#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.

[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!

[sanrioelitist]

Just a dumb fandom rant

Ok, I feel dumb talking about this but it has been driving me crazy for a while now. Pls ignore my spelling and grammar for this shit bc I just need to get this out. (sorry if I say "like" a lot, I'm not good with words)

ok bear with me here cuz I'm going to yap for a minute

Why do people believe that fandom content is entitle to them? like all the fanart, fanfiction, and other shit. Like I know the answer to that question but still

like I see this on tiktok and twitter (even Youtube) all the time and I normally ignore it, but it's been like a little fly in my ear for a while now and it getting annoying.

Like how people will complain about a headcannon or how a character is portrayed and get pissed about it??? like if you don't like it, just ignore it. mfs be treat the artist like their fucking customer service or something?? and obsession of canon is just mmeh... bc why does it matter so much? If you want stuff that is canon then just consume the media itself.

It gets even more annoying when people tell you that your fanart, ship, or whatever isn't canon like yes I know it's not but I'm not going to stop. Like a mf alway got to tell you the sky is blue and an apple is red. like ok I know? but the sky can be orange/gold and apples can be green too. God forbid that I have a different perspective than you.

Also, why do some ppl hold fictional characters, more accountable than real people?? Like I understand, your allowed criticize and dislike a character (hell I do the same thing), but there a point you might as well put all that energy on real people. (I don't know if that came off as insensitive or not if it did, I apologize)

I also don't understand the whole "toxic" fandom shit bc it all fandom not just a couple, like every fandom is going to have some toxic fans. the bigger the fandom is the more toxic fans there's gonna be but also there's going to be a lot more normal fans. That's just math and common sense. I specifically hate it when people treat the entire fandom like they're all toxic fans with only few goods one.

So for example, when I was in middleschool (like 5th grade) I was in the undertale fandom and later on I would join the Mha fandom (recent got back in after 4 years) both were HUGE fandoms in their peaks and still kinda are. but I remember watching those "Most toxic fandom EVER" videos and thinking to myself "like damn that bad, the rest of the fandom is fun tho" maybe bc I was actually in those fandoms and I knew where to look, but I used to hate it when ppl in the comment (or in general) would be like "Oh good thing I'm in the [insert smaller fandom] bc we would never do such a thing" like most likely your fandom does the same thing?? you just know where to look and where not to go.

Omg also "the fandom ruined the show!" type of mfs like ignore the fandom jackass. I also feel like people use a fandom to hate on a show the popular (or vise visa) instead saying they don't like the show and moving on. Like just let ppl enjoy shit, not everyone is the same? like ever happen to "One man's trash, is another man treasure"?? and did we all read the "everyone is different" book during storytime as kids??

Especially the purity culture shit like ppl trying to be social justice warriors over some dumb shit (mainly harmless stuff) by calling it "problematic" like is it actually problematic or do YOU just not like it? then ppl write essays explaining why a harmless ship is "problematic" like put all that energy in your school assignments instead??

Also why do people act surprised when they get jumped by a bunch of fans on a post about such content like if you comment something like "this ship sucks and everyone who ships it is a horrible person!" on someone post about that ship, why are shock that the same shippers are attacking you?? That just dumb as hell and your fault at that point??

for example, I don't really like Kacchako, but you don't see me hating on a Kacchako shipper post, especially, if it's just wholesome content. No, I just move on the next post a fine something I like. In my opinion, you just seem pathetic and miserable if you do.

anyway that's it, this was suppose to be shorter but I got carried away a bit lol mb

also go look at my art ^^

[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.

[questionablemeap]

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

[lobautumny]

So there's a Twitter post making the rounds making the claim that nobody has ever shown anyone an old TikTok video and that the website is an entire platform of "disposable content."

It is not lost on this toy that the account holder is probably engagement-baiting, and does not earnestly believe this argument or, at the very least, is embellishing their beliefs to make them more inflammatory so they can farm bigger numbies and get that paycheck from Elon. However, it doesn't really matter if said post is genuine or not because a lot of people agree with the point wholeheartedly.

Now, this toy could sit here and point out a ton of TikTok videos/accounts that are really very good/have had a pretty good amount of cultural staying power/have become large memes, such as the square hole, "that doesn't taste like a gusher," the Da Vinki twins, three gallons three seconds, the tour of Ohio video, the Grimace shake, etc. It could go on. But that wouldn't matter, because anyone making this claim will simply tell you that "oh, well, those are fun videos and all, but nobody will remember them in <amount of time>. You're only proving my point."

Many will go on to tell you that TikTok is nothing like the good ol' days of Vine, that nothing from TikTok will ever compare to the heights of humor and cultural relevance of classic Vines like, uh... The yeet video, for starters. Y'know, that did lead to the creation of a word that persists in common slang years later. Aside from that, though, there's, like... Fre sha voca do? Road work ahead? Welcome to Chili's? Any of those ring a bell? They might, but they also may very easily not. There was the Damn, Daniel vine. Remember Damn, Daniel? Seriously, aside from "yeet," how many vines do you actually hear referenced or otherwise mentioned in the modern day?

Now, one might try to use this as evidence supporting the claim that TikTok is a garbage platform that only produces worthless slop. After all, if the platform commonly cited as being superior didn't actually have that much cultural staying power, then surely that means it's actually secretly worthless and TikTok is doomed to also be worthless, right?

Well, no, not remotely. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of culture is pretty short-lived, especially online culture. I mean, how could it not be? Think about how much stuff gets posted every hour, how quickly it can blow up, how quickly trends start and then proceed to become insufferable. Think about how there's not really much of a unified cultural zeitgeist anymore because of how the internet lets communities for niche interests flourish.

Yeah, the vast majority of Vines have lost all relevance, seven years out from the platform shutting down. Sure, nearly every single TikTok will share the same fate. But that's how all of this goes. You could say the same thing about anything posted on Twitter, or Tumblr, or Youtube, or bsky. An iconic Vines compilation feels the exact same, to this toy, as a classic TikToks or classic flipnotes compilation. Going a bit further, you could say the same for most things put onto platforms like DeviantArt, or Newgrounds, or Steam, or itch.io, or AO3.

Like, yeah, sure, memes get quickly cast aside once they have stopped being novel and culturally relevant, but does the same not happen to art all the time? To that end, are memes, in themselves, not capable of being art? What does it say about us, about how we engage with media, that so much of what any given person consumes is given no thought, that there is genuinely no difference in the average person's mind between works of art that had a ton of effort put into them and what they would describe as "slop?" Sure, they'll tell you that there's a difference, that one is much better and preferable and more noble than the other, but it's all just background noise to them. They'll drop a like and scroll past it in either case, never thinking about it ever again. If the random meme that gives you a chuckle during your busy day is fake culture for stupid idiots because you won't be thinking about it in a year's time, what does that make the beautifully-rendered painting of a landscape that you looked at for about a second and a half before dropping a like on and abandoning all thought of forever? Surely, if the former is slop because you have treated it as slop, then the latter must also be, yes? But you'll never admit that because then you'll feel bad.

The issue with online culture is not that the culture is bad (at least, not inherently), nor it that the people posting it are (inherently) bad. Rather, the problem is that everyone is being psychologically manipulated into endless, mindless scrolling forever while we also happen to be living in a culture that constantly devalues art and only sees culture as being worthwhile if it's making some suit somewhere a morbillion dollars per week.

But instead of having this conversation, we have a bunch of shockingly young people within this toy's exact age range talking about "new thing bad because new. New kid upbringing bad. Me miss old thing from me upbringing" like they're stereotypes of 80-year-olds. And that gives this toy one very simple question:

What the fuck is happening?

No, seriously, why do we have people who were literally in high school a single-digit number of years ago whinging about how kids these days are too cringe and pining for the good ol' days? Where is this coming from? This toy knows that on some level, the internet can be said to rapidly age people, but this is ridiculous. Furthermore, why is specifically TikTok causing this divide? This toy could understand to an extent if the website started in 2020, but it started in 2016. It could also understand to an extent if TikTok were actually primarily used by children, but it's kind of always been used primarily by the exact age demographic that this toy sees complain about the website the most.

Is this toy simply too young? Have there always been 20-somethings acting like crotchety geezers when new things enter common culture, and this is simply the first time it's become aware of this phenomenon? If not, what actually makes TikTok any different from any other platform that's ever existed?

This toy doesn't really have any conclusive statement to give here. It's just frustrated watching so many people its age give way to reactionary boomer-isms and getting heavily invested in generation politics (by which this toy really means petty shit-flinging) real early, all the while brushing against the task of interrogating how they engage with the world around them while doing and saying whatever they can to avoid that uncomfortable little conversation.

Truly, we will never be free.

[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.

[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 💋💋💋

[godtier]

Don't get me wrong, it's just so dumb. I just don't get it because those people literally opened a book and cried because "there's too much words" and I.... 😭

Because I know some people on tiktok are dumb on purpose. They are to make views because people are reacting to it. But I feel those people on the video are saying this for real and then I remember many people on twitter can't also read correctly or read only the headline but not articles and I'm just feel desperate because what the hell and when did things get so wrong. We are educate enough to READ, like... reading was for the elite a long time ago, but not anymore, everyone can read and have access to culture, and they are complaining because "too much words" IN A BOOK😭

oh I'm sure at least SOME of them are playing it up for views, that's not an uncommon tactic at all

but the majority of them are definitely not playin around and it's genuinely horrifying, I agree wholeheartedly

I think a lot of it has to do with not just how schooling has changed since I was in school, but just the whole tiktok algorithm encourages endless scrolling in the worst way

for all of its faults, they really did craft the perfect algorithm and environment to nurture said algorithm on the platform

and when it's all short-form content, those younger ppl get so used to ingesting what seems like "a lot" of information in less than 5 mins at a time

then the brain gets overloaded by the stimulation and requires higher and higher thresholds to be satisfied

another thing is that younger ppl can't tolerate being "bored" (or what they perceive as "boredom") and if you can't convey the core of the information you're providing in a timely fashion, they tune it out and move on

they honestly remind me of the whole "elevator pitch" scenario personified: you have to pitch shit to them in under 1-3 mins to be efficient and hold their interest, otherwise they're already gone mentally. except instead of being a busy executive with a lot of things on their plate (which is where "elevator pitches" were rooted from and targeted towards), they're a 21 year old economics major who chatGPTs their way through uni and tries to be popular on tiktok since that's going to be their only source of income since they retained exactly nothing from their classes

like how the mind becomes poisoned by repeated drug usage. after some time, your brain will need a higher concentration of the drug to get the same level of output (or "high") to function. except it's like... you need to cram as much info into a 1-3 min long tiktok session as possible or else the brain gets bored and searches for the next "high", if that makes sense

younger ppl honestly just need to learn how to be bored, tbh. they have no idea what boredom is supposed to feel like or what purpose it serves, so they lose all cognitive function when they try to consume media that isn't immediately engaging and at full-blast

that's not to say that books with lots of exposition are inherently "boring," but more that boredom serves a cognitive function, allowing your brain to adapt and rest when you're not constantly assaulted with "excitement" or stimulus. it allows the brain to slow down and process things, come up with ideas, ruminate in information, etc.

.... that turned into a longer rant than I originally planned oopsie

hopefully I got the point across 😭 I just woke up so I'm gomen if it doesn't make sense!

[nickgerlich]

Let's Get Social

It’s hard to believe a world without social media. For the vast majority of my students, who are Gen-Zers, you have known nothing else. Social media is a major part of what it means to be a digital native. My older students, who are primarily Millennials but with a handful of Xers, had to adapt. And my tribe, the Boomers, all had the same look on our faces when we first encountered them: What dis?

The first social network I joined was Twitter, back in 2008, which means I wasn’t exactly an early adopter, but I didn’t wait terribly long. That would put me in the Early Majority. Twitter launched in July 2006, two years after Facebook, which originally was a private network that expanded through Ivy League schools, then eventually all universities, and finally everyone. Before that there were MySpace, Friendster, and a couple of others that have vanished from the collective memory.

Networks come, and networks go. We have seen the rise of SnapChat and the explosive growth of TikTok, but also witnessed others struggle and even go away. Anyone remember YikYak? BeReal has attempted to rise above the din of staged photos by prompting users to shoot unscripted selfies at random times…a novel idea, but one that just hasn’t taken off yet.

And then there is the very real consumer trend we are witnessing right now with yet another mass exodus from X, formerly Twitter, the social site owned by Elon Musk. How anyone could squander more than $40 billion in market cap and still be able to blow it off as pocket change is the kind of thing only the world’s richest people could fathom.

Which he has.

Unless you missed the Presidential election campaign, Musk buddied up with Donald Trump, donated millions, and has now been guaranteed an important position in Washington. Thanks to the politically divisive nature of things these days, and the fact that Musk has turned X into a haven for the far Right, millions of long-time users are finding their ways to the exit. It’s the second such exodus, the first happening immediately after Musk bought it in April 2022.

It is a shame that social media have come to this, but here we are. Upstart sites Threads and Bluesky are experiencing surges in new users, all Twitter/X ex-pats. These two sites were launched to be alt-Twitter sites in the first place, and now they are growing.

Threads is a spin-off from Instagram, which is owned by Meta, the parent of Facebook and also WhatsApp. It debuted in July 2023, and enjoyed a meteoric rise right out of the gate. I joined within the first three hours, and still have a user number in the three million range. Today, there are 257 million monthly users, with one million new users a day for the last three months.

Bluesky launched in October 2021, but was invite-only until early this year. It was developed by Jack Dorsey, one of Twitter’s founders. It now has 16 million users, but just had its first one million new users day this week.

Aside from my LinkedIn account, I am keeping my social media usage all in the Meta family, from Facebook through Insta and Threads. Oh, and WhatsApp when I travel internationally. I rather like Threads, and do not find it to be an echo chamber of disaffected users from the Twitterverse. I hear both Left and Right voices there, and use the site to display my Texas photos, all rendered in black and white.

I haven’t signed up for Bluesky—yet—if only because I don’t have enough hours in the day to create content. I still have my Twitter account, but haven’t used it since Musk took over. He made it impossible to cross-link content from other sites to his, and at that point I said that was fine. Thanks very much. It was fun while it lasted.

From my perch in the ivory towers of academe, I see social media as having evolved now to the point that which brands—because that’s what they are—have become a reflection of us as consumers. Think about the brands you buy, your streaming services, your vehicle, your clothes. They are all extensions of you and your personality. Just as we are loyal to our consumer brands, we are now loyal to our socials. We have choices, and we can decide to pig out at the trough of social media, or pick only a few, or none at all. Again, that’s a reflection of you, and a consumer choice.

I just had no idea 16 years ago when I got started in all this that it would wind up becoming just another exercise in consumer behavior.

Dr “ReTweet” Gerlich

Audio Blog

[doxieandthedead]

"Not actually try to assassinate the author" is a huge and many of my friends in creative jobs have talked about how it something they often think about not just in their own social media presence but also in terms of what their employers are working on. After all, how often do we see fans consider that character's morals to be the creator's or actors morals? I'm thinking of poor Jack Gleeson who played Joffrey in Game of Thrones is a massive example of this, and how more recently Neil Newbon has had fans attempt to frame him as Astarion from Baldurs Gate 3 in how they interact and understand him - he ha had to really push back against this.

We (as an online culture) don't consume entertainment with the view of 'death of the author' and separate the work from the creator anymore and I don't think that is healthy and is having a really negative impact on what creators are willing to try.

Oh this has turned into a rant sorry (not sorry).

I know Twitter isn't as big now, and I suppose its been replaced by tiktok in terms of short form takes with zero nuance and mob mentality; but how many people want to risk being attacked or ridiculed for a risqué piece of work that isn't seen as morally pure enough, doesn't have high production value, or is a risk that didn't play out? Sarah Z does a great video on this called 'sacrificial trash' and I think it really highlights to me why often it doesn't feel worth the risk for a lot of people out there.

This and the fact that creatives do not have the distance from the people who consume their content like they used to, means that it is more dangerous (emotionally and physically) to really push the boat and write about challenging characters and dark themes. Neil Newbon is an excellent example of this where he has had people harass him and be incredibly harmful in his livestreams because they cannot separate him from the character he plays, and he is not the only person who has experienced this by far. Sarah Z in the above video also talks about this, and how many times have we seen creators go offline due to online bullying, harassment and doxing? Often it is just not safe to publish what has been created and we are missing out on some potentially transformative work because of it.

Another aspect of this is how as a culture we understand villains and 'bad' characters. I am a person who ADORES a good villain. I love putting them under that microscope and seeing what makes them tick, but more and more I'm seeing characters who are described as 'bad guys' who are actually just... not?

I do think that the rise in needing 'soundbites' and '30 second clips' is a huge thing, but to me I also want to integrate this into this weird moral 'purity' culture that has been growing for years. This inability to understand that great (complex, realistic, relatable) villains can be admired because they are bad (evil, make bad choices) because "Um, don't you know that they're actually problematic and not really your woobie?" Yes. That is why I like it. Sometimes I want to read about a person who acts as monster because understanding that mindset and how they got there is fascinating. Frankly, I also think it is healthier to explore this in fiction than it is in the likes of say, true crime.

There's also been a lot of commentary recently about how so much of our media focuses on nostalgia because studios know that its going to make money, and they look for algorithms and patterns around what is going to make money, and its killed that more niche creative side that takes risks but I think that folks don't realise how insidious this is and how much of an impact the 'algorithm' has what big companies are willing to spend their money on.

So why WOULD a studio take a risk with something new when we have no evidence it is going to work? Why would you go go further and push the boundary of a story and take a risk when you know you're potentially going to lose money? I remember someone telling me that we are learning and adapting to the algorithm, instead of it learning and adapting to our behaviour, and it makes me incredibly sad.

On an uptick to this, there are actually a range of indie authors, animators, game devs and media creators who are creating amazing work that really pushes boundaries out there. It just can feel impossible to find them at times especially as so many written articles online that curate lists, tend to fall back onto using an data already compiled from an algorithm and don't use the richness of their own experiences to create these.

As I continue to purchase and consume media online, I am less likely to pick something up that isn't similar to what I've been recently reading. Going back to bookstores (both indie and Waterstones) has been great, I've picked up stories that I'd never have been shown on Goodreads or Amazon or Booktok (don't get me started on booktok, I really dislike it). We lose so much when we rely on an algorithm to decide what to show us, because it can only go on what you have previously read. Why would it show me poetry when all I've been reading is romance? Why would I see classic speculative fiction when I'm currently focused on anthropology? How I can I explore a rainbow of options if you are only showing me red and orange?

It feels like such an unpopular opinion these days but I'd much rather a story take a big swing and miss than just be a tepid, lightly-tread path. I'd much rather writers take big risks, play with expectations, subvert tropes and ultimately maybe fail a little bit than have this constant stream of content that can be summed up in trite soundbites or carved up into 30 second clips.