#anyway idk if im making sense i am v spacy today

[milfbrainrot]

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this is hypocritical bc i also do nothing but complain about other people in fandom, but i do feel like fandom is... so much more complaining about other people these days than actually engaging or making things. or at least that's kinda where i've landed myself in a bad little cycle due to other people complaining first lol.

i have always had a sense of emotional paralysis with fanon creation that was able to be remedied by me having more time for it in the past to truly take as much care as possible. and now i really don't have that, be it to make sure i'm doing things in-character or not representing something badly. so i just don't make anything. and idk, i feel like it would be less difficult if there were less pressure from knowing all of these attitudes about what the fandom doesn't like more so than what it does like, since when a fandom DOES like something reblogs and comments are dismal.

a lot of times it's hard to think of things to say that aren't negative, which is why i think those posts happen so much. clearly i do this a lot. sometimes fandoms have more popular opinions on things and it feels inevitable to voice contrary opinions to make sure ur not insane, or idk to feel better at media analysis than the other people. and yeah lol sometimes popular fandom opinions are missing the point or you do not get the popular ship etc. it's good to have those discussions i think when done respectfully to try understanding why people think one thing, or pushing that hey something else also makes sense let's look there, etc, moreso collaboratively.

at the risk of romanticizing earlier fandom days, i guess there is something more general in the backlash now though? i imagine that on sites like livejournal, or i remember on deviantart, criticism was... kind of contained. your art might get one shitty comment or there might be deviantart stamps voicing Hot Takes you could then view the popularity of based on the comments/faves and how many people embedded it on their profiles. but there weren't mass reblogged posts with 120k notes about how boring an AU type is, or how stupid people are for shipping rather than worldbuilding, or how things that are genuinely skill issues more than malice are in fact malice so people aren't even allowed to explore and learn in their inherently amateur creations. it is easier to be hateful when a validated approved post is put on your dash affirming it or influencing that toward people and making it into a bigger deal than it needs to be to justify itself and all you need to do is hit a button to further the train.

like i just think there is such a higher expectation for perfect content tm catering to a mass appeal it would've been harder to measure and conform to before. every time i go on twitter the algorithm just gives me post after post of people going "i can't believe people think this character would do this" or "this headcanon pisses me off so much because___" or "ew how could people ship this?" ...all of which was absolutely present in fandoms before! like, i'm sure anonymous posting in particular saw a lot of these things get traction! but not in such a way where an opinion dragging something you do has 248 retweets putting it on ur feed and insinuating that ur mutuals will judge you next time you post a fic update with that thing. (and then ofc, as i do all the time, seeing people complaining = cue complaining about other people complaining.)

obviously we can just block people we don't like or whatever and it's up to us to not let contrary opinions get to us! i just guess this level of complaining has never before been so widespread and easy because you don't even have to say the thing yourself. you just have to hit reblog or retweet to voice something you otherwise would've kept to yourself with less care. and the numbers feel insane because of how much more popular online fandom is today than even 10 years ago, which... i think has brought on such a loss of etiquette in certain ways when fandom is less interactive and personal for like, tiktokers seeing a 30 second fancam and hitting like if op is lucky and scrolling by. algorithms making more personalized experiences make it so much easier to expect everything to cater to us so it's the end of the world when it doesn't. i could go off on a tangent about anti behavior but i won't. etc.

again i am hypocritical because i complain about other people in fandom endlessly (mostly... because of other people complaining about people like me first) and i am doing that here and i probs have reblogged lots of those things myself lol. obviously there are good convos to be had around how fandoms handle certain things! people are free to do that AND other people are free to post whatever kinds of creations they want AND people can block/mute/whatever any of the above! it's just... although fandom has always had its toxicity i do miss when it felt more fun and carefree and appreciative of imperfect contributions instead of... the balance we currently seem to have in a lot of cases.

it felt like we hit such a shift in ~2015 (anti stuff on the rise, representation convos around lexa dying, etc) that injected the expectations for mass media creators into literally anyone making anything at all for free and for fun. and as much as the ability to reblog/retweet/share around so easily can be beneficial for spreading good and building up fanon creators, i wonder if those critical convos wouldn't have gotten so intense and high-risk for anyone who didn't conform to some frankly impossible standards if it weren't for the intimidation of mutuals contributing to the 13k validating notes on a Hot Take. (and, in terms of anti issues, the ensuing callouts FOR making a mistake could get so much more traction than... telling people to Spread The Targeted Harassment Campaign Word by putting the effort into going and talking about it in their own journal.)

anyway, twitter bad and tumblr tags bad. and i really hope i can get to a point where i am less impeded by this sense of pressure keeping me from making things because it is honestly so hard now to take the limited time i have and pump out something that is either risky or out of character or inevitably imperfect and dare to post it. i am trying to do more with original works because of that, but i still love fandom! so it would be nice to engage with other fans through creating and sharing those joys more these days rather than only having the energy to engage with fandoms by seeing what other people are doing and then seeing these popularized takes and getting even further frozen about contributing lol. people are entitled to their opinions ofc and i need to just stay off twitter keep continually building up my ability to go "yeah that opinion is stupid / even if it's understandably contrary to my preferences i can still do what i want even though it feels more dangerous to know the amount of people who could conceivably ostracize me for it" as the sharing scale of Fandom Takes on too-influencing-friendly platforms continues to rise.