(no subject)

[mistressofmuses]

Boy it sure is something to hear about what seems like garden-variety fandom BNF flounce-drama, passing distantly... and then to actually find out that ah, this shit is way wilder than I thought.

How many BNFs turn out to be abusive wannabe cult leaders who are also convinced of something that makes them better and more spiritually and uniquely special than everyone else out there in the world?
Like... I'm sure the real answer would shock me, but I feel like any number greater than 0 is a problem.

Fucking yikes.

-

We are about to head out to our friend's album release show. Fingers crossed it all goes well. Alex seems... like he doesn't really want to go, but I'm hoping he has a good time once we do. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone, but I'm also still pretty anxious about it. Haven't tried to get together with people like this since before Covid.

Comments

apparently AO3 slander really grinds my gears

[chemicalcain]

Yeesh, reading this makes me wish I had the spare cash to re-up my AO3 subscription. I really despise that there's a large cohort of kids (read: people under 23) who don't recognize that the OTW is the only reason they can write drabbles on Wattpad, and that most of the sites they think are "morally superior alternatives" can and will delete their content at the drop of a hat if it seems profitable to do so. I wasn't around for the LiveJournal purge but I was around for the Tumblr porn ban. Entire networks of blogs, years worth of content and fanworks and diaries erased permanently. AO3 has some policies that could do with updates, but they won't purge your work or suspend someone without cause and warning. The fact that Dreamwidth operates under similar principles is a big part of its draw for me.

Anyway, yeah, it doesn't shock me when abuse allegations come out about people who talk that way, because shifting blame and claiming to be the real victim is a tactic often used by abusers. And cults are abuse on a massive scale, in my opinion - such a massive scale that it can be hard for victims to realize they're being abused, because everyone around them says it's normal. Being that insular isn't good for the brain.

Re: apparently AO3 slander really grinds my gears

[mistressofmuses]

AO3 slander grinds my gears so bad, haha.

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

[chemicalcain]

Yeah, my policy is that if people don't want to read something, they can revoke consent at any time by closing the browser. They implicitly consent by continuing to read content that was posted publicly and not directed at them (which would be covered under the Harassment section of the TOS.) Basically this:


Looking at the AO3 TOS, their commercial activity policy is quite permissive. They aren't saying you can't host commissioned works on AO3, only that you can't promote commercial endeavors or solicit donations on the Archive itself. This user wouldn't have gotten in trouble for soliciting donations for chapters if the solicitation was off-platform. So it seems absurd that someone would dig their heels in so hard when there were easier ways to accomplish what they wanted and when the rules are so few and so clear.

Since DW policies lean hands-off in the same way AO3 does, and since both sites make it really easy to back up my data, I feel very comfortable here. Sites with unclear content restrictions remind me that everything I say or do can be interpreted with malicious intent. I get the same reminder when reading about queer history, honestly. Someone can and will claim that writing a certain trope or expressing my gender a certain way inherently proves I'm a predator; then they can use that claim to try to leverage me out of public space. It's another way to make certain varieties of queer people unacceptable.

Re: apparently AO3 slander really grinds my gears

[mistressofmuses]

Exactly! Opting out of a fic is absolutely always an option! Whether it's the content or the style or the characterization or any other aspect that isn't to your liking, backing out is always a good choice!

("If it sucks... hit da bricks!!" skeleton is honestly such a good life philosophy.)

Exactly! They don't even ban posting commercial fic - just discussing the commercial aspects on AO3 itself. I know an author I follow takes fic commissions, and she will mark them as having been written for that person, but never ever mentions that the fics were commissions or that she takes commissions at all.
And there's no rule against linking to a site, as long as it isn't primarily intended for commercial activity (so no patreon/ko-fi/amazon author page/etc.), but a tumblr account is fine, even if she talks about commissions and fundraising there. But no, she was blatantly talking about the commercial activity, and then threw a fit about being told she needed to remove those notes from *all* her fic.

But yes, I feel much more secure using sites that don't have content rules to be weaponized. Because that's exactly it - even sites with only a few content rules (beyond legality, which is AO3 and DW's policy), even ones that on a surface level seem reasonable, are subject to malicious interpretations and grudge reporting and all those sorts of things. And that has absolutely been an issue with things like queer history, queer expression, any of it.
And gosh, people probably shouldn't even use that word, it's so unpalatable! [I'm being sarcastic. To be clear, I am happily queer, but that in and of itself is something people will attack. "This site doesn't allow slurs, and *I* say queer is a slur, so you self-IDing as queer means you should be banned!"]
There is a common demand that queer people in particular be paragons of perfect virtue. Any "problematic" aspects of a person's interests, expression, writing, identity, etc. is sufficient to throw them out of the community. And of course, perfection will never happen, so it's only a matter of time before SOMETHING you say/do/ARE/etc. is enough for someone to maliciously attack over, if they feel like they can.

Re: apparently AO3 slander really grinds my gears

[chemicalcain]

Yesyesyesyes. The "perfect queer" thing is a huge problem. It's metastasized into the idea that queer people can't write stories that involve any kind of trauma - that writing someone who experiences abuse makes the author inherently abusive. Or, sometimes, that writing trauma poorly makes the author an abuser, even though writing is fucking hard. It suuuuuucks.

I think cancel culture at large grew out of a good motive, originally. There are people who abuse others to gain more power, so when people point out abuse, we can help the people who were targeted. But trying to pre-empt abuse by labeling traits or interests that "predict" abusive behavior is gonna net a lot of people who are really just doing their goddamn best out here. It can be a fine line to tread, but man, a lot of people saw the line and decided to walk perpendicular.

Re: apparently AO3 slander really grinds my gears

[mistressofmuses]

Exactly! That writing about any sort of trauma is somehow equivalent to enacting that type of trauma (either on the readers, or on the characters who are being treated as more important than the actual human author.) And sure, I've seen clumsy handling of trauma or of other "sensitive" subjects, but... oh well. If something is written poorly, or in a way you don't like... we're back to "hit da bricks!!" Find something you enjoy more!

I think you're right - deplatforming hateful, awful people can be one of the best things to stop what they're doing, as is calling out their harmful behaviors and helping to show patterns of abuse that certain people have engaged in. (And sometimes it's needed because the perpetrators DO have a good public face.)
Unfortunately, it sees like it's just kind of turned into its own form of clout-chasing. Of being the most performatively angry, because *that* is its own form of social currency. And if that means attacking a fellow queer creator, or some poor kid on twitter, or some artist you don't like, welp... gotta get that engagement!
There is this utterly mistaken belief (which some people seem to genuinely believe, and others just try to feed into) that you can somehow "tell" a bad person from a good one based on their thoughts/traits/interests/art/etc. That's nonsense - none of those are actually *behaviors* that are going to harm another person. It also lets *actually* harmful people slide under the radar, because they know the right things to say or interests to talk about to make themselves seem "safe".

It's back to a really frustrating new incarnation of purity culture and misguided ideas of what actually makes people safe or not. An obsession with weeding out the "sinners" of a community, and performatively attacking them to distance yourself from the "bad" is disturbingly religious-culty, even if the people involved rarely think of it that way.

Re: apparently AO3 slander really grinds my gears

[chemicalcain]

Yes to all this. Once again I am glad to have more or less abandoned Twitter. The policy of Twitter staff is almost explicitly "reward what gets clicks," and the stuff that gets clicks is performative outrage. It's not exclusive to Twitter, obviously, but it's very apparent to me that the site is actively designed to bury nuance and polarize opinions.

It also lets actually harmful people slide under the radar, because they know the right things to say or interests to talk about to make themselves seem "safe".

^^^ This, this, this. People can and do take advantage of this kind of moralizing in order to find easier targets. Calling it "weeding out sinners" feels spot-on, because you see this exact same shit in lots of church congregations. (Specifically thinking about evangelical Christians here, because that's where my experience comes from)