#and I get that moderation is a thing and without mods the subreddit is just fucked but still...

[one-and-a-half-yikes]

little weird joining the bakudeku subreddit and then it just being completely vacant of any activity going on and then I look and see IzuOcha sub with more activity (not meant to be taken as a negative tbc, glad they're having fun over there it just sucks lmao) like what the fuck happened???? Did everybody over there fucking die or something?????💀💀😭😭😭😭

[xavigav]

The Reddit Blackout, #196, And Being New to Tumblr

okay i've seen a lot of people in the past ~24 hours or so confused by everything going on with Reddit & Tumblr from both sides - people new to tumblr who don't know how to use it, and tumblr users who don't know what's going on with reddit and why many of its users have joined up here i know this isn't really related to my blog but fun fact about me: i was up until recently a very active reddit user and even mod a subreddit, but I've also been on tumblr for about 3 years now on different accounts, so I think I can see pretty well from both sides of this and explain what's going on this post will be split in 2 sections: what happened with reddit (and what #196 means), and a guide for new users

1. What The Hell Is Going On With Reddit?

The thing that's caused all this ruckus is a major change to Reddit's API, which is what Reddit provides to people so they can pull directly from Reddit to make third-party apps or tools.

The change is that Reddit is changing its previously free API to be paid. Which on its own kinda sucks for developers, but it's not unexpected. They need to make money somehow, right?

The problem is that the API pricing is WAY TOO FUCKING EXPENSIVE. The developer of the most popular 3rd party Reddit app, Apollo, says it will cost him $20 million a year to continue running the app as normal.

Essentially, this pricing forces almost everything third-party to shut down, which causes 3 major problems:

Third-party apps cannot keep running, which sucks for normal users because Reddit's official app is awful. It's slow, its video player is a thing of nightmares, it doesn't have many useful features third-party developers have made.

It sucks even more for visually impaired users because they can't use the official Reddit app at all. Reddit's official app does not work with iOS's native text-to-speech function. Third party apps, on the other hand, often do. So Reddit is forcing blind users away.

Third-party moderator tools cannot keep running, which sucks for moderators because many rely on these tools to properly moderate their subreddits. And moderators are often necessary, because without them subreddits get banned and hate speech and even CSA can often run rampant.

So you see why this change is bad.

Reddit users were PISSED.

So over the past week and a half or so, they have been working on organizing a site-wide blackout. The majority of the most active subreddits have now gone private. Some are only doing it for 48 hours, others (such as r/196) are doing it indefinitely.

That's why you can't access most of Reddit right now, and that's why many users have come here.

You're probably still wondering, though - what is this #196?

Well, as you may guess, it's connected to that subreddit r/196 I just mentioned. r/196 is a subreddit which only has one rule: every time you visit, you must post before you leave.

That's it, that's the subreddit.

The thing about r/196 that set it apart from most other subreddits - and what lends the subreddit's users perfectly to Tumblr - is that it was dominated by queer and leftist users.

So now they've come here and set up shop in #196 and r/196 so they can continue their merry little shitposting.

There's a ton of lore related to r/196, actually, but this is already a long tumblr post and quite frankly I cannot be bothered to write about it at the moment.

2. I'm Here From Reddit, What Now?

Hello there, random new user. As a double-citizen of Reddit and Tumblr, let me show you around this place.

First off, there are some other people who are better at explaining that I am who have made some really helpful things. Watch this Strange Aeons video as a guide to Tumblr culture and functionality and read this post which directly compares Reddit and Tumblr.

Assuming you've done that, here's some additional advice of my own:

Do you miss sorting subreddits by top of all time/the year/the month? Well, you can do something very similar with tags! If you go to a tag at the top of the screen you can select top, and then at the dropdown that says "all time" you can select different time periods! Even 6 months, which Reddit hasn't ever had.

Tumblr has a lot of cool customization features! Even outside your icon/banner/bio, you can change you blog colors and on desktop you can have an html theme (which has its own thriving community here). That customization is part of what sets Tumblr apart from everywhere else - I think you'll enjoy playing with it.

Notes will probably confuse you at first. Unlike the different numbers for upvotes and comments, notes combines the total number of likes, reblogs, and replies into the same number.

Outside of organizing your own blog, when making your own posts tags are what help other people find your post. Use them! But don't abuse them, because then people will just block you.

There are three ways of people finding your post: if someone follows you, if someone follows the tag(s) assigned to your post, and if someone is just scrolling through the tag(s) assigned to your post (and also the secret 4th way no one uses, which is finding it on the trending page, but even if people did use it no one will find your post initially that way)

tumblr is no longer The Discourse Website. And unlike what Reddit wants you to believe for some reason, it is very much alive still. Most of the people seeking fights have moved to Twitter (though some have also moved back here again). You will not get any brownie points for being a dipshit like you do on some subreddits.

So there, welcome to the hellsite (affectionate), you'll pick up on all the in-jokes eventually, for now just try not to be a nuisance and soon enough this'll be your new internet home.

[sophieinwonderland]

The hatesub r/systemscringe are being full-on transphobes again!

Reminder: a huge number of systems have alters and headmates with completely different genders and sexes from the body.

Anyone who has ever studied any type of multiplicity is aware of this fact.

And not-so-shockingly, this makes gender complicated.

Let's just see the screenshots they're angry at today.

So the body has transitioned to male but this one headmate identifies as female and identifies as a trans woman.

In another screenshot, the system says they aren't "invading trans spaces." Which is such an absurd thing to have to defend yourselves from accusations of when you're a part of a trans system.

Even if you do take the position that spaces for transwomen should be exclusionary AFAB people, one would at least expect the male headmates to be able to feel safe in the trans community without being made to feel like they're "invaders."

Unfortunately, many pluralphobes and queer exclusionists have decided the gender identity of headmates in systems is less valid than that of singlets.

This is another pretty common thing. Especially with introjects who have source memories. It's common to have memories of lives you may not have actually lived but still feel pretty real.

I did a Tumblr poll last year. About half of systems responding had at least one trans headmate with the same gender as the body's AGAB. Nearly all had cis headmates with the opposite gender of the body.

Of course, if you heard it from r/systemscringe, they must be faking being trans entirely!

And takes like this throw not just systems under the bus, but also people who are genderfluid or otherwise nonbinary as well.

And if you're thinking, "wow, that comment sounds like something truscum would say," you aren't wrong!

Here are some unrelated posts this same user has authored:

Back to r/systemscringe, most of the comments were more of the same, stopping just short of calling them transtrenders but clearly very much wanting to!

By the way, all the censors on the names of the system and alters were mine. u/superthrowawayEEE censored nothing. When a user points this out, moderator u/DizkoLites says they considered taking it down but chose not to, saying their name was common enough that it wouldn't matter.

To be fair, the mods did end up taking it down... after the system got harassed for their gender and contacted the subreddit directly.

So congrats on waiting until after the harassment to enforce your own rules!

But don't worry, you're free to make a brand new post mocking someone for their gender identity! r/systemscringe's mod team is totally cool with that! Just gotta hide the name because that's apparently the only problem here!🙄

(You know, unless they're on the mod-approved hit list. Then you can name them too no matter how much harassment they get.)

The other day, someone asked this question on the hatesub:

Here's the answer:

Stop being bigots.

Stop being ableists.

Stop spreading misinformation.

Stop mocking people for their genders.

Stop harboring truscum and parroting transphobic talking points!

Try to be decent human beings for once in your lives!

And then... well, I guess that wouldn't leave much of a subreddit would it? There's no r/systemscringe without ableism, transphobia and queer exclusionism. It's baked into the DNA of these groups.

But maybe that would be for the best.

Nothing from these cringe communities is salvageable. And nothing should be socially acceptable about groups founded on cyberbullying.

[dextixer]

Yknow, at first i thought i would just make a thread telling everyone how manipulative this post about how "I dont hate critique but critique bad" is, to warn people about snakes in the FNDM hiding in the grass.

But then this utter clownshoes decided to invoke Monty, to talk about Montys wishes. To weaponize a dead person as a cudgel for a fucking internet argument.

This is why i hate most of the RWBY FNDM, because they are all sunshine and rainbows, all progressive, all nice people, or at least they portray themselves to be until they take off their fucking masks. And then all of these supposedly nice people reveal themselves to be manipulative ratfucks.

So, lets be very clear. If you invoke Monty in your shitty internet arguments, you are just a morally defunct person, you are lower than fucking trash. He is a deceased man. His corpse is not there for you to parade him like a fucking puppet for your own arguments.

The fact that it follows a fake ass "nice guy" facade is just the icing on the cake.

Despite the claims of the OP, they were not "suggesting that hate discourages people" they were being a snakey fuck by at first saying "Criticism isnt bad" and then outlining literally EVERY single tired anti-criticism buzzword phrase in existence. Everyone fucking knows that most of the time "Im not saying x is bad BUUUUUT" leads to the person revealing that, yeah, they are saying that X is bad. Its the most fucking elementary silencer for any argument in existence.

We have the ol reliables of

>"If you no like, just leave" >Conflating criticism with hate >Implying that people should not criticize passion projects >Implying that RWBY receives unique kind of criticism that no other thing does

Alongside that we also have some weird implications that RWBY is disliked for being "cringe" and of course, more instances of conflating criticism with "hate". If one pays attention they could easily spot a pattern, take a shot of your favourite drink anytime you see the word "hate" or its synonim when the supposed thread is supposed to be about criticsm.

As far as for the second part of the post that comes after my reply.

Criticism does not have to be constructive, its good when it is, but if a person can see something wrong, they can say its wrong without offering a solution. I dont need to be a professional doctor to see a bone sticking out where it shouldnt be etc.

And lets get back to the old sticking point "Oh, but why does RWBY have separate critic communities".

Because the fandom MADE it a fucking necessity! Just like with shows like Game of Thrones and many others! You think critic spaces or subreddits are some kind of never seen before thing before RWBY?!

The only reason RWBY has them is because of the fucking Fandom!

The RWDE tag on tumblr only exists because people were ASKED for criticism to be something that people could avoid, by tagging a post as RWDE anyone using this platform can easily blacklist the tag and NEVER see anything from it! And yet the Fandom instead of doing so CONSTANTLY comes into the tag, and then constantly bitches and whines about how criticism exists!

The critics subreddit exists because most people there were slowly pushed away from the main sub. It didnt START as that, but it became that when the mods of r/RWBY decided that instead of moderating discussions they would rather throw out all the critics because fans would NEVER behave in critical posts and would either mass report them or cause conflict!

Whether someone likes RWBY or not has NOTHING to do with personal morality. Its also extremelly ironic that there are constant "uwu, people say me bad because i like RWBY" claims with nothing to back them up while on places like twitter you can see RWBY twitter accounts say that anyone who dislikes RWBY is just a misogynist or the like.

I would rather take the most toxic critic foaming at the mouth about how RWBY is bad over people like op, ratfuck snakes who pretend to have no problem with criticism while sneaking in the same fucking anti-criticism shit into their threads.

I dont even criticize RWBY that much anymore and i mostly just tell the critics spaces to not even talk to the larger fandom, and its because of dipshits like the OP.

Because the RWBY FNDM is full of these nice presenting, nice writing manipulative jackasses who are just smiles and rainbows while saying the same tired bullshit as always. Just a reminder, just because someone is "polite" does not mean they are not full of shit.

[kingdoms-and-empires]

I don't know about that new subreddit, one of the mods seems to regularly post in r/Conservative and has quite a few... hot takes, to say the least, that I doubt will go very well with most users here. Don't take my work for it: imgur(.)com/a/BFOT6cI

Hello, I'm actually glad you brought this up! The person in question is named Bird on KaE Discord, he's one of my moderators. He's the one who created the subreddit in the first place actually.

In the early days of the KaE Discord, it was like the wild wild west lol, not only was it anarchy and messy...we had alot of political talk in there as well.

We soon learned that it made things too incendiary, and put people at risk of getting banned for emotional outbursts. So we implemented new rules in my server that political talk was now prohibited. Why? Because it has no place in a community that's centered and focused on Interactive Fiction. We came in with the same mindset concerning the subreddit. It's a place that allows discussion only on the topic of Interactive Fiction. Bird and I actually discussed whether or not we should use different usernames for the subreddit. One out of fear for incurring the wrath of some entities, and the other for letting ourselves be open for inspection to the world. It's a very naked feeling, having your commentary be exposed for everyone to see, to judge. But we said fuck it. We shouldnt hide.

His and mine political leanings havent been a problem ever since we prohibited the allowance of political talk in the server.

My server has now grown to over 1000 members, and the moderation of Bird and the rest of the team is a main reason for it.

I invite anyone and everyone to look inside my server. See the vibe of the place. You'll find that the community is one focused on not just Kingdoms and Empires, but the Interactive Community as a whole.

We actually expected this to happen. So thank you for ripping the band aid off and letting us talk openly about it. However, I'd like everyone to know, this anon has sent the same message to every single person who has reblogged the subreddit post. I sense shady shit is underfoot. Honestly, this tactic may have worked if everyone was decentralized and unable to communicate with each other. But thankfully, the Interactive Community is becoming more centralized and united. I have a suspicion on who you are, but baseless claims are below me, and not worth anyone's time.

Just like your baseless claim of Bird's ability to moderation being in question. Not when the past indicates otherwise.

Also, I hope you know: If you continue digging up the past or mass message people who support the subreddit with more screenshots and the like...you're gonna get outed as someone who wants to see this subreddit fail, right? You won't be someone who simply wants to call to alarm a mod being conservative and warn others who disagree with those views. You couldve simply brought this out into the open at the subreddit itself, where everyone could see and we couldn't delete it without looking like hypocrites. Instead you'll be exposed as a bad actor with malicious intentions. Ah but i digress, now im the one throwing baseless claims...until you prove me right :)

Also, shameless advertising: https://discord.gg/73WdMMNXvm

[funnuraba]

This is a post I didn't want to have to write. It’s about some disturbing things that have been happening in the Vinland Saga Discord server, Somewhere Not Here. This is the one currently attached to the r/VinlandSaga subreddit. And, unfortunately, this involves the mods and at least one leader of the Project Vinland scanlation team, which scanlates a number of series besides Vinland Saga. I've made the decision that the situation is too dangerous and unfixable for me to stay silent any longer.

(EDIT: As of January 2025, I've ascertained that the two minors involved in these incidents have left the server. (At least one is now an adult.) In one case, they were banned for violating server rules, I'm assuming the ones against NSFW, since my little outbursts have prompted the mods to actually enforce them. This means that all their messages have been erased from the server, and the screencaps can no longer be used to identify them. My health has declined to the point that it would be pretty arduous to get to my PC and locate my own screencaps, but if necessary, I'm now willing to post censored versions without permission from the minors in question.)

(If anyone has more to add to what I say here, I just ask that you please not give any identifying details for regular users unless you've cleared it with those involved. Many active users in the Discord talk about being minors on a regular basis and I don’t want them to be endangered over this.)

The Somewhere Not Here server is supposed to be “all ages”, meaning that no NSFW is supposed to get posted, period. According to direct statements the admins have made, that includes even nudity and suggestive scenes from the manga itself. There are no age roles or locked channels to keep minors and adults apart.

The lines I'm drawing for "NSFW" aren't my own personal interpretation, they're based on the mods' own repeated words and rules they've enforced in the past. At least, for people who aren't mods or friends of the mods.

For some time now, these rules have been enforced very rarely. More than a few of the people posting explicit/NSFW things and escalating NSFW conversations have been mods. After seeing it happen a few times and feeling uncomfortable, I discovered to my horror that adults and minors were interacting in these conversations. I’ve reached out to the mods and admins over and over, showing them exactly what was happening and begging for more caution. They’ve done their best to stonewall. (Also, in the process of all this, I've discovered one of the mods is underage and will get pinged/notified for NSFW you report to the mods on Discord or on r/VinlandSaga. Great planning there!)

A few of the mods made a server-wide announcement back when I first contacted them and cracked down for a while, but now it’s started back up. Despite my repeated attempts to explain to them what this looks like, and why it is bad to be doing this in a forum full of teenagers that they advertise as being minor-friendly.

In that February announcement, they pretended they’d just randomly remembered about the rules they came up with themselves.

That was a lie. The announcement was made about a day after I sent an anonymous Reddit PM to two admins including Rill, detailing every disturbing thing I’d seen from their mods in the past few weeks. I gave them dates, channels and names. The server announcement referenced a few rule violations I'd told them about, but only the ones from regular members. A few members apologized jokingly for NSFW posts that they’d made, and the mods responded like it was in fact the fault of random members, and not the moderators of the server actively making things unsafe. I think that was a calculated and malicious choice.

I knew then that I'd be writing this post eventually. But I needed to be absolutely sure I wouldn't be smearing anyone for a one-time mistake. So I waited. There were a couple of minor incidents with mods "forgetting" the no-NSFW rules after February, but no smoking guns. Then around Halloween three different mods went berserk at the same time, and I've had to reach out on Twitter so many times I've lost count.

I’ve wrestled long and hard with how much detail I should post here. There are many admitted minors in this server, and definitely many more who haven’t mentioned it. I don’t want to repost anything sexual that they’ve posted, and my fear is that if I name someone they like, they could get defensive and wind up staying in a dangerous place longer than they would have otherwise. But so many adults are involved in the lies that I’ll just have to say it.

There are three adult mods I’ve seen breaking the rules against NSFW. Tikki is the one I’ve seen doing it the most. She’s tikki.ki on Discord and TikkiTchikita on Twitter/Reddit. She has a Tumblr too, but I don't remember the username because just seeing it pissed me off enough to block her. I can't prove what's in someone else's mind, but I've seen her talking with minors about NSFW subjects over and over and over again, and based on certain facts I can't share safely, I believe she knows exactly what she's doing. I told Rill and the other admin in my first warning that "someone" would be able to produce screencaps making an airtight case for that.

I think they got my hint, and they know I'm right. That's why they made that server announcement within a day. And that's why "21+" mysteriously popped up in Tikki's Twitter bio just days after I sent this to two people who definitely aren't her:

(LAST-MINUTE EDIT: While making sure I have screencaps of everything, I discovered something I hadn't seen before in which Tikki does this with a minor who states their age in the same conversation. Her only previous defense would have been that she doesn't have eyeballs and her memory resets at the end of every day. This is beyond any conceivable defense and I'm no longer nervous about my choice to name names in this post.)

JarkeyBacon (same username on Twitter, Discord and Reddit) and OddHesitation (oxsystem on Discord) are the other ones who've violated the NSFW rules, before and after my first warning to the admins. They've also made it clear that they're ignoring other people breaking these rules. They do it much less frequently. OddHesitation has done it with an underage person, but unlike Tikki I have no proof he knew that. I believe he and JB just don't care what they're doing.

Most recently, JarkeyBacon pinned a post to the top of the #manga-discussion channel. It was a screencap of (exhales) a Twitter foot fetishist telling Yukimura-sensei they want to suck on his feet. I've reached out four times, three times directly to JarkeyBacon, begging for that to at least be unpinned. No response. I'm getting views on those tweets that only he and I would've reasonably seen. He's tweeting and liking things in between. Meaning he's deliberately ignoring me. The foot harassment post is still pinned. So for a week now, every single minor who went into that channel has gotten an unmissable notification for... you know. That.

Rill/Kiekoes (rillant_pv on Twitter and rillant on Discord) is the admin I've contacted the most about all this. He helps run the scanlation group Project Vinland. I've given him chance after chance to turn this around. I don't think he's interested.

Rill was the one who helped Tikki pretend after that server announcement that she was someone who could be trusted around minors, even though he knew exactly what I reported to him. I told him and the other admin, "I can't sugarcoat how bad this looks," hoping they'd be more likely to remove her if I put it in a non-confrontational way. Instead they ignored the evidence I sent them. I'm certain that my recent tweets to Rill have been shared in the private mod channel, because the views and profile clicks are sky high compared to my usual stats. And I know that he shared and acted on at least one tweet, because someone from the server found the Tweet and contacted me within the day.

This is what he helped her do. After reading my very clear warning about her repeatedly, knowingly, talking about this stuff with minors:

She gets to pretend she wasn't the one at fault. She gets to pretend she's safe. That she's the one who's always cared about these rules the most.

I know posts like this are hard to believe without a ton of screencaps. I wrote a much longer post with some very disturbing details, but after wrestling long and hard, I don’t feel like I can post that part without further endangering innocent people. All I can say is that I’ve had this same fandom identity for 15 years now, and that’s what I’m staking on this public statement. I hope anyone who’s followed me for a while knows that I take this subject very seriously and I would never fabricate anything like this. Not to mention that Project Vinland is scanlating two different series I very much want to keep reading.

There are a few screencaps I will post: after I saw that the the mods were getting careless again despite my private warning, I tweeted this at an admin. (I've left a tiny screenshot in there with no username. (CW FOR FICTIONAL CSA: If you right-click and view the image in a new tab, you can zoom in to see a tiny fraction of what's been getting posted in just one channel lately, with moderators clearly active in the same channel on a regular basis. Tikki is the main one ignoring these posts, which are often still visible on the same page when she responds to something else.)

No response, but the Views are very high compared to my usual tweets.

I haven’t been blocked by anyone I tweeted at, and they made that server announcement about the rules one single day after my Reddit PM. They also haven’t made any public statements about how a lunatic is trying to take the server down with fake accusations. Those facts mean they know they can’t risk actively antagonizing me, because I have the screencaps to prove everything I’m saying. They were hoping I'd go away.

(And, guys, if you're reading: my primary concern here is for the minors in your server. If you try dragging any of them in to defend you, obviously I'll have to post the screencaps after all, and explain exactly what I had to report to the admins in that Reddit PM.)

If you're in the server, you can go check the date on that post in #server-announcements for yourself. It's February 4, 2023, one day after I sent my original PM on Reddit. Here's an Evernote draft of the very last version I checked over before copy-pasting it as a PM, plus a few paragraphs to prove how extremely helpful and polite I was:

Wasn't I nice? Obviously I'm not new to the internet, so I was lying about expecting them to deal with it correctly. That never happens with mod friend groups. But I had to give anyone who actually cared about this a fair chance. Either to get the offending mods out, or to get themselves out. Every current mod's had the chance they deserved to get out of this. None of them are willing to run their server safely. Not one single apology from anyone involved.

Since that first PM, I've also learned that one of the Discord/subreddit mods is in high school. In both places, users are directed to report all NSFW content to the mods. I’ve used that rule on the r/VinlandSaga subreddit to report a couple of ugly rape jokes. I know that minors are bound to see those things on the internet--I certainly did--but I would never forward posts like that to a minor for any reason. I’m disturbed to learn I did exactly that without knowing it. I don’t understand how this decision was ever made. I reached out to Rill, asking him to please tell me there was some kind of setup where the underage mod wouldn’t get pinged/notified over reports that could have NSFW content, and again I was ignored.

So. I've counted 3 adult mods bringing up or highlighting NSFW things in the Discord, all of them on multiple occasions. One underage mod who was bafflingly chosen to handle reports that would inevitably include NSFW material. And I've contacted two admins, one of them repeatedly. I know these messages made contact. Because of the views, and the fact that two of the warnings got them into scramble mode, and because every time I've tweeted at Rill or JarkeyBacon over the past week, I see mods mysteriously popping up in some of the Discord's public channels within a short time. I wonder what made them all come into the server to chat???

Here's yesterday:

That tweet of Yukimura's he links to at 8:26, btw, is dated 8:22 by my time. But JarkeyBacon broke his Discord silence at 8:20, meaning he was on Discord and Twitter simultaneously just forty minutes after I tweeted at him at 7:44.

Go ahead and guess what happened during that gap between 10/31 and 11/4.

JarkeyBacon I literally just wanted you to unpin and delete the toe-sucking tweet in your server full of minors. That's all I wanted. You fucked up once back in January, but I didn't name you in my PM, and I wouldn't have named you here otherwise. I would've assumed that was a one-time mistake. What are you doing, man?

At this time, I no longer believe anyone left could be ignorant of what's going on. If they are, then the other mods have deliberately endangered them by keeping them in the dark. I don't think anyone with power is genuinely interested in fixing the horrifying situation in the Somewhere Not Here server. In February, I threw these people a rope to pull them away from the cliff over which they were dangling. They decided to fling themselves back over, while spraying diarrhea all over a bunch of minors they PERSONALLY asked to come hang out under said cliff.

Did you guys really think I'd stop caring?

[tsarscur]

Also not to contradict my previous post but there's been an alarming tendency of YouTube guys leaking into GWAG and posting their Patreon previews there.

I get it - YT has been becoming increasingly difficult to post any "spicy" content on but GWAG is a porn subreddit - sure there are always exceptions to the rule like the "But Master" series that hadn't become "porn" until part four, but I'd like to see you try post the first three parts on YT - and if you only post "technically SFW" content I feel like it's not exactly your place. There are quite a few GWAG VAs who have Patreon, but they don't post previews on Reddit - they just advertise it on their page. On the other hand, those kinds of previews would also often seem out of place on say r/lgbtpillowtalkaudio because most of them aren't vanilla and/or "cosy, sweet, soft, soothing" - they're functionally kinky porn just without the porn part.

An exempt from GWAG Wiki:

Also, this is less of a technical thing and more of a feeling, but knowing those kinds of guys (from YT) I FEEL like if they were actually posting their full content on GWAG they would... not necessarily get banned or reprimanded but face moderation - they're not especially good at tagging their stuff properly.

All that said, I trust in GWAG mods more than I trust in any gods, so I'm sure it's going to be okay at the end.

[droewyn]

[image ID: A screenshot of tumblr tags reading as follows:

#i still dont fully understand the proship vs antiship bullshit

#ive heard people saying that proship is another one of those labels pedophiles hide behind

End ID]

Okay, before anyone digs this person out of the tags to give them a hard time, they said a LOT more than this, and all of it is very sane and reasonable. But I wanted to address this particular point, so I grabbed just this.

I'm a regular on the AO3 subreddit. About once a week, we get some smug anti coming in to complain about the "LiTeRaL cHiLd PoRn" on AO3. They're usually expecting to find an echo chamber, and to be fair, on this topic we are one. We're just not echoing the position that they're expecting. Like AO3 itself, the subreddit is unapologetically pro-ship, down to the mods, some of whom are OTW volunteers themselves.

So antis show up, they get roundly mocked, and either vanish without a trace, or say something bad enough to get banned, either from the sub or from reddit itself. Honestly, the only reason to even click into these threads is to watch the drama; it happens so often.

Last night, I thought I was clicking into just another anti-post. It had a post title of "Is this something I can report?" Typical anti stuff. But when I clicked in, what came up was this:

[image ID: a screenshot of an AO3 story summary. The fic title is "The Eyes that Watch the Cradle", the author name has been redacted, and it is listed as an original work, meaning no fandom. It contains the archive warnings Rape/Noncon and Underage, and the freeform tags include the following:

Father/Daughter Relationship, Original Male Character(s) / Original Female Character(s), Older Man / Young Girl - Relationship, Omorashi, Grooming, Lolicon, Gymnastics, leotard, Urination, Piss Play, Voyeurism, Rape, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Teen Pregnancy, Inverted Nipples, gym clothes, Flexibility, Puberty, pee desperation, Pee, Childhood Trauma, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Sexual Abuse, Daddy issues, Daddy Kink, Foot Fetish, Sweat, Tickling, Non-Consensual Tickling, Flashing, Non-Consensual Groping, Dry Humping, Coming In Pants, Molestation, Loss of Innocence, Vibrators, Orgasm Denial, Dubious Consent, Religious Guilt, Religion, Catholic School, Catholic Guilt, Hand Jobs, Forced Masturbation, First Time.

The summary reads: Tom and the perverse grooming of an 11-year-old girl gymnast he becomes infatuated with, through the years, she marries him and has his children, he grooms them too.

WITH PICTURES!

Transcriber Note: I need a shower now. End ID]

The thread has since been deleted by moderators, but fortunately the reddit mobile app is broken AF, so I was able to get the above screenshot.

The whole thing is really icky, but I want to highlight this:

[image ID: a screencap of just the phrase "WITH PICTURES!" taken from the previous image. End ID.]

I didn't track down the fic or click into it for obvious reasons (the FBI doesn't make a distinction between people consuming illegal content and people who just clicked in out of morbid curiosity), but others did, and reported that while there is no actual CSEM, there were photographs of very young children wearing leotards.

The implication is that these photos of kids are meant to be the ones being groomed and abused in the author's story.

Here is a representative sample of the comments on the thread:

[image ID: two screenshots from Reddit, displaying user comments.

User creampiebuni (with user flair "annoying shotacon") writes, "Pretty sure if it's linking to real photos of children, it can be reported. That crosses a big line."

They responded to themselves with, "Edit: I looked it up, yep, report, report, holy shit, this is not lolicon, this is just pedophilia."

User NataZing (the reddit thread's OP) replies, "I know, I only skimmed it, real nasty. Tried reporting it but it already had been so hopefully they get taken down

User parsious (with user flair "Definitely not an agent of the Fanfiction Deep State") replies, "If it had real pedo I would also be reporting to the police so they could talk to ao3 about user data... This sounds like the kind of person that needs to have a chat with the police."

User Connect-Sign5739 comments, "Yes, I'd report this. Including real pictures of children, even though non-pornographic, definitely crosses a line. Those real children shouldn't be associated with this story!"

User CatterMater (with user flair "Totally Not Boeing Mangement") writes, "Report, report, report."

User foreigner says, "WTF. [crying emoji]"

User andthennini writes, "Aside from how nauseating it sounds by the tags alone, if it actually has real people then I think it's reportable."

User ChaosieHyena says, "I gagged. Am pro fiction, but that's it FICTION. Any rpf (with images, no less) makes me genuinely queasy."

End Image ID]

There is not a SINGLE comment in support of this author. Every single person, except for one dipshit who made a really tasteless joke and got downvoted into oblivion, expressed shock, disgust, and horror.

See for yourself. OP's screencap is gone on desktop (again, it still shows up on mobile, at least for now), but the thread is still there and comments are intact: https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1czd7aw/is_this_something_i_can_report/

This is what it means to be proship.

HJELP MEEEEEE LMAOOOO

[sophieinwonderland]

Reminder: A hate group is a group that, through its beliefs or practices, attacks and maligns an entire group of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.

r/systemscringe is a pluralphobic hategroup.

And the current mod team's actions have only made the subreddit more dangerous.

Where the previous moderators had rules against posting people uncensored to discourage harassment, new moderators replaced these restrictions with a hit list of acceptable targets. They did this under the pretense of only targeting "public figures" but their definition of a public figure is broad enough to allow the mods to name anyone they dislike as an acceptable target.

And it's not just that. Shortly after taking over, the mods of the hate sub did away with flairs for systems. The new rule is that people with DID aren't allowed to say if they have it.

And people who the r/systemscringe mods deem a faker will be hit with a "check user history" flair to brand them as such, encouraging harassment against branded users.

("Trolling" for them is, unfortunately, anything that goes against their narrative.)

All the while, they've taken a hard stance against RAMCOA survivors, making their automod respond to any mention of RAMCOA with links saying it doesn't exist that cite the ableist Satanic Temple's Grey Faction, a group that doesn't even believe in DID and whose founder specialized in the made-up False Memory Syndrome, as it source.

Yes, r/systemscringe is an ableist pluralphobic hate group that is designed around maligning and attacking systems. Often for basic system things. And it's currently being ran by a vile mod team who are intent on pushing boundaries as far as they possibly can without getting the subreddit nuked. And the only reason they're showing as much restraint as they are now is because of that looming threat from Reddit admins.

No, this is not a "both sides" issue, and I will not shy away from calling a hate group a hate group.

[stellae-de-baphometis]

PSA: Stay away from the DemonolatryPractices subreddit.

Hi everyone, so a little side note before I get into everything. This post is gonna be a bit venty and also touches on sensitive topics, so apologies in advance for that.

⚠️ TRIGGER WARNING - mentions of anti-Semitism, Nazis, suicide, alcoholism. ⚠️ Full post will be under the cut.

So I haven't posted in a while, the main reason being that I've been struggling with mental illness and I'm working a very stressful job that's been taking up pretty much all of my time. Luckily I'll be quitting this job soon though. But I also wanted to address the fact that one of the other reasons I stopped posting is because I realised in the past I had an anti-Semitic mindset without even realising, and I was appropriating Jewish daemons in my spiritual practices and spreading harmful misinformation on my blog. I've since deleted any posts containing such content and have been doing my best to educate myself on why it's not okay to appropriate Judaism. I also removed the Jewish daemons from the grimoire I'm writing and left a Daemonolatry subreddit that encouraged and tried to justify appropriating Lilith and other Jewish daemons.

This subreddit was r/DemonolatryPractices.

Just recently, I posted to a pagan subreddit about including daemons like Azazel, Leviathan, and Behemoth in my grimoire, as I am aware of their Jewish origins and wondered if it would be okay to include them in my grimoire, as they're also present in Christianity. I briefly mentioned in the post that I had omitted Lilith from my grimoire as I didn't want to appropriate a Jewish entity.

Someone in the comments tried to claim that working with Lilith wasn't cultural appropriation, and obviously got the ban hammer from that subreddit because it's anti-Semitic to try and appropriate Judaism as it's a closed practise. This person got really salty and went into my DMs, trying to claim that Lilith was a "Mesopotamian Pagan goddess" and started shouting a bunch of anti-Semitic shit claiming that Judaism took this "Queen Of Hell" and spread lies about her, which is obviously just an insanely disgusting thing to say... And correct me if I'm wrong here but I think that whole idea of Jewish people spreading lies about spirituality and the world in general is based off an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. Again, correct me if I'm wrong because I genuinely don't know for sure - it's just something I've heard about. If it is true then holy shit that's fucked up...

Anyways, this person kept accusing me of being "incorrect" and "wrong" about cultural appropriation, and it got to the point where I had to block them because they just wouldn't leave me the fuck alone.

This person then went to the aforementioned Daemonolatry subreddit to talk shit about me behind my back and started a huge smear campaign in the comments, where there were almost a hundred comments all calling me insane and accusing me of being an "internet bully" for trying to be an ally to Jewish people and calmly educating people on why it's not okay to appropriate Lilith. They kept saying that I was spouting bullshit and that was wrong.

This then lead to me getting witch-hunted by a bunch of people getting really angry and bitter with me, trying to defend appropriating Lilith. Everyone was blowing up my DMs trying to argue why it's okay to appropriate Lilith and other Jewish daemons. I had to block several people and also contact the moderator of this pagan subreddit, as there were so many comments of people slamming me and trying to justify their anti-Semitic rhetoric, that the mod had to actually disable the comments on my initial post.

It was overwhelming as all fuck and I actually had a meltdown because of this. I have BPD and other personality disorders, and so it's very easy for my emotions to get out of control and for me to become overwhelmed... And that's exactly what happened. I was so stressed out and upset that I started binge drinking vodka to the point of passing out. I'm struggling with alcoholism at the moment, so this situation triggered my alcoholism and I absolutely lost my shit. I even became actively suicidal and was drinking to try and combat these feelings and prevent myself from actively carrying out a suicide attempt, because I really felt like I was on my last straw with all the problems I've had at home lately. The whole ordeal was fucking awful...

But enough about how it made me feel because that's not nearly as important as how this shit is potentially affecting Jewish people themselves. Now I don't want to speak over Jewish people here or speak on how anti-Semitism affects Jewish people, as I am not Jewish and it's not my place to speak on that whatsoever. However I will say that I do recognise and understand that Jewish people are an oppressed minority group that have evidently suffered a lot of discrimination and marginalisation throughout history. All I'm saying is I can imagine that Judaism being appropriated by anti-Semites probably isn't gonna make Jewish people fucking feel good...

I apologise if I've said anything incorrect here or if I'm speaking over Jewish issues. It's not my intention to do so, and my goal is to only speak from the perspective of an ally. Please don't hesitate to correct me in the comments if I've said anything incorrect or insensitive, I don't want to speak over anyone here or spread false information.

Anyways. These people in the r/DaemonolatryPractices almost view Lilith appropriation like some sort of cult. If you're complacent and don't criticise it, they're fine with you. If you try to call them out on their shit, they come after you hard and ridicule you to shit. It's fucking terrifying, disgusting, and downright disturbing how these people will get so defensive, bitter, angry, and vicious when you call them out on their cultural appropriation. To me, it looks like an obvious projection of their covert anti-Semitism, and when you call them out for said anti-Semitism, they lose their shit and feel deeply attacked, because you're exposing them for what they truly are.

This very subreddit was the thing that sent me down an anti-Semitic pipeline where I got it into my head that cultural appropriation and anti-Semitism is completely fine, and that Judaism was a "bad" religion just like Christianity. They vilify Judaism and lump it into the "big bad Abrahamic religions" category alongside Christianity, and accuse Judaism of vilifying "their" Lilith. It's truly disgusting and horrifying, and I am deeply ashamed that I was brainwashed into thinking this way and was basically within an echo chamber that prevented me from seeing a different perspective. But being brainwashed doesn't take away from the fact that I still take complete accountability for what I did, and I am genuinely so sorry to the Jewish community for spreading anti-Semitic rhetoric on my blog and having such a warped view of Judaism. I sincerely cannot apologise enough and it's something I want to do everything in my power to make up for.

So my message to you guys is this. Please stay the hell away from r/DemonolatryPractices. They are anti-Semites at best and far-right Neo-Nazis at worst. Please don't go near that cesspit of a subreddit. It's riddled with anti-Semitism, cultural appropriation, and bigoted people who will try and justify and defend that shit to their fucking death. Stay far away from this subreddit, especially if you're a Jewish person, as I can't imagine it would be a very safe environment for Jewish folks...

Everyone please stay safe and I wish you all well. And again, I am sincerely sorry to the Jewish community for my past actions. I will do everything I can to make up for it.

Ave Satanas ⭐

-Kody

[dontbemeanmrbubz]

*kracks knuckels* Buckle up, this is gonna be a long one. Get ready for some reddit lore.

The beginnings

It all started with a group of roommates who made a subreddit called r/195. "195" Was their dorm number. The only rule of that subreddit? You must post an image before you leave. Originally it was just a thing between them, but of course other people started joining and it snowballed from there.

The result was essentially a shitposting subreddit, but without the rampant mean-spirited jokes and right-wing dogwhistles that are usually present in shitposting communities.

First migration

Eventually, the roommates told people that they planned to close down the subreddit because it was too much work, they weren't actually roommates anymore etc. As a result, the subreddit r/196 was created and carried forth the spirit of its predecessor for many years. It established itself as a very popular left-wing shitposting subreddit and (arguably) a safe space for queer people.

There are some offshoots of this subreddit as well, e.g. r/19684, where sexual stuff is banned.

API-protest and second migration

A while ago, reddit made some very unpopular API changes which made third-party apps practically impossible. This was heavily criticised, mostly because 1. the reddit app was and is dog shit and people don't want to be forced to use it, 2. third-party apps provided accessibility for people with disabilities, and 3. it made moderators' jobs harder.

In protest, a lot of subreddits just started to "black out" (nothing can be posted or commented), and r/196 was particularly persistent. As a result, a lot of people from this community fled to tumblr - either to support the protest or simply because they couldn't post anymore on r/196 - and used the tag #196. Integration went smoothly because r/196 already had tumblr-style humour, had similar (political) values, and a huge part of the content there was already just tumblr screenshots.

People also noted that the welcome on here was very dissimmilar to when people from twitter fled to tumblr, since apparently a lot of tumblr users fired the digital equivalent of "rent lowering shots" back then.

Aftermath and final thoughts

Eventually, r/196 was re-opened. The reddit-wide protest faded out without having had much of an effect, and reddit threatened to replace the mods of subreddits that still protested. I personally think it was ultimately a good thing that the subreddit became available again because it's a huge leftist and inclusive community - God knows we need as many of those as we can get!

A lot of people seem to have found other tags on tumblr, went back to reddit, or (like me) ended up using both tumblr and reddit, so #196 does not seem as active as it used to be anymore.

There have been some controversies on r/196 (e.g. tankies being bullies with a victim complex, discussions regarding the distinction between genital preferences and fetishization, and arguments regarding the presence of minors on the subreddit), but all in all I'm personnally quite happy with the subreddit's current state, and I enjoy being on tumblr as well :3

WHAT THE FUCK IS 196???????????

[moonstarfem]

This post kind of took me by surprise yesterday, and I'm curious to see what other rad fems who frequent FDS think about this announcement. It seems as though some of the mods are unhappy with the way the subreddit is going and are seeking to remind users that the whole point of the sub is to apply what you've learned on FDS by actually getting out there and dating men.

This is a poor take IMO considering that the sub exists to support women in all areas of life, not just dating. I don't think the moderator announcement is at all representative of the majority of the current userbase, especially when you take a look at FDS' most popular posts and the type of content that users are most frequently engaging with. I mean, just take a look at the flair options. There are multiple ones available for us to talk about a variety of issues, including "cultural misogyny" and "global resistance". Even posts that aren't inherently about dating are still relevant to dating. To quote a user below, "dating doesn't exist in a vacuum. The whole dating scene is very obviously impacted by the patriarchy. So raising consciousness among women about beauty standards, the sex trade, cultural misogyny etc are all important because they're tied together".

I think FDS ought to embrace the community they have established and the way it is continuing to evolve and thrive. I've seen some incredible posts on there in the months I've been subscribed. From an extensive list of why you shouldn't go 50/50 with a man on a date, patterns of behaviour displayed by abusers, calling out liberal feminism, analysing the glorification of sex work and much, much more. There are few spaces online where women are provided with such indispensable information straight off the bat. A woman who simply came onto FDS for dating could leave with a whole new understanding of the world and the misogynistic forces at play. I even saw a post the other day from an ex-sex worker who stopped escorting after discovering FDS and listening to the podcast. She encouraged other sex workers to do the same too.

It's actually quite insulting for OP to say that the "aggressive radfem idealogical grandstanding BS" has got to go. What a bizarre thing to say. I understand that not all FDS members are radical feminists, but considering that, 1. many active users are rad fems, 2. many have become rad fems through participating (whether that was the sub's intention or not) and 3. the podcast itself just hosted an "aggressive rad fem" last week (the incredible Gail Dines), I have no idea why radical feminism is being dismissed in this way. Why is it an issue if some posts include core radical feminist beliefs? It is still connected to dating, seeing as we are still attracted to men and have to navigate misogyny in all aspects of our lives. Radical feminism only strives to help women, not hurt women.

Also, OP seems to be unable to recognise a healthy middle ground between actively dating multiple men and opting out of dating completely. Yes, the handbook recommends multi-dating, but nowhere did it state that if you are single, you ought to be dating. She says, "It's okay to take breaks from dating because you're in a negative mindset, or focus on self improvement, or determine what you even want"...well, what if it's none of those things? If we're happy to just get on with our lives without actively seeking a man? What then? We are not "waiting for a HVM to come along" by not actively seeking them out. We know it's not that easy. I don't want to use online dating. I'm not going to join a meetup group for a random hobby just so I can cultivate opportunities to meet men. My life doesn't revolve around creating opportunities to meet men and I don't appreciate being told that I should "get in the habit of curating new experiences" with them. Like...no thanks. I will happily activate the vetting techniques I've learned when I come across men, but I don't need to go searching for them just to gain experience meeting and rejecting men. There are so many things I'd rather dedicate my time towards than to seek out men to practice FDS tactics on. Besides, there are plenty of non-dating situations involving men where we can still practice these techniques. Situations with male work colleagues, relatives, friends and strangers. Men are literally half the population. I think we'll be fine.

Anyway, I'm gonna share some comments from the post that particularly resonated with me:

Would love to see some more thoughts on this!

[rotationalsymmetry]

I guess I’m in it now.

It’s good to re-examine the language you use to be more inclusive now and then. It sucks to have a gender that routinely gets left out of the conversation. It is good to adjust the words you use to back away from the idea that everybody is male or female, pick one. (Especially when you know people who aren’t male or female, but even when you don’t.)

It is also, specifically for bisexuals/pansexuals/etc, really fucking exhausting* to not be able to find an online group where I can just talk about the experience of being bi, and listen to what other bi’s have to say about it, without the discussion constantly being hijacked by nonbinary inclusion discourse. Constantly. All the damn time.** In a way that doesn’t happen when other people talk about their identities, and certainly doesn’t happen when straight people talk about who they’re attracted to.

(Straight people use “I love cock/I love pussy/I don’t like whatever” as shorthand for orientation all the motherfucking time, when they even have to explain their orientation rather than just having it assumed. Bi people? Not allowed. And we can’t just talk about anything — not who we like, not stereotypes, not appropriate sexual healthcare, not invisibility, not our own language issues — without about 1/3 of the conversation, or more, ending up being all about something on the nonbinary inclusion/whether bisexual or pansexual is the more inclusive term/the intrinsic transphobia of talking about attraction in terms of genitals, rather than what we were trying to talk about.

I am nonbinary. I do want to talk about nonbinary stuff. I would love to talk about the intersection of being nonbinary and being bi! never happens because everyone’s yelling about pansexuals or how it’s wrong to describe yourself as being attracted to me and women or conflating genitals with gender during your own coming out, an event where you should get to center yourself or something.

It is effectively a form of silencing. Even when it’s us doing it to ourselves.

*actually that’s not the right word. I mean really fucking alienating.

** I realize sometimes people say things like that when they mean “it gets brought up at all”, but I do actually mean all the damn time. I am not currently following any blogs that focus on being bisexual on tumblr because of this problem, the Facebook group I used to be in would have multiple massive dogpiles per week that were the first thing you saw because they got so much engagement (which seems like it would be hella counterproductive if your goal is to make a safe space for trans and nonbinary people, just moderating those posts out was an option and it was not an option the mods went with), and while Reddit of all places has been the best online space I’ve found for this, it still gets dragged down by bi vs pan BS fairly often. Like, if I look at more than 2-3 posts in a bi subreddit there’s going to be one of these things showing up. If I binge and read a bunch of posts, I’ll get multiple posts about this stuff. TBF, when I went to an in-person group that wasn’t really a thing at all, but as a spoonie in a pandemic, in-person groups aren’t really an option for me, and realistically even heathy bisexuals tend to look for other bisexuals online.

[chariot313]

Western social media has no respect for Japanese online artists - and it’s killing online art

The visual arts have evolved to suit the most popular medium of each era. In nowadays’ case, the internet is the go-to method of sharing the fruits of one’s labour). However, as stated in that tweet thread of mine you can see if you scroll down a bit (assuming you’re viewing this post on chariot313.tumblr.com) different cultures have different attitudes towards how their customers react to their products. This include you know what fuck the formalities, I’ll just say it: The exclusively western concept of someone seeing something they like online and hitting the share button to stimulate the “Haha, upvotes go ‘brrr’!” dopamine in their smooth-ass lizard brain will be the death of online Japanese artists. Or rather, it has been already, and you would know that if you’ve ever seen an artist’s Twitter bio be in mostly Japanese save for one sentence in English; “Reprint is prohibited.”.

If you want to hear me rationalize the absurd claim I just made, feel free to click the “Keep reading” button. Otherwise, turn back now and save yourself from me possibly wasting your time.

Alright, you’ve chosen to stick with me. Just remember, you asked for this.

Introduction

Social media as a whole is based around sharing (posting, uploading, submitting, tweeting, blogging, streaming etc.) and other’s reactions to what one has shared (views, likes, subscribers, favorites, followers, upvotes, retweets, reblogs, crossposts, etc.).

However, miscommunication and culture shock due to language barriers and cultural differences is one of the many factors that can negatively affect one’s experience on social media. For example, the Japanese artist community, active on sites such as Twitter, Pixiv, NicoNico Seiga, FC2 blogs, etc.. Twitter is mostly inhabited by English-speaking users. Here in the west, our main motive for sharing something on social media (such as art) is for fame and recognition. However, over in the East, most online artists only upload their works to the internet for personal use. I’m not saying one cultural attitude towards sharing art is better than one another, but when these two worldviews collide, the culture shock can negatively affect the careers of artists who are unaware of the other culture’s differing views on sharing art.

So, I’ve listed numerous social media platforms below and I’m going to elaborate on how each of them contributes to the alienation and discouragement of Japanese artists.

DO NOT WITCH-HUNT OR HARASS THE CULPRITS I’VE LISTED AS EXAMPLES; THEY ONLY SERVE TO BACK UP MY ARGUMENT

Twitter

Go into the twitter search bar and type in the name of an anime character (usually female). What do you find? Most likely an account named after said character that does nothing but post unsourced fan art of said character with cheesy “in-character” captions on them.

Exhibit A [NSFW]

Exhibit B [NSFW]

Exhibit C [very NSFW]

Aside from that, Twitter isn’t that bad in this regard, as a lot of the art that gets stolen is originally uploaded to Twitter anyway. But I’m just getting started. 

Wattpad

Ah yes, Wattpad. One of the “trinity” of fan fiction communities (the others being fanfiction.net and AO³), featuring many different stories with varying degrees of readability. The problem is the option to add a picture to adorn your fanfiction, at which point most of the authors google “<fanfic subject> fan art” and use something from there without considering the repercussions. This causes Wattpad to be one of the top results when reverse image searching to find the source of some fan art, aside from another site I’ll mention later on...

Reddit

There’s a subreddit I often browse called r/ChurchOfJirou, a community for sharing anything relating to the character Kyouka from My Hero Academia (I mean come on, she’s like the cutest thing ever). A lot of the posts on that sub are sharing fan art of the aforementioned character. One of the rules in the sidebar is “always include the source in the title or the comments”. And most of the submissions make good on that rule. However, a lot of the posts are from Japanese artists on Twitter or Pixiv, and following the source link leads you to find the artist’s bio, which usually has something along the lines of “don’t repost my work”. And what’s more, the biggest offenders (of submitting art to the sub without OP’s permission) were the moderators of the subreddit. You know, the ones who are supposed to be enforcing the rules? I even got so fed up that I called it out, to which one of the mods replied,

“It doesn’t really make a difference, does it?”

Luckily, not all subreddits are like this. For example, other MHA-related subs like r/BokuNoShipAcademia or r/ChurchOfMinaAshido have moderators that are more considerate of artists’ wishes. Overall, Reddit is usually a hit-or-miss when it comes to this kind of thing. At best, you’ve got subs like the two I just mentioned which make sure to respect artists, and at worst you’ve got people trying (and failing) to edit out watermarks. Also, not to self-promote, but this tweet of mine represents this situation pretty well:

Imgur

Imgur isn’t that bad compared to the rest of these, but it’s a common one that people link to when asked for the source of whatever they’ve shared on Twitter or Reddit or whatever.

Amino Apps

Amino Apps is a strange case. I don’t know much about it since I’ve never used it, but from what I do know it seems similar to Reddit in that there are numerous communities for different niches. That said, judging from the way it clogs up Google image search results, I doubt OC art is posted there often.

YouTube

Now, you may be thinking, “How does a video site rip off others’ art?”. The answer is uploads of soundtracks. Look for any OST from a video game or anime on YouTube and the picture used for the video will likely be some fan art by a Japanese Pixiv artist, usually one that forbids reposts of their work. Not only that, but if the uploader did bother to add the source in the description, it’s usually not even a link to the actual source, more likely a link to Zerochan or Pinterest or something. Now take into account that some of these videos get millions of views. Imagine working hard on something, and some numbnuts takes it, slaps some music onto it, uploads it to YouTube, and gets millions of views while you get next to nothing in comparison.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B (re-upload; original had nearly 40 million views before it was copyright claimed)

Exhibit C

and many many others

Pinterest

Alright, this is the big one. When Pinterest isn’t giving recipes or wardrobe ideas to suburban white moms, it’s clogging up Google reverse image search, punishing anyone who just wanted to find the source of some cute fan art. I feel like this meme by ZebitasMartinexSi on Facebook sums it up:

For example, this piece of Legend of Zelda art by Twitter artist @_nomeri_ (I’ll just link to it, since it would be hypocritical of me to embed the image even though @_nomeri_’s bio warns people not to repost their art). Good art, right? Well, if you right-click and hit “Search Google for image”...

...yeah. Pinterest is a plague. It thrives on theft. Even worse is when someone will post fan art on Twitter/Tumblr/Reddit/etc. and have the nerve to say “IDK the source I found it on Pinterest ^_^”. Or worse yet, they link to Pinterest saying it’s the source.

Instagram

While many other sites rag on Instagram for its reposting of memes, it’s no better when it comes to reposting fan art, especially from Pixiv. I’ve seen lots of stolen pieces with fan fictions written in the description. Personally, if I were an artist, I’d rethink my career choice if I saw my art reposted on Instagram with a half-assed fanfic under it, so I don’t blame Japanese artists who close their Pixiv accounts after seeing that. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to prevent it from happening in the first place.

DeviantArt

DeviantArt is more “renowned” across the web for its niche circles of bizarre fetish art, but in its defence, there are some legitimately good pieces on there. If you do find a good one though, try checking to see if all of the uploader’s pieces have a similar overall art style, because if not, that’s a sure sign of someone passing off some Pixiv user’s art as their own, which is unfortunately fairly common on DeviantArt.

9Gag

Not a whole lot to say about 9Gag. I mean, it does contribute to reposting of art, but nothing really separates it from the others on this list, aside from its watermarks. At least the watermark gives away the fact that something was reposted.

Know Your Meme

You know that Zelda pic by @_nomeri_ I was talking about earlier? Well, to add insult to injury, it became an object-labelling meme.

Imagine putting hours into something and politely asking others not to repost it, only to find that some nincompoops on r/DankMemes made it into an object-labelling meme.

But this isn’t KYM’s fault, per se. Know Your Meme only documents memes; they do not create them. However, as someone who regularly browses the Know Your Meme image galleries, I can say that the image gallery has essentially become Know Your Fan Art (unlawfully reposted fan art, that is).

Redbubble

There’s an NSFW artist I follow on Twitter by the name of Nico-Mo. A while ago, his Pixiv account was suspended, and there were numerous pictures on there that he had not uploaded to his Twitter or DeviantArt, so I found a mirror of one of those pieces on Gelbooru and reverse-image searched in hopes of finding it on his Twitter. No such luck. What came up instead was a .png of the piece made into a sticker being sold on Redbubble. In fact, that’s one of the major reasons why artists disapprove of their art being reposted, as it may find its way onto a sticker or a T-shirt being sold as merch without the original artist giving consent nor the artist receiving so much as a single nickel.

Facebook

Surprisingly, I think Facebook is one of the least offending sites on this list. Still worth mentioning, though.

Funnyjunk

Like Imgur, Funnyjunk isn’t that bad compared to some of the rest of these, but this exchange in the comments of a repost of an MHA artist that deleted their account (not hard to see why considering people straight-up ignored the big-ass watermark at the bottom) is proof enough of western social media’s flippant attitude towards ruining online artists’ careers.

Aggregator imageboards such as Yande.re, Konachan, Danbooru, Gelbooru, Rule34, SankakuComplex, Zerochan, etc.

I don’t think I need to explain these. But like Imgur, these are what most people link to when asked for source instead of bothering to find the original post.

We Heart It

I don’t know much about “We Heart It”, but it seems to be a “Pinterest Lite” considering it clogs up image search almost as much as Pinterest does.

iFunny

Basically the same as 9Gag, in the sense that its watermarks are a dead giveaway.

4chan

I’m not sure if 4chan really “counts” among these, as it’s a chat board where nearly everything is impermanent anyway. However, I was once on an NSFW subreddit where one submitter used a 4chan thread to get Patreon-exclusive material from an artist to upload to the sub (even though one of the rules of the sub was “no paywall content”), so that alone earns 4chan its spot on this list.

Tumblr

Yes, not even Tumblr is innocent. Although I’m sure you knew that. Similar to what I said about Twitter, look up any blog named after a fictional character and it’ll likely be chock-full of unsourced fan art.

“Why is this even important?”

Because if an artist sees that their work is being reposted, depending on the artist, they may delete the original post when they wouldn’t have to if people had just respected their wishes. Now, if an artist wants their works gone from the internet for other personal reasons, that’s up to them and we should respect them for it. But artists taking down their works due to mass reposting is 100% preventable, which is why it’s sad. If you don’t respect an artist, they won’t create art. Simple as that.

“Why do you care so much?”

Eh, I’m just weird like that. It just ticks me off when anything online, whether it be art, or a video, or whatever, is lost. In my opinion, nothing hurts more than clicking a Pixiv link on an imageboard and being greeted with “The work was deleted or the ID does not exist.”.

“But lots of western artists forbid reposting of their art too!”

Indeed, that is correct. But while many artists of every nationality and culture frown upon reproduction of their work, it seems only western social media is responsible for reposting art in the first place. I mean, why else do you think Japanese artists are saying “Reprint is prohibited” in English when the rest of their bio is in Japanese? Because English-speakers are the ones reposting.

“But exposure can help an artist!”

Yeah, that’s true...

...but “exposure” doesn’t mean much if those “exposed” to one’s work don’t know or care who it came from.

And if you need even more reasons, look no further than these posts about the same topic by other blogs:

https://cranberrywitch.tumblr.com/post/143456002228/stop-reposting-art-from-japanese-artists

https://thegospelofnagisa.tumblr.com/post/143308182398

https://edendaphne.tumblr.com/post/163117317030/ive-been-wanting-to-make-this-educational-cheat

https://marklightgreatsword.tumblr.com/post/190056977650/discourage-art-theft-in-fandom-in-2020-dont

https://letusrespectpixivartistconsent.tumblr.com/post/92189994896/why-is-this-important

also, not to self-promote but I made a thread on Twitter on this topic about a month ago that you can check out here.

That’s all.

posted Jun 14; last edit Jun 21

[myonlypen]

Gosh, I get so nostalgic about the MLP fandom. I miss it. I’m going to go on a bit of a ramble, sorry:

I wasn't all that active in the fandom, having stopped watching the show at around the time season 3 aired, but I do remember I originally made my tumblr account in 2011 to follow MLP ask blogs.

I've described the MLP fandom in the past as "the last hurrah" of the old internet. It was so welcoming and full of creativity and positive energy.

There's so many differences between the fandom experience then and now that I can't think of them all, and I'm not sure how many of them were inevitable. The internet itself has become bigger in terms of population but so much smaller in terms of sites we visit and diversity of content (no more flash games :( ). While there was a "hub" for the MLP fandom found in Equestria Daily (which I followed by RSS rather than on social media) there were plenty of other sites out there. Ponybooru and later derpibooru for images; active places for discussion on ponychan, reddit, 4chan, and a load of small forums too; active communities on twitter and tumblr; people uploading a variety of creations to deviantart and youtube and soundcloud; plenty of independent blogs that posted podcasts and reviews. Heck, dedicated websites specifically designed for pony fanfic were created, separate from FF.net and AO3.

These days pretty much everything would be concentrated on social media giants. Twitter for community and discussion and following the news and artists, reddit for better formatted discussion threads. Think about it: if you want to ask a question about a cool game you just played and you find a largeish subreddit called /r/gamename you're going to ask there. If you don't like the moderation? You're hardly going to be able to found a /r/gamename2 and expect it to become popular. How would you even advertise it? But on the old internet independent forums could and did coexist without one of them sucking all of the oxygen out of the room. Not to mention those forums actually had a community. Reddit isn't the best place for building communities since the size of the website is too big. On twtter you might have a circle of mutuals but there's always the risk that a tweet will leave its intended audience and draw the ire of randos.

Another difference is the structure of internet communities. People used to share art or make videos for fun, to be a part of the community. The community structure was much flatter; except for mods or admins on forums no user was privileged over others and they posted what they wanted. These days, your posts don't matter unless you have loads of followers or subscribers. Artists were an important part of the community, but they were not structurally more important, if that makes sense. If a newbie joined and posted art a lack of "followers" wouldn't cause it to go unnoticed.

On a similar note to the above, everything is much more explicitly about money now. It's really hard to phrase this without making it sound like I don't think artists should be paid, but when there's lots of posts saying "support me on patreon" it just feels kind of... soulless? I want to see people share things due to their passion - which they can and should get money for if they are able! don't get me wrong! But once the financial incentive is there it has an insidious effect on the culture as a whole. People will get into producing the art in the first place because there's money in it, instead of producing it anyway and happening to monetise it. Or you might see artists follow the money, drawing characters who are currently popular. Artists that aren't in it for the money will draw the one character they like over and over and over again. I enjoy the second kind of artist's art more, because there's passion behind it. I sometimes rewatch youtube videos from the late 00's that I remember. There is no "like and subscribe", they aren't padded out to be be 10 minutes and 1 second long so they get more ad revenue. The videos are made because they wanted to make it, and it was just as long as it needed to be. The stuff that was created back then just feels less bullshitty. Meanwhile these days "artists" and "musicians" and "authors" are all bundled together into the sickeningly corporate phrase that is "content creator" because their work is what is valued, rather than them as people. I want my communities to centre around people, not "content".

And because money is involved, you have to make sure advertisers are happy. That's why everywhere is so sanitised now. Fewer places allow NSFW content. Places are quick to ban anything too controversial in case the skittish investors flee. There was just something soooo liberating about browsing tumblr back in the day and see porn in the same tags as the moodboards and discussions. Seeing people actively giving each other shoplifting tips. Sharing links to torrents in the open. Not only that but you could send anonymous asks without being logged in, browse people's "archive" pages without being logged in. Things like this are slowly being removed and the place slowly but surely feels much less free.

There are some causes for the change in the way the internet works that we can definitely pin down.

The internet becoming more widespread and instantly accessible due to smartphones becoming ubiquitous. It it only takes a few seconds to pop out an angry tweet you can do so, but before if you had to wait until you were home and log on to your PC first you might realise before you posted anything that it doesn't matter after all.

Apple not supporting Flash on iOS devices. Okay, Flash wasn't the biggest or most important thing online, but it was one mode of expression that no longer exists (or at least, not unless you only want to reach people like me who still like to seek that stuff out)

Google killing Reader. This happened 10 years ago. I still haven't forgiven them. This is the point where my opinion of Google went from "company that makes cool stuff that I can use :o" to "just another company that doesn't care". RSS readers still exist, but they're not nearly as widely used as they used to be. Another contributor to the decline of RSS was twitter dropping support for it at around the same time so that you could no longer follow a twitter account via RSS. Probably because they (correctly, unfortunately) thought that people would just use twitter to keep up with all the articles and artists they wanted to follow. RSS was a competitor to them.

Laws being passed. Various countries have passed laws that made hosting web content much harder to do. Whether it be copyright related or trying to stop harassment, lots of places stopped allowing user generated content to avoid liability or started being much more restrictive about what they allowed.

Discovery is now driven more by "the algorithm" than by seeking things out or word-of-mouth. Viral used to mean something that was so compelling that the people who saw it decided to pass it on. It spread between people like a virus. Now, something only needs to be promoted by an algorithm enough to be considered viral. In fact, last year I decided to check out if some of the videos I remember watching in the early days of the MLP fandom were still around. They were still there! but they only had like, 6k views. I was shocked at this. Today I wouldn't bother watching a video unless it has over 100k views because I unconsciously judge things by how many views they have on the youtube search page. Compare to 10 years ago when I discovered youtube videos not through youtube itself but from links on other websites. This is a change to the way the internet worked that was so gradual I didn't even notice it happened. And because of that, it's hard to explain to people who didn't experience the internet before what it was like. I've also seen it suggested that this is what caused people to stop curating their internet experience. Now it's something that's curated for you by someone/something else. And if someone came across something they didn't like, they were more likely to want it banned rather than just ignoring and moving on.

Politics. 2016 saw both the US and UK become incredibly polarised, and I wouldn't be surprised if other countries had similar experiences. While this may partially due to other factors rather than a factor in and of itself, it's bled into pretty much all of social media and kind of become unavoidable. "I don't want to talk politics" is seen by some as taking the "other" side in a debate. No! Fandom is my escapism! I want to talk about things and not be reminded of the horrors of reality.

Ramble over. That sure was a stream of consciousness. I just have a lot to say about how the old internet felt and how I preferred it that way. It wasn’t perfect but it was easier to avoid toxicity, I feel. Which is ironic considering a lot of changes to laws/terms of service are made in order to tackle toxic behaviour and yet we’ve been left in a much worse place overall.

the show: an all-ages fictional animated series that preaches inclusivity and freedom of expression, where the main villain is a puritanical witch hunter who fully believes he's in the right and is saving and protecting the innocent

the fandom: routinely witch hunts its own members for enjoying or creating content they personally do not like, fully believing that they are in the right and are saving or protecting the innocent

[wholesomebpt]

An update for some of the rules - Trolling/harassing/rudeness [

The WholesomeBPT Mod Team has decided to update our trolling/harassing/rudeness rule. While most of you visit the sub for wholesomeness, issues of race will always be below the surface simply by virtue of the name of the subreddit. We are using a black frame of view for most of these examples, but the reverse is also disallowed. For this reason, we will describe the behaviors that are not allowed or welcome:

CRUSADING - Coming to BPT with the express intention of starting a fight with other users. This is a sub for laughing and enjoying the wholesome content, not getting into race arguments. Examples of comments that are against this rule:

Quoting FBI Crime Stats/IQ stats

Calling other users racists with the express intention of derailing a thread ("you're the REAL racist" or "This is reverse racism")

"Everyone should just get over this"

"If you'd stop bringing race into everything racism would go away"

"Imagine if the roles were reversed and a white person posted/said that"

"Not all [insert group of people]"

"Playing the victim card/something about wanting victim status, "self victimization""

"They should had just complied with the police and not resisted"

Trying to justify the use of "n*gger" or "nigga" amongst non-black people.

"This is the most racist sub on Reddit"

TROLLING - Intentionally posting edgy things to make others angry. This one is self-explanatory. But here are some examples anyway.

Kill yourself loser

LMAO I bet you're just a white loser

Anything involving the word cuck

Triggered, Snowflakes

Cunt

WE WUZ KANGS.

Similarly posting "WE", "WE WUZ", or “KANGS N SHIEETT”

Use of "Dindu nuffin" or "Dindu"

"Muh"

Comments that are unnecessarily uncivil

All Lives Matter

Use of "Soyboy"

CONCERN TROLLING - This is a different type of trolling that has to do with acting as if you are a concerned user who would totally be for a certain ideal, 'if it wasn't for xyz'.

"Man I would totally be behind this if it wasn't for Jesse Jackson supporting it"

"I'd think police brutality was an issue if it wasn't for all the black on black violence"

“Just Asking Questions” - is a way of attempting to make wild accusations acceptable by framing them as questions rather than statements

Sea Lioning - Which consists of bad-faith requests for evidence, or repeated questions, the purpose of which is not clarification or elucidation, but rather an attempt to derail a discussion or to wear down the patience of one's opponent. The troll who uses this tactic also uses fake civility and feigns offense to discredit their target. Example

Context matters greatly in these. Different opinions are allowed, but bad faith posting is pretty visible. Moderators will use your posting history to get an idea of what you are like, and if it becomes obvious quickly if that a user is attempting to derail the natural flow of the sub. The punishment for violation varies based on the severity of the offense, which could be anything from removed comments to a permanent ban.

Have no doubt that if you say something remotely racist or race-baity and it ends up in the modqueue, and we find past racist posts or comments, you will be banned without a second thought. There is no place for neo-nazis or white supremacists in this subreddit, and if you are found trying to astroturf you will be indiscriminately banned.

**We may ban based on post history depending on the subreddit(s). Some subreddits have been openly hostile towards us, and continue to be. If you are found to be participating in said subreddits, you will be banned. If you feel as if it's a mistake, feel free to message the mods.

Things that aren't changing:

If you start calling us n*ggers, k*kes, neckbeards, and 'for free' in response to valid bans.

Racism still isn't allowed.

Saying 'ITT: Butthurt White People' still isn't funny. It'll be removed.

Thanks for bearing with us, if you have any questions or concerns, please leave them in the comments.

SIDE NOTE

Black Twitter is more than just memes and comedy. Black Twitter itself (not the subreddit) is an extension of the black community. Therefore, whatever is wholesome/popular/viral on Black Twitter may get posted here. Black people are not here purely for your own entertainment.

Politics influences/affects everyone and everything, it's going to be widely discussed at one point or another.

Users commenting "this sub used to be funny, now it's all politics/social issues" etc will be banned.

If you cannot deal with an influx of political/social issues posts, feel free to leave the sub.

The WholesomeBPT Mod Team

]