#but then you go on twitter/tiktok and it’s like oh. you are not consuming this media in the same way that i am huh

[rhaenryas]

i’d like to kill hbo for this team black/green marketing

[thestormypetrelofcrime]

while i do appreciate the tiktok/reddit/twitter immigration jokes to a point it is mildly concerning when it starts to resemble real world anti-immigration rhetoric

[alilarew23]

stop doing shit you don’t want to do

if you had what you wanted and were who you wanted to be and wouldn’t, then, feel the need to REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT, you do realize you simply…don’t have to repeat? like by all means if it feels good to tell yourself the same story over and over again until you have a migraine, do your thing, but if your brain is exhausted and hurting and keeps screaming, “YEAH I KNOW I AM LOVED PLEASE SHUT THE FUCK UP, RESPECTFULLY,” you can just be loved. i know girlie on twitter is preaching you gotta do this to get this and that tiktok coach with the SuCcEsS sToRiEs PiNnEd At ThE lInK iN hEr BiO is telling you you gotta flip this to get that but what if all those voices you’ve absorbed over the months/years since you discovered the law just…disappeared? deadass, what if you decided you never consumed anything except info from the few teachers with whom you truly resonated? what if everything went quiet? so blissfully quiet. and you had a moment, finally, to check in with yourself and be real honest. if, then, you wouldn’t still be doing everything you’re doing, stop doing it. right now. drop it. beep. boop. kersplat. you’re free. now go put your energy into something that truly lights you up. or go, with your energy, and light something up. or take a nap. you are safe. you are held. everything you want is here right now. you see it, don’t you? you feel it, don’t you? oh, thank god. you don’t need to keep reminding yourself.

[souridealist]

the thing about “oh, likes are useless, they don’t do anything” is -- yes, they do? They tell you that someone saw the thing you posted and wished to convey to you their enjoyment or approval. Why is that valueless to you? “Well but likes don’t boost visibility and reblogging does” but visibility is just... people seeing your work and possibly enjoying it. If someone reblogs the post, other people may see it and like it -- but likes are useless! it doesn’t matter if those people enjoyed it, unless they reblog it so their followers can see it, but those followers’ pleasure is also useless and they need to pass it on and where does it end? Is there some minimum number of degrees of separation before it starts to matter that someone liked a thing you made? Is the purpose just to be passed on and passed on and passed on with no end in sight? What are we after here?

This is particularly baffling to me when it’s like, “oh kids are coming from Twitter and TikTok and only liking posts and it’s going to RUIN THE SITE and Tumblr will become EMPTY OF CONTENT” -- okay but. why. you’re still getting more attention and notes -- more people are letting you know that they enjoyed your work -- than if these people didn’t make blogs at all and nothing changed. you’re coming out ahead. why are we comparing everything to what you MIGHT have gotten if people were The Ideal Consumer instead of the actual people they are? why is every reality measured against the theoretical maximum? are you really going to stop drawing or writing or photographing or composing or playing music because the response to it increased but not as much as it might have?

Like. I do get it. It’s discouraging to work on something and get crickets chirping in response! It really is! You want people to like what you make! And I’ve been lucky enough to have a few things that I worked hard on happen to catch a zeitgeist and get a lot of attention by my standards, but by some people’s standards those are still chump change. I’ve also had stories - since then - get a bare pittance of attention, by my standards. And by some people’s standards my pittance is a wealth. And the thing is that that experience really confirmed two things for me - which, admittedly, I’d known intellectually before then but hadn’t really believed in the same way, but they’re still true -

1) it really is about being the right thing in the right place at the right time, as much as luck

2) there is no number of kudos or reblogs or notes or comments or bookmarks or anything that will earn you a Real Adult Good Competent Artist Card that makes you stop feeling insecure. There isn’t. That insecure fearful hollow inside of you is not something you can fill with achievement or attention or praise; it will open up again and again, because the next one might not be as good, because it might be too different, because it might not be different enough, because making art is taking a piece of yourself out of you and putting it into the world for people to see and that’s a fundamentally terrifying leap of faith. You can pour thousands and thousands and thousands of notes or hits or likes or kudos into that hollow and it will just keep draining again and again. The only solution I’ve ever found, the only solution that I’ve ever heard of anyone finding, is a mixture of faith and of learning to work through the fear.

And yeah, no amount of confidence or faith is going to make it stop being a bummer when something flops. It feels bad! You put all that work into something and you want it to be appreciated; you want it to matter! All of that makes sense! But it’s really not going to help you to castigate the people who like your work for not liking it The Right Way. people don’t like being told that their enjoyment is useless. and it’s certainly and emphatically not an attitude that’s going to help you have a good relationship with your work.

[rinsoap]

˚ ༘ ♡⋆｡˚ ﾐ the big seijoh four's favourite artists!

✿²˖ ࣪ ➣ includes : oikawa tooru, iwaizumi hajime, matsukawa issei + hanamaki takahiro

note : sorry ive been inactive as hell w actual hcs or like. real works LMAOO i have been #depressed and #unmotivated LoL! anyways pls tell me u can see suna's influence on iwaizumi i hc that they r friends <33

oikawa tooru :

!!? KALI UCHIS STAN NEVER SPEAK 2 ME AGAIN. he LOVESSS her he is completely convinced isolation was specifically made to cater to him and his exact music taste delusional king fr!! and he gatekeeps her SO HARD like babes as much as i would like to be her top listener too, the 21,158,866 monthly listeners seem like they might be hard to beat 🤔

his favourite songs by kali uchis are :

tyrant - ft. jorgia smith on the isolation album.

i wish you roses (single).

loner on the por vida album.

!!? this artist is not a guilty pleasure no matter how many times he says he's sooo embarrassed he likes carly rae jepson. "omg stop don't tell people i like her that's humiliating omg stop i don't want people to know!!!!!!" he is a LIAR. he will publicly scream every single lyric to every single song she makes, IN FACT he will shamefully make tiktoks on public buses and shit, lip syncing to her songs on full volume (or at least he would if literally all of seijoh didn't tell him to shut the fuck up LMAO)

his favourite songs by carly rae jepson are :

call me maybe on the kiss album.

boy problems on the E•MO•TION album.

felt this way on the dedicated side b album.

!!? —✩⌗ HONORABLE SONG MENTIONS : good days by SZA. heart to heart by mac de marco. oh no! by marina and the diamonds. conceited by flo milli.

iwaizumi hajime :

!!? UGH ANOTHER AMAZING PERFECT TYLER THE CREATOR STAN. OOH I WANNA KISS ALL TYLER FANS ON THE HEAD I FREQUENTLY MAKE OUT W EVERY TYLER FAN EVER!! he's a very loyal listener, he knew him on vine bro like i said in pt 1, he introduced him to suna (while suna takes all the credit lol) he might even have a slight... fixation.. one might call it a.... crush.... but he will never admit it his ego is too big!!

his favourite songs by tyler the creator are :

A BOY IS A GUN on the IGOR album.

garden shed - ft. estelle on the flower boy album.

SWEET / I THOUGHT YOU WANTED TO DANCE - ft. brent faiyaz and fana hues on the CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST album.

!!? is it controversial to say he fucks w ice spice.. almost a little too much... he knows all the lyrics to munch which is def something he has in common with oikawa's music taste!!! like at this point they're like pavlov's dog, they are absolutely salivating every single time they hear "stop playin with em riot!"

his favourite songs by ice spice are :

bikini bottom (single).

princess diana on the like..? EP.

in ha mood (single).

!!?—✩⌗ HONORABLE SONG MENTIONS : she likes another boy by oscar lang. attention by new jeans. just a stranger by kali uchis and steve lacy. NASA by ariana grande.

matsukawa issei :

!!? unlike iwaizumi, he will admit his huge crush on brent faiyaz with his ENTIRE CHEST. brent faiyaz his love, his one and only (i am projecting!) <3 most of the content he consumes is brent faiyaz related tbh the algorithm knows him too well and before you ask the burning question on your mind, YES he did almost start a stan twitter in year one!!! makki will never let him live it down as if he didn't ACTUALLY start one for bruno mars..

his favourite songs by brent faiyaz are :

ADDICTIONS on the WASTELAND album.

what you heard (single) by sonder - technically still brent faiyaz.

talk 2 u on the sonder son album.

!!? he really should be ashamed he likes drake tbh. he physically could not compell himself to show anybody his spotify wrapped because almost all drake songs were in his top played. please never ever speak to him about the time he genuinely ugly cried to one dance. he will never elaborate and will probably go and sob to god's plan next.

his favourite songs by drake are :

way 2 sexy - ft. future and young thug on the certified lover boy album.

9 on the views album.

circo loco on the her loss album.

!!?—✩⌗ HONORABLE SONG MENTIONS : love is only a feeling by joey bada$$. small worlds by mac miller. awkward by SZA. finesse (remix) by bruno mars and cardi b.

hanamaki takahiro :

!!? ACTIVELY PUSHING THE MAKKI BRUNO MARS AGENDA!! fuck an evening with silk sonic he wants an evening with bruno 😭 all he is doing every day all day is praying bruno gets his heart broken again so he can drop another DELECTIBLE album!!!!! also him and iwa like to say that since makki is puerto rican and iwa is filipino, together they make one bruno mars <333 (this is a hc dont take it too srsly lol)

his favourite songs by bruno mars are :

that's what i like on the 24k magic album.

treasure on the unorthodox jukebox album.

after last night (with thunder cats & bootsy collins) on the an evening with silk sonic album.

!!? he is a dork and i am a dork soooo i'm gonna have to say he is a the living tombstone stan.... oikawa will go on full rants about how cringey 2020 was and how weird that video game animatronic type music is and he'll look over at makki and see the single tear roll down his face as he says he has no idea the music genre he's talking about 😭

his favourite songs by the living tombstone are :

my ordinary life (single).

drunk on the zero_one album.

jump up, super star! (single).

!!?—✩⌗ HONORABLE SONG MENTIONS : new person, same old mistakes by tame impala. your teeth in my neck by kali uchis. join us for a bite by JT music. ORANGE SODA by baby keem.

[mamawasatesttube]

13, 16, 21, 24

13. worst blorboficiation

jason todd. fanon tim is also annoying as hell but at least he doesn't prompt people to start spewing literal straight up copaganda

16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

SHOVEL TALKS. theyre rooted in so much gross misogyny and very often also racism lmfao what is the appeal to you people??? the idea of a father figure being overly invested in your virginity???? 😬😬

21. part of canon you think is overhyped

this is incredibly specific and also incredibly bitchy but. you know that one yjdc panel of tim looking at kon's statue and saying "i didn't know what i was feeling". so many people reposted that all over the fucking place and would not stop talking about it and it was Right as i was getting into the fandom and i just remember so vividly thinking like. wow! this is so extremely bland and says nothing and was clearly just written in to get attention and be tweeted and tiktoked about. geoff johns was accidentally way queerer than this. chuck dixon was accidentally way queerer than this. judd winick's closet scene was WAY queerer than this. this is clickbait. this is literally just bait. this doesn't even confirm ANY sort of romantic feelings. it's like very vaguely implied but "i didn't know what i was feeling" about grief that consumed your life can have so many nonromantic implications as well. like. this is nothing. this is nothing!!! everyone shut up about this panel it literally says NOTHING.

but that also goes back to how i feel like a lot of recent comics have been full of clickbaity panels. like they just want to get this specific shot talked about on twitter or whatever. :|

24. topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

does "mentioning that fandoms can perpetuate racist stereotypes" count? i mean imo thats not even ~discourse~ thats just straight up people refusing to think about their own internalized biases i guess.

oh i know!!! saying "i headcanon kon as a gay man" because you get so many people going "well i think he's generally queer or bi" because you know. he doesn't LOOK like a stereotypical twink, and as we know, all gay men are skinny white twinks ONLY,

(i'm sure there's something even more rancid than this but i'm just drawing a blank right now. so we get what was rancid to me PERSONALLY as opposed to what might be more rancid on the general level?)

"choose violence" ask game!

[niamflopped]

 

Leave Taylor Russell Alone, You Racist Creeps

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | October 3, 2023 |

This past weekend, actress Taylor Russell, star of Waves and Bones and All, appeared at Paris Fashion Week. Wearing a stunning metal coat sculpture by Loewe, for whom she is an ambassador, she sat front row by Josh O’Connor and Anna Wintour, giving her one of the most sought-after placements of the season.

Russell is a daring fashion figure as well as a celebrated actress currently receiving rave reviews for her West End theatre debut in Lucy Prebble’s The Effect. There’s a lot to be excited about with Russell, from her fascinating sartorial choices to her work with the likes of Luca Guadagnino to her impeccable charm in interviews. Oh, and she’s also possibly dating Harry Styles.

As you can imagine, that last part has become probably the defining part of her current public image. Styles is wildly famous and his love life has been obsessed over since he was a teenager. Every woman who has ever been even remotely connected to him has been subjected to a barrage of misogyny and hate from a vocal subset of his fandom.

Olivia Wilde, who he dated after working with her on Don’t Worry Darling, was labelled a groomer hag for being in a relationship with a man who was pushing 30. Tess Ward, a food blogger who was merely rumoured to have dated Styles, saw her cookbook review bombed on Amazon and faced intense hate on social media, as did model Camille Rowe, who Styles apparently had a year-long relationship with.

So, alas, it’s not surprising in the least that Russell, a beautiful Black award-winning actress with a famous boyfriend, has become the subject of such attacks.

It doesn’t take long to find the hatred online, whether it’s sad creeps on Twitter claiming she’s an ugly social climber, TikTok conspiracists insisting she’s the latest PR beard keeping Styles away from his true love Louis Tomlinson, or Reddit pages spinning dramatic tales of her sultry wiles that will devastate poor millionaire Harry.

The cycle of being the girlfriend, confirmed or otherwise, of an internet boyfriend begins anew. Same as it ever was.

With Russell, there is also the horrendous typhoon of racism on top of the misogyny. She’s a Black actress dating a white man who is more famous than she is, and therefore she is somehow the enemy to the white women who cannot let go of their inflated fantasies of Styles.

All the screeds about her ugliness (which are so astonishingly and objectively false that it boggles the mind) are thinly veiled insults regarding her race. Her career achievements are invalid in the eyes of those who view any woman connected to Styles as a fame-hungry vulture using his spotless image to inflate their own egos. They love to claim that nobody knew who Taylor Russell, an award-winning actress and muse of a luxury fashion house, was until she met Styles. Then again, they said the same thing about Olivia Wilde, too. Facts don’t matter. These insults don’t even need to seem true. They’re just the same old insults used over and over again, to be recycled with every woman who dares to approach their beloved.

I doubt many of these so-called fans actually care about the person they spend so much time devouring. At the very least, they’re so wholly consumed by their conspiracies that they’ve grown more attached to a delusion of utmost misery than a true desire for happiness for their favourites.

[questionablemargot]

so, little story time.

i’m really sick right now, it’s not covid but with the conglomeration of chronic illnesses i have, the illness is being a little bitch.

basically long story short, my stomach doesn’t want to work, like ever. have you ever had a package that said they’d deliver in 5-10 days? and you’re like oh five to ten days, that’s just a week or so, not bad. and then a week passes and you’re like, okay where’s my package? so you check the website, and you realize it said 5-10 business days? so now you’re waiting for a package that instead of taking a week to deliver, it’s going to take a month and a half?

yeah, that’s my stomach, but also add in that because of my stomach not working, if i’m not careful i will throw up everything i eat and not truly consume anything for months on end. anyways, because of this and a bunch of other things, my immune system is constantly in a state of that one meme with the dog sitting in the middle of a fire saying this is fine.

so i have some sort of cold, or something of the like. no big deal, i’ll just be sniffly and coughing for a few days. hey remember how my immune system is total shit?

my symptoms have been as follows. coughing fits, repeated dry heaving with no actual throwing up, just the painful feeling of retching with no relief, a sniffly nose so bad i can’t taste anything but mucus, extreme nausea, stomach pain, scratchy throat, headaches that turn into migraines, and fatigue.

y’know what you do when you’re fatigued? you rest, obviously. i don’t have the energy to walk down the stairs more than once a day, so i’m limited to my bed and two or three bathroom trips a day. i’ve been in bed all week. all. week.

now when you’re restricted to your bed for a week, feeling like utter shit with very little motivation to talk to anyone, you get bored very easily.

now what’s a good thing to do when you can’t move, but are really bored? read. i have been consuming fanfictions at a rate i haven’t done since i was in middle school. i’m in the middle of churning through dark matter on ao3 like it’s the last thing i’ll ever read.

hey. hey guess what happened. you’ll never guess. you’ll never guess what happened.

ao3 is down for maintenance. now that’s fine, i can be without fanfic for five minutes or so, so i go to scroll tiktok and get lost in a rabbit hole of frogs and mushrooms. thirty minutes go by. i think, oh well ao3 has got to be up by now!

it’s not. i check ao3’s tumblr. nothing. i get so desperate, i even check *shudder* twitter. and you know what i find? ao3’s been having trouble lately. too many 500 errors are randomly appearing. they have the site down to fix it. they have the site down for maintenance.

so i’m here, fuming in my bed, incredibly sick, and ready to throw hands. i’m so ready to throw down, i spend a good twenty minutes writing out this tumblr post.

long story short — im sick, and i’m feral, and i need my fanfiction

[maybuds]

I also think it's interesting to see how movies and music are also not even marketed as art/stories anymore like the barbie phenomenon is such a clear example, the whole scheme was it's a Barbie movie! look at the aesthetic! it's all PINK! isn't it fun that it comes out the same day as that war movie that's all red and black ! boo explosions ahah !! like ??? where's the plot of the movie?? isn't anyone going to tell us that? and the answer is no bc it's irrelevant lol, ppl go watch it bc they can dress up and take pictures to post on Instagram, they go see the new mcu movie bc they "have to" finish the trilogy so they can talk about it on Twitter, it doesn't matter if all we have is reboots bc stories don't matter anymore.

it's also happening with concerts like people don't go to listen to the music (bc the music isn't even that great tbh ! it's just what's popular on tiktok!) but bc it's an ~experience~ and again an opportunity to dress up and post pictures!! even for the singer what they're wearing matters more than what they're singing! and I get that live music/concerts have always been an experience per se BUT it had never been this disconnected by the music itself imo

also I'd urge to recognize who is benefiting from these shifts bc what happens when going to a concert or watching a movie becomes something that requires a specific aesthetic that then needs to receive social media approval?? exactly, you need TO BUY STUFF! every time ! and who sells you the stuff ? the companies that have partnered with the company that made the movie of course! the popstar with their specific brand ! the influencers paid to go to that concert and that movie premiere! it's literally a Neverending cycle of money that you keep giving to the same people and a Neverending production of stuff that will be thrown away almost instantly bc it's made to become irrelevant almost instantly!

oh my godddd this is all so true, you said it all anon. and it’s depressing for the ones who want to produce and create art because this is what their hard work comes to, as consumables or just products to sell, and they end up just looking at it as another job instead of something they were passionate about in the first place. it’s a struggle with, like, reconciling artistic expression/meaning-making and earning an income, and you can’t blame them for choosing the latter at some point. it sucks, everything sucks, it’s unsustainable and it’s such a depressing scene to look at, especially when all you wanted was to create something meaningful. and it sucks that the way people now engage with this stuff on social media also inevitably perpetuates the shittiness of it for artists and creators everywhere, it just becomes a cycle and just the big studios and brands are benefiting from it

[mariacallous]

Long gone are the days when fan fiction was treated as a guilty pleasure, exclusively consumed on a glowing iPad screen under the covers at night and never to be discussed outside of Tumblr. We’re living in an age where Supernatural star Misha Collins boasts about Dean/Castiel fanfic stats on Twitter, a Harry Styles fanfic on Wattpad has been adapted into a major movie franchise, and even Academy Award–winning filmmaker Chloé Zhao openly admits to writing fan fiction. The hobby has become a cultural phenomenon, referenced casually in shows like Euphoria, Only Murders in the Building, 13 Reasons Why, and Bob’s Burgers. And who could forget Archive of Our Own (more widely known as AO3) snagging that Hugo Award in 2019?

Born in 2009, AO3 is one of the biggest fan fiction sites today. It’s an open source, multi-fandom archive for transformative fanworks that, as of January 2023, is home to approximately 10.5 million works across over 55,000 fandoms, ranging from big names like Stranger Things and Marvel to the most niche corners of the internet you could imagine. AO3 is pretty much a household name now, at least for any Gen Z or millennial with some degree of online presence. And as fan fiction has become more mainstream, there’s also seemingly been a push by some users for AO3 to keep up technologically. More specifically, for the archive to function … well, more like TikTok. Picture a “for you” page greeting you as you log in to the archive. It automatically recommends your next fanfic to read, like an oh-so-helpful friend plucking a book off the shelf for you that they just know you’ll love.

Let’s be clear though: This idea isn’t going to see the light of day. “An algorithm is never going to happen,” Claudia Rebaza, a volunteer for AO3’s parent group, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), tells me outright. But the debate about whether AO3 should have an algorithm reveals what’s special about fan fiction and the importance of maintaining a space where creative works can just exist.

I get it. As someone born in 1997, it’s hard to remember a time before algorithms, rankings, and personalized recommendations. It feels like every place on the internet is trying to become more like TikTok, from Instagram with its Reels (until Kylie Jenner complained) to Twitter’s “for you” feed. For better or worse, the world today feels deeply online. When nearly every aspect of our lives feels optimized, it makes sense that some want fan fiction to keep up with the times too. 

But here’s the thing: AO3 isn’t social media. It’s simply a space that hosts an enormous collection of works. It’s basically a library on your phone. Being a nonprofit run entirely by volunteers distinguishes AO3 from other fan fiction sites like Wattpad, which is an entertainment company. “AO3 is designed to be an archive, not a social media site, and we’re a nonprofit that will also never run ads,” explains Rebaza. “So we’re not trying to make people spend more time on the site or make anything go viral.” 

Another aspect that sets the archive apart is its lax content policy. While the site still draws the line at some content—explicit material of real minors, flat-out plagiarism—nearly all fanworks are allowed. The only major requirement is that users must tag works containing rape/non-con, graphic violence, major character death, or underage content (alternatively, authors can simply tag “Creator Chose Not to Archive Warnings”). But as long as it’s properly tagged, it’s probably permitted “no matter how awful, repugnant, or badly spelled we may personally find that Content to be,” per the site’s terms of services.

It’s a policy that has been both praised and criticized. But one of the reasons for AO3’s hands-off philosophy is that fan fiction has historically faced a great deal of opposition and censorship. For instance, Fanfiction.net (FF.net), one of the first major fanfic sites on the web, banned all works based on anything by Interview with the Vampire author Anne Rice after she reportedly threatened legal action. (The law as it pertains to fan fiction is murky, but OTW believes nonprofit, transformative works fall under “fair use.”) In 2002, FF.net began implementing a strict “no NC-17 content” policy. Then in 2012, the site famously deleted a large number of stories, presumably ones deemed too mature. The move was widely coined the FF.Net purge by fans, and it sparked concerns about potentially disproportionately affecting authors of slash (same-gender pairing fics).

AO3 is one of the few remaining places on the internet where you alone are responsible for curating the content you consume. You’re armed with only a search bar and the use of tags and filters, sent out into the Forbidden Forest to find whatever your heart desires. And sure, that may feel like a daunting task, especially if you’re used to the likes of TikTok. But part of the beauty of it being algorithmless is that you can hand-pick the works you’re looking for and also easily avoid content you don’t want to see. If AO3 were to implement an algorithm, it’s highly likely you would encounter a lot more content you would have otherwise filtered out, scrolled past, or simply just been blissfully unaware of.

An AO3 algorithm could present a problem not just for readers, but for creators as well. Harassment has long been an issue in fandom, but it feels more intense and intimate in the social media age. In the early 2000s, ship wars and heated discourse mostly lived within the confines of forums, under usernames that nobody would care enough about to track down. Now? Not so much. Hollie, a moderator for the 329,000-member group r/fanfiction on Reddit, tells me how she’s seen things change over the 15 years she’s been involved with fandom. “Fandom has become more clustered into a smaller number of spaces, rather than being able to easily separate into different groups. [So] people with very different interests and takes overlap,” she says. “Don’t get me wrong, there were ‘sporking’ (mocking fics) sites back in the day, as well as bullying and ship wars, but for the most part, people complained in their own groups about how terrible their rival ship was or how gross they found certain kinks or whatever. They didn’t usually go to the creators/shippers’ social media and fics to complain at them.” (Plus, if your fandom self is even slightly intertwined with your public persona, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that you will at some point be harassed, threatened, or even doxxed over fictional characters.)

An algorithm would only further knock down these walls. If someone really dislikes a ship or trope for whatever reason, one might assume they would go out of their way to avoid such content by using tags and filters, or simply interact only with fans who have similar taste. But if the algorithm shows people something they hate, they might feel more inclined to engage with that content and go out of their way to make it known just how much they hate it. 

There’s something quietly beautiful about AO3 not making it easy for us to snap our fingers and have a personalized story recommendation fall into our laps. I’d liken browsing the archive to wandering into a bookstore, picking a novel off the shelf, and being pleasantly surprised by how good it is. Sure, you might head to a genre you know you enjoy or gravitate toward a familiar author or friend’s recommendation. But when it comes down to it, you picked the book. Maybe an algorithm would have found a story you liked just as much, maybe not. 

Algorithms and modern technology can be convenient for discovering new content and tailoring things to your personal taste, but they can also impose their own limits. Sure, streaming is great—but are we really taking advantage of this infinite amount of content if all we see is Netflix’s top 10 and Recommended for You tab? Or are we perhaps missing out on shows we would have enjoyed, if only we’d known about them before they were canceled after one season due to (supposedly) low viewership? Is the skill-based matchmaking algorithm used in multiplayer online games like Call of Duty actually helping us enjoy gameplay more? Or is it ruining video games altogether?

If you’re on TikTok, you’ve likely experienced seeing a video on your “for you” page that you never would have clicked on yourself. Sometimes it’s merely annoying (no, I’m really not into watching people eat that Pink Sauce); other times, it can be outright distressing. For instance, if you’re into cute cats, the algorithm might think you actually want to see a viral video mocking domestic abuse. Algorithms often lack the ability to distinguish tone, and they generally don’t account for triggers or content warnings. It’s like shelving Stephen King’s It in children’s fiction just because the characters are kids.

Safety and practicality issues aside, an algorithm would ultimately just plain suck the fun out of AO3. I don’t want to see only the biggest, most popular content. I want to live in the corner of my little niche fandom, enjoying whatever weird things I like regardless of how many views, kudos, or comments are involved. In a world dominated by algorithms, stats, and virality, let me have my fan fiction.

[sysciety]

[cont. of this] ('factives are more than cc introjects')

It's because it's not trendy or marketable to say you have an introject of someone who abused you, or even someone who might be your friend who's a great person but doesn't happen to be popular. This has devolved into complaining more about tiktok/twitter but it feels like people won't talk about the downsides or the non "quirky" sides of a disorder unless it's done in some quippy or marketable way. (Not that they necessarily should do that either but it does unintentionally create a skew)

Saying "oh I felt dissociated on my way to x" doesn't make good content. "Here's a day in my life with a cdd" and it's me sitting at a desk doesn't make good content. There's nothing wrong with wanting to go "here's what a switch looks like" but I think it's still to some extent catering to an algorithm based on shock value as opposed to serving an educational purpose, especially when something like that is meant to be the highlight of a video (this is about tiktok again bc due to formats system-youtube does this in a much better way).

Saying you have a guy in your brain vs saying "I literally become x char from y media" will evoke two different responses from the average viewer even if to the system in question these could be two coexisting alters. But the latter is more shock inducing. On a reactionary algorithm that's what becomes popular and so other people follow suit, resulting in media introjects becoming more talked about, and eventually becoming the norm. Subsequently it also becomes a whole lot easier for people to target, creating a discourse feedback loop.

(i.e it's easier to fakeclaim fictives/make discourse around them)

Tumblr a) has an older userbase, b) is notorious for having no algorithm, c) doesn't have a character limit so discourse can be discussions instead of statements and d) isn't considered profitable/popular and I think that's why it's exempt from like, 90% of this

Remember when this post was about factives? How did we get here.

I think the general view of CDDs stems from the content portraying systems. It's like the inverse of "everyone with did is a murderer." The old (pre-2010s) perception/blanket statement to the general public was this, even if jokingly. Now it gets seen as the roleplaying disorder because of the sheer volume of content that's about having fictives and sources and source calls without enough understanding of the full picture.

(The murderer one's still there too tbh now there's just a second stereotype)

No one should be forced to talk about whether or not they endured something so traumatic it permanently changed their brain structure. I don't think everyone necessarily should, either. And I don't think just because someone never shows the negative sides of a disorder doesn't mean they don't have it. This isn't anyone's fault just a product of how to get views quick. The takeaway shouldn't be that media introjects are bad for the community at large. I don't believe that at all (still wanna get to the bottom of the rise of introject heavy systems, but that's for another post). This is just a general issue I have with turning every aspect of life into something consumable. When I say marketable/content I don't mean the person filming is trying to sell anything it's more like the persona presented online type of thing.

I know it probably only feels tangentially related but it's related enough for me to talk about. I don't know if there's anything here that can really be solved but at least to me it feels like a big part of the issue

[literaticat]

Can bad Goodreads reviews or Book Tok bomb an author's career? Reviewers trash books that aren't even out yet because they didn't like the blurb. Or something the author said. Or because of something they heard about the book that isn't even true. A lot of these reviewers haven't even read the book, which they even admit in the reviews. How can authors protect themselves in this climate? I'm thinking particularly of the Cecilia Rabess case.

I think it's very important to remember that "online" is not the same as real life. Like I know it SEEMS like it! And if you're in the thick of reading terrible reviews about your book, or getting involved with some Twitter Controversy, or whatever -- it FEELS like it is all-consuming and truly the world is against you, etc.

But like -- that's probably not the case, in reality. In REALITY, a small number users are very active on BookTok or GoodReads or whatever. MOST people in reality, the people who like, GO OUTSIDE, etc, will have never heard of whatever-the-thing is, even if it seems like everyone in your online circle has.

As an example, one of my books had a sort of publisher-"scandal" years ago and it was big news -- zero fault of the author, entirely the publisher mishandling something and seemingly "whitewashing" the cover, which went viral on Twitter etc, and then even got picked up by major media like The Guardian, etc. -- For me, and the author, this was SO INTENSE -- people were so mad, many of them AT US! For some reason! -- and it felt like the absolute end of days. During the midst of this, though, I had to go to a dinner with like, 100 of the most well-connected librarians in the Bay Area. I truly expected them to not only know the story, but have bad opinions about it, and I was bracing myself. Guess what: ONE of them had heard the story, and they were very nice about it. The rest of the folks had never heard about it -- because they weren't glued to a small section of twitter or paying attention to random-ass "news" that didn't affect them anyway. That's when my fever broke - -this wasn't the end of days. This would blow over. Nobody would remember it later. And that was all true.

So I guess that's the takeaway. Don't seek out lousy reviews. Don't engage with reviews. Do not argue with reviews. Reviews are not your business. If you are freaking out -- get off the internet and talk to some people and touch some grass. And remember -- "Bad" reviews might inspire people to read the book, too. I read/see plenty of "bad" reviews that make me think, oh, that sounds interesting, actually. And if people are talking about your book, even if some of them are mad, that's better than NOBODY talking about your book. (I'M NOT SAYING, start a scandal! LOL. Just, you know. Most books get totally ignored, so hey, no such thing as bad publicity?)

I had not heard of "the Cecilia Rabess case" so I did some digging online. It seems that the author was the subject of "review bombing", where a bunch of disgruntled people saw a post online that made them mad and went en masse to one-star review the book on Goodreads. It very much sucks that people do this, btw, and I wish they wouldn't -- but it's much like when a bunch of people review bomb a business on Yelp because they saw a video of the owner being a jerk or something. Can that make the owner's day/week/month pretty rough? Yes. Will it prevent the owner from ever working again? Probably not, at the end of the day, provided they are actually doing good work and real Non-Yelp people know that.

In this case, the "bad review" on TikTok that inspired the whole thing was done well before the book even came out, and the person was objecting to the very premise of the book, and many/most of the people one-starring it had definitely NOT read it, because it wasn't out! (Insert "Old Man Yelling At Cloud" GIF)

The premise they were objecting to is that it *seemed* like it was an enemies-to-lovers Romance between a Black liberal woman and a T**mp-lovin racist white dude. I can absolutely see why people lost it about that -- because A ROMANCE NOVEL inherently has a happy ending, and sorry, but there's no way that premise COULD have a happy ending unless both parties got lobotomized, and how happy could THAT be? (Much akin to why people lose at at enslaved person / enslaver Romances, or Nazi/Jew Romances -- GROSS. It's GROSS.)

The thing is though .... it's not a Romance.

It has at its center a woman and a man in a complicated romantic relationship -- a 'love story' if you will -- there may be romantic PARTS -- but ultimately, it is not a Romance Novel. The author didn't intend it to be a Romance Novel, and the publisher didn't intend for it to be shelved in the Romance section as far as I know. (Where they effed up is I guess in the marketing they used the phrase "enemies to lovers" or something, so people assumed that because of that Romance Trope being invoked, that it was a Romance Novel? But IDK.) -- if anything, though it isn't horror, it seems more akin to like, GET OUT, thematically. The title and cover alone point to that -- "EVERYTHING'S FINE" is what the character says even though everything is very much NOT fine -- and there's a crushed strawberry on the cover bc (spoiler) one of the things that happens in the book is, the main character doesn't tell her partner that she's allergic to strawberries and eats them anyway because she doesn't wanna rock the boat, and "EVERYTHING'S FINE" -- but it's, again, say it with me, VERY MUCH NOT FINE -- it's about her self-sabotaging, etc. Lots of us gravitate towards things that hurt us but feel good, no? Especially in our 20s? I sure did.

Luckily the book actually sounds pretty good, and has had a lot of big time accolades as well as the trolls. I wouldn't have heard of it before, and now I'm interested. So... I think the author will end up fine, at the end of the day. An unpleasant episode that actually the majority of people never heard about and will be forgotten by all soon.

[bogunicorn]

Here is my one and only thing to say about this whole... AO3 algorithm thing. Ready? Here it is, super controversial:

Most of the complaints about the structure of AO3 - as in, the search function, the bookmarking, that sort of stuff, not the arguments about what's in the content that's posted - can be boiled down to people basically saying, "I wasn't curious enough to look up a solution to the issue I'm having, or wasn't self-directed enough to figure out a system that works for me, and it's less embarrassing to complain as if my refusal to do so is someone else's problem."

Now, yes, are there actual structural complaints to be made about AO3? Of course! I'd love to have things like be able to block specific authors or tags by default just built into the account, or even just floating comment boxes (rather than needing a browser extension for those things, which does exist). I'd love to see IP banning become available to make anon harassment more difficult.

But this current little spat of complaints is an update of some older, consistent complaints that can be solved either by: the complainer learning how to use the site, or AO3 becoming social media. And the second one isn't going to happen. I'm not, like, harshing a buzz here, it's literally not social media. There are no private messages, no feeds, the inbox is only for comments and replies to your comments. There is deliberately no feed for, like, things the people you're subscribed to have bookmarked or something. They made it that way on purpose and they're not going to try to change it just because a handful of people with their brains still solidifying are getting crabby about it. There is a reason that you have to subscribe to people instead of "friending" them, there's a reason there's no, like, blogging feature or messaging system or even the ability to set up a feed for anything in browser.

AO3 wants you to be social about fic somewhere else. They expect you to go to tumblr or twitter or discord or, I don't know, fucking carrier pigeons to keep track of stuff they don't have built in. Because once it's inching toward a true social media platform, once we start doing things like automatic feeds, recommendations, algorithms, an app, whatever, then there are community considerations to be made regarding content. Those are the cracks that gives censorship leverage.

Plus, like, you don't want an algorithm anyway. You know what algorithms are for? Selling you shit. Turning you into a sellable product. Driving engagement, which inevitably means rage farming. Every social media algorithm present on the big sites is there to feed you things you'll interact with, and the algorithm doesn't know the difference between joy and drama.

There's already a harassment issue on AO3. You want more harassment on AO3? An algorithm is how you get more harassment on AO3, because it's going to funnel people toward fics that people are already mad about, just like it does on tumblr and twitter and insta and tiktok and facebook and whatever other algorithm-powered shit there is. People in fandom already dogpile each other on other sites over what's on their AO3, the OTW isn't going to help you do it.

But none of that matters because it's just... it's not going to happen. Even if AO3 wanted an algorithm (which it does not, very emphatically and by design), managing one is expensive, hiring the people to create it is expensive, everything about it is expensive and time consuming. So, like, don't worry about it. And if you wanted one, idk, that sucks for you but I'm sure you'll recover.

AO3 expects to give you tools and let you do the work. Curating your own experience is your job, not theirs. Yes, you may have to manually trawl through your friends' bookmarks, oh no. Some large fandoms or super popular pairings even have tumblrs run by bots that post every single thing that shows up in that pairing tag, if that's your thing. Hell, just straight up ask people who wrote your favorite fics what their favorite fics are with the same pairing, and they'll probably go look them up for you!

Oh, also, if you're going to complain about AO3 as if it's doing something to spite you... at least make sure it's about a feature that takes someone more than 5 seconds to go look up and screenshot for you. Or at least go through your settings first and make sure you don't have shit like not asking for confirmation on explicit works turned on or something, since people just love getting sooooo pressed about "not being able to avoid smut" or whatever.

[forjongseong]

NOO BECAUSE 🎀 ANON IS SO RIGHT ABOUT JAYS FANBASE BEING OLDER? it didn’t click into my head until now but it’s true that i rarely see jay stans that are still underage. enha’s fanbase as a whole is really young imo so even jays fans who tend to be older end up just being around his age and slightly older than hee too. and the stuff about jay being Hong Kong actor handsome is also so true i feel like he would absolutely demolish a concept centered around wong kar wai’s typical movie aesthetic.

as for the how other writers write jay i kinda agree with that anon but also i get why some writers lean into that. if someone who just joined the fandom is trying to write for him, their first thought is going to be writing jay as cold and more mean just because that’s the image they get at first glance. we obviously know that that’s not true but that’s mostly because we’ve spent more time the fandom (and consumed other media outside of tumblr) and know how he is (or at least how he presents himself). i get how annoying it can be though especially since many people just don’t write for jay as often as they do the other members so it seems like more and more fanfics don’t have the variety that usually given to the other members since jay comparatively has a lower pool to choose from.

and as for why jay isn’t written about as much (this such a long ask im so sorry LMAO) i think a big is how people present him in the fandom which kinda connects to the fanfics. you go on tiktok and some of the top tiktoks of jay are about how he’s rich, how he likes corn, how he has “anger issues”, basically a bunch of first glance stuff that don’t really encompass who he is. thankfully now and a lot of people on there talk more about how goofy he is and how much he cares for others but since tiktok is so widely used now, if someone is introduced to enha through tiktok, they probably get a very skewed view of jay. that’s just my experience as someone who got into enha last year through tiktok! i personally had a very different view of jay for a while until i saw him play polaroid love on the guitar and idk he just seemed so much more “human” i guess? more like he finally seemed like he had much more of a personality and depth to him than what people on tiktok were saying.

your writings however especially the assistant jay series OH MY GOD chefs kiss 💋

🎀 ANON HERE YOU GO another anon who agrees!

WONG KAR WAI!!!! BESTIE I SWEAR TO GOD I found an edit either on Twitter or TikTok of Jay and Wong Kar Wai omg I'm sad I didn't save the link or something but yes a thousand times yes... HIM and his aesthetic! also sometimes I joke around with my friends saying that Jay looks so mature he almost looks like he's Park Hae Soo's age (not to mention their vibes are similar too ahsdahsdhdsa OR MAYBE the CEO/husband from The Glory????)

I agree with you saying that the cold/cool guy image is the first thing they get when they are first introduced to Jay (especially since debut era where he was blonde and overall just exuded jock vibes) anyway agree with that whole paragraph

DON'T APOLOGIZE FOR THE LONG ASK I am here for it honestly can you all send more???? stay hidden in anon, I don't mind. I just love reading this stuff.

the "anger issues" HELP thanks for putting that in quotes... I don't know what other people's fyp look like but mine are just funny edits of enhypen 😭 I followed enha since their egg days (I-LAND) so I already knew the type of guy Jay is, so I think that's what made it feel jarring to me the way some people rely on Jay's outer appearance or first impression/vibe to build his character. on god the people on tiktok are another breed though. tumblr engenes, tiktok engenes, and twitter engenes are all from different planets hasdhashdsa

thank you for loving secretary Jay 💋💋💋

[thegirlwiththelilactattoo]

No. 5, or "Spell Pharaoh. Tell me what the FTC does."

"Name a single hobby of your's outside of media consumption."

That satiric and honestly iconic TikTok by Glamdemon2004 (a head's up that there are no captions on this video) has lived in my head rent free since the I saw it on Twitter.

The fatal read hit me on two levels.

I have very few hobbies. I used to have some amount of hobbies when I was younger. I wrote when I was a teenager and was a voracious reader. College slowly stripped me of any love of reading. It wasn't until I entered grad school that I realized the anguish I felt picking up a book. Writing, too, has lost its luster (although this blog is an attempt for me to reclaim that).

All of my hobbies are media consumption. I hate to call the mindless and mind-numbing scrolling I do on Twitter, Reddit, or Youtube a hobby, but it's how I spend all of my not school time. There are reasons of course. For me, media consumption fills time and it provides much needed audiovisual stimuli for my melancholic neurodivergent brain. Of course, there's also nothing wrong with consuming media. Humans have been creating and enjoying the creations of others forever, but idk...the Frankfurt School and the critiques of popular/mass media also haunt me when I sit for hours just doing nothing but staring at a screen.

It's also something that has bothered me for years. I've often wondered how other people pass the time. How do people find things that bring them joy? That fill the day with someone other than doing the things they must to survive capitalism. (a lot of this is the melancholia speaking, i know.)

And on a less depressing note, how do people find things that they like to do? I wasn't a child who played the piano or did a sport, so there's no like childhood thing for me to return to. I quit almost everything I was in as a child the moment things got challenging and no longer enjoyable. I've left a wreckage of potential hobbies in my wake, so my goal this year has been to find the joie de vivre in something and a smaller side goal of that to quit less things.

Enter Crochet

I've learned/re-learned how to knit off and on for the last 15 years probably. My last return to knitting was in 2018. I was desperate for literally a n y t h i n g to break the monotony of gym, class, spend hours online, homework, sleep (but probs not even bc of insomnia). I started knitting for something to do with my hands while I was watching Youtube. Like all my times knitting, I quit (I plan to return to knitting at some point because I think knitted socks look nicer than crocheted socks). When I quit knitting, I thought that maybe at some point I'd take up crochet since it seemed easier thank knitting.

Towards the end of 2022 I was gonna start knitting again, but a barrage of posts on Twitter showing beautiful crocheted items convinced me to give that a go.

And, I like crochet! I find it easier to get in a rhythm working the stitches, working up a project is fun, and even the moments of frustration feel encouraging, rather than a reason to put down the hook. It's also an activity I can do in silence without feeling like I need to have something else to do to occupy my mind. Hopefully glamdemon2004 is proud of me because I finally have it, a hobby outside media consumption.

I am a wee beginner crocheter and I love to start new projects all the time, which is something I love about crafting! I can work on different projects depending on how I'm feeling. Currently, I'm working on:

Yearlong mood tracker blanket (using this pattern from TLYarn Crafts).

Face scrubbies made out of a cotton/bamboo blend to replace the disposable cotton rounds I use (linked here)

Granny square beret (linked here)

Oh and a sweater I'm gonna frog because the ribbing in the pattern is Not Fun to Work! If you have any beginner friendly patterns using a category 3 yarn, I am all ears.

Crochet has not cured me of my media consumption woes or tendency to sadness, but idk Marx was on to something. Having the fruit of my labor in my own hands does give a burst of serotonin like no other.

P.S. Also, I made another account to reply from (theblogwiththelilactattoo) because I refuse to have this account linked to the primary blog I haven't used since 2010!

[forlorngarden]

☕️ im here for YOUR unpopular music opinions bab xx right my wrongs xx

im genuinely a bit terrified because many of my music tastes and opinions are deemed lame and basic but lame girl is my alias and profession so i will commit to it.

before we start let me assessment the level of my lameness - i have a twenty one pilots and a taylor swift tattoo. see? this is what we are working with

whatever

- lyrics are much more important to me than music i do love beautiful melodies and production of course but if the lyrics slap i will probably not give a fuck about anything else

- the best way to listen to music is by going through albums from start to finish. shuffle is evil and my sworn enemy

- phoebe bridgers is in fact one of our greatest songwriters right now. yes, along with mitski. im sorry ridi. they explore different themes and i feel like our connection to said themes is what makes us love one or the other more. and well. it's phoebe for me. i feel like punisher changed the course of my existence that winter night in my small god awful apartment where I listened to it while for the first time while cutting my hair with paper scissors.

- same with taylor. there's much to say about her as a political figure (of sorts), as a businesswoman, as an artist too, and not all of it will be pretty. but she's a strong, strong writer who is constantly overlooked by many outside of her (very annoying and over the top, yes) fanbase (that i have beef with but. that's another story).

one of the most consistent criticisms of her as a songwriter though is that there's too much of her, so much she feels inescapable. and that is a classic case of being woman'd (term courtesy of rayne fisher-quann - we as a society and as consumers are compelled to want to take any woman that gets too successful down a notch. she has always been annoying. there's too much of her. overrated. and so on. rayne's essay was rather eye opening and i can't recommend it enough). but that is a co-product of misogyny, people of marginalized groups (fairly) recognising her privileges and being (fairly) upset by the lack of opportunities for equally talented artists, her enormous fanbase and the pit of despair that is modern stan culture.

- on the topic of stan culture. oh brothers what makes people so mean? for the life of me i can not figure out what good it does you to write "flop" under popcrave tweets. do people feel righteous? cathartic? edgy? is this for the sake of ruling up some and getting throwaway validation from the others? can not wrap my head around this.

- in the same vein. we have GOT to stop demanding content from any kind of artists, musicians included. i think everyone here agrees but i needed to say that because i can not bear seeing this attitude on twitter anymore

- oh those were some thinkpieces babes. well i wasn't an academic for 6 years for nothing

- flash round! melodrama best album ever made; jack antonoff the lows are low but the highs are really fucking high have you heard choreomania and hard feelings/loveless; bo burnham amazing lyricist im not even fucking sorry about this one though i got bullied on tiktok for it; we deserve an emo renaissance. i think that's it for today that was really something