[ SECRET POST #6990 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6990 ⌋

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


01.



__________________________________________________



02.



__________________________________________________



03.



__________________________________________________



04.



__________________________________________________



05.



__________________________________________________



06.























Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 18 secrets from Secret Submission Post #998.
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)]

Hm... I don't know, I think for a while it's because Tumblr/Twitter were the only places where you could do fandom, and both sites have no moderation, it's very difficult to control who sees what, only informal norms about what you should/shouldn't post in commonly used tags (on Tumblr, which are entangled with a mechanism people use for organizing their blogs and making their own posts findable to them again...) and what you should/shouldn't put as a reply to a stranger's post, and only recent somewhat better controls on how to control replies and spread of your posts.

Heavily-moderated Discords ARE a lot more popular nowadays, so people are going off and creating the heavily-moderated spaces you're saying people don't want to create... But the reason you probably don't hear about them is because Discords are also less public and you usually need a private invite in order to get in.

Even now, I enjoy Tumblr so little I barely use it, but I'm having difficulty deleting it entirely because it's usually the one and only place people will go to talk to you if they read your fic on AO3 and want to start up a conversation with you. "Like my fic? Join my private proship Discord or friend me on Dreamwidth where I post more about my creative process" is uh not something I've gotten any takers on, I gotta say.

Anyway, what I'm saying is that I'm 100% someone who is all in favor of moderated spaces with clearly delineated rules about what can and can't be posted. (I am, however, NOT a positivity-only type person because I like positive and critical discussion and this is usually why I keep reblogs on on pretty much all my posts -- I LIKE discussion, and that can't happen if everyone has the exact same opinion/interpretation/reaction to our shared fandom. At the same time, I also think if you want to dish it out, you should be able to take it. If e.g. you're going to talk about how people who ship x bother you because [list of reasons] in the main fandom tag, you should be willing to countenance replies strongly disagreeing with you and telling you you're wrong without throwing a fit. Like, negativity is OK but also it for obvious reasons starts fights and if you don't want to get in a fight then don't be negative in a place where that will start a fight and then get shocked because there wasn't a rule against being negative in public.) I have even made such heavily-moderated spaces myself. But also there is value to the public unmoderated spaces that make it so that people still often have to use them (e.g. if they want to find the private moderated spaces in the first place...). Even though I agree with your prescription and do it myself, I don't think practically speaking this removes my ability to have to use unmoderated spaces and my frustrations when I do. Theoretically, fandom could just en masse use the heavily moderated spaces by default. It does not, though.

Anyway, I agree with you that more people should openly want spaces like this. I do think, though, that people ARE creating those spaces more and more (even though you may not see them). This doesn't remove fandom's heavy reliance on unmoderated spaces, though, nor will it eliminate the phenomenon that when you post negative opinions in a fandom tag you will likely get yelled at by other fans, because that's how being in a fandom works. Like, even in a space with no moderation and no rules, if you act like a jerk to other people -- surprise, surprise -- you will be treated like you are a jerk and socially punished for this.

I also think conflating a "heavily moderated" and "fans-only" space with "positivity-only" and "no-dissent" is itself really problematic and probably why you don't get any take-up when you make this suggestion to other people... The whole reason for heavy moderation and membership requirements/vetting IMO is so that some amount of negativity and dissent/disagreement can happen between fans without it spiraling into something toxic or actively dangerous (e.g. doxxing). I don't see moderation and negativity/disagreement as opposed; rather, I think unmoderated spaces are the type of spaces that get terrified assent and sheep mentality because people cannot safely disagree.

[(Anonymous)]

SA

I should also add that you can still get terrified assent and sheep mentality in heavily moderated spaces too. It really depends on the mod and the rules they've set up. As is clear from the variety in Reddit spaces, you can get tyrant mods or anti mods who make it very dangerous to disagree with the majority. So moderation isn't some guarantee against groupthink either, but in my opinion, it is a prerequisite to enabling people to disagree safely. You still have to be careful about who the mod is and what rules they've set up, and how the members tend to interact, though. Moderation isn't a silver bullet.