[ SECRET POST #6042 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6042 ⌋

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


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 42 secrets from Secret Submission Post #864.
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)]

You're taking one moment in history and assuming it was the ur-thing when it wasn't. Comments played a marginal to nonexistent role in fanfic writing before the early social-media-ization of the internet. When fanfics were stored on private websites and fan shrines, there was often no way to leave feedback for the author, short of getting in touch with the owner of the site and seeing if they would give you contact info for the person who had submitted a particular story to their library, and then sending the author a private email. People who are going "comments have always existed" grew up with fanfiction.net or livejournal or the AO3 - all of which came along considerably later. Before, there were no view counts, there were no comment walls, and there were no likes or kudos. There were just people who went from writing and publishing their stories in zines to publishing them on the internet, out of love for the canon and love for the fan-created stories they'd read. The whole assertion that fanfiction will go extinct if praise isn't forthcoming is a lie.

That said, I think "what's happened?" is a good question. The social fabric has been damaged on a lot of different levels. One of the more obvious changes is that people are threatened offline with being ostracized, arrested, punished at school, or fired for things they post online. And that "we are policing you, so you'd best police yourselves and each other" ethos makes it hard to maintain a space where people are being genuine with each other. Another is that highly abusive verbal attacks have been trivialized as if they were to be expected, and despite the fact that anyone who's had in-person experience with bullying should know "oh, just ignore them and it will stop" is useless advice, fandom often stood by and admonished the people who challenged assholes insted of the assholes themselves. The worst of this involved serious emotional violence - there was a particular time in fandom when I remember a number of incidents involving someone faking their suicide or death from a serious illness, turning out to have never been the person they'd pretended to be ... and the people affected had to deal with that betrayal alone, because life on the internet was treated like it was trivial, unreal, and unimportant. AFAIK, that tapered off when police investigations brought fraud charges against some of the perpetrators. But they deceived many people before they were caught. And to this day, I've spoken with disabled people who've felt compelled to send me pictures of confidential medical documents that I (an internet friend) had no right to see, because they think otherwise I have no reason to believe them if they just tell me that they're dying.

I realize that went somewhat off on a tangent from fanfic, but it's backdrop to panfandom water-cooler spaces like this one getting bombarded with secrets about how people "side-eyed" you for leaving the wrong kind of comments, or not enough of them, or criticism, or just kudos, or even showing that you interpreted the story in a way the author thinks is morally wrong. And it's like a death of a thousand cuts to people feeling like an attempt to interact with a stranger who made something they liked will be well recieved. As opposed to judged.

What happened? All of this, plus anti crusades and more.

[(Anonymous)]

+100000