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#(i am so tired) – @aph-japan on Tumblr

(((I Will Outlive)))

@aph-japan / aph-japan.tumblr.com

Chai * (*"Kari" in DigiAdvs & 02 fandom; close friends may use another particular name). THEY/THEM. {JEWISH} + AUTISTIC&G.A.D + Disabled ABOUT + FAQ. (READ BEFORE Interacting extensively/directly on my posts) DIGIMON (ADVENTURE/02/Tri/Kizuna/2020/"02 Movie"). Cardcaptor Sakura/TRC/CLAMP. Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon (+ Crystal). Yu-Gi-Oh (DM.) Pokemon (anime/games/rgby/gsc+hgss/rse+oras/ Zelda. Kagepro/Vocaloid. Utapri. Kingdom Hearts. Professor Layton. K [Project]. Madoka Magica. Miraculous Ladybug/PV. +more! READ MY RULES & FAQ BEFORE INTERACTING ship list / permissions / other/past blogs * This blog's (and all of my other blogs') r18+ (or r18+ implied) content is now tagged #r18! However, please note it is infrequent on all of my blogs! *
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reblogged
parents when i'm 12: don't date anyone! focus on school!
me: okay
parents when i'm 15: and don't have sex with anyone! wait until later!
me: sure
parents when i'm 20: um so are we ever gonna meet a partner or a lover...?
me: nah
#not fandom#text post#text#ME#parents#(this)#(this this this this this thi)#(ok so not my parents exactly)#(more like society in general?? i mean)#(someone finally said it)#(looks @ ship discourse too with this)#(why does this still happen)#(confession: i uh have never actually been on a date ever ???)#(part of that is because of my own hesitance uh b u t)#(literally what even is dating how do people do it why is society like this too)#(i am so tired)#(like even syaosaku have dated meanwhile)#(meanwhile looks over in kagepro's direction like literally he's older than syaosaku ??? and they act like that over it sometimes just)#(i can probably say i'm not aro that is at least just uh. yeah)#(and then people just expect you to randomly go out and date like how even does it work how even)#(edit well the kagepro chara is one year less when you compare to clear card syaosaku but still his birthday is like four months away i am s#(plus syaosaku got together when they were like 10!! 10!!! and everyone ships that but meanwhile other ships?? what other ships ??)#(*i am so tired)#(*edit this goes for certain aph ships too like especially the ones where they're already implied to be like a 'young woman' y e a h)#(even worse are the ones who judge based on how old you look like i'm like 5'0 i can't help it leave me alone)#(aph japan!!! is!!! taller then me h o w even just. sobs forever)#(*edit adds professor layton fandom too y e a h just sighs forever)#(oh i edited a tag and everything is lowercase now ok i was kinda screaming about this earlier just ahhhhh)#(man i really do hope that new adaptations for those fandoms though start bringing in more new fans that don't act like ..... that y e a h)
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.

#manda rambles#(manda's posts)#(anyway i updated my full profile and faq sections in the last couple days)#(please take the time to read them if you're an active follower)#(if you do too can you like this post maybe?)#(i am so tired)#(why are people like radfems and exclusionists still following me)#(i wasn't going to comment on the discourse because i hate discourse but at this point i'm fed up)#(i'm sorry for the bit of negativity lately i'm hoping to turn this into more positivity)#(but there's definitely -phobes and exclusionists following me that have been irritating me so maybe note all that in my bio yeah)#(i'm willing to give other chances too as said like if you recognize what counts as that rhetoric)#(but some people just. keep. missing. the point. completely and still follow me and tag their reblogs like)#(i don't want to block you please don't make me block you)#(because i tend to like some of your content otherwise and i know you're probably nice just)#(i'm so tired i can barely find the words to describe why lately)#(sometimes i think about taking a break from fandom because of all the negativity wearing on me and my conditions)#(but then i'd feel upset because i love sharing positive content and creative works with other fans!!)#(I LOVE ALL OF YOU WHO ARE POSITIVE I LOVE YOU I REALLY LOVE)#(especially those who keep my rare otps and favs alive!!)#(so negl i'll probably never truly leave still even now)#(just... please... please understand my views if you're following me)#(i already had to deal with a radfem exclusionist in kagepro fandom just I AM SO DONE)#(who also was approving of death threats and false callouts and cyberbullying just I AM SO DONE THEIR HEADCANON ISN'T EVEN CANON)#(THERE'S MULTIPLE INTERPRETATIONS J U S T)#(also them just totally disregarding important information about other things too in favor of bullying just)#(fortunately they listened when i asked them to stop BUT STILL I'M MAD)#negativity //#(but again i'm hoping to turn it into positivity yeah I WANT TO)#(just THE KAGEPRO THING WAS EVEN ABOUT A SHIP THAT'S NOT EVEN ONE I ACTIVELY SHIP LIKE I ACKNOWLEDGE IT BUT STILL J U S T)#(anyway. this... might also go for you if you're the type to engage in this stuff often. just. please read my bios)
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joestrummen

i didnt realise ao3 was started in response to lj deleting account relating to p//edophi|ia and they explicitly support the posting of such works yikes

it wasn’t, like, ~~~we luv pedophilia, it was way more complicated than that!

although it’s true AO3 does allow all fannish content provided it’s properly warned for, there’s a long history there - of spaces being used by fans until the host decided whatever we were doing was too weird and distasteful and either kicking us off, banning certain content, or changing the nature of the site until it was no longer viable as a host.

you’re referring to the LJ Strikethrough of 2007, which, being an ancient crone, I lived through, and since I was hanging out in the last vestiges of SGA and in bandom, I saw some of the fallout. this was before LJ was sold to the Russians (which is a whole ‘nother story), when it was still owned by Six Apart; in an effort to clean up LJ’s act, Six Apart decided to delete all accounts using tags like underage, incest, rape, etc.

this was supposed to get rid of actual child porn on the site, and I hope it did, but it also targeted fan communities. this was a problem for a couple reasons; for one thing, not every story tagged with these words is in favor of them; for another, these things happen to real people and these personal posts were also potentially in danger of being attacked; for the last one, look, I ain’t into this kind of fic but people write about what people write about, and if it’s fictional and not explicitly banned in the TOS (correct me if I’m wrong; I don’t think written content about this stuff was banned?) then it’s not cool for a content host to just start deleting communities without warning.

but that’s what happened! these deletions were also primarily targeting slash communities, which smacked of some serious homophobia since things were deleted that had nothing to do with any of this kind of content.

eventually someone found out it was this super conservative religious group who’d sent a list of journal names to Six Apart, and who if I remember correctly targeted slash fic on purpose, even after it became clear that the fic was, well, totally fictional. after a while, Six Apart admitted they’d made a mistake and started to reinstate journals, but all of fandom was pretty shaken up.

THEN Boldthrough happened, which was essentially the same debacle several months later, at which point fandom began its long slow migration from LJ to GJ, IJ, and eventually AO3, Twitter, and tumblr.

AO3 was opened in 2008 in response to several incidents, of which Strikethrough was a really intense one. remember, also, that back in 2008 the stigma surrounding fandom was significantly greater and more shameful than it is today, so finding hosts willing to archive fic was difficult unless someone had the dough to pay for server space - often not an option. this was also back when fanfic.net’s HTML restrictions were so great that users couldn’t use any special characters or bold or italicize anything, and it didn’t allow R-rated content, so it was clearly not ideal. in addition, although cease & desist letters were much less common than they were in the early 2000s and before, DMCA takedowns were still a phantom on the horizon.

LONG STORY SHORT, even though pedophilia is reprehensible and I personally cannot stomach fanfic that involves that kind of content, AO3 was founded specially as a safe space for fandom communities that could not find homes elsewhere. it requires warnings precisely for that reason, and if you find a story that is not properly warned, you can alert the admins and get the story labeled appropriately.

IDK, maybe it’s just because I am, again, ancient, but I was in and around fandom before homosexuality was legal in all 50 states. so were most of the people who started AO3. for most of my formative life, being gay was associated with pedophilia, and so was writing about gay characters. just - it’s a lot more complicated than you might expect, and there’s a reason many older fans who have been involved in several generations of fandom were so grateful to have AO3 as an option.

I don’t read, for example, Hydra Trash Party fics.  They squick me, and I generally feel they are pretty gross.  But writing noncon body-horror is not the same as saying “yeah, I totally want to go out and rape and torture people for years while brainwashing them!” or even “yeah, I wouldn’t do it myself, but it would be totally okay if someone did!”  Nobody is hurt by it, and nobody is going to be hurt by it.  So should I have the right to go, that is gross, you don’t get to write or read that?  No.

In the same way, writing about underage teens getting it on–sometimes with each other, sometimes with adults, sometimes consensually, sometimes not–is not the same as child pornography, nor does reading a fic about Hermione and Snape getting it on while she was his student mean someone thinks that would be a good and/or healthy thing in real life.

Fiction affects reality, but fiction is not reality.  And writing about something does not mean you want to do it in real life, or believe that anyone should.

Let’s take a closer look at that “Ao3 supports pedophilia!” shall we?

1) The only fics I have ever come across that had actual pedophilia (i.e. someone having sex with a child), it was clearly and explicitly abuse.  It was not meant to titillate or arouse.  It was meant to horrify.  It was seldom explicit.

2) There’s a lot more incest, but it is usually portrayed either as explicitly mutually consensual (i.e. Sam/Dean) or as abusive.

3) I’ve been in fandom for a decade and a half.  When people start getting upset at “omg pedophilia, think of the children!” the fics they are usually objecting to aren’t actually pedophilia.  Usually, it is teenagers having sex, especially queer sex.  And people don’t like that, and use pedophilia as an excuse to shame people for writing/reading sex they don’t like.

Let’s look closer at Strikethrough, shall we?  I hope that, if there were any communities of actual pedophiles on LJ, they got taken down, too.  But here are some of the communities that got taken down that were not in any way supporting pedophilia and/or rape and/or incest that got taken down:

1) at least one support community for survivors of sexual abuse.

2) a literary book discussion group that was reading Lolita.

3) lots of slash fanfic communities, for things like Draco/Harry fic set in their fourth year (when both boys would have been 15).

Basically, this very conservative “family values” group hated porn, and they hated queer stuff even more, and used “but think of the children, it’s pedophilia!” to pressure LJ to get rid of huge swathes of things they didn’t like.  And one time taking down the worst of it wasn’t good enough for them.  No, this was step one on a moral crusade.  If you acceded to their demands, all that did was whet their appetite, and soon they would be back with a new list of demands.  This is why the 2007 strikethrough was not an isolated event, but rather one of a series of events, nor was LJ the only website thus targeted.  It starts with anything that can get labelled “pedophilia” or “incest” because that’s low-hanging fruit.  But they use that to go after anything relating to queer teen sexuality.  Then anything with teen sexuality.  Then once the community is already divided and diminished, they go after anything with non-con.  Then whatever is next on their list.  It doesn’t stop until they’ve won the point and nothing but suitably “family-friendly” fics that match their purity test are allowed.

Which is why AO3 has no morality content in their terms of service.  You can’t break copyright beyond fair use (and AO3 has an expansive view of “fair use” and a team of lawyers on call).  You can’t use AO3 for commercial advertising.  And you can’t post ACTUAL child pornography, i.e. the things that are legally prohibited, i.e. actual photographs or videos of actual children (not teens) in sexually explicit positions–you know, the stuff that actually hurts kids.  Other than that?  It’s fair game.  You can post anything you want, and the archive will not judge.  There is no handle for the Moral Majority Family-Friendly Thought Police to latch onto, no cracks they can exploit to divide and conquer.

We’ve been down that road.  It doesn’t lead anywhere good.

Reblogging this for the excellent explanation of what exactly the moral crusaders did last time. They had an explicit agenda of anti-queerness, and they specifically targeted slash and femslash communities in particular, such that many ship communities became (or started as) deliberately members-only. You had to apply, and your personal blog had to look like a real person and a fan. You were vetted, a la 1990s private servers.

During this period, Dreamwidth was also targeted by attacking its payment processor. They had to get a new one. These “Warriors” (literally called themselves that!) were totally on board with destroying fandom as a side effect of destroying the parts of fandom they didn’t like.

If you’re carrying out harassment of people right now because they’re posting works with sexual elements you don’t agree with? (And it’s always sex, never non-sexual violence, how strange….) If you’re doing that, you’re also totally on board with destroying fandom as a side effect of destroying the parts of fandom you don’t like. Because your tactics are fandom-destroying, and so is your agenda.

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nwcostumer

reblogging because this is important: strikethru and boldthru and all the various “purges” that fandom went thru about 10 years ago: this had to do with OUTSIDERS deciding that fandom in general and fanfiction in specific were evil and needed to be destroyed; unless we were writing and shipping good vanilla M/F married people. These were outsiders, going after fictional writing about fictional characters.

AO3 and OTW are HUGE, because now we have an organization, with very smart women and a lot of lawyers, that have our back. Fannish history is important, people! It has not always been this way.

This is so, so important: there’s that other post about AO3 and fanfiction floating around, about our history. People decry violent video games but no one is trying to force companies out of business. But people can and do attack fanfiction: an activity primarily written by women for women, about fictional characters. And often about sex. We have to constantly defend ourselves, protect ourselves, support each other against charges like “paeodophilia”.

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denaceleste

^^^rebageling again for excellent commentary

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araceil

Throwing this in because I was also present: This was during the American Government’s attempts to pass censorship laws on the internet. As MOST of those domains had their serves in America, they were beholden to those censorship laws. A great deal of fanfiction.net was removed because they happened to lose a goddamn courtcase. I’ve been on the site since 2002. They may not have ‘officially’ allowed NC-17 rated content (what it used to be listed as in the filters), it never did a damn thing to remove it. Ever. They had it listed as a rating option during ‘New Story’ uploading after all. It was i nthe search filters. After they lost the courtcase however, they legally had to start doing things about the mature content reports they got. The admins and mods were not actively looking for fic to remove, they were just responding to reports they had already received. 

tl;dr - I know tumblr is all about black and white “you’re either all right or all wrong” thinking, but it’s important to understand what actually happened before going “ew ao3 was made to give pedophiles a safe place to post” because that is 110% not what happened.

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shidgephobe

This is why so, so many of the comparatively older fannish folks on tumblr like me are so vehemently against stuff like the anti movement and “all ships are valid UNLESS”. It smacks of censorship and content policing - and we’ve been there. We got our shit deleted and our accounts banned because someone else thought what we were reading or writing or talking about needed to just… not exist. No warning. Literally overnight. We just woke up and stuff was gone.

And yeah, the group was legit called Warriors for Innocence (or maybe of). I knew several people that were members of survivor/support groups that lost their groups - and their main support network - when Strikethrough happened (ten years ago holy shit).

You antis need to listen when us older fans tell you that the censorship you’re advocating for, when put into practice, is NOT a positive thing; it’s an extremely scary thing!

I can guarantee that you would be very, very upset if another event like LJ Strikethrough were to happen today because *you* are just as vulnerable as the rest of us! If you support the rights of marginalized groups of people, if you’re a slash or fem slash shipper, if you support gender identities that aren’t defined by biological sex, if you care about representation, if you support women, if you have any kind of kink, if you care about fandom in any capacity beyond its eradication, YOU DO NOT ACTUALLY WANT THE SORT OF CENSORSHIP YOU’RE ADVOCATING!!

People were terrified during Strikethrough.  I was there.  Communities were being shut down, individual users were being shut down.  People were losing access to their own fics, their feedback, their comments – a LOT went on in comments on LJ.  Think more coherent reblogs, much more personal, very widespread.  Comments were also very important, and in terms of networking/communicating, were absolutely critical.  

LJ was, for many people, central.  

It was a fundamental part of the infrastructure of fandom at the time.  

Having it attacked, having parts of your fandom’s territory just deleted like that, was very very scary.  People didn’t know who was next.  Every day, the list of stricken journals grew.  And not all of them came back, not all of them recovered their content.  Some people even voluntarily deleted their content as a form of protest.  It was a bad time.

You do not have to interact with fic that grosses you out or makes you uncomfortable.  Tagging is a thing.  And even outside of tags, you are responsible for curating your own fandom experience.  It is not right to expect it to be curated for you.  And it is not right to lash out when someone refuses to do so and expects you to walk away from things that do not concern you.

I was gonna say “things that don’t harm anyone” but I realize you can argue that.  If you get triggered, that’s upsetting.  That could be considered harm.  And I have sympathy for that.  I do.

I have run across fic that triggered me.  I have pretty specific triggers, and people don’t always think to warn for them because they aren’t that big a deal for a lot of people.  Or it’s sort of bundled into kink and is presumed, that if you’re okay with certain kinds of kink, you’re okay with this.  So I’ve been blindsided by it before.  And it sucks for a couple of days while I get over it.

That was not the fault of the authors! You could argue that tagging should have been used, and maybe it should, but ultimately that’s not an ironclad obligation.  It’s a tool people provide out of courtesy.

That was not the fault of the site!  The site is there to give authors a way to make fiction available, not to judge each work and interrogate its validity and make sure everything is tagged so that nobody has to see anything bad, ever.

That was not even my fault!  It was my responsibility to try to curate my experience, and I tried, but it wasn’t my fault because I didn’t deliberately set out to trigger myself.

When I get triggered, unless it is by a deliberate act, it is actually the fault of the people who hurt me in the first place! And I refuse to let them off the hook and blame perfectly innocent people who just wanna write their fanfiction! I may hate that fanfiction, but that is irrelevant to the question of whether or not people should be allowed to post whatever they want.

Also, some people cope by writing about fucked-up shit.  My best friend in the whole wide world has shared her fic with me, and HOO BOY it is messed up. She wrote it during a time in her life when she was in and just coming out of a horrifically abusive relationship.  I mean, it was exactly the kind of relationship all of us here on Tumblr love to hate.  She was married to a shitty, abusive man who preyed on someone younger than he was and used his influence over her to treat her in a way that would be right at home in that Lundy Bancroft book Why Does He Do That?  He was a real rapist, a verified grade-A bad fuckin’ guy.  (She was lucky to escape.  I have immense respect for her.)  And she wrote some fucked up fic to deal with it, and she shared it, and people were invested in it.  And because this was early 2000′s, she had to host it on a foreign server and cover her tracks, because at that time no-place was safe to post it.

“Yeah, but if she’s writing it for therapy, she doesn’t have to post it where other people might have to see it!” I hear you say.

But like … what the hell??? “Shut up, don’t talk about it, it’s bad to talk about these things, because these things are bad!” is something used against folks with trauma.

“This isn’t good for me, I can’t talk about this, I can’t be your audience for this,” that’s fine, those are boundaries that people with trauma use to defend themselves.  You should learn to say those things!  It will help you!

But expecting other people to never create and share art about trauma is just so thunderously oppressive I lack the ability to fully articulate it.

And nobody should have to disclose their history of trauma to prove their motives are pure or virtuous enough for their speech to be protected.  I’ve only really been able to openly say “I was assaulted, it was traumatic, I am a little fucked up from it” for the past couple of years, tops.  I couldn’t talk about it before that.  Couldn’t!  And it was over 20 years ago!

I also believe, very firmly, that you don’t need a history of abuse to find writing really messed-up shit satisfying, or to find reading it cathartic.  I believe 100% in the freedom of creative expression, and the freedom to read whatever fucked up shit you want to read.

All y’all fandom youngsters can spit nails all you want over gross rape fic, incest fic, whatever.

Fine, I don’t like it either!

But that fucked up shit?  That fucked up shit helped carve out the spaces we have today.  You don’t have to like it, but campaigning to get it deleted, harassing content creators, calling people rapists and pedophiles who have never done and would never ever do such a thing, that is not the way to improve the world, it doesn’t keep actual kids or teens or assault/rape victims safe.  It wouldn’t have made me feel safe when I was 16 and did’t want what was going on.  It doesn’t make me feel safe now.  I can say with the perspective of someone 24 years away from that event, it doesn’t make the world safer for people like I was.  It actually makes it worse.

Learn to steer clear of the messed-up stuff you don’t like.  It’s a skill, you get better with practice.  Have someone else vet stuff for you if you need help doing it now.

Everything that is sketchy and gross is not criminal, and writing about a thing is not morally the same as doing it.  Please stop acting like writing about an adult and a teenager having really questionable, gross sex is as bad as the actual registered sex offender they caught hanging around an actual elementary school two neighborhoods over from mine, just trying to talk to the kids.  The former is, at most, in poor taste, and potentially triggering to abuse victims.  The second makes me want to vomit because even though he was just talking, that guy was gearing up to try something and create another abuse victim.  A g a i n.  

The first can be avoided because it is imaginary and you, an adult, have power over your back button so that you don’t have to witness harm to imaginary people.  The second, those very real kids had to rely on real adults and real law enforcement to keep them safe from very real assault.   (It worked!  The neighborhood rallied!  He was arrested for violating parole!)

Pretty sure Sleazebag McDongface didn’t read some gross NC-17 Draco/Lucius fic before deciding to harm an actual human being.  Pretty sure not having read it didn’t keep him from doing it. ‘Cause he fuckin’ did it.  And he would have done worse. But actual people stopped him.

I get wanting to protect victims when so many of us are victims ourselves, but man, going after fiction is not the way to do it.

An author is not a perpetrator.  Stop trying to make those things synonymous in the minds of other fans, and in the minds of other recovering victims.

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bonibaru

I’m a crone who also lived through strikethrough, and all y'all young fans need to read this and understand it if you don’t want history to repeat itself someday.

Here’s the thing, also: it doesn’t stop with fic about objectionable stuff.

If you have a website with TOS that includes any kind of “objectionable content” rules, there will be parties who will use those rules to try to silence other people whom they want silenced.

Let’s look at the alt-right and MRA movements today, or GamerGate a few years ago. What is one of their primary weapons? They report black or feminist or really any leftist YouTube channels (or Twitter accounts, or whatever) whose message they don’t like and claim those channels are are violating TOS by posting hate speech or incitations to violence or whatever bullshit they can come up with, in an attempt to silence those channels.

When Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequence came under fire for starting a crowdfunding endeavor to fund the production of her Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series of videos, male gamers tried to get her KickStarter and various social media accounts shut down by reporting her for for hate speech and promoting terrorism.

Luckily, that became a big enough story that the dudes failed and their efforts backfired. But a lot of times, these tactics work.

How do I know this? Because it happened to me. Not over major shit like the examples above, but over something completely petty.

Back in the mid-to-late 90s, before LiveJournal really became the place for fandom, before FF.net was really a thing, you had to create your own personal website on whatever free webhost you could find (GeoCities was popular, but there were others) if you wanted to host your fic somewhere.

And back then, TV studios and book authors were still sending their lawyers after people who wrote fanfic, issuing cease and desist letters to not only the authors, but also to their webhosts.

At the time, I was writing perfectly het Mulder/Scully fanfic. No rape, no pedophilia, no slash. Maybe a little BDSM. But largely it was unobjectionable.

Then the 8th season of X-Files started, David Duchovny decided he only wanted to be involved part-time, and the show decided to bring in another male character. The fandom lost their shit–as fandoms do–over the idea of “replacing” Mulder blah blah blah.

One of the most popular fanfic mailing lists–one that had previously had no restrictions on what characters or pairings could be posted–decided that if you wrote fanfic involving this character, you were no longer welcome. Well, this was the mailing list with all the readers. Sure, authors could go to other mailing lists, but they wouldn’t have exposure to the sort of readership this other list boasted.

I spoke out, saying that this change was unfair to fic authors and that the moderator of this list was behaving in a pretty vile way. The moderator and her friends took aim at me and began a campaign of harassment, and a few days later, suddenly my website with my XF fanfic was TOSed because someone had reported it. So was the next site I tried to create to host my fic, and the one after that.

Thanks to the way AO3s TOS are constructed, that sort of shit doesn’t happen now. I can speak up if I need to, and while I may receive harassment on my various social media accounts, there’s no chance they can have my fic taken down just because they have an agenda and don’t like me for reasons not relating to my fic.

So yeah, AO3′s rules protect fic a lot of us might find objectionable. But they also protect fic that is in no way objectionable from being targeted by unrelated harassment campaigns. And since any of us could find ourselves in the sights of those sort of campaigns at any time, we need to thank our lucky stars for that.

I like this last addition.

When I helped write the ToS for AO3, I wasn’t primarily thinking about strikethrough. I was primarily thinking of FFN, where so many people post things that are technically against the ToS but that the community tolerates. Any time someone gets pissed off, they can go on a grudge-reporting spree and target their enemy’s work. Often, that means guys targeting slash or Twilight fic because it’s “for girls” and thus sucks. Sometimes, it’s one ship vs. another. I was also thinking of Miss Scribe and all of that other Harry Potter fandom drama. (And if you think fans are above destroying an entire archive just to strike at one enemy, think again!)

We can’t force people to like each other. We can’t force people to be nice to each other. But we could take away fandom bullies’ favorite tools.

So we did.

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femservice

Here is the secret to fandom:

Give zero fucks about what anyone else is doing.

Seriously.  I mean it.  Because inevitably you will love something that no one else loves.  Or you will love something that everyone loves and people will shit all over it because it’s “so trite and unimaginative and done.” Or you will love something that no one else has ever heard of.  Or you will love something dark and edgy and or obscure and people will roll their eyes and say, “What, do you want people to think you’re dark and edgy and obscure?”

Alternatively, you will not love the thing that everyone else loves, and you will wonder what precisely is wrong with you that the sight of that thing is aggravating the shit out of you now when the whole world sings its praises as one.

People will irritate you.  They’ll irritate you with headcanons that make no sense and misinterpretations of canon.  They will make the same jokes 500 times.  They will overwhelm your corner of fandom with something you either are tired of hearing about or don’t care about.  They will post art that isn’t theirs.  You will meet people who think you are the greatest person ever and bombard you with messages  only to wander off when they find someone new or shinier; you will meet people whom you admire and who do not really seem to notice you exist. 

So give zero fucks about it.  Seriously.  Like what you like, blacklist what you need to blacklist, and ignore everything else.  Be friends, play nice, enjoy it.  And in the meantime, just do you.  Like what you like, love what you love, and to hell with all the rest of it. 

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staff

We’re taking steps to protect against future interference in our political conversation by state-sponsored propaganda campaigns

Hi Tumblr,

We’re all grappling with the influence that state-sponsored disinformation campaigns can have on our political conversations—and how wide-spread that interference turned out to be. So please take a moment to read this, think about it, and talk about it.

Last fall, we uncovered 84 Tumblr accounts linked to the Russian government through the Internet Research Agency, or IRA. These accounts were being used as part of a disinformation campaign leading up to the 2016 U.S. election. After uncovering the activity, we notified law enforcement, terminated the accounts, and deleted their original posts. Behind the scenes, we worked with the Department of Justice, and the information we provided helped indict 13 people who worked for the IRA.

Now that the investigations are done, we want to let you know how we’re going to help protect Tumblr in the future and what you can do to help.

Here’s what we know about these accounts

The IRA employs more than 1,000 people who engage in electronic disinformation and propaganda campaigns around the world using phony social media accounts. Their goal is to sow division and discontent in the countries they target. What makes them so difficult to spot is that they’re not spambots. They’re real people who get trained and paid to spread propaganda.

As far as we can tell, the IRA-linked accounts were only focused on spreading disinformation in the U.S., and they only posted organic content. We didn’t find any indication that they ran ads.

Remember, the IRA and other state-sponsored disinformation campaigns play off our zero-sum politics. They want to drive a wedge between us so that we spend our time fighting with each other instead of building towards the future. We’ll be watching for signs of future activity, but the best defense is knowing how they operate and how to judge the content you see.

What we’re doing in response to the interference

First, we’ll be emailing anyone who liked, reblogged, replied to, or followed an IRA-linked account with the list of usernames they engaged with.

Second, we’re going to start keeping a public record of usernames we’ve linked to the IRA or other state-sponsored disinformation campaigns. We’re committed to transparency and want you to know everything that we know.

We’ve decided to leave up any reblog chains that might be on your Tumblrs—you can choose to leave them or delete them. We’re letting you decide because the reblog chains contain posts created by real Tumblr users, often challenging or debunking the false and incideniary claims in the IRA-linked original post. Removing those authentic posts without your consent would encroach on your free speech—and there have been enough disruptions to our conversations as it is.

What we’re doing to stop future disinformation campaigns

You’ve probably read that U.S. intelligence officials expect foreign agents to try similar propaganda campaigns in the future. We’ll be monitoring Tumblr for signs of state-sponsored disinformation campaigns, and if we see anything we will…

  • Terminate the accounts and remove their original posts.
  • Notify you if we determine that you’ve liked, reblogged, replied to, or followed a propaganda account.
  • Add the username to the public record.
  • Alert law enforcement.

There are also things you can do to help stop the spread of disinformation and propaganda.

  1. Be aware that people want to manipulate the conversation. Knowing that disinformation and propaganda accounts are out there makes it harder for them to operate. The News Literacy Project has this handy checklist for spotting their tricks.
  2. Be skeptical of things you read. Disinformation campaigns work because they know people don’t fact check. Look for reliable sources, and double-check that the source really says the same thing as the post. You can also check Snopes and Politifact. Both are award-winning resources and usually have the latest viral claim fact checked on the front page. 
  3. Correct the record. When you see people spreading misinformation—even unintentionally—politely say something in a reblog or reply. If it’s your friend, send them a message to let them know.

One last note: Please vote.

Transparency won’t mean a thing if we don’t participate in the process. Whatever your political stance, voting ensures a government that represents your interests. For our U.S. users: You can register online or by mail, and many states are holding primaries right now.

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knitmeapony

Honestly, you know Facebook is fucked up when the Tumblr staff manages to get it more right than they do

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hyperewok1

Hey how about those anti-propaganda tactics, like the radical notion of fact checking and getting sources before you reblog 

#tumblr staff#tumblr#tumblr issues#politics#us politics#propaganda#us election 2k17#(oH MY GOD)#(I AM SO TIRED)#(DONE)#(i mean it's good they admitted to it unlike facebook but jUST THERE'S SO MUCH MORE YOU COULD BE DOING ABOUT THIS TOO)#(LIKE ACTUALLY HAVING AN ACTIVE SUPPORT TEAM THAT BLOCKS PEOPLE WHO ARE COMMITTING CRIMES SENDING DEATH THREATS ETC.)#(WHY HAS SOCIAL MEDIA COME TO THIS)#(BRING BACK JOURNAL SITES AND GEOCITIES SHRINES I MISS THEM)#(at least for fandom anyway just)#(and fandom's not really important right now THIS IS SUCH A SERIOUS ISSUE THERE'S SO MUCH MORE THAT COULD HAVE BEEN DONE)#(ALSO GETTING SOURCES BEFORE YOU REBLOG YEAH)#(LITERALLY PLEASE)#(THIS WAS LIKE INTERNET KNOWLEDGE 101 WHEN I WAS IN OLD FANDOM WHY... is it not now..... sobs)#(ok but honestly this is legit terrifying)#(i'm glad indictments were FINALLY made over it but... just... still.....)#(OK BUT TBH if you are reblogging this complaining about neo nazi bots and pornbots instead as someone with Jewish family)#(MAYBE IDK FOCUS ON THE PERSON THAT'S ALLOWING ALL OF THIS TO HAPPEN???)#(BECAUSE WITH THEM LEAVING ACTUAL CHANGE WOULD BE MADE?? MAYBE??? IDK)#(what a concept apparently internet trolls are more important RN than ACTUAL POLITICIANS ALLOWING THIS TO HAPPEN who knew?)#(even though internet trolls are easy to report and block wow maybe tumblr will get to them now that they've WRAPPED UP AN INVESTIGATION)#(like?? people are acting like this is a joke IT'S.... NOT.... GUYS THIS IS SERIOUS)#(THEY WERE TRYING TO SWAY THE VOTE AND SUCCEEDING SO MAYBE DON'T ACT LIKE THIS IS A JOKE BC APPARENTLY ALMOST THE WHOLE SITE WAS DUPED)#(i've already seen mutuals say they got an email saying they got duped by over half the list meanwhile i'm here with like. nothing so yEAH)#(that is to say they spread other stuff too including stealing from leftist bloggers but they spread a LOT of anti hillary stuff so)
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reblogged
The Entertainment Software Association, which represents the video game industry, said it told the president that “numerous scientific studies” show there is “no connection between video games and violence.”  In fact, Markey said his work shows when a new violent game is released, crime actually drops.

when a new violent game is released, crime actually drops.

CRIME ACTUALLY DROPS.

its almost as if giving people harmless outlets for their aggression allows people who use that outlet to vent safely as part of their coping process, imagine that. perhaps we should be encouraging people who need to vent that they should actually go vent instead of telling them that safe venting is socially unacceptable this is similar to when people were blaming edgy music- listening to depressing songs will not cause depression nor cause someone to kill themselves, but listening to them while writing bad poetry and wearing stylish yet regrettable outfits may allow someone to work through an emotional time in their life better then listening to equally embarrassing in hindsight pop music its entirely possible ‘Doom’ prevented someone with anger issues from killing someone, its entirely possible ‘suicide solution’ by ozzy has prevented suicides let people have safe outlets for their emotions

#politics#us politics#fandom politics#fandom discourse#discourse#video games#fiction affects reality#fiction is NOT reality#scientific studies#(CRIME ACTUALLY DROPS)#(I MEAN WE ALL KNEW SINCE BEFORE TUMBLR BUT WOW WHO KNEW)#(I AM SO TIRED)#(EVEN THE CURRENT POLITICAL ATMOSPHERE G O D)#(PLEASE LET US STOP REHASHING THIS OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVE)#(ANYWAY MY THOUGHTS ON THE MATTER)#(LOOK IF I AS AN ACTUAL 9 YR OR SO KID COULD WATCH YUGIOH 0 AND BE FINE)#(YUGIOH 0???? Y E A H THE ONE WHERE IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A HORROR SERIES AT THE BEGINNING AND FOR GOOD REASON)#(anyway I still turned out fine in every instance of this occuring so just... yeah)#(that's why you control which content you see..... if even 6 yr old me could... yeah)#(but I guess again people being responsible like 6 yr old me didn't exist in fandom huh)#(whispers they did but i stg lately it feels like we never existed as being responsible for ourselves WELL I DID SO... JUST SAYING)#(yeah i'm mad)#(lately anyway just it's like I was neurodivergent in fandom at 6 I keep saying it)#(bUT IT'S TRUE AND I STILL KNEW HOW TO LOOK OUT FOR MYSELF WHY IS IT SUCH A FOREIGN CONCEPT)#(also back then internet trolls ran everywhere too and homophobia was RAMPANT and the concept of ableism barely existed as a concept)#(like it existed but... not as defined... and I felt I had to hide my anxiety bc of it y e a h... anyway I MANAGED by blocking and avoiding)#(anyway just... sorry for rambling lately I'm just... so tired... this had to be explained... to our GOVERNMENT.... and fandom j u s t.. yea#(anyway i'm just linking from an actual news source here ok)#(I MEAN YOU GUYS DON'T UNDERSTAND WHEN EVEN PKMN AND YGO WERE USED AS REALLY BAD ''EVIDENCE'' FOR THIS YOU'VE SEEN THINGS THAT HAPPENED)
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