Literally I got into fandom when I was like fourteen and I was writing and posting dirty fanfic a couple years after that and the same is true of basically every 30-40 year old fandom person I know?

Like I’m sorry but where the *hell* is this notion even coming from https://twitter.com/theswordwizard/status/1199929165824380929

I’m really wondering what OP considers an “early fandom space” tbh because I’m betting they’re not counting anything before the early 2000s

Like I got into fandom in the late 90s and early aughts when LJ was still the main thing and I have enough of a historical clue to not consider *that* an “early fandom space”

Dear children, fandom did not actually begin with Tumblr

I understand that an N of “me and all my friends” is not necessarily a representative sample but I guaranfuckingtee you that I could do an Actual Sociology on this and find that a significant majority of fandom people in my age cohort got into it in our early/mid teens

(OP is apparently 20 btw so yeah)

Yeah, I actually found the thread via someone else talking about the fandom context collapse that occurred when the tagging system broke. Again, it’s like they literally don’t think any of this was here before. https://twitter.com/moranakhorys/status/1200235019664535553?s=21 https://twitter.com/moranakhorys/status/1200235019664535553

lmao I absolutely promise you that people have been writing filth about other people’s characters since *the invention of writing*

We come up with a new thing and then we make porn with it, it’s just what we do https://twitter.com/dlbowman76/status/1200236660765724672?s=21 https://twitter.com/dlbowman76/status/1200236660765724672

Also, in terms of understanding the history and scope of the space that you, a relative newcomer, are in: I may be papering this over in my memory but I don’t ever recall thinking anything like this as a teen. I pretty much assumed I was involved in an old thing.

I also found out fairly early on about the history of zines and Kirk/Spock and I was like oh, so other people have been here forever already, totally makes sense. Like for me the notion that I was new and had to learn from the people who had been there *was a fucking given*.

I realize this might be coming off all IN MY DAY WE RESPECTED OUR ELDERS but it’s honestly not about that, it’s about being willing and able to grasp the full nature of your own context.

Not only do the people like OP seem uninterested in their own history, they seem completely ignorant of the fact that there’s history to not know.

LMAO OKAY THIS EXPLAINS SO MUCH

“Deliberately obtuse” lol ok

Read whole thread for some truly impressive pivoting.

But this is what they do when it becomes clear that their starting premise was too laughable for even them to defend. They pretend it wasn’t their starting premise at all and hope no one notices.

(And for the love of god, child, no one is saying no one got preyed on or groomed back then. It absolutely happened, I *know* someone it happened to.)

Lemme jump back in here one more time because I RTed this earlier but it’s how I found the thread and it’s Important

Tumblr is not the first fandom space to be structurally hostile to fandom because capitalism but it’s an especially destructive one https://twitter.com/outliersgeorg/status/1200202390693003264?s=21 https://twitter.com/outliersgeorg/status/1200202390693003264

Livejournal, fanfiction dot net, there have been others that I can’t think of because I’m tired. The assholes who run them don’t understand how or why fandom uses them, don’t care, and hurt people without consequence.

So no one is saying that the pain OP is talking about isn’t real (which of course is what she seems to be inferring). It’s *very* real. And then the ignorance of history and rejection of education makes it even harder to deal with the trauma.

I see this a lot in anti circles: not understanding who actually hurt you and why, and directing justified anger at inappropriate targets (in inappropriate ways).

Tumblr hurt you, not the people making Homestuck porn. Tumblr is the one who made you less safe.

The people making the Problematic Content, by and large, are trying to make sure the wrong people don’t see it. When some slips through, it’s frequently if not mostly because something structural that they don’t control got fucked up somewhere.

Antis taking screenshots of said content and posting it with inadequate or absent tagging because LOOK AT THE SIN? Yeah, they’re the ones who actually triggered you. They’re the ones you should be mad at.

“WELL THEY SHOULDN’T MAKE/POST THE CONTENT AT ALL” I’m super tired of that argument so let’s leave it aside for the moment and focus on my actual point.

Not understanding the real failure-points and the structural dangers means you don’t know how to advocate for yourself.

As long as sites like Tumblr can just break themselves at will with no accountability in ways that *genuinely hurt people*, those spaces are unsafe at the level of the code. Whether or not certain content should exist is honestly kind of beside the point.

Which is why AO3 exists, and why, while it’s certainly an imperfect solution, we need it. It is a fandom space designed from the code up to prevent exactly the kind of thing Tumblr did to such catastrophic effect.

And yeah, yeah, STOP MAKING THE CONTENT YOU PEDO, oh my god I’m so tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiired, I am tired to my very narrow bones

Even if you were to somehow eradicate the content you hate, you’d still want those structural safeguards. The ones Tumblr killed.

Basically what you should actually be angry at down to the most fundamental level is capitalism and how social media platforms are run.

So like with everything else terrible, yes.

When I was a little baby sociology grad student taking classes with Patricia Hill Collins and being extremely , one of the first things she told us was to ask, when harm is done, “who benefits?”

Look for who benefits.

At the very least look for who seems to be deeply involved and yet surfing along above the harm, totally happy and untouched.

And now I’m gonna shut up and post some sin.