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I remember being fascinated when the examination of problematic content began on Tumblr bc back in the day I got made fun of and called a prude for not wanting explicit fic on a community I modded bc I was 15. There were a gazillion other comms for that.
But then it made you a weirdo if you were a minor, didn& #39;t want to engage with 18+ content or be sexualized yourself. I remember one of my friends calling me the "racism police" bc she wasn& #39;t black and I thought her using the N-word wasn& #39;t cool.
So suddenly when we started to work through problematic media, tropes or biases in fiction and fandom in earnest, it was crazy bc these discussions used to get you labelled a killjoy or a cop. I have never see anything wrong with being critical of media.
But then. You know. But then.
People started saying engaging with said media, even critically, meant something about your moral character and that certain works should be banned. Even content that was not endorsed by the text. Just that it existed was bad.
People started saying engaging with said media, even critically, meant something about your moral character and that certain works should be banned. Even content that was not endorsed by the text. Just that it existed was bad.
Something like Lolita, which isn& #39;t a love story and wasn& #39;t meant to be anything remotely close to a love story (the fact that people did think that disturbed Nabokov himself) is seen as dangerous bc some people read it that way.
Fiction does influence reality, but it isn& #39;t 1:1 and the nature of something existing in fiction isn& #39;t inherently dangerous. A documentary about child abuse doesn& #39;t condone child abuse by discussing it. Fiction is the same.
The difference is people make moral judgments about *why* fiction was written. "Why write about something awful like that?" is a gateway to, "you wrote this because you think it& #39;s okay. the nature of its existence is dangerous so by creating it you endorse it."
Then it started to trickle down to fanworks, which I won& #39;t go into because my thoughts are complex and don& #39;t exactly line up with pro-ship OR anti communities but watching the equation of morality with fiction and the call for censorship has been a thing.
I don& #39;t miss the days of rejecting criticism as "boooo, you& #39;re just being negative in my sandbox, your real human feelings don& #39;t matter" but I also am continually weirded out by the insinuation that certain fiction is a crime just by existing
arguably I& #39;m more disturbed by the idea that, to ask for nuanced discussion or to suggest that people block or don& #39;t engage with content or to not doxx or suicide-bait people you are either an accomplice or you yourself are guilty
of the crime of allowing fiction that disgusts, disturbs or upsets you to exist. You either agree that some fiction needs to be destroyed and its creators punished or you are just as bad as the deviants that made it.
I know it& #39;s hard sometimes to think, this isn& #39;t reality and I shouldn& #39;t judge people based on what they make/consume. Because I still do. I still see shit and think, god why are you all such nasty freaks or are genuinely worried about someone& #39;s mental health.
I think a lot of stuff is gross, people are gross for making it and they make me uncomfortable to be around! I don& #39;t think I can change feeling that but you know what I do? I block the content or them. I don& #39;t tell them they& #39;re a freak or post death threats.
One, because I am a grown adult capable of setting boundaries for myself and two, because they& #39;re not actually hurting anyone as disgusting as I find them. No real person is harmed. But harassing them harms a real person and of the two of us, I would be the dangerous one.
Back when I was a ~prude~ for wanting to curate my experience to not upset me, we didn& #39;t have ways of actually doing that. Tagging didn& #39;t exist. Blocking didn& #39;t exist or wasn& #39;t effective. Content warnings weren& #39;t en vogue at ALL, to say the least.
So the fact that people today have the ability to do that but choose instead to punish/harass folks for the *existence* of fiction (whether they created it or not) tells me it isn& #39;t about comfort but virtue signaling. And that troubles me.
I don& #39;t know what conclusion to draw from it but seeing Person A say not to suicide-bait someone and block them and see Person B call A a pedo for suggesting B take responsibility for their experience is where I start to see this weird groupthink go way too far.
"This thing exists so by engaging with it or creating it you are bad and the only way to be good is to want to destroy it or punish those responsible" and "my disgust response is a morality litmus test" are lines of thinking used by religion to police perceived threats
wherein someone doing something you disagree with is tantamount to harming you. This is (surprisingly!!) a very shitty, cruel way of thinking.
And again ... it is SO weird to me this is where we ended up. Reinventing the conservative wheel. What the fuck.
And again ... it is SO weird to me this is where we ended up. Reinventing the conservative wheel. What the fuck.
