be nice to sharks

the datasets that these tools, even grammar/spellcheck ones use, are built on stolen writing from the very creatives that these people are creating alongside. ao3 has been scraped and fed to these sets to take advantage of free writing. to not know this or care about this is a problem because fandom is a community.

at what juncture do we respect the community we are in, more than we crave the capitalist satisfaction of production? at what juncture do we collectively enforce community standards and practices that tell folks to reach out to other human beings for art and build connection in order to find a beta, to find a mentor to tell them how to establish boundaries with pushy readers, to tell them how to be a fan and support a creator, to explain how to comment and reblog and post on the same platform with people and ENGAGE with others. how do we guide each other in learning how to exist in a collaborative art remix of a media object we all love? how do we create tangible infrastructure in our social networks that affords us the benefit of each other and discourages manipulation, disinformation, and isolation?

we have to be open to dialogue.

to learning. to critique. to growing. to educating. to taking a breath and a moment. to being wrong. to being vulnerable in reaching out to others. to talking.

and when we aren't open to these things - when we seek One True Fanon Truth or idolize the canon/showrunners/authors/etc., when we cannot handle critique of our own work, when we police fans of color in our spaces, when we don't listen to concerns and make our own educated judgements, when we fail to discuss outloud WHY certain fandom community standards are the way they are and the history of how they came to pass - we let new and apathetic actors enact their own rules into our spaces, in bad faith, and for their own benefit. and we, collectively, are the ones hurt.

that can be true of very big things, like your career or your love life, but also moment-to-moment things. are you enjoying scrolling social media? is that phone game actually any fun to you? are you staying up to read and your eyes are burning and your face feels all gritty and tight and bad and your anxieties are starting to swirl?