#'oh lii you shouldn't tell people to be mean back' tough tiddies because it works | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

linneakou · 16 days ago

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I gotta throw my hat into this.

I remember back in the day, close to 10 years ago, being part of one of my foundational ship fandoms and having fandom friends.

One of my friends posted a lovely little one-shot for the ship. This was during the dying days of LJ/DW groups being a hub for organizing and gathering. I was part of the IRC chats and regularly communicated with this person.

One day, they stopped talking. They deleted most of their presence online, including requesting their fic posts to be taken down. They mostly disappeared.

I found them and asked what had happened, and here's the gist of what they told me:

A group of rival ship enjoyers (this was at the start of an extensive and all-encompassing shipwar that eventually led to most of my fandom friends including myself quitting the fandom entirely) had gone through their fics and commented multiple times on several that the ship in question was 1.) bad, 2.) immoral, 3.) nonsensical, and 4.) stupid. Several commenters, ostensibly trying to be kind, said that this writer's talent was being wasted on this ship and that these fics would've been much improved if my friend would rewrite them for this rival ship instead (my friend Did Not Ship It and was very much disinterested.) The comments had started off as a trickle on that fic I mentioned at the start, and then over the course of a couple months became so unbearable that this writer wiped their presence online to escape it. They said their love of that ship had been tainted, and thinking about it gave them panic attacks. They were sorry that they'd effectively taken their ball and gone home in regard to their beloved fic, but they just couldn't take it anymore.

I was saddened by this but of course didn't hold it against them, because I am literally a lifelong bullying victim (it continues to this day IRL) and I know as well as any other weird kid who had the misfortune to grow up ostracized by my peers that the only way to stop this treatment is to cut yourself off from your tormentors.

Flaming is bullying, and if you don't want your fandom to dry up and die like an unwatered houseplant, you fucking nip that shit in the bud when you see it. Take advantage of moderation tools on sites like AO3. Be mean back. These people will have to learn by being shut out of the fun spaces and refused engagement on their nastiness. They learned in schoolyards that this is a great way to either get a response or remove an easily ignored annoyance, and frankly I'm sick of this childish behavior permeating adult spaces.

You want to behave like a tar pit in a place where people find joy and acceptance? I'm going to treat you like a tar pit. And you won't like it.

I wanna know where people have lately gotten the audacity to leave comments on fanfics talking about how much the fanfic sucked and negatively critiquing an author's fic like it's a published book review.

It pisses me off cause I've seen authors abandoned or delete their fics because of this.

You're getting fanfics for FREE! No one asked for your opinion.

I hope y'all know as authors we get email notifications when you comment so we see EVERY comment that's been left.

We also can see the negative reviews you leave when you bookmark our fics

#'oh lii you shouldn't tell people to be mean back' tough tiddies because it works #sometimes being mean is blocking and deleting their comments after telling them what a piece of shit they are #and they need to get a taste of their own cooking to learn

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creative-anchorage · 16 days ago