There are SO MANY people who don't realize how unique a space AO3 is, and that it maintains that by being both permissive and unbiased when it comes to content and users. It isn't PERFECT, but AO3 and the OTW as a whole has done SO MUCH for fandom in terms of allowing it to exist the way that it does now. The idea that content should be restricted (based on whatever the individual doesn't like) is so frustrating to deal with, because no one is willing to admit that those policies existing means that they can and will be used against other subject matter. There's shit I would never ever want to read in a million years... so I don't. They have relatively few rules - AND ONE OF THEM IS NOT TO TALK ABOUT COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY WTF IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE WHO CAN'T DEAL WITH THAT.
I remember strikethrough on LJ, though I wasn't directly impacted the way a lot of people were. I didn't lose my journal or my work or communities I was in, but it definitely made the space feel far less safe than it had before, because there was the knowledge that if your content was ever deemed sufficiently "bad" you could be thrown out with no notice or recourse. The tumblr porn ban felt deeply like the 2.0 version of that. Suddenly, such huge swaths of community were gone. Dreamwidth absolutely appeals to me for the same reasons that AO3 does - I'm not worried about anything I post or share being grounds for termination, and I don't feel like I'm at risk of losing years (more than a decade now!) of personal connection and emotional investment because some anti-queer group launched an attack on my content or whatever.
Yeah, it's very classic DARVO. Cults are absolutely abusive relationships writ large, and all the things that make exiting an abusive relationship hard are magnified as well.
Re: apparently AO3 slander really grinds my gears
There are SO MANY people who don't realize how unique a space AO3 is, and that it maintains that by being both permissive and unbiased when it comes to content and users. It isn't PERFECT, but AO3 and the OTW as a whole has done SO MUCH for fandom in terms of allowing it to exist the way that it does now. The idea that content should be restricted (based on whatever the individual doesn't like) is so frustrating to deal with, because no one is willing to admit that those policies existing means that they can and will be used against other subject matter. There's shit I would never ever want to read in a million years... so I don't.
They have relatively few rules - AND ONE OF THEM IS NOT TO TALK ABOUT COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY WTF IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE WHO CAN'T DEAL WITH THAT.
I remember strikethrough on LJ, though I wasn't directly impacted the way a lot of people were. I didn't lose my journal or my work or communities I was in, but it definitely made the space feel far less safe than it had before, because there was the knowledge that if your content was ever deemed sufficiently "bad" you could be thrown out with no notice or recourse. The tumblr porn ban felt deeply like the 2.0 version of that. Suddenly, such huge swaths of community were gone.
Dreamwidth absolutely appeals to me for the same reasons that AO3 does - I'm not worried about anything I post or share being grounds for termination, and I don't feel like I'm at risk of losing years (more than a decade now!) of personal connection and emotional investment because some anti-queer group launched an attack on my content or whatever.
Yeah, it's very classic DARVO. Cults are absolutely abusive relationships writ large, and all the things that make exiting an abusive relationship hard are magnified as well.