i have a long history of being deeply frustrated with fanfic authors with an extractive relationship with fandom, right--like, it's always pissed me off when authors behave as though their goal is the achievement of metrics. hits, kudos, bookmarks, etc, you know, because fandom is a gift economy blah blah blah authors are not content creators and readers are not consumers, we are all at a big potluck together and so on etc. there is a grand old tradition nevertheless of people who enter fandom spaces with the express goal of hitting those metrics and perhaps even becoming a Big Name Fan. historically, the behaviours such people engaged in to that end would be for example aggressive 'marketing campaigns' for their fics on social media or cozying up to pre-existing BNFs to try and break into an established clique. these are deeply annoying behaviours, to me, but they are by nature visible, and one can choose to block the offender's usernames across platforms to, at the very least, reduce one's own exposure to them.
this is about those claude artifacts. what the fuck is anyone using claude to write fanfic (and concealing it!!) for if not as a shortcut to number go up? on principle i don't think anyone should be harassing anybody, but i struggle to feel bad for those experiencing the consequences of breaking trust with an audience they appear to be using for a dopamine hit.
