#and my expectations that this post will even be understood are low 🙃

[pragmatic-optimist]

An Appeal re: Anon Asks

For the last week (although honestly, the last six months), I've been having conversations on and off about the responsibility of answering asks on your blog and the impact it has on fandom as a community. 

At some point during Season 2 of Lone Star, the Anon asks, in particular, got truly out of control, and it's only gotten worse over time. Your blogs are your blogs, and I respect that. At the same time, as a fandom community, we share this space. Whether or not we all know one another, we're all coexisting in the tags and on this site. It takes a lot of emotional labor and time to filter and block on Tumblr, especially when folks don't tag consistently or correctly. Like many in this fandom, I also want to have fun while I'm here, but it's hard to do that when there seems to be little to no discernment in answering asks or properly tagging them.  

When it comes to unnecessary negative comments on fanfic, we often say, "it's not hard to close out of something if you don't like it." The spirit of that applies here, too. It's easy not to answer an ask, especially an Anon ask.

If someone isn't putting their name on something they're asking you to post to your blog, I would argue it requires an additional second and third look and careful consideration of how you answer it. (Certain asks are answered flippantly and then tagged for all to see, but that is an entirely separate post I won't be writing). 

Everything you share gets eyes; how many depends on how loud of a voice you're considered in the fandom. And it's been my experience that the louder the voice, the more substantial the likelihood you'll find problematic Anon asks in your inbox. Answering these asks on your blog gives them a platform, and tagging them gives them an audience outside of your followers. If you're a "big blog," it increases the odds that some of us will also be subjected to these problematic asks through reblogs. All of this broadly impacts fandom conversation because now it's deemed acceptable to send XYZ type of ask, use XYZ word(s), bring up XYZ topic, or talk about XYZ actor(s) or character(s) in any type of way.

The whole "this is Tumblr, it's not that serious" argument is privileged because some of this stuff is serious for someone like me (and others in this space). I can't just pretend someone isn't implicitly making it seem okay to say certain things, especially if their blog is looked at as a popular fandom source.

This ask is just one example of what I'm talking about:

It's the use of a racialized fetish term, and honestly, it's super cringe. Seeing this in the show tag is deeply uncomfortable as a Latinx person. What was the point of answering this ask and then tagging it? It serves no purpose and hangs out in the show tag like we all just throw it around (we don’t). It's been brought to attention, and still, it lingers. 

A fandom community should be safe and fun for all, but we don't live in a perfect world, so it takes work. Part of being in a community and doing the work is kindly holding people accountable to make it that way and being willing to have constructive conversations when concerns are raised. It's not accountability if you only show "remorse" when your friends bring something to your attention, and then nothing changes.

Accountability also ceases to exist when the fandom community chooses deep avoidance, handwaving things away whenever someone tries to share a concern. I have no idea why this keeps happening here, but I do know that every time it happens, it is profoundly isolating and makes it clear that fandom is only meant to be fun for some. The rest of us have to either put up with it or leave. 

If that's the message the Lone Star fandom intends to send, it's being received loud and clear. 

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(Edit: the post is finally down, but I’ve shared a screenshot because it took three days and more than one person to address it publicly and this is exactly what I’m talking about.)