fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6020 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6020 ⌋

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

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07. [SPOILERS for Good Omens season 2]

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08. [WARNING for discussion of sexual misconduct allegations]

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09. [WARNING for discussion of sexual assault]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #860.
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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What kind of online protest wouldn't be performative?

Being a performance seems like it's intrinsic to the idea of an online performance, and I don't see the problem with it.

nayrt but I suppose it depends on what exactly they are trying to accomplish with a title. If they just want people to look at them and go "wow, now there's a person who cares about ending racism in the OTW!" then okay, I guess. Otherwise, it's just along the lines of thoughtsandprayers™, #activism, etc. Which also is fine as long as the writer understands that their efforts will have as much impact as a fart in the wind.

Well again - what else should they have done as a protest that would be different?

Like, this is something that's entirely online, by definition. That's very different from most traditional protests. It seems to me like if your goal is to get people to think about problems with racism at AO3, then this protest is a reasonable way to get them to do that. IDK.

Again, it depends on what they're trying to achieve. If they just want attention, carry on. But just because it's online doesn't mean they should do whatever you want in spaces where people are just trying to enjoy themselves. It's the equivalent of standing up in every restaurant screaming about the inhumane treatment of cows because you believe the owner purchases their meat from a shady processing plant. Okay, I guess you've possibly made your point, but you're disrupting everyone's night and haven't really accomplished anything by doing so.

Being online doesn't limit their avenues of protest. They can bring up these concerns on other fandom message boards (or even the AO3 subreddit, official or not), or start their own blog speaking of the injustices that concern them. Or start their own fanfic site that's held to a better standard of preventing racism. They can bash AO3 all day long if they wish there! I'm aware that saying "they can always leave" will be taken in a racist way, but it's not meant that way, and it's always an option.

Now, it's entirely possible they have tried all of these routes and more first and it's been fruitless, so maybe this is their last resort. Reading the rest of the thread, however, I suspect that isn't the case.

DA

So all the alternatives boil down to "they just need to make their online protest less noticable to the people they want to reach"? Changing titles is a perfectly reasonable action when the issue is that many AO3 readers/writers may not be aware AO3 made a promise years ago that it hadn't (until after the campaign) made any updates about. There wasn't a critical mass of users asking for accountability, before this campaign, so changing fic titles - which will make some people go "men, skip" and some people "wait wtf is this" and look it up is actually useful.

It's the equivalent of blocking the highway during rush hour to bring attention to irl racism. It's disrupting people's fun in a relatively harmless way (in the online version, in a completely harmless way) to raise awareness that there's a problem.

Unlike going somewhere else, off AO3, to talk about problems with AO3, which would be a lot less useful in comparison. The difference between protesting in the town square and protesting quietly in your house.

Changing titles is a perfectly reasonable action when the issue is that many AO3 readers/writers may not be aware AO3 made a promise years ago that it hadn't (until after the campaign) made any updates about.

Please, do tell me how changing the names on old fics no-one is going to see unless they're actively searching for them or a frequent visitor to the author's profile is "raising awareness".

Do you actually write fics on ao3? Do you get daily kudos emails? Old fics that are at the top of various tags/categories can get more traffic than new fics in small fandoms. They’re also the fics ppl bookmark & come back to. Not that old fics were the only ones with changed titles, but every action has value. (The mere fact OP made this secret means they were stumbling on fics with changed titles often enough to notice)

I mean it's kind of empty, I guess?
This is a bit specific to the people I'm subscribed to, but they've not really engaged with what racism in the OTW means beyond it being something they're copying into their titles to flag that they are Good People. It's a rote act, not meaningful and sincere protest.

just changing the titles of your fics is literally a meaningful protest, as it gets people to notice and talk about the issue (which before no one was talking about), and sends a message to people who care about this issue that they're not alone. IDK how you can judge sincerity, there are a lot of causes in the world and ppl only have so much energy, if they donate a dollar or sign an online petition or change a fic title it's still better than nothing.

People have been talking about this issue a lot, for years. You just haven't noticed.

What issue? The campaign was about OTW promising to hire a consultant & then never updating. They literally stayed silent for years, then this campaign happened & suddenly they’re updating about it. So I guess this actually did make a dent & created sufficient noise that couldn’t be ignored anymore

What kind of online protest wouldn't be performative?

Full out protest I'm not sure about, but refraining from uploading fic/keeping your old fic on the very website you're protesting would be a good start!

speaking as someone who's researched this in academia, it would be a bad start, actually. there are different stages of protest, in some removing your content from the platform can be effective, for what EOTWR is trying to do it's actually much better to take up space/visibility within AO3/the community they're trying to reach. their whole point isn't that ao3 is a racist platform, but that the org made a promise it needs to keep. they're trying to get the org to perform an action/take accountability, and the methods they're using are actually very appropriate for that

[ SECRET POST #6020 ]

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