Dream Country

RE: your fandom concern. Unfortunately, you’re mostly arguing with children; logical fallacies, thoughtless name-calling and zero common sense is kind of what they do. Most will grow out of it (we did) and the ones that won’t, no amount of gentle correcting will ever help. Don’t bother engaging them; as you’ve realized it leads precisely nowhere. Better to devote your energy to positivity and showing there’s an alternative to those obnoxious voices without giving them any power or credability.

So I don’t know whether these two anons are really the same person, but in any case, it makes sense to post these asks together. 

Here is the thing: What you’re suggestng is an entirely valid approach if all you want is a pleasant, wank-free fandom experience. And it’s perfectly fine to want that.

But I’m not convinced that this is a track that all of us should follow. 

The problem is that many of these antis are not just fifteen year old teenagers, or malevolent trolls, though some of their posts might certainly look like it. These antis are also twenty-something US American college students, who claim to be knowledgeable and educated - leftists and liberals who think in all honesty that what they are doing, and the way they are doing it, is helping to make the world a better place. 

On top of that, the lines are not as easily drawn. When I talk about antis, I also talk about fans, because there is no easy way to discern between an anti and a fan. Antis are not all alike, and many of the problems that I see when I look at their posts are also problems on a larger scale, a reflection of culture wars taken to the extreme.

Your posts make it seem as if this new generation of fans were not any better or worse than previous fan generations, and as if I were exaggerating their number. 

But I don’t think I am. I think that these people come from a different background than many older fans, they come from a society that has changed, and still changes, through liberal politics and social media. At the moment, it feels that for every head of the anti-Hydra that we’re cutting off, two more grow back. To use a different allegory: it’s like discovering a few bad apples now and then, rather randomly, and dismissing them as not all that relevant, but then suddenly, the stench of rot surrounds you and it affects everything you do.

Yes, part of it is classical trolling behavior. But the problem is that many of them come with convictions and opinions that are directly derived from a liberal, politically correct US American college culture, and they are difficult to counter becaus fandom, by and large, is also a mostly liberal space. “Anti behavior” does not only mean posting anon hate or replying to certain posts with “die, you disgusting piece of shit”. That’s only the most extreme for.  But typical “anti behavior” also contains a lot of things that the entirety of fandom has not yet acknowledged as a problem. 

Partly, the backlash we‘reexperiencing now is owed to the fact that fandom has gone mainstream.Add social media to the mix, in a highly dangerous combination of interconnectedness and anonymity, and suddenly you have a fandom space that is no longer separate from mainstream culture (it never entirely was, but that is beside the point), Of course there will be a reaction to it - one would exepct the outcry of the politically and religiously conservative, the moral outrage of sexual purists, homophobic Christians,and so on - but instead you get a segment of the left, only that they are suddenly using the same arguments as their conservative opponents and seek to ban certain kinds of content and tell people what they can or can’t do if tey want to avoid being called racist, or misogynists, or apologists of any flavor.

There are many factors contributing to this, and I’m going to list them as they come to my mind after some consideration.

A new generation of young people who wereshielded from upsetting or problematic things during childhood, and are now expecting theirenvironment to provide them with „safe spaces“ - and to protectthem from offensive or disturbing content. An expectation that often results in a demand for trigger warnings or outright censorship.

A culture where identity – belongingto a certain minority or marginalized segment of the population - worksas an “appeal to authority“ that is in turn used to dismiss otherpeople‘s arguments and have the final say in all kinds of matters related, if only vaguely, to thisminority.

Emotionalizing of discourse, wherefeelings and expression of feelings are considered more relevant than arguments, andwhere name-calling and personal attacks are excused as a valid expression ofrighteous anger - whereas attempts to argue rationally are dismissedor sometimes even discredited as a means of oppression and tone-policing.

The addictivness of call-out culture,supported by social media, where the person who states their opinionin an especially loud and aggressive fashion is celebrated for speaking out against any kind of injustice.

The tendency to ignore dissentingopinions and dismiss facts, while stating one’s own opinion in an echochamber full of like-minded people who drown out any other voices.

Contemplating societal, historical, orother issues solely through a US-centric lense, e.g. “cultural appropriation”, but also matters of representation in media, or fictional worldbuilding.

An unhealthy, paradox approach to anything sexual, where the importance of sex is greatly exaggerated, yet at the same time, it is still seen as something as something inherently dirty, degrading, and immoral.

The notion that since one is so clearly in theright, one doesn‘t have to explain one‘s own opinions, let alone make any kinds of concessions - also the idea that the problems and issues of a marginalized group always take precedence and other people’s concerns can be dismissed on the grounds that these people are privileged.

The widespread idea that works offiction influence reality, and that moral considerations should therefore trump the purpose of entertainment - or the author’s creative freedom (and especially where the entertainment provided contains a sexual aspect, s.a.)

Black-and-white thinking, where everything that is even slightly problematic is immediately condemned in its entirety.

The use of certain words and terms to the point where they become mpty catchphrases; a special kind of rhetoric that disregards traditional meanings and definition and is often used to dismiss and discredit other people’s arguments.

The dismissal of freedom of expression where inconvenient; the opinion that freedom of expression is a tool of oppression and shouldn’t apply to opponents.

There are more, and they overlap in a variety of ways, but I think that these are the most important aspects. Add to that the highly emotional fandom environment and you get what we have now. 

This is also the reason why I don’t think that blocking and moving on - a behavior that, if we were only dealing with common trolls, might be effective - will work well in the long run.

The problem here is that if we don’t speak out, if we don’t adress the issues the antis are raising, people who are new to the discussion, new to fandom, might not realize that they can have a different opionion at all. 

If we don’t stand up against censorship, how long until tumblr caves and starts to ban certain kinds of fandom content? If we don’t make sure to point out why the AO3 was founded, and to what purpose, how long until the board members cave and introduce a new content policy? If we don’t point out that trigger warnings are opitonal - here or elsewhere - how will antis understand that they are not entitled to them? 

I don’t want to wake up some day and realize that because I vastly underestimated the power of a certain group of people who didn’t seem all that powerful at first - people I refused to take serious and decided to ignore - these people have now elected a new board for the AO3 and suddently the TOS are re-written to exclude dark fic, and make trigger warnings mandatory.

Not only that, but there’s also more at stake. So many people were taken completely by surprise by the outcome of the US elections, because they hadn’t truly thought that Trump might win. At the same time, these people are still incapable of seeing Trump’s victory as a warning sign that the regressive left has alienated many people who might otherwise not have voted for Trump. Again, we see the tendency to ingore dissent, to dismiss other people’s perspective, and the refusal to acknowledge that if you don’t manage to get people on board, they’ll stay behind, and at some point they might just try to sink the lifeboat, no matter the consequences.

The question, to me, is not whether we should address the anti problem. I don’t think that the tactic of pretending that they don’t exist, treating them like standard trolls, will work. I’d rather work out a strategy to get them on board - to fight irrationality, ignorane. How do we deal with these people in fandom, when it’s pretty clear that their behavior is rewarded, reinforced, and rewarded in other areas of life? How do we fight a culture that ranks feelings, subjective experience, and identity politics higher than rational arguments, freedom of expression, and true tolerance?

I’d like to add links to a few articles that showcase some of the phenomena cited above:

I’m a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me

Call-Out Culture and Blogging as Performance

What I learned from teaching a standup comedy class to college students 

I’m A Liberal Professor And My Conservative Students Terrify Me (When they fail, it’s always personal)

The Coddling of the American Mind 

and last, but not least…

The Price of Shame

“For nearly two decades now, we’ve slowly been sowing the seeds of shame and public humiliation in our cultural soil, both on- and offline. Gossip websites, paparazzi, reality programming, politics, news outlets and sometimes hackers all traffic in shame. It’s led to desensitization and a permissive attitude online to cyberbullying, harassing and threatening.

This shift has created what Professor Nicolaus  Mills calls “a culture of humiliation.”

…

The more we saturate our culture with this kind of shaming, the more accepted it is, the more we will see behaviors like cyberbullying, trolling and online harassment, and some kinds of hacking.

Why? Because they all have humiliation at their cores. This behavior is a symptom of the culture we’ve created.

…

Changing this behaviour in our culture begins with evolving our beliefs. We’ve seen that to be true with racism, homophobia and plenty of other biases now and in the past. As we’ve changed beliefs about same-sex marriage, we’ve seen more people being offered equal freedom. Valuing sustainability led to more recycling.

So as far as our culture of humiliation goes, what we need is a cultural revolution. Public shaming as a blood sport must stop. It’s time for an intervention on the Internet and in the culture.

The shift begins with something simple, but it’s not easy. We need to return to a long-held value of compassion, compassion and empathy.

Online, we’ve got a compassion defecit, an empathy crisis.

Researcher Brene Brown said, “Shame cannot survive empathy.”

….

The theory of minority influence proposed by social psychologist Serge Moscovici showed that there is power in small numbers when there’s consistency over time. In the online world, we can foster minority influence by becoming upstanders.

To be an upstander instead of bystander apathy means to stand up for someone else online or maybe report a bullying situation. Use a positive comment. Online media can tear us down, but it can also build us up.

…

We talk a lot about our right to freedom of expression, but we need to talk more about our responsibility to freedom of expression.

We all want to be heard, but let’s acknolwedge the difference between speaking up with intention and speaking up for attention.

The Internet is the superhighway for the id, but showing empathy to others online benefits us all with a better and safer world. We need to communicate online with compassion, consume news with compassion and click with compassion.

…

To name a recent, let’s call it “incident”, Donald Trump has been voted as the president-elect of the United States. How have non-Trump-supporters responded? By name-calling, by dubbing all Trump supporters as stupid, racist, sexist and homophobic. I’m from Britain, and on too many an occasion have I heard someone ask me, “Are Americans really all stupid?” in a sickeningly sincere way. It’s as if the liberal-left cannot possibly fathom the fact that other people have different opinions to them. It’s as if they believe that there is only one way of doing things, and that is their way. Because, yes, the left seem to won the cultural war of right vs. left, at least, in the media anyways.

No, not all Trump supporters are stupid, sexist, racist or homophobic. Some are, true, but so are some “left” Clinton supporters. “He without sin may cast the first stone” is what I say to that.

In other words, I believe that we should be more compassionate towards these blue-collar people who have voted for Trump because they voted for Trump because they wanted change. Clinton represented not a single change in the slightest. Trump, however, promised change, and that is certainly what we’re going to get. 

Room to Breathe 2.1 “Try A Little Noise” by SixSpades

In which Derek has escaped the clutches of Beacon Hills but still manages to sustain some mild property damage .

Finished just in time for Sterek Week ‘16!

I got a face swap app and aparently it detected a face in the noodles

Werebabies, magical babies and just all around fluffy kid fics. 

He’s Not Mine by  Sunnee | 68,534

Derek comes home to find an abandoned werebaby on his front porch and Stiles volunteers to help him out. Surprisingly, that is just the beginning of his problems. 

Didn’t See That Coming by  knittersrevolt | 83,838

Stiles leaves Beacon Hills in the dust after he catches his husband cheating on him.

He finds his way to New York where he starts working for the Hale House Nursery, accidentally adopts a werewolf baby (through no fault of his own thank-you-very-much), and somehow starts training to be an Exorcist Emissary. So, in general, life was going good.

Then he hears that demons have found their way into his hometown. Can he face his inner demons and go back to save the day?

Reasonable to Assume by  Saucery | 32,476

“You’re a werewolf! He’s a werebaby! How can you not know what to do with him?”

My World Is Filled With Cheer And You by  bleep0bleep | 10,832

“It was a last minute decision. Single parents with children draw attention to themselves in this type of neighborhood, and this department didn’t have a big budget to relocate all the werewolf and werewolf sympathizers that were targeted on this list. We’ve combined a lot of our relocation assignments. It ended up working out that another family, Mr. Stilinski and his son, looked like a good fit for you guys, so you’ll be sharing a home with them for the time being.” Markowski grins at him. “Congratulations! You’re married!”

In which Derek and his daughter are displaced just in time for the holidays, matched up with Stiles and his young son in a government protection program.

Snow Flirting by  thepsychicclam | 11,396

As Beacon Hills get pounded with foot after foot of snow, single dad Stiles can’t quite keep up with his four year old, his job, and shoveling his driveway. Derek makes his teenage son shovel Stiles’ walk, and that just leads to Derek helping Stiles out with a whole bunch of other tasks. That’s okay with Derek, though, cause any chance to be with Stiles is okay with him.

One Hale of a Sandwich by  whatthehale | 10,090

AKA, the one in which Derek thinks Scott and Stiles are in a relationship and that they want to threesome with Derek. Spoiler Alert? They aren’t and they don’t.

You put a Hallmark on my Heart by  giantteenwolforgy | 3,325

Stiles is funny and smart and kind and is also his daughter’s teacher and his boss’s son. On the list of people who are off-limits, Stiles has held the top spot for as long as Derek has known him.

Since Derek is Derek, Stiles also happens to rank number one on the list of people Derek is in love with. Seriously. His life is like a bad Hallmark movie.

Layover by  dr_girlfriend | 3,641

Big, serious brown eyes were staring right into his from only a few inches away. The child had clambered half over the arm of Derek’s chair to study him at close range, her little rosebud mouth pursed in concentration.

“Uh.” Derek couldn’t look away as the girl reached out one pudgy hand and patted him gently on the cheek. Her scent was soft and sweet and somehow a bit familiar, just enough to keep Derek from shying away. Derek didn’t know too much about kids but he guessed this one was probably three years old or so, head still oversized in proportion to the short limbs and round little belly.

She seemed fascinated with Derek’s beard, eyes widening further under incredibly thick lashes as she petted Derek’s cheek some more, smoothing down the short stubble. Finally she grinned widely. “Good wuff.”

One Night Pancakes by  literaryoblivion | 5,643

Derek loves his kids. He does. But… every once in a while he needs a break from them. It’s natural. It’s totally fine. He needs some “me” time occasionally. It’s allowed, okay?

At least this is what he keeps telling himself when he drops the kids and their overnight bags off at his older sister Laura’s house.

I Know Where Babies Come From, Derek by  DiscontentedWinter | 51,937

Stiles finds a baby on the porch.

It looks exactly like him.

Well, this is awkward.

The Littlest Alpha by  triedunture | 52,508

Derek and Stiles have taken out the Alpha Pack and pretty much saved the world. Okay, the town. Okay, their remaining friends. But the Alphas left something behind: a baby. And this baby is an Alpha too. Derek is determined to take care of the abandoned child, and Stiles is stuck going along for the ride.

But Stiles doesn’t expect the ride to include seeing another side of Derek, or to find another way to say “family.”

Baby Yoga For Beginners by  otatop | 7,606

He started the ridiculous class because his best friend harassed him. He stayed because of the teacher. 

Most Important Things by  sarcasticfishes | 21,180

So as some of you know, i reached 7k a long time ago and i’m nearing 7.5k (like you guys know i’m a loser right?but still tysm!!) so i wanna celebrate because it’s amazing and i’ve met so many new wonderful folks here so yeah, tumblr awards! 

R U L E S : 

follow this loser reblog this post / likes don’t count! this post must reach 40 or i cry ends may 29th will have one winner and one runner up per category

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