[ SECRET POST #5431 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5431 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 07 secrets from Secret Submission Post #777.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I'm similarly old and from a non-English country and for a long time I had the same mindset that you did. I used to read porn in my teenage years and I saw nothing wrong with it. I even found it empowering, since I was taught that women aren't supposed to have sexual urges, and fanfiction proved otherwise.

But in the recent years my interests have shifted towards fandoms with a lot of Zoomers, overwhelmingly under 18, and in my experience today's teens are very different from the teens in my youth, and a major reason behind this is the way fandom interactions have moved from being mostly text-based (livejournal, fanfiction-websites and anon-memes), to voice/video/photo-based, such as tiktok, instagram, or discord, where it's very difficult to not notice the age difference among the people participating in the conversation. And based on what my teenage fandom friends have been saying, as well as things that I have witnessed (and the erotic roleplay posts on reddit are barely scratching the surface), there's a whole lot of adults in fandom, who have been smothering the teens with innuendo and smutty material. This is especially unpleasant in fandoms centering around youtubers and twitch streamers, many of them underage, where it's near impossible for the streamer to not see porn of themselves, despite begging people many times to not sexualize them. It has reached the point where teens in fandom are simply sick and tired of anything sexual coming from adults, because of how often that kind of talk leads to grooming (you can't throw a rock on twitch without hitting a streamer who pressured a 15yo for nudes) or other unpleasant situations (I've seen someone post a long rant under a tumblr post of a streamer, who said they didn't like it when fans sexualize them, telling them they have no right to express discomfort with it, because they think of them as a fictional character when they write porn of them.)

You talk about you fear of purity culture, and that's an argument I often see pro-shippers making, I used to parrot it myself not long ago. But after being in those teen-heavy fandoms, I've realized that vast majority of pearl-clutchers in teen-heavy fandoms are teenagers themselves. They don't actually appreciate you fighting valiantly for their right to see people like themselves be sexualized, especially when people doing the sexualizing are adults. Are there exceptions? Sure, but this is by no means a common view among teenagers in fandom. It's not unusual for teens in twitch/youtube fandoms to refuse to interact with adults at all because they're done with the creepy innuendo that seems to always come from them. On one of my discord servers, teenagers made a petition to the mods to create a NSWF channel, so they wouldn't have to see all the sex jokes the adults on the server were making. Teenagers today simply don't want the same things we did when we were their age, and I think we should respect their wishes.

[(Anonymous)]

AYART

Thank you for replying. I think I understand more clearly your point of view and you made a good case for yourself.

I don't think I have much more to add to this conversation, also because it greatly derailed from the original topic, but know that you made me think.

I'll just add this final consideration: I do not personally [fight valiantly for their right to see people like themselves be sexualized] like you said. My only interactions with the fandom are on F!S where I partecipate mostly as a lurker and reading fanfiction for fandom with exclusevly adult characters (I do read problematic stuff without any shame, though). I am lucky enough I don't feel the need to interact much with strangers online, so no contacts with teens for me.
I appreciate you giving me food for thoughts on the situation on fandom for the youths of today. I knew already that the ones fighting for more purity in fandom where teenagers themselves, or at least they are certanly the most vocal. They're right to do that. The problem is that adults and young people don't have different spaces for fandom now so we end up battling each other from two valid points of view and it doesn't benefit anyone because there are not alternatives ATM.
I think it's easy for outsiders like me to project my experiences (like you said, reading porn while young etc) to other people and miss a lot of context. I do not envy young people coming to their first fandoms today. Two decades ago it was unthinkable revealing your age or where you lived to complete strangers and now it's completely different and the dangers are different, too.

[(Anonymous)]

SA

Let me just add something. I read some other new replies below mine and I think that you're hanging around very toxic places. Fandom isn't worth your mental health and I don't think you're taking it as well as you probably think you are. It's not your responsibility to always think and advocate for teenagers in fandom, especially regarding these heavy topics.
Maybe take a break and please stay safe.