Fandom is weird now. It’s becoming less trusting and friendly, and the Orwellian surveillance issues that are currently running rampant in the USA and UK have bled over into fandom spaces.
I’d read the articles that young people have no privacy and have become so accustomed to it that they enact on themselves. Abstractly I knew this and had accepted it, but it’s only now that I’m seeing it become a major issues.
Obviously part of the problem is I need to become a trusted member of my new fandom. But fandom in general is becoming far more hostile to privacy than even just 5 years ago.
I’ve had to leave 3 servers that want to do age verification. And this is new. Not even 5 years ago when I started zines ppl just turning 18-20 were far more receptive to the ideas espoused by us older folks about not being surveilled. But now it almost feels like they *want* to be surveilled.
They’ve become so used to it from tiktok and their government that they crave it. I’d write a dystopia about it but unfortunately what even is there to say that hasn’t already been said?
If you’re 18-22 now and you’re reading this and willing to listen without immediately calling me suspicious: this is not normal. Age verification will not keep you safe and will not keep minors safe either. It will only lead to the normalization of further surveillance and erosion of your privacy.
I know it can be an unwieldy text especially if you’re not used to reading academic sources, but go read The Panopticon. Watch V for Vendetta or read the comic, read 1984. Watch The Lives of Others and understand the ways this modern era is not so different from the Stasi in the film.
I don’t want to see a rerun of the surveillance state anymore.
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