#you’re just feeding into it more by engaging with the discourse

[majikdog]

This Jim DeFroque thing really needs to blow over, y’all are too much

[monkiekidtwt]

Genuine question, no hate! Why stay on lmk Twitter and repost stuff to here abt it if you dislike it so much? And why are we all arguing over which platform is better? They are all good and bad, there's no better over the other.

To answer this seriously: the reason I stay is because it’s where the majority of LMK fans are. It’s the only place where Monkie Kid News and other such resources resides, and it is often the place that first gets wind of stuff like new releases. If I want to have my finger on the pulse of the show, I sort of have no choice to be. So, while I’m there, I repost the good stuff.

I’ve never engaged in arguments that one social media is better than the other, mind. Just said that Twitter sucks. But the reasons why I dislike Twitter (especially fandom Twitter) are as follows:

A culture of directly harassing people for minor infractions, or what turns out to be misinformation (just the other day, a minor was harassed for something it turned out they didn’t do)

Idolization of big name fans (like I said in an earlier post; if you criticize a big name fan, then you’re gonna get dogpiled to hell and back, and if a big name fan says something, everyone will pretend they’ve always agreed, even if they’ve expressed the opposite recently)

Literal 24/7, unavoidable discourse that nobody tags (today, the topic of fandom-wide discussion was people who treat Mei like she gets in the way of Spicynoodles, which literally nobody does)

It is so hard to optimize your experience and curate your feed, because tagging is not built into the system (like, what would I filter other than ‘Spicynoodles’ to stop seeing the previous discourse, when the majority of them are just text posts with no tags? what if I like that ship and don’t wanna mute it?)

Even if you could curate it better, general social media stuff that everyone knows about Twitter at this point makes it so that you’re always seeing stuff that upsets you (it’s designed to addict you, and feeds you the algorithm which is designed to show you posts that make you upset or angry for engagement, plus more!)

And that’s not even getting into the Elon Musk of it all, or the fact that I’ve had multiple friends on there both watch and be victims of horrific harassment campaigns on LMKtwt that left them with literal trauma symptoms.

Compare this to tumblr:

The culture here is largely “block and move on”

The tagging system makes it easy for people to tag their discourse so I don’t have to see it

Since there is no algorithm, there is no issue with being fed posts to upset me

Harassment is less normalized, and when you are harassed, it’s usually via anon, which you can turn off to shut them up

I have never personally seen any people showing weird behavior towards fellow fans, which is either a sign that it doesn’t happen or that you’re able to curate your feed with minimum effort to never see it

Twitter is an infinitely worse experience, culturally and by social media design, but I stay there because it is where most of the LEGO Monkie Kid fandom is, plus the chill people that reside there sometimes.

So, that’s 1) why I hate it there, and 2) why I’m there anyway. And I run this blog to share the goodies with tumblr, so that nobody else has to feel obligated to be on LMKtwt like I feel that I do. Which is why I make jokes about making such a huge sacrifice for the sake of LMK tumblr, via running this blog.

[joels-shitty-puns]

hi a!

i’m back with another “gentle reminders” ask. it goes in line with one of my personal goals this year of trying to work on my kindness and how i show that kindness to others.

the beginning of a new year is always a bit tough for many people, for many reasons but at the scale of the fandom, i have noticed some negativity starting to spread. maybe it’s bound to happen on any social media but i always considered tumblr to be different, to be over the kind of discourse you could find on other apps. this place has been a true haven for many of us and i would like to keep it that way, so i thought, as a way to counterbalance this negativity, i could compensate with a nice message for one of the driving forces in the fandom: our dear writers.

i would like to begin by saying thank you.  thank you for dedicating your time, your energy, your love and sharing pieces of yourself with us. the fandom wouldn’t be what it is without you: just like a body needs a brain or a heart to function properly, fandoms need writers like they need others contributing. thank you for offering diversity, engaging with different tropes and characters to reach as many readers as possible. i will admit, some things proposed are not my cup of tea but i know they can be enjoyed by others, the same way some of my favorite fics wouldn’t necessarily attract others. so thank you for giving a chance to everyone to find what they enjoy, to discover, to learn, to cry, to laugh, to love and to be able to do so in an open, safe space. thank you for interacting with us as well. thank you for responding to our questions, sharing snippets when we get impatient, teasing us with your new ideas and making life a little more fun and exciting every day. and of course, thank you for doing all of this for free. for expecting so little in return when you give us so much.

now a few things i want you to remember: 

although we’re all thankful for having access to your art, your first fan should be yourself. write what you enjoy, write that self-indulgent fic, write your favorite trope, an improbable duo or crossover because you’ve always wanted to. do it for yourself. in the same way, have fun with it. writing is a hobby, it’s not your job, it’s not supposed to be a chore. so do what makes you happy. don’t worry about updating fics, about being slow, about posting too much or too little. some things might take time, some might need an hour to be posted but in the end, they all matter just the same. they’re worth being read and cherished and we will appreciate them. whether you have thousands of notes or barely a few hundreds, you have your place here. you’re still an amazing writer, you’re still an artist regardless of the stats. 

whether i've had time to binge-read your stories or just discovered you. thank you. i love you. i’m grateful for you. i see and appreciate your work. your efforts. you.  i’m sorry if you’ve ever been received with negativity but i hope this can make up for some of it.  you deserve nothing but kindness and appreciation and i hope you know how much you matter here.

sending you all my love,

anna 💗

ANNA!!!!! 🥺🥺🥺 You're gonna make me cry. This was so sweet and meaningful. I needed this ��️ thank you. The same goes to you as well. I hope you know how amazing you are. I love seeing you pop up on my feed. ❤️ You're important and wonderful and what you're doing here with these messages is so kind and special. Thank you.

I love you ❤️

[wxlfbites]

I’ve pretty much stopped talking publicly about my delusions of being descended from werewolves… It’s hard to keep sharing such personal experiences when you’re met with doubt and judgement everywhere you turn. The discourse that engulfs clinical lycanthropes and physical nonhumans, whether it’s total rejection from other nonhuman communities or infighting amongst themselves, has reared its ugly head at me whenever I’ve tried to explain my delusions and hallucinations, so I’ve kind of just kept it all to myself since then. I want to talk about it more but it’s difficult to get past all the things that make me feel invalid or shunned from spaces that should welcome me.

It’s also hard to explain, without being viewed as problematic, that I’d like for others to engage with my delusions rather than treat them the way many info posts suggest you do. When I feel like people are being dismissive or treating me like a patient, it can make me shut down or think I’m being completely rejected; making me defensive or upset. Part of my delusion involves the denial and secrecy of my families werewolf heritage since the portion of them that split off from the Pack no longer have the ability to shapeshift and thus refuse to accept our true nature. This is only further fueled by my own mother’s avoidance of the topic, neither denying nor confirming anything I ask, just skirting around my questions like she knows something she can’t tell me. So when I feel like other people do this, even if they don’t mean to, it makes me a little more suspicious and maybe even slightly angry.

I find reality checking extremely painful for me but most mental health communities agree that there is only one other option: to be passive about delusions. Do not encourage or discourage a delusion. Do not ignore the delusion but also don’t feed into it. This is where I feel like I have to tread lightly. Because I want my delusions to be encouraged and fed into. I want people to fully embrace what I’m telling them as my truth even if they don’t believe it themselves. Whether that makes me a bad person or not I guess is up for interpretation…

[joemuggs]

ESCAPE THE CRINGE

I first wrote this piece for an art mag at the start of the year but they dicked me about over rewrites so much - and I mean really dicking about, like radio silence for three weeks then suddenly demanding changes for the next day - that for the first time in my life I actually pulled a piece. A couple of other outlets were up for it, but needed further alteration to fit house style... With so much going on I let it slide and let it slide, and now it's been so long I just feel like shoving it out there. It still feels relevant (maybe more so now that we're seeing an increasing public collapse of some of the most high profile demagogue scammers, albeit with new hydra heads quickly replacing them), and I'd rather have people see it and maybe feed back, rather than wrangle over it any further. So without further preamble, here's some thoughts about one of the defining reactions of our time and how to get away from it.

👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

We live in a time when groupthink and echo chambers are everywhere, where ingroup radicalisation, cult-like behaviours and submission to scammers and demagogues seem to be defining patterns of the era. Blame for these things is often laid at the feet of algorithms, of politicians, of capital - in many cases rightly so - but we all individually play the game too. We build the walls of our own cultural gated communities, with tweets and artworks and individual choices about where to go and what to say, and the more we do so the more those spaces that we force ourselves – and others – into become more or less gilded prisons. We all think we’re hip to something, and end up orbiting that something endlessly.

The first rule of hip club is you don’t talk about hip club. That is: if you’re serious about your aesthetic nowadays, you do your very best to not acknowledge that it even is an aesthetic – let alone identify its rules and delineations. Now, of course this doesn’t go for everyone: there are still anime cosplayers, emo kids and others who still gauchely adhere to the overt “style tribe” late 20th century ways of belonging. But these are exceptions that prove the rule. Far more often the things that make us “us”, that hold us together, are still based on taste - but these tastes that provide us with a sense of belonging are signalled covertly. They’re signalled not by discussing, or even necessarily knowing, what preferences make you belong among Your People, but rigidly enforcing the ingroup-outgroup divide with reactions against The Others’ tastes: through a set of real or figurative winces, grimaces and cringes. 

Oh yes, the cringe. That most visceral response, often deployed simply as a single word sentence by the Terminally Online, the argument ender to end all argument enders: just “cringe”. It’s noun, verb and adjective all rolled together into a gut level rejection, and it’s a dead giveaway that so, so many parts of The Discourse - as people solipsistically have it - is based way more on aesthetics than it is on any kind of coherent set of positions. That is, it’s less about showing revulsion at ideas, than about the fact that they’re expressed gauchely or clumsily or simply with the wrong slang. It’s a social cue, a nod to one’s fellows, to acknowledge shared good taste in memes, phrases and cadences, which one’s interlocutor has unforgivably failed to engage properly with. 

This kind of of us-and-them cringe-signalling operates in various ways across society, but perhaps the most fundamental dichotomy is basic vs hip, or normie vs hip. This in itself is framed in a variety of ways, but a super simplified version might run like this: influencer culture, sincere slogans, Will Ferrell and The Office memes, Goop wellness, "Fiat 500 Twitter" on one side - and shitposting, pursuit of the latest zero-caps punctuational microvariant, everything intellectualised but ironised, the moods formerly known as “based” and "dank" on the other. The former sees the latter as smug, pretentious, nonsensical, messy while in the other direction the hip cast the basics as conservative, simplistic, unimaginative, conformist. Each cringes at the other, each considers the other fundamentally in bad taste.

And these dichotomies are held in place firmly by the material interests of vested powers. So to keep with our sample duality, on the basic side, there are the affirmatory or aspirational solution-havers, the Matt Haigs and Johann Haris, Rupi Kaurs and Molly Maes, while on the hip side there’s the Somethingawful-to-Vice-to-Broadsheet ironymonger pipeline and the Politics Podcast Industrial Complex embodied in people called things like “PissPigGrandad”. Each relies on hate and fear of the other to provide a steady stream of attention and income to those who shore up their own self-image, who normalise an way of being, who provide just enough answers to make people feel like they’re on the right track, but not so many that they won’t keep coming back for more. Yet each is, of course, built on a lie. 

The basic think they are commonsensical and unpretentious, but actually adhere to byzantine aesthetic and political codes of belonging. The hip think they are switched on, fast moving and progressive but in fact their gatekeeping is deeply conservative: the solipsism of believing an echo chamber is “The Discourse”, no matter how ironically you try to couch that, is all about normalising enormously limited race, age, nationality and class boundaries around what is acceptable. Both are co-dependent false divisions of ideas and people made to shore up power structures and the interests of the privileged, and both are built on aesthetics above all else. Each is, in its own way, an insistence of good taste.

Once you see this, you see it everywhere. There are so many versions of this mutually exclusionary duality. Sometimes they’ll manifest as ostensible generational, regional or professional divides, sometimes as scene or faction schisms (and note well, political factions have more in common with musical, fashion or social scenes than anyone within them would ever care to admit). Each time, if you look, you’ll find that they are defined more by aesthetics than ethics: by those assemblages of catchphrases, by certain quirks of timing and emphasis. Whether it’s Dawkins and Harris quoting facts-and-reason guys defining themselves against what they think of as a feminised, emotion-driven mushiness in the barbaric masses, or underground music fans against the flash and spectacle of EDM, or vintage specs wearing postgrad ketamine-leftist cliques against “shitlib centrists”, or crypto-bros against anyone who doesn’t have a wallet, all too often the sense of self is generated by what one is NOT. 

And each time if you dig into what is happening in these oppositions, you’ll find someone benefitting in real, material terms: spokespeople, figureheads, demagogues, people whose theories or slogans are rallying points for believers and who rely on those believers for speaking engagements, podcast and newsletter subscriptions, NFT sales, academic tenure, political appointments, newspaper columns. There is a whole egosystem of commentariat and metacommentariat whose job appears to make bogeymen of one another, yet who one all too often finds in the upper echelons are on perfectly friendly terms when they run into one another in green rooms of media recordings, backstage at literary festivals or in the offices of the agents that they share. This last location not picked idly, n.b.: one of the UK’s loudest hip-left commentators of the past decade shares a literary agent with a leading hip-right provocateur and an old-school hard-right rabble rouser: they are very literally all in it together.

All of this, it really bears repeating, is built on lies, and further, is built on consciously or unconsciously deliberate obscuring of the truth, in order to support these power structures. If ever you see an argument that’s built around one of these abstracted dualities - pop vs underground, modernist vs traditional, respectable vs transgressive, health vs pleasure, decadence vs morality, rationalism vs “the blob”, take your pick - you can be sure that not only is there someone making cultural or actual capital out of it, but that they are muddying waters to make it more difficult to make out the connections, genealogies and human realities underlying what is being discussed. An appeal to take a side in one of these, ultimately aesthetic, judgements – an appeal to show good taste – is an appeal to feel the cringe instead of analysing what one is cringing at. It’s an appeal against scholarship.

Which is why we must, with extreme prejudice, abolish the concept of good taste. “In principle,” said the DJ and dance music producer Chrissy in 2020, “I think the idea of good taste is classist and racist! Usually whatever's considered good taste is what the most powerful or most educated or wealthiest people feel comfortable yelling about, and the ones out of them that can yell loudest and most eloquently about it, as a society we call that good taste.” And he is entirely right. No matter how you define “good taste”, you are defining it as a power relation, an exclusionary tool, a way to deride. 

Which is not to say that taste and discernment don’t and shouldn’t exist – but they exist in the sense that scholarship exists. Not ivory tower, status-accrued-by-citations scholarship, but scholarship as in demonstration of knowledge accumulated and the practice of accumulating it. The kind of scholarship that’s as likely – or perhaps more likely – to be exhibited by autodidacts as celebrity professors. You can’t judge scholarship according to winces, grimaces and cringes, you have to take it on according to what it is actually saying about its subjects and objects: and so with taste. Someone’s taste should impress precisely to the degree that they demonstrate that they know and care about the objects of their affection, not for its adherence to a social code imposed by vested interests. 

Maybe there are reasons to hope. The early years of this century were formed by information glut, by seemingly all of cultural history being available all at once. Many thought this would lead to cultural paralysis, a dissipation into undifferentiated “conent”, and a death of innovation – and certainly it can be seen to have driven a retreat into reactive and reactionary positions. When bold statement of preference and belonging is made difficult by the baffling array of choice, covertly coded taste bubbles are an inevitable outcome. But two things abode. 

Firstly, those genuine old-school style tribes, from cosplayers to grime lovers, who grew up together over years, put in the time together, and truly and positively identified with what they do, and the real spatio-temporal existence of what they do, in defiance of the grimaces of others. Second, the rise in value of curation. It’s a word often derided because of its ubiquity in marketing speech, and mocked because “everyone’s a curator” (or “everyone’s a DJ”) nowadays. But curation at its best is precisely the kind of pride in scholarship and individual ability to map connections across the information ocean, that can short circuit the demands of good taste. 

It’s available to all, it can be expressed easily – as punks did with paper fanzines and grime lovers with phone-shot video – and it is by its nature collaborative, sharing, and dependent on positive choices. There ARE glimmers of hope that Generation Z are more able to think in a curatorial way than their predecessors, to cut and paste the always-on data glut of past culture into something more actively expressed than reactively defined – something that can engender a sense of belonging without the need for those gut level micro-rejections of The Other to define itself. And if that is the case, then maybe, just maybe, they can demonstrate new ways to escape the cringe.

[darkishleaf]

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[sonodaten]

Fired Emblem trending on Twitter again bc people feeling the need to dredge up “3H v Engage” again and it’s like how are you still on social media and not know it works.

Yes, obvious 3H account that was not interested in Engage and therefore made no effort to follow/sign-up for notifications/or otherwise curate your feed towards the game, of course it seems like the game released and then promptly disappeared. It has 0 presence in your internet airspace, what else would it do for you, personally?

Yes, obvious Engage account, of course discourse/argument posts travel furthest outside of the intended audience and would result in a longer lasting media presence. Social media as it is today rewards engagement/hostility more than it does any positivity/enjoyment people get out of art/animation/meta. You’re literally engaging in it right now.

Shut the fuck up I am literally so sick of seeing a game I genuinely like (Forspoken, Engage) being a trending topic on Twitter or Tumblr and then going into the tag/topic and seeing it’s just people being unrepentant shitbags over the stupidest things.

Go do something you love. Christ alive.

[anoriathdunadan]

Perhaps not surprisingly, the activity from the initial tweet was enough to make TexasGOP a trending topic for a minute, which boosted their visibility. More importantly, it let a troll account set the agenda — including yours! This is the product of outrage baiting.

With 3 of their top 10 tweets posted on a single day, & the top tweet *ever* posted on that same day, it becomes clear how the TexasGOP parlayed a single offensive tweet into multiple high-performing tweets plus a trending topic — b/c they had help! From people who hate them!

Outrage trolls don’t want dialogue, and you aren’t going to get one. They exist to waste your time and your followers’ time, to pollute your feed, to distract you from more important issues, and to make you angry enough to say something you regret.

I see a lot of people who I follow responding to this tweet, so maybe it’s time to talk about outrage trolls. These accounts are not bots; they’re people who post intentionally inflammatory, over-the-top statements like this. They want you to respond. That’s the whole point. 1/

These people exist to hijack your attention — and if you’re a large account, to hijack your followers’ attention, too. When you engage with them, you are giving them control of the discourse and allowing them to decide what you (and your followers) talk (or don’t talk) about.

Seemingly small decisions, like whether or not to engage w/ an outrage troll, have a huge impact when they all add up. If we collectively decided to limit our engagement w/ this content, we’d not only cleanse our feeds — we’d also train the algorithms to stop amplifying outrage.

Distracting you and your followers, hijacking the narrative, and disrupting discourse is not just a side-effect — it’s an intentional tactic. If you are a large/influential account, you will be targeted by this. But all of us can help by not taking the outrage bate.

As I’ve said previously: In our media environment, attention is currency. It doesn’t matter if that attention is positive or negative — all that matters is that you’re clicking, viewing, commenting, sharing, and driving ad revenue. Your attention is valuable. Spend it wisely.

[liquidstar]

I feel as if many people, myself included, have been having problems with the way “critical thinking” is conducted in fandom circles more and more. Which I’d say is a good thing, because it means we’re thinking critically. But still the issues with the faux-critical mentality and with the way we consume media through that fandom group mentality are incredibly widespread at this point, despite being very flawed, and there are still plenty of people who follow it blindly, ironically.

I sort of felt like I had to examine my personal feelings on it and I ended up writing a whole novel, which I’ll put under the cut, and I do welcome other people’s voices in the matter, because while I’m being as nuanced as I can here I obviously am still writing from personal experience and may overlook some things from my limited perspective. But by and large I think I’ve dissected the phenomena as best I can from what I’ve been seeing going on in fandom circles from a safe but observable distance.

Right off the bat I want to say, I think it's incredibly good and necessary to be critical of media and understand when you should stop consuming it, but that line can be a bit circumstantial sometimes for different people. There are a lot of anime that I used to watch as a teenager that I can’t enjoy anymore, because I got more and more uncomfortable overtime with the sexualization of young characters, partly because as I was getting older I was really starting to realize how big of an issue it was, and I certainly think more critically now than I did when I was 14. Of course I don’t assume everyone who still watches certain series is a pedophile, and I do think there are plenty of fans that understand this. However I still stay away from those circles and that’s a personal choice.

I don’t think a person is morally superior based on where they draw the line and their own boundaries with this type of stuff, what’s more important is your understanding of the problem and response to it. There are series I watch that have a lot of the same issues around sexualization of the young characters in the cast, but they’re relatively toned down and I can still enjoy the aspects of the series I actually like without it feeling as uncomfortable and extreme. Others will not be able to, and their issues with it are legitimate and ones that I still ultimately agree with, but they’re still free to dislike the series for it, after all our stance on the issue itself is the same so why would I resent them for it?

Different people are bound to have different lines they draw for how far certain things can go in media before they’re uncomfortable watching it and it doesn’t make it a moral failing of the person who can put up with more if they’re still capable of understanding why it’s bad to begin with and able to not let it effect them. But I don’t think that sentiment necessarily contradicts the idea that some things really are too far gone for this to apply, the above examples aren’t the same thing as a series centered solely around lolicon ecchi and it doesn’t take a lot of deep analysis to understand why. It’s not about a personal line anymore when it comes to things that are outright propaganda or predatory with harmful ideals woven into the message of the story itself. Critical thinking means knowing the difference between these, and no one can hold your hand through it. And simply slapping “I’m critical of my interests” on your bio isn’t a get out of jail free card, it’s always evident when someone isn’t truly thinking about the impact of the media they consume through the way they consume it.

I think the issue is that when people apply “Critical thinking” they don’t actually analyze the story and its intent, messages, themes, morals, and all that. Instead they approach it completely diegetically, it’s basically the thermian argument, the issue stems from thinking about the story and characters as if they’re real people and judging their actions through that perspective, rather than something from a writer trying to deliver a narrative by using the story and characters as tools. Like how people get upset about characters behaving “problematically” without realizing that it’s an intentional aspect of the story, that the character needs to cause problems for there to be conflict. What they should be looking at instead is what their behavior represents in the real world.

You do not need to apply real-world morals to fictional characters, you need to apply them to the narrative. The story exists in the real world, the characters and events within it do not. Fictional murderers themselves do not hurt anyone, no one is actually dying at their hands, but their actions hold weight in the narrative which itself can harm real people. If the character only murders gay people then it reflects on whatever the themes and messages of the story are, and it’s a major issue if it's framed as if they’re morally justified, or as if this is a noble action. And it’s a huge red flag if people stan this character, even if the story itself actually presents their actions as reprehensible. Or cases where the murderers themselves are some kind of awful stereotype, like Buffalo Bill who presents a violent and dangerous stereotype of trans women, making the character a transmisogynistic caricature (Intentional or otherwise) that has caused a lot of harm to the perception of trans women. When people say “Fiction affects reality” this is what they mean. They do not mean “People will see a pretend bad guy and become bad” they mean “Ideals represented in fiction will be pulled from the real world and reflected back onto it.”

However, stories shouldn’t have to spoon-feed you the lesson as if you’re watching a children’s cartoon, stories often have nuances and you have to actively analyze the themes of it all to understand it’s core messages. Oftentimes it can be intentionally murky and hard to parse especially if the subject matter itself is complicated. But you can’t simply read things on the surface and think you understand everything about them, without understanding the symbolism or subtext you can leave a series like Revolutionary Girl Utena thinking the titular Utena is heterosexual and was only ever in love with her prince. Things won’t always be face-value or clear-cut and you will be forced to come to your own conclusions sometimes too.

That’s why the whole fandom-based groupthink mentality about “critical thinking” doesn’t work, because it’s not critical. It’s simply looking into the crowd, seeing people say a show is problematic, and then dropping it without truly understanding why. It’s performative, consuming the best media isn’t activism and it doesn’t make you a better person. Listening to the voices of people whom the issues directly concerns will help you form an opinion, and to understand the issues from a more knowledgeable perspective beyond your own. All that means nothing if you just sweep it under the rug because you want to look infallible in your morality. That’s not being critical, it’s just being scared to analyze yourself, as well as what you engage with. You just don’t want to think about those things and you’re afraid of being less than perfect so you pretend it never happened.

And though I’m making this post, it’s not mine or anyone else’s job to hold your hand through all this and tell you “Oh this show is okay, but this show isn't, and this book is bad etc etc etc”. Because you actually have to think for yourself, you know, critically. Examples I’ve listed aren’t rules of thumb, they’re just examples and things will vary depending on the story and circumstance. You have to look at shit on a case-by-case basis instead of relying on spotting tropes without thinking about how they’re implemented and what they mean. That’s why it’s analysis, you have to use it to understand what the narrative is communicating to its audience, explicitly or implicitly, intentionally or incidentally, and understand how this reflects the real world and what kind of impact it can have on it. 

A big problem with fandom is it has made interests synonymous with personality traits, as if every series we consume is a core part of our being, and everything we see in it reflects our viewpoints as well. So when people are told that a show they watched is problematic, they react very extremely, because they see it as basically the same thing as saying they themselves are problematic (It’s not). Everyone sees themselves as good people, they don’t want to be bad people, so this scares them and they either start hiding any evidence that they ever liked it, or they double down and start defending it despite all its flaws, often providing those aforementioned thermian arguments (“She dresses that way because of her powers!”).

That’s how you get people who call children’s cartoons “irredeemable media” and people who plaster “fiction=/= reality!” all over their blogs, both are basically trying to save face either by denying that they could ever consume anything problematic or denying that the problematic aspects exist all together. And absolutely no one is actually addressing the core issues anymore, save for those affected by them who pointed them out to begin with, only for their original point to become muffled in the discourse. No one is thinking critically because they’re more concerned with us-vs-them group mentality, both sides try to out-perform the other while the actual issue gets ignored or is used as nothing more than a gacha with no true understanding or sympathy behind it.

One of the other issues that comes from this is the fact that pretty much everyone thinks they’re the only person capable of being critical of their interests. That’s how you get those interactions where one person goes “OK [Media] fan” and another person replies “Bro you literally like [Other Media]”, because both parties think they’re the only ones capable of consuming a problematic piece of media and not becoming problematic themselves, anyone else who enjoys it is clearly incapable of being as big brained as them. It’s understandable because we know ourselves and trust ourselves more than strangers, and I’m not saying there can’t be certain fandoms who’s fans you don’t wanna interact with, but when we presume that we know better than everyone else we stop listening to other people all together. It’s good to trust your own judgement, it’s bad to assume no one else has the capacity to think for themselves either though.

The insistence that all media that you personally like is without moral failing and completely pure comes with the belief that all media that you personally dislike has to be morally bad in some way. As if you can’t just dislike a series because you find it annoying or it just doesn’t appeal to you, it has to be problematic, and you have to justify your dislike of it through that perspective. You have to believe that your view on whatever media it is is the objectively correct one, so you’ll likely pick apart all it’s flaws to prove you’re on the right side, but there’s no analysis of context or intent. Keep in mind this doesn’t necessarily mean those critiques are unfounded or invalid, but in cases like this they’re often skewed in one direction based on personal opinion. It’s just as flawed as ignoring all the faults in the stuff you like, it’s biased and subjective analysis that misses a lot of context in both cases, it’s not a good mindset to have about consuming media. It’s just another result of tying media consumption with identity and personal morals. The faux-critical mentality is an attempt to separate the two in a way that implies they’re a packaged deal to begin with, making it sort of impossible to truly do so in any meaningful way.

As far as I know this whole phenomena started with “Steven Universe Critical” in, like, 2016, and that’s where this mentality around “critical thinking” originated. It started out with just a few people correctly pointing out very legitimate issues with the series, but over time it grew into just a trend where people would make cutesy kin blogs with urls like critical-[character] or [character]crit to go with the fad as it divulged into Nostalgia Critic level critique. Of course there was backlash to this and criticism of the criticism, but no actual conversation to be had. Just people trying to out-do each other by acting as the most virtuous one in the room, and soon enough the fad became a huge echo-chamber that encouraged more and more outrageous takes for every little thing. The series itself was a children’s cartoon so it stands to reason that a lot of the fans were young teens, so this behavior isn’t too surprising and I do believe a lot of them did think they were doing the right thing, especially since it was encouraged. But that doesn’t erase the fact that there were actual real issues and concerns brought up about the series that got treated with very little sympathy and were instead drowning out people’s voices. Though those from a few years back may have grown up since and know better (Hopefully), the mentality stuck around and influenced the norm for how fandoms and fandom people conduct any sort of critique on media. 

That’s a shame to me, because the pedestal people place fandom onto has completely disrupted our perception on how to engage with media in a normal way. Not everything should be consumed with fandom in mind, not everything is a coffee-shop au with no conflict, not everything is a children’s cartoon with the morals spoon-fed to you. Fandom has grown past the years of uncritical praise of a series, it’s much more mainstream now with a lot more voices in it beyond your small community on some forum, and people are allowed to use those voices. Just because it may not be as pleasant for you now because you don’t get to just turn your brain off and ignore all the flaws doesn’t mean you can put on your rose-tinted nostalgia goggles and pretend that fandom is actually all that is good in the world, to the point where you place it above the comfort and safety of others (Oftentimes children). Being uncritical of fandom itself is just as bad as being uncritical of what you consume to begin with. 

At the end of the day it all just boils down to the ability to truly think for yourself but with sympathy and compassion for other people in mind, while also understanding that not everyone will come to the same conclusion as you and people are allowed to resent your interests. That doesn’t necessarily mean they hate you personally, you should be acknowledging the same issues after all. You can’t ignore aspects of it that aren’t convenient to your conclusion, you have to actually be critical and understand the issues to be able to form it. 

I think that all we need is to not rely on fandom to tell us what to do, but still listen to the voices of others, take them into account to form our opinion too, boost their voices instead of drowning them out in the minutiae of internet discourse about which character is too much of an asshole to like. Think about what the characters and story represent non-diegetically instead of treating them like real people and events, rather a story with an intent and message to share through its story and characters, and whatever those reflect from the real world. That’s how fiction affects reality, because it exists in reality and reflects reality through its own lens. The story itself is real, with a real impact on you and many others, so think about the impact and why it all matters. Just… Think. Listen to others but think for yourself, that’s all.

[hunxi-guilai]

Due to all the racism and imperialistic views westerners have towards Chinese media, do you think westerners should first educate themselves about Chinese culture and history before watching these dramas as to better understand the cultural differences? I have also seen some (rather rare) comments about white people just staying in their lane and not sticking their noses to what isn't made for them to begin with, but I find that a bit extreme (despite kinda being true.)

oh okay, we’re only doing easy questions on this blog now I see

let’s start with the more extreme take, because that’s easier for me to definitively say: no, I don’t think we should gatekeep people from media based on race or place of origin, because look, if we told westerners to keep their hands off of cmedia, then I’d be disqualified from consuming cmedia as well and that seems, well, a bit ironic

personally, I believe that shared media and narrative and storytelling is such a powerful generator of interest, curiosity, empathy, and knowledge, that to deliberately keep people out because they don’t understand the context or background or finer nuance of something will only feed that same ignorance that leads to further misunderstanding and dehumanizing of other cultures and traditions. Gatekeeping generally doesn’t benefit a diversifying audience, and tends to lead to a build-up of resentment and lack of understanding on both sides

and it’s unreasonable to demand that people, like, take an intro course or whatever before consuming media from another culture, because... 1) what would this intro course even look like, 2) that would honestly put a lot of people off who simply aren’t willing to make the effort (or don’t have the time/mental/emotional bandwidth to study up on something when they’re trying to relax), and 3) cmedia and cdramas are often excellent sources to study when you’re trying to learn more about these cultural differences, especially because there are a thousand little details that manifest in character interactions and quirks of dialogue that would never make it into a textbook

and honestly? I don’t think fandom has been that bad--discourse is inevitable, drama is inevitable, but (at least in my corner of fandom) people are willing to listen and learn, and the fact that people are actively asking me about tricky topics means that 1) they’re genuinely interested in learning more/improving themselves, and 2) this is an environment where they feel comfortable enough to do so

the really beautiful thing about media, I think, is the way it inspires people to go above and beyond, whether that’s watching LOTR at a formative age and deciding to get into archery, or stumbling onto a 50-episode show about a plucky necromancer in ahistoric fantasy China and deciding to Duolingo a whole new language. I always want to encourage people who are attempting to genuinely engage with foreign and unfamiliar texts, because we’re all broadening our horizons here, and I think that is both good and joyful work, and if we all keep in mind our own limited knowledge, biased perspectives, and the respect we should have for the source text and source culture, I see no reason why initial ignorance should be a reason to keep people from accessing these texts

that being said, we are running into discourse and racism in this fandom. there are feelings being hurt, deliberately or otherwise. and I can personally testify that it is incredibly exhausting to constantly take on the role of the tour guide, especially because it constantly places me (and many other diaspora/Chinese fans who put themselves out there in these Anglophone fandom spaces) in a position where we are likely to run into microaggressions and misguided takes. and look--I’m glad that people are trying to educate themselves, to make mistakes and learn from them, but being that guide for people takes time, and energy, and emotional labor

all of which is to say: people should be free to consume whatever media they want, but they should be sensitive and respectful of the context and creators, the intended audience and the subjectivity of perspective. especially when you’re consuming media that is based, so definitively and inextricably, in the fabric of another culture, it’s important to remember that you are a guest here, and to conduct yourself accordingly

(alternatively, read this statement on MDZS, diaspora, and cultural exchange, because it continues to be the most eloquent statement on the topic)

[chemicalpink]

I feel like from the type of digested academic stuff I bring you on some posts, evidently if you’re interested in such things, along with some things on my inbox (that I will not be directly posting but rather referring on here bc they’re questionable at best in regards of bashing Jungkook) we have a great opportunity to talk about Jungkook’s interactions and parasocial fan behaviour.

Evidently, if you follow closely what has been going on with Jungkook and his job as an idol, he’s been pretty active on social media (something quite unusual for him as we’ve known him doing his job previously) and evidently this has stirred some ‘he’s feeding the delulu side of the fandom’ discourse, so we’ll look over it objectively.

We’ll need to point some clear concepts first, Jungkook is an idol. An idol is a specific category of celebrities, where on top of regular artist activities, like singing and dancing and performing, fan service is a key word. Working as an idol caters to the Asian market, which means it has its own existing context and sociocultural impact, it’s not just about having a platform but about what lineaments you follow with it, which is why the ‘idol’ term rounds its etymological meaning of image and shaped. Being an idol is about having a properly shaped image. A pristine member of society that people look up to. Which is why scandals and ‘improper Korean (in this case) etiquette’ are such a big thing. Now that’s without really diving into it’s historical practice of entertainment practices. With all that being said, Jungkook’s job is being an idol.

Now, I believe I’ve talked about this before. Fan service. While we refer to this loosely in means of referring to members’ interactions, truth is, being an idol, as a job, gains its market value in terms of neuromarketing and fan behaviour. This means, put simply, the more you engage with fans, the more market value you gain. With all its specific details, the answer of companies to freely play with this economic value curve was to put simply: sell us an interpersonal relationship. A friend, a significant other, someone that seemingly listens to us and cares for us. This is not to say idols don’t care about fans, quite the contrary, this is just the corporativism approach to the phenomenon.

So let’s get personal, idols are people with a job, they’re human just like us. And this economic structure is a two way road, from fans to idols and from idols to fans. While rather crude to fans, it’s also crude to artists. And economy is a science, the market value doesn’t take into consideration the implications of the human psyche, their actions, graphics are in no way reflecting the fan-artist relationship, the way that artists may or may not care about their job, the mistakes they make as human beings. So evidently, idols can and most likely do, care for their fans, each to their own extent.

So let’s talk power dynamics. As much as an artist may care about fans and as much as it derives from a not so pretty place of quite literally selling interpersonal relationships in their parasocial variety, it is a quite subjective platform where the fandom is made up of individuals that are grouped together as a whole and presented as such to artists, while us fans are presented a single individual with seemingly enough capacity to cater to everyone. Fans and artists do not stand on the same platform. A single action from an artist impacts a whole fandom, while the fandom must group and act in terms of hundreds or thousands of people to impact an artist.

Bear with me, we’re getting to the Jungkook part.

While we are only able to speculate the reasons of Jungkook’s lack of interaction in social media, truth is that has changed as of now (2022), as he has. The man is all grown up, he’s allowed to change in terms of how he relates to other people, the way that he decides to interact with fans. As we all are. We can’t continue to try to hold 2018 Jungkook accountable for what 2022 Jungkook would like to do in terms of how he does his job as an idol.

So sure, he’s flirty, is there anything to blame so far if the man is just doing his job to cater to a neuromarketing strategy of ‘making people fall in love with you’? (To put it simply, it’s obviously much more than that)

But the seemingly controversial part of it is that he ‘feeds them (which we’ve established is quite literally an idol’s job description) and then complains about it’ which are… some quite big words. Taking into consideration that ‘complaining about it’ isn’t in terms of complaining about his job, but rather being an individual that’s doing his job and having people strip him from any sense of privacy, wanting to strip him of his sense of self, not just taking what he’s willing to give but demanding that he has nothing of himself to keep for himself, and that, is in no way justified. We are talking human beings here.

But let’s not turn a blind eye either, no subjective verbs such as blaming, but looking at it from action-reaction. Does Jungkook being openly flirty on camera/ with direct fan interactions end up feeding parasocial relationships of some fans? It does, but how is it any different from how we’ve seen other members of the same band doing such things too. Like how Yoongi has answered to the ‘I will sue you’ comment or ‘bring the documents’ to a clove marriage proposal, to Namjoon answering an ‘I love you’ with ‘me too baby’ and so on and so forth?

We would have to look at statistics, and I’ve also talked about this before, although I’m sure statistics have changed since pandemic ARMY now represents around the 60% of the fandom. But as fandom trends tend to keep the same, BTS’ market or value persona while diverse, is mainly young people, this, seen side by side with the corporate perspective of their work, makes Jungkook, as a 24 year old, being the youngest, the most attainable member of the band. Which is a whole discussion of its own.

So yeah, Jungkook’s interactions in social media ends up directly affecting parasocial relationships. And no, Jungkook’s actions are not to blame, because we’ve seen such actions from other members and it hasn’t been talked about to the same extent.

Jungkook is a 24 year old man that is doing his job as an idol rather impeccably whose work has been trapped in a consumerism dynamic that tries to blame the market behaviour on him when there’s no one but capitalism to blame.

[fandom-oracle]

Wait wdym? Do you think fic is bad?

i'm getting canceled tonight i guess.

if you actually did a good a faith interpretation of my post you know it's not really ABOUT fanfiction at all, i actually write fanfiction myself. i'm not sharing here because it's overwhelmingly bad fic that i write exclusively as wish-fulfilment or for self-projection, but at least i'm self-aware about it. i am ALSO one of the people who reads ze Books™️, although most of the academic material i consume are nonfiction, so this whole thing is particularly annoying to me. the crux of the matter is that, if you're a little younger you might've missed it, but this website was a hotbed of scalding takes like 'dante's divine comedy is literally fanfiction', 'something something is literally fanfiction' when the thing in question barely counts as a transformative work and, in fact, it weakens the definition of transformative work in itself to try to apply it to literally anything that exhibits an ounce of intertextuality. plenty of takes that are... true, but require some nuance, focused on the idea of transformative fandom as a place defined by its presence of overwhelmingly female and disproportionately queer (occasionally, though disputedly, nonwhite) content creators and the ways in which transformative fan content could be interpreted as a space of defiance to cisheteropatriarchy in the way it permeates traditional media. a third, less common but still relevant take was the focus on how certain fandoms such as trek and doctor who have a long history of involvement in real-world civil rights issues and progressive politics. so this kind of take has been the dominant view on tumblr and transformative fandom for a good decade now, perhaps longer, and the people with this kind of takes can sometimes be a little... obnoxious. and the majority of people on transformative fandom (regardless of wether or not the fandom is disproportionately composed of nonwhite individuals or not, by sheer virtue of american demographics and this site`s heaily skewed userbase, the majority will still be white) are white, and like any other space dominated by white people, fandom has often been a vehicle for white supremacy. "Stitch Media Mix" talks about this in-depth. the discourse on fandom racism and ways in which transformative fandom as a whole contribute to racialized stereotypes, hierarchies, and deeper problems within online culture has led to a lot of people with grievances with fandom, many of whom are women of color, to develop an entire online identity built around the concept of being "critical of fandom", which is a very weird thing to do with fandom is literally billions of people, not a unified demographic, and that being critical of something can mean a WIDE amount of things; which in turn has led to a lot of people insulating themselves completely from any criticism of fandom as being inherently in bad faith, which a weird thing to do when literally ANY sphere of society should be open to criticism. people taking critiques of media they consume and taking critiques of their own critiques as personal attacks are abound here and make everything worse. so a fairly recent (mid2018ish, definitely post the insanity of reylo discourse but before sarah z blew up in popularity) trend has been that people in these communities isolate more and more and the general discourse has effetively resulted in people with differing takes in fanfiction specifically but fandom as a Whole (which is, again very weird to say because fandom is not 'a Whole' because there's no unifying element to different fandoms) only interacting with each other in hostile ways. and increasingly, in my personal sphere, a lot of people are positioning themselves in the "fandom critical" (AGAIN, WEIRD THING TO SAY, WHAT DOES IT EVEN MEAN, PLEASE USE WORDS WITH PRECISION) sphere, and I tend to take that "side" myself, but i specifically do not think framing this as a team A or team B thing is useful. this culture war was in the buildup.

last week a post by a user i follow recently became popular. the post itself was a critique that i.. do not necessarily agree with. it was ultimately about the idea of easily-consumable popular media being seen as an acceptable form of exclusive media engagement by people in the "pro-fandom" sphere, and how the insidiousness of this line of thinking has to do with how capitalist media production is designed to spread, and how fandom AS A TREND, not specifically any individuals or any fanworks, can empower capitalism. the post specifically did NOT use the kindest possible words, but that was what they were trying to say. howelljenkins also has really good takes on the subject, albeit from a different angle.

anyway because this is a circular culture war, the result was as follows: 1) a bunch of pro-fandom types refuse to actually make a charitable reading of the post and insist the user in question hates fandom and thinks people under capitalism shouldn't have things that are Fun, and should Only Read Theory and keep sending anon hate to several blogs in the opposing sphere, therefore proving the point that fandom sometimes prevent people from being able to engage critically with things; 2) a bunch of anti-fandom types who defined their entire identity on hating fandom being like "haha look at these cringe people" instead of trying to understand why a demographic overwhelmingly composed of marginalized people would feel strongly to posts that use inflammatory language against an interest of theirs, thereby proving the point that most criticism of fandom is divorced from actual fan content and is vaguely defined. the reason this is a culture war that actually deserves attention (unlike most fandom culture wars, which are just really granular ship wars made into social justice issues for clout) is that, for the most part, both of these groups are mostly people with college degrees, many of whom will contirbute to academia in the coming years. fan studies is a relevant field. these discussions have repercussions in wider media criticism trends, and this is why i can't really stand it or just passively ignoring it the way i do with most other inconsequential discourse. like it's genuinely upsetting seeing almost every single tumblr user, most of whom should know better, patting themselves in the back for their inability to read things in a way that doesn't feed into preexisting cultural hostilities in fan spaces.

[masterthespianduchovny]

As much as I understand the need for queer representation, queer shipping around mlm ships tend to be misogynistic as fuck. Doubly so if one of the male characters has a canon female love interest. They have to shit on her and "punish" her for interfering with a ship that isn't canon and was never going to be canon.

And that's important to note because, within the last few years, fans of these ships frame these relationships as barriers to their preferred ship or they get mad that there isn't an open ended to pretend these two characters ended up together.

As if this is somehow the fault of the female characters and not the writers. Most importantly, it overlooks the fact that, more times than not, these character sexualities were considered and there is a vague outline of where they might end up. It's unfortunate that queerness isn't often considered, actually very little, but it's not okay to engage in misogynistic rhetoric all because your mlm ship didn't happen.

From my own personal experience, a prime example is Steggy.

Steve is framed as straight. Maybe there's a chance that his bi--idk. But the MCU has always positioned him as being into women with the subtext that he'll end up with a woman. Yet, because he ended up with Peggy, she's constantly attacked and doesn't "deserve" him because she didn't know him as long as Bucky. She's been called all sorts of derogatory things, slandered, criticized for random bullshit, etc. Reduced to just her reproductive parts, having ageist remarks leveled at her, and so forth.

Most of this didn't exist before Endgame, but after Endgame, the attacks are non stop. People are triggered whenever she comes her. All because Cap chose her over someone he wasn't even interested in. All because fans shipped him and Bucky together and the MCU didn't bend to their will.

Another example: Darvey. Harvey and Donna from Suits.

No one has to like a character, but usually, the way certain fans rip into Donna usually ends up with it being a Marvey shipper. They'll contort truth, ignore details, and color her in the worst possible light to prove how she's bad for Harvey, yet ignore all of Harvey's bullshit to prove how he and Mike are MFEO.

Let's be clear: I don't fucking care if people ship non canon ships or think two other characters, whether or not they're the same gender, are better together. However, When you're being misogynistic and sexist to upload your OTP, you can rightly fuck off. It's so easy to ship what you like without bringing that bullshit into it.

Tragically, many of these critics are women who have massive internalized misogyny, but believe they are being progressive, inclusive, and ship without prejudice. If you're tearing women down to uplift any ship, even if it's queer, that's not progressive and feeds into the patriarchy.

It's okay to prefer something else, it's not okay to feed into a pre-existing, harmful, and sexist narrative.

And it's really bothersome because these same people call themselves trying to validate the LBGTQ community, many of these shippers are straight (which this opinion is based on various discourses and criticisms of how gay characters are written in these stories and dialogue surrounding them) and ironically end up invalidating Bi, Pan, and NB people.

Some of these ships are due to these characters being hot, which is fine.

Other times it's due to chemistry, which is also fine.

But as another person argued years ago, one of the reasons why mlm shipping is so popular and prevalent is because male dynamics are actually fleshed out and explored meaningfully. This leads to wanting to ship characters who have real relationships, conflicts, and history with each other no matter how small or large.

However, the issue comes in for some because it's not canon. These meaningful relationships aren't romantic and many women tend to want some romance included, which isn't a bad thing. But when you know the romance will never happen, it's easy to get upset about that. And they know people who ship canon pairings have that over them, which is infuriating.

Which is understandable.

Regardless, diminishing, trivializing, and insulting women is not okay, esp when some of these women have the relationships with men that are usually reserved for male dynamics.

Donna and Harvey have a long, complicated relationship that is based on a professional dynamic, friendship, and romantic yearning. This was established in the first season and didn't come out of nowhere, yet people either ignore that, play it as one sided, go on and on about why they couldn't be just friends (they never were), and hilariously, refer to it as fan service.

Peggy and Steve develop a friendship of sorts, are supportive of one another, genuinely are in love with each other, and have worked alongside each other is criticized because Peggy didn't know Steve as long as Bucky. Appalling things are said about her.

Thing is: these aren't the only fandoms that do this. Trust and believe, whenever there is a major male pairing, if any woman is canonically paired with ether one of them, she's being attacked and called gross things. That's not okay even in the name of representation. If you genuinely hate this female character because of who she is and not because of her gender, I get that. However, a lot of it is gender based and it's quite obvious when reading these criticisms.

Wanting better and more representation doesn't excuse or justify shitty behavior.

Lastly, people factor in compulsive heterosexuality regarding their criticisms of various straight pairings. That's a validate take, however, we need to be honest about our issues with certain pairings rather than piling on undeserved hate towards female characters, and then have nuanced conversations about what this means in context to that specific series.

No. You're not going to have these conversations with show runners, writers, and actors. I get this. But some of you need to stop harassing others and acting like assholes because they don't support your pairing (which they don't have to). If you believe Steve is bisexual, then stop fucking harassing people who ship him with Peggy. If deep, meaningful relationships are important, then stop undermining them to push a ship. And stop turning women into fucking mascots in your fanfic and fan art to prop up your ship--that shit is so dehumanizing. Often times, when these shippers don't hate the women, they only exist to say, "when will these two silly kids get together?" OR "I'mg lad you two silly kids finally got together."

Turning a woman into a mascot isn't any better than harming her or killing her to fuel a man's story--even if the man is gay.

Ironically, I'm less likely to see this from wlw ships or ships that has more queer support and than het support.

Quite interesting.

[thedreadvampy]

honestly not to get into this but I think we've got to find a better way as a like online community of squaring the following facts

teenagers should not be held to the same standards as adults and need to have space to screw up and learn from their mistakes

children, teenagers and young people are particularly vulnerable to bullying, manipulation and grooming

people, particularly children and young people, should have access to age-appropriate spaces where they're not constantly presented with sexual imagery and expectations

there is a substantial power differential not just between adults and children, but between older and younger teens

we live in a culture which overwhelmingly pressures teenagers to act as adult as possible, and we should aim not to feed into that pressure

significant age gaps in relationships are often dodgy, manipulative and leave lasting damage regardless of intent, especially when you're college age or younger and regardless of whether or not it is, technically, legal.

with the related facts that

teenagers are still responsible for their actions

there is no hard and fast cutoff point for this learning curve and vulnerable stage, and people in their late teens and early 20s are often similarly vulnerable even after passing the age of legal majority (and in my experience often abruptly much more targeted by creeps once they pass the age of consent)

Teenagers and young adults are going to be friends with each other and that's normal

Teenagers are going to have sex with each other, talk sexually to each other and fantasise about sex. that's a normal part of development and if it's not pressured there's nothing at all wrong with having sex with someone a similar age. yes even if one of you's 15 and one's 16. IF you feel safe doing it and IF it's genuinely what you want to do (and being a teenager is messy and confusing so you may not know but. be careful with yourself there will always be a later)

teenagers are capable of intelligently engaging with topics, and capable of learning

teenagers need to, to some degree, retain a degree of responsibility for their own internet experience (not in the sense that it's their fault if they get targeted, but in the sense that personal blogs, 18+ content and other content not targeted towards

like there must be a better way to square this than Everyone My Age Or Younger Who I Agree With Is A Literal Minor How Dare You, Also Here's A Callout Post I Wrote About A 19 Year Old For Shipping Two Teenage Characters Together When They Are A Literal Adult.

like dividing the world into Literal Adults and Literal Minors isn't.........working great, is it? people who are very clearly to my eyes still Youths (you know, like 19 or 20) are looking down at 17 year olds from their Lofty High Horse of Adulthood instead of engaging with them as people, and simultaneously people that age exist as Schroedinger's Minor - if we like them then they can't be expected to do better and if we don't like them they're, idk, pedos for having 17 year old friends even though like. my dude I have been in university classes that contain both 17yo and 21yo people, is it unreasonable for them to interact as equals???

age discourse on this site is fucked my guys and I'm speaking as someone who was Very Much Pushed To Grow Up Too Soon and consistently targeted by adults demanding sex and emotional support from 14 on. like I'm not here to diminish the importance of building safe environments for teenagers, I just think that necessarily means treating teenagers and young people as whole individuals with specific needs, not seeing an arbitrary cutoff below which you are not to be interacted with or criticised. that isn't how you create a healthy relationship between adults and young people, it's how you create a highly exploitable and exploited system of alienation, and it leaves a lot of people who should be getting support and protection out in the cold.

[gryphsdeadbones]

Half-Life and its media are rated M and the following applies:

(cw for: nsfw discussion)

1. Don’t fucking send nsfw shit to minors. What is WRONG with you. If you are an adult you don’t bring that shit up with minors. Don’t fucking go into their inbox and whine about nsfw discourse. WHY are you personally interacting with kids in that way, it’s shady as fuck??? You can discuss that stuff with other adults, don’t involve minors- even if you feel the need to correct them it’s just. Really not a good idea. 

If you really can’t avoid a discussion, keep your distance.

Minors, for your safety, only trust whoever you feel is an okay adult. Even then, don’t hesitate to cut off contact if an adult ever feels very very suspicious and unsafe. You can softblock/hardblock as needed on the internet and it’s understandable and gets the message across. 

2. Don’t fucking send nsfw shit to adults who didn’t ask. Why the fuck are you sending nsfw shit to wayne and co. This is like nsfw etiquette 101, if you DO discuss serious nsfw in a sfw space, you always make sure the others are okay with it and its tagged as such/in the appropriate space. 

The huge problem with the discourse in the first place is that some chucklefuck thought it was funny to send it to creators. 

The crew do crack nsfw jokes but like. They know each other. The twitch chat’s aware of their brand of humor. But some stranger showing up with straight up nsfw jokes/content unprompted? That’s not okay, even if outwardly they seemed fine with it.

It’s pretty much unwanted harassment- like if you were joking around with your close circle of friends at a bar and a total fucking stranger shows up and tells you nsfw jokes. Jokes that they made porn of your oc, unprompted. What the fuck.

3. Don’t fucking harass nsfw artists either, holy fucking shit. If you’re not familiar with nsfw spaces, it is not your place to tell what artists can or cant draw. Any nsfw artist with basic common sense fucking knows to:

- NOT put it in the main tags of a media

- tag warnings when needed

- mark their own account as nsfw

- block and avoid problematic shit

If you think every single nsfw artist is into gross illegal shit you are out of your mind and extremely wrong. Regardless, if you’re not into nsfw content, then it’s not for you. Simple as that- you block/avoid as needed and they will do the same- both sides win!

I’ve witnessed nsfw artists getting death threats- the characters in their art being unrelated adults and consensual. Holy fuck just leave them the goddamn fuck alone. You’d think ‘oh but they’re adults, they can handle it’ hello these guys are real people. Their feelings are more important than dumb internet discourse. If you’re concerned for your safety, the block button is free of charge. Use it.

The real, actual, mutual enemy is the people who make extremely vile abuse fetishization shit- even then, just block and don’t engage AT ALL for your own safety. It’s that easy.

Literally every Half-Life character is an adult and not related to each other (aside from the obvious).

I hate to break it to you, but HLVR:AI has a good chunk of nsfw dialogue and is taking place in an M-rated game. 

It’s legitimately concerning sometimes that there are a lot of minors who like HLVR:AI. All the characters are ADULTS and they say dumb adult shit sometimes.

It’s okay to enjoy it, I’m not saying ‘minors shouldn’t be watching this’. It’s very important to set boundaries. And it’s equally important not to go looking for content you don’t want to see. 

It is your own responsibility to curate and filter your own feed. Ao3, Twitter and Tumblr have their own filtering system: actually use it to your advantage. 

Also a note: people tend to miss dni lists and carrds, so using filters are much more helpful for you and others.

Don’t go crying into anyone’s inboxes and make them do the work for you- unless there’s, for some goddamn reason, explicit nsfw in the main tags. Even then, those are like a small number of people who are easy to block and ignore. Simple as that. Use your brain.

You can reblog this. Except for p*do/inc*st/n*ncon creators, I’d rather you don’t interact.

If you’re going to send anon asks about this, be fucking respectful and mature about it. Anon hate and harassment goes directly into the garbage and permanently blocks ip.

[ilikekidsshows]

Another thing about Youtube hate videos

The sad truth of Youtube is that videos that complain about stuff get a lot of traffic, and videos that cater to the people with the laziest approach to media analysis (aka, they just adopt what others say online) are even more popular. Basically, if you say the same things as the other popular creators, the algorithm will recommend your content to people who watch those channels. And, if you hate the thing that’s popular to hate on, you will hit the jackpot on the popularity of your content.

People who take their analysis of a media from other people’s Youtube videos just love watching videos that reiterate the same tired discourse at them over and over again because it makes them feel validated in their opinions, even when said opinions are based on literally nothing but a bunch of videos about people talking angrily about the show. This further feeds into the spiral of negativity. Other creators will copy it, and the audience will consume anything with the same talking points.

Just check out the avalanche of High Guardian Spice complaint videos that seem to just repeat each other, like the video makers are watching each other’s videos for reference, drowning out the actual analysis of the show. Similarly, when Pokémon Sword and Shield first came out, the Pokétube side was nothing but complaints about how this or that Pokémon wasn’t in it (aka the “Dexit” controversy) for months leading to the release and the first few months after the release. It’s only after the height of popularity for the topic had vaned that actual videos about the actual game started coming out. The same happens with every single new Pokémon game, actually, just with a different gripe of choice.

Miraculous Ladybug is a popular show, but it has a lot of episodes. So how are click-hungry Youtube content creators going to milk that popularity for channel engagement without having to put too much work into watching and analysing the show? They watch the popular videos made on the show and make their own video repeating the exact same talking points and then they can sit back and watch the clicks and viewers roll in.

Even when not looking at it that cynically, a career Youtuber making a video to pay their bills and a fan of the show analysing a series they like are going to have very different approaches to the idea of “analysis” to begin with. In addition to that, their motives for tackling a specific topic are very different with one trying to game a system to get engagement and the other wanting to share how they think a thing they like works.

But people who are just fans of a show don’t really have a reason to have a Youtube channel, since interacting with the fandom happens more easily on platforms like tumblr, while on Youtube, people who’ve never seen an episode of the series you’re talking about will watch your video and think that they know everything about the topic based on that or some other video(s). The same is true for any topic being discussed in Youtube, though, a lot of people think their personal opinion is the most important piece of valuable information on any topic. In the middle of that there are people who know how media analysis works and they do that analysis as their work on Youtube, but they are less likely to trap themselves into discussing a single show, no matter how popular, and will most likely tackle different shows to create a wide repertoire of content.