#were past dramas bitter? yes. but hardly fandom-shattering

[superconductivebean]

#1235: about confessions

I'm 26. I might seem young and inexperienced fandom-wise. Except I grew up on FailedFandomAnon-esque anon forums, remember LJ fandoms, Diary.ru and LI, Fandom Kombat, and I check in with the FFA-alikes on the regular basis to this day.

I'm also a native Russian speaker, and my fandom experience mainly includes Russian-speaking fandoms, as exemplified above. All these aren't English-speaking hellscapes. But with English-speaking ones, there are certainly overlaps and all, but what different is…

It feels like English-speaking fandoms, en masse, have never tried true anonymity, even in the noughties? With exceptions for dumpster fires such as 4chаn or kiwifаrms. Hence why, perhaps, people around here aren't keen on trying to converse anonymously: If you associate anonymity with hatespeach, I can't judge you. I hate when it's used by coward arseholes unable to stand ass up as proudly and eagerly as they do from under anon. I'm on par with Russian-speaking fandoms in our collective disdain for these hateful rats.

Which implies, that yes, our anon spaces have moderation, but it's not persona-based. We don't have names on there. It's linguistics-based. Too rude? Poshol nahui, banned. Too shit-mouthed? It isn't 2ch, get out. Policing everyone in the thread? Do that in your own, personal diary, please. Trying to recruit an anon army to raid someone's comments? Poshol nahui, we're not your faithful summons, pray we don't guess who you are, asshat. And so on.

There, we are discussing fandom matters and its history sometimes, we needn't personalities to do that; we can be bashful and rude of course, but we are met with the same attitudes and are often asked to tone the fuck down if we'd like to continue (otherwise people will leave; anonymity doesn't and shouldn't mean Be Rude Be Phobic Be A Menace Just To Tell Those Libs11!!1, it's meant for speaking without prejudice and bias associated with our names, whatever these biases might be down to a single anon (I've seen it all peapals; some people won't talk to you if you like a certain character but will if you wear an anon mask; yes I'm aware of the comedy, it's everyone and mine favourite genre, and gets us every time)).*

On the confession blogs, usually if not always, you'd get exploded arses and wrecked friendships rather than addressing any issues or talking them through and getting corrected in your assumptions (or caught on telling lies and wishful thinking). Like, a confession isn't even about a conversation or problem solving of any kind.

It's all about venting. Venting doesn't get you anywhere other than… letting it off your chest, really. Any psychologist will tell you that. And will follow up with a suggestion to start working on your problems instead of endlessly complaining about things. Your vents will create more problems and will solve none except maybe make you feel better for a short second—at everyone's expense.

Maybe don't do that if you want to have fruitful and respectful conversations about stuff around here that bothers you—or any fandom therein, socmed-wise.

Anyway, my point is, anonymity—if handled correctly, it is possible— is an one way to talk through points of contention people have with stuff around the fandom. Another would be just…

Post about your hardships in the tag? Do the We Need To Talk thing? People will understand. That they might disagree, well. What are your priorities? To talk things through and probably agree to disagree, or getting pent up and potentially ruin everything by words too sharp?

*As you can also imagine, hateful peapol may overtake threads, still. Sometimes they do. The thread can die but can also be revived by knight anons who will fight these demons away. Or if when the new anons will discover the thread and evict the pests. You got the idea. Also. Anonymity allows to discuss gardening in shameless details. There is hardly anything funnier that being called Soup Cactus Anon. Or addressing the local pest as the Black Mold. In such a place, there's obviously a thread about some anons that piss everyone off. This is the local newspaper. Then there is that fucking hellhole, 'Fandom Grievances'. Deranged crappot, I hate it; '12 Things You HATE About Fandoms' is less toxic, people have polite talks there, can you imagine.