I loved your post about antishipping being the cool new trend for young/college age teens! Pretty much nailed my own opinion of it (and then I blew through your whole blog in like two hours lol I love how you discuss things! You're always so calm and polite which is something I appreciate a lot!). I'd value your input on how we might be able to put a stop to a lot of anti behavior if you have any c:

I’m very glad you’ve enjoyed my blog!

Unfortunately, there’s no way to stop anti behavior. The joke is: we’re allowed to ship and they’re allowed to hate ships; we’re allowed to write dark fanfiction and they’re allowed to loathe it. Until somebody is doing something illegal we can’t actually stop them.

However, we can limit anti influence on fandom spaces. And I don’t think it’s easy, or I wouldn’t have a blog like this.

The primary public goal of anti-shippers and anti-darkfic communities are to obliterate ‘bad’ ships and dark content in fandom spaces.  All public action taken with the intent of having their views communicated to shippers/creators of dark content are aimed to either drive them out of fandom or make them see the light of their evil ways. Their social power mainly comes from generating negative emotions in fandom, and I think there are 3 primary forces:

So I think the best way to cut the power and influence that antis have is by shutting them and their rhetoric out of fandom spaces.  this looks like:

Block antis. Block all antis. block virulent negativity. Block even antis that hate the same ships you hate. Keep yourself away from the nastiness and also protect yourself from their notice (if you block them they can’t see or reblog your posts as easily).

Avoid black and white ‘discourse’. Don’t dwell on social debates about purity and the moral implications of your ships or fictional content. Be selective about the meta you indulge. Remember that nuance exists. Don’t publicly argue with people who refuse to see nuance, spreading their nonsense further.

Don’t fight fire with fire. Don’t borrow anti arguments to prove what hypocrites they are or use anti logic to explain why ships are bad (e.g. ‘antis say that x/y is bad b/c x is older than y and they call that pedophilia.  but antis ship y/z, even though they fight all the time; that’s abuse!’)

Ignore hate messages. If people send you hate for your ships or creations, ignore and delete them. it makes you a boring target if you don’t react and cuts the hate significantly. (This won’t work unless the main goal is getting a rise out of you. In the case of a targeted hate campaign, the goal is usually pleasing the instigator of the hate campaign, and reacting or not reacting won’t make a difference. :( )

Surround yourself with creative content and positivity. Curate your dash and social media circles to be mostly, if not entirely, fandom positivity focused and about creating new content instead of complaining about bad content or bad fandom behavior.

Spread positivity. If you have the energy, try to share the things that make you happy. Recommend fanfics, comment on fanart, talk about your favorite headcanons.

If you’re like me and you can’t entirely ignore shitty things that happen in fandom, create a separate space away from your main fandom space to indulge your salt. that way you can walk away and take breaks. (I tend to find salt begets more salt.)

last thing may not work for everyone: be kind and/or civil when interacting with antis. There’s of course no obligation to be nice to people who antagonize you, but I find that in general being kind in response to people being jerks gives them room to relax, stop being defensive, and talk openly. Most individual antis aren’t that different from shippers; they just have different ideas of what a safe, comfortable fandom space looks like. (And if they refuse to stop being a jerk, ignore/block them.)

that’s my two cents, which, as usual, looks more like 2 dollars. I hope it’s helpful.