about what she encountered over the last two days in Foggy Silent Hill, but she makes it clear that she is alive and is not a ghost.

ALSO there is a joke ending. If you click on a specific spot on one of the maps on the site a certain amount of times, it takes you to the ARG's very own dog ending.

My takeaways:

My theory up until the final video was that the cult was trying to resurrect Walter Sullivan through the ritual murders. It would have been cool!

I'm still not clear if there was ever supposed to be a cult called Twilight of Jupiter in Silent Hill or whether William/Oliver was acting alone under that name. Also they never explain who the "unknown sender" who wanted you to destroy the brochure was. If it was William, why would he tell you to destroy the brochure and then immediately tell you not to follow those directions?

I think this would be a really fun lead-up to a future installment in the series, perhaps a sequel to SH4. Or there could be a game where we play as Ruby as she investigates everything and also attempts to escape the foggy otherworld. It could be fun!

Also I am very curious about those missing 48 hours from the ARG. Perhaps she's "pure of heart" and her experience in the foggy world wasn't that bad, lol.

I'm also curious if there will be references to any of this in the SH2 remake.

Some theorize that this story could be related to Townfall. Lord knows at this point.

Also this might point to a potential remake of SH4, which, frankly, is a game I think would greatly benefit from a remake that doesn't feel like PUNISHMENT.

I appreciated that they focused on Walter's story in this one. I always thought he was an interesting character, especially considering serial killers and slasher movies never really interested me.

This was loads of fun and a pretty good introduction to ARGs, IMO. I had never really done one before (not counting Petscop) and I found it fairly easy to follow. A couple of the puzzles felt really rewarding. The only things I had to look up elsewhere were the links hidden in the images on the site.

I am actually sad that silenthill-historicalsociety.com/walterishemp didn't lead me anywhere, lol.

There is

A Silent Hill ARG

And I'm losing my mind.

[maddys-mad-menagerie]

Happy Friday, y’all~!

Just your favorite Maddy-ite checking in on you all, like usual! I come wishing you a great weekend! If y’all come on in this weekend, we’ll also be having a special on holiday cookies and kits. Come make cookies with your favorite Mascots~!

Ahh, right. Something I gotta pass along to y’all! One of the managers are probably not gonna be going home at all this weekend. Seems something went down at home with her, but the big boss seems to be understanding and is allowing her a room in the back for staying around.

So, if you see Manager M, be sure to give her a little pep for her step! You can tell her I sent you or do it of your own volition! I think she’ll appreciate it, regardless! Now, if only I could convince one of them to let me have a bigger TV back here...~?

Oh, yeah. Signing off for now, have a good night and weekend, y’all~!

[seepweed]

. summer. or whatever.

[webheads-dot-com]

Looking to know a Webhead?

>>READ HERE<<

Hi there! My name’s Michael and I made this blog because I took a funny little interest in First Ideas’ Webheads toy line from the early 2000s. They’re a fascinating group of computer and internet themed toys, meant to be monitor companions and photo frames. Now out of active production and circulation and never reaching popularity, the Webheads line has faded into obscurity, and in many cases presents a mystery. What happened? Why is there so little information online about them? Where did they go?

While I’ll be trying to dig up more about them, what I know for now is that there are 16 total dolls listed on the archived iwebheads.com via the wayback machine, several of which have no available photos beyond blurry thumbnails for their bios, and who present both an interesting cast of characters, and a fun look back into the early days of the internet.

These characters are:

Auntie Virus • Baby Boy.com • Baby gURL • Browser the Webhound • Cookie • Cyber Cat and Mouse • Dot e.com • Dr. Disk • E-male • Eve Shopper • Hacker • Melissa LuvBug • Wally Wallstreet • Web Mistress • Webmaster • Web Surfer

Here I’ll be posting the history bits I’m able to find on the Webheads line, the characters’ bios, playlists, headcanons, OCs, art, and more! So if you’d like to stick around and learn about some friendly computer companions that nearly count as lost media, you’re in the right place :-)

I got some fanart to kick this blog off, which is just absolutely gorgeous and shall remain here because it’s very close to my heart.

Tag directory is under cut, and otherwise have an epic day!

Characters will be tagged by their names as done so on this post, and each of their bios will be tagged with #site bio for their official ones, and #webheadcanon bio for my takes/additional bios on their characters

Posts featuring media from the webheads website will be tagged as #web(head)site

Posts with headcanons or analysis on the possibilities of the web-world and characters will be tagged as #webheadcanons

Posts talking about the current state of the brand, new information found on other sites, or anything to do with finding more than I have will be tagged as #webheadsleuthing

Posts with random mod commentary or ab irl stuff will be tagged with #off the web and details and reviews on different Webheads dolls as I track them down and collect them will be tagged with #doll reviews

Original characters will be tagged with their names, as well as with the tag #original computers

Fanart and fic will be tagged as #art and #fic respectively

Asks and submissions will be tagged with #web mail

[creativitycache]

ngl asking for people who self-identify as "antis" is already biasing your results because the term originated from fans being defensive over getting called out (eg the types who sincerely think fandom culture is ""puritan""). fair number of people started to use the term ironically and it might be evening out but overall the post calling for responses on the survey still comes off as something written in bad faith?

I wrote a rather long and involved response and then tumblr ate it. Goshdarn.

Fair warning, this is a hyperfixation and I’m coming off of a migraine so this may not be very cogent. Please read this in the over excited tones of someone infodumping about emulsifiers, with no animosity intended.

So, tl;dr and with a lot fewer links, I’m incredibly interested by your perspective that “anti” originated as a derogatory term.

As far as I am aware, the etymological history of the word “anti” being used pejoratively is coming from some very new debates.

I’m also noting that you had no feedback regarding the content of the questions themselves, which I would be interested in hearing as I am genuinely coming from a place without censure.

The term “anti” actually is a self-descriptor that arose in the Livejournal days, where you’d tag something as “Anti ___” for other like minded people to find. (For example, my cursory google search pulled up 10 Anti Amy Lee communities on LJ).

I’m a self-confessed old. I was back in fandom before Livejournal, aaaall the way back in the Angelfire days. Webrings children! We had webrings! And guest books for you to sign!

I’m going to take a swing for the fences here Anon, so if I’m wrong please let me know, but I’m going to guess you became active as a fan in the past 5-8 years based of your use of the term puritan.

There’s actually a HUGELY new debate in fandom spaces! Previously, it was assumed that:

a) All fandom spaces are created and used by adults only.

b) If you were seeing something, it’s because you dug for it.

These assumptions were predicated upon what spaces fandoms grew in. First you had Star Trek TOS fandom, which grew in 1970s housewives kitchens. They were all friends irl, and everyone was an adult, and you actively had to reach out to other adults to talk about things. (By the way- a woman lost custody of her children in the divorce when her ex husband brought up to the judge she kept a Kirk/Spock zine under her bed. The judge ruled this as obvious signs of moral deficiency. That was in the 80s! Everyone is still alive and the parents are younger than my coworkers!)

Time: 1967-1980s. Is Anti a term? No. Who is the term used by? N/A Is fandom space considered Puritanical? No.

Then, when the internet came about, it was almost exclusively used by adults until The Eternal September. 1993 was the year that changed the internet for good, but even years after that the internet was a majority adult space. Most kids and teens didn’t have unlimited access if their parents even had a home computer in the 90s.

This is the rise of Angelfire, which were fansites all connected to each other in “rings”. You had to hunt for content. If you found something you didn’t like, well, you clicked out and went on with your day because you’d never see it again unless you really dug. This was truly the wild west, tagging did not exist and you could go from fluff to vore in the blink of an eye with nothing warning you before hand. All fannish spaces were marked “here be dragons” and attempts were made to at least adopt the “R/NC-17″ ratings on works to some limited success, depending on webmaster.

Time: 1990-1999. Is Anti a term? No. Who is the term used by? N/A Is fandom space considered Puritanical? No.

In 1999 LiveJournal arose like a leviathan, and here is where the term Anti emerges as a self descriptor. Larger communities began to form, and with them, divisions. Now, you could reach so many fans you could reach a critical mass of them for enough of them to dislike a ship. The phrase “Anti” became a self-used tag, as people tagged their works, communities, and blogs with “anti” (NB: this is at far, far smaller rates than today). Anti was first and foremost a tagging tool used and created by the people who were vehemently against something.

You could find content more easily than in the past, but you still had to put some serious elbow grease into it.

In 2007, Livejournal bans users for art "depicting minors in explicit sexual situations”. The Livejournal community explodes in anger- towards Livejournal staff. The account holders/fans view this as corporate puritanical meddling. The outrage continues as it is revealed these bans were part of a pre-sale operation to SUP Services. SUP Services, upon taking over Livejournal in 2008, proceeds to filter the topics “bisexuality, depression, faeries, girls, boys, and fanfiction”.

The Great LiveJournal Migration begins, as fans leave the site in droves.

Time: 1999-2009. Is Anti a term? Yes. Who is the term used by? People self describing, seeking to create communities based off a dislike of something. Is fandom space considered Puritanical? No.

Where do fans go? Well, in the last decade, they migrated to Tumblr and Twitter (sorry Pillowfort- you gave it a good try!)

What’s different about all of these sites? Individuals are able to create and access content streams. These are hugely impactful in how communities are formed! Because now:

a) finding content is easier

b) finding content you dislike by accident is easier

c) content you dislike requires active curation to avoid

d) truly anonymous outreach is possible and easy (for example, you anon! Isn’t it much easier to go on anon to bring up awkward or sensitive topics? I’m happy you did by the way, and that’s why I keep my anons open. It’s an important contextual tool in the online communications world!)

Now the term Anti gets sprightly. Previously, if you didn’t like content, there was nothing you could really do about it. For example, I, at the tender age of way-too-young, opened up a page of my favorite Star Trek Deep Space 9 fansite and pixel by pixel with all the loading speed of a stoned turtle a very anatomically incorrect orgy appeared.

I backed out.

1. Who could I contact? There was no “message me here” button, no way to summon any mods on Angelfire sites.

2. If I did manage to find a contact button, I would have had to admit I went onto a site that wasn’t designed to keep me safe. I knew this was a site for adults, I knew there wasn’t a way to stop it from showing something. There was no such thing as tags. I knew all of this before going in. So the assumption was, it was on me for looking. (Some may have argued it was on my parents for not supervising me- all I can say is thank GOD no one else was in the living room and my mom was around the corner in the kitchen.)

But now? On Tumblr? On Twitter? In a decade in which tagging is so easy and ubiquitous it’s expected?

Now people who describe themselves as antis start to have actual tools and social conventions to utilize.

Which leads to immediate backlash! Content creators are confused and upset- fandom spaces have been the wild west for decades, and there’s still no sherriff in town. So the immediate go-to argument is that these people who are messaging them are “puritans”.

And that’s actually an interesting argument! A huge factor in shaping the internet’s social mores in the latest decades is cleanliness for stockbrokers. Websites can become toxic to investors and to sales if they contain sexual content. Over time, corporations perfected a mechanism for “cleaning” a site for sale.

Please note there is no personal opinion or judgement in this next list, it is simply a description of corporate strategies you can read during the minute meetings of shareholders for Tumblr, Twitter, Paypal, Venmo, Facebook, Myspace, Yahoo Answers, and Livejournal.

1. Remove sex workers. Ban any sex work of any kind, deplatform, keep any money you may have been holding.

2. Remove pedophilia. This is where the jump begins between content depicting real people vs content depicting fictional characters begins.

3. Remove all sexual image content, including artwork of fictional characters.

4. Remove all sexual content, including written works. If needed, loop back to step 2 as a justification, and claim you do not have the moderators to prevent written works depicting children.

I would like to reiterate these are actual gameplans, so much so that they’ve made their way into business textbooks. (Or at least they did for my Modern Marketing & App Design classes back in the early 2010s. Venmo, of course, wasn’t mentioned, but I did read the shareholder’s speeches when they banned sex workers from the platform so I added them in the list above because it seems they’re following the same pattern.)

So you have two groups who are actively seeking to remove NSFW content from the site.

A) Corporate shareholders

B) People are upset they’re seeing NSFW content they didn’t seek out and squicks them

Now, why does this matter for the debates using the term “puritan” as an insult? 

Because the reasons corporate shareholders hate NSFW material is founded in American puritanism. It’s a really interesting conflation of private sector values! And if Wall Street were in another cultural context, it would be a completely different discussion which I find fascinating!

But here’s the rub- that second group? They're not doing this for money. If there are any puritanical drives, it’s personal, not a widespread cohesive ideology driving them. HOWEVER! The section of that group that spent the early 2010s on tumblr did pick up some of the same rhetoric as puritanical talking points (which is an entirely separate discussion involving radfems, 4chan raids, fourth wave feminism, and a huge very nuanced set of influences I would love to talk about at a later time!)

These are largely fans who have “grown up” in the modern sites- no matter how old they actually are, their fandom habits and expectations have been shaped by the algorithms of these modern sites.

Now HERE‘s the fascinating bit that’s new to me! This is the interpretation of the data I’m getting, and so I’m out on a limb but I think this is a valid premise!

The major conflict in fandom at this time is a struggle over personal space online.

Content creators are getting messages telling them to stop, degrading them, following them from platform to platform.

They say “Hey! What gives- we were here first. The cardinal rule of fandom is don’t like, don’t read. Fandom space has always been understood to be adult- it’s been this way for decades! To find our content, you had to come to us! This is our space! This is my space, this is my blog! If you don’t like it, you’re not obligated to look!”

Meanwhile, at the exact same time, antis are saying “Hey! What gives- this content is appearing on my screen! That’s my space!  I didn’t agree to this, I don’t like this! I want it to be as far away from me as possible! I will actively drive it away.”

This is a major cultural shift! This is a huge change and a huge source of friction! And I directly credit it to the concept of “content stream” and algorithms driving similar-content to users despite them not wanting it!

Curating your online space used to be much simpler, because there wasn’t much of it! Now with millions of users spread out over a wide age range, all feeding in to the same 4-5 websites, we are seeing people be cramped in a technically limitless space!

Now people feel that they have to go on the offense to defend themselves against content they don’t like, which is predicated upon not only the algorithms of modern websites but ALSO talking points fed from the top down of what is and what is not acceptable on various platforms.

Time: 2010-2020. Is Anti a term? Yes. Who is the term used by? People self describing,and people using it to describe others. Is fandom space considered Puritanical? Depends!

So I, a fandom ancient, a creaky thing of old HTML codes and broken tags, am watching this transformation and am wildly curious for data.

Also...I uh....I can’t believe this is the short version. My ADHD is how you say “buckwild” tonight.

Anyways...um...if anyone has read to the bottom, give me data?

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

MC.Princess >  <3 <3 <3

DJ_Hyperfresh > Pearl... Why are you texting me this when we’re in the same house, in the same room, in the same BED? 

MC.Princess > can’t make heart emojis irl :(

DJ_Hyprefresh > Well I can’t kiss you through a chat. So. 

MC.Princess > !!!

[Webmaster] > MC.Princess has logged out

[rolmaniacos]

Vergüenza ajena me dio el posteo del @ en Fire Emblem Exodus. A ese mismo foro lo quemaron en Mamba con capturas y todo por la actitud tan déspota del Staff// La prueba aportada fue una captura de una chica exigiendo un trato especial a la webmaster por el hecho de ser amigas irl. Lo único que se quemó en ese blog patético fue la pulsera de la amistad de plástico de la muchacha. Sad.

Que mal. H͎y͎p͎o͎c͎r͎i͎s͎y͎

[mozillavulpix]

my bipolar mood about fandom today

mike was subtweeting about me, which means his Webmaster Powers™ found my post/s again, so I should probably stop. Or at least be more careful the next time I say the K-word.

I mean, he’s probably accidentally found far more of the inner reaches of my mind than any human being would realistically want to deal with. I dunno what he thinks I actually am like.

And of course, this is what my mind goes to. “What does he think of me?” As opposed to anything about how I’m feeling about all this and trying to come up with helpful ways of dealing with it all.

Really, it all comes down to wanting to feel loved and appreciated. If the Fandom Influencers I Respect have completely different opinions to me and also all agree in that opinion, my opinion is wrong, which means if they met me IRL, they’d lose a degree of respect for me because I disagree with something they feel strongly about.

That’s assuming they respect me in the first place instead of thinking I’m a mentally ill Gohan fangirl who doesn’t know how to deal with things.

See, this is what my mind does. This is what I’ve trained my mind to do. To immediately assume if anyone knows an iota about the real me, they’d never actually like me. They’d never actually choose to like me.

It even provides workarounds actual positive encouragement. It says “by talking about how shitty you’re feeling, you’re essentially forcing people to try and comfort you. You’re taking advantage of natural human empathy.” So, essentially, I can’t start spilling my heart to try and get validation. Because then, if I got it, my mind would be saying I manipulated them into doing it and it doesn’t actually count.

so tl;dr I assume nobody likes me, so when there’s even a hint validating that assumption, I go into actual anxiety and try to push away from everything and everyone

[greenyvertekins]

I don’t know why precisely but I feel very...reminiscient all of a sudden. Specifically about my experience in the online Sonic fandom. I think I’ve accomplished quite a bit in regards to it and only really realised it very recently.

I’ve been around this fandom online for over 14 years to date. Made a lot of good friends, made one that’s as close as a sister to me IRL and even met my partner in the fandom. I’m so thankful for that.

I was the Sonic Stadium’s first female site writer/News reporter in it’s history (Retired now. Partly due to creative differences). And whilst I was never very comfortable in that role partially due to my own misgivings about my own ability and the environment behind closed doors, I’m still fairly proud that I wrote for one of the more famed Sonic sites.

I currently write for Concept:”Mobius”. A site I place on a high pedestal even before the webmaster asked me to join his team. I have a lot of fondness and regard for the stuff we were able to accomplish with that site and consider my work on it in collaboration to be my magnum opus.

When I signed up here, I never thought, never could have expected that I’d garner the following that I did, that so many other fans were so interested in what I had to say. There’s nearly 5000 unanswered asks in my inbox, I just couldn’t keep on top of them and/or answer them in a way that I felt did them justice. I’m sorry about that D: Truly.

I don’t think I could ever turn away from this fandom despite it’s huge issues. It’s a decently-sized part of my life that I mostly feel a pleasure being a part of for just under half of my life. Even though the series has been floundering for seven years, I still feel a great affection for it even though much of my more fonder recollections are of the time before it’s slide into mediocrity i.e Prior to 2010.

Thanks for the memories :D Given the hardships of my life, I’d be so much more worse-off if I hadn’t experienced this fandom.

[baileye]

Nika Simovich Fisher From my understanding, you created Echo from a desire to build a social community of people in New York. At the time, why did a telnet based platform seem like the right place for that, rather than an IRL location? What was the appeal of doing it online?

Stacy Horn I’d already been participating regularly in an online community called The Well, based in California, so I was already aware of the advantages of online communication. Like meeting people you wouldn’t necessarily meet otherwise. Even if I limited myself to my small neighborhood in Manhattan, I would never be able to meet everyone. Or easily find the people who share my interests. Online, I can have ongoing conversations with these people regardless of where they are, or when they’re engaging in the conversation. I can post something before I go to bed and wake up the next day to see who responded.

And this kind of communication was brand-freaking-new. It was so exciting. It was a whole new world to play in. Hard to communicate how thrilling that time was to people who have always had it. It felt like one day I only had access to people living nearby, and the next day I could talk to anyone in the world.

https://little.chefs.fun/pocket-notes/stacy-horn