#never going back

and here it is uncoloured

It's not only dead in terms of fandom content, but it has a BIG problem with focusing on drama/infighting content. Everyone's posting NLGs of things that would get a block and delete from any reasonable person just because it either brings in clout or strokes and ego cause everyone seemingly HAS to give their two cents on everything. And then of course, with everyone giving their half baked thoughts on everything, it leads to every little thing being needlessly whipped up into a frenzy. atp dream so much as picking his nose would lead to a week of arguing and think pieces and fighting over there, and it's just so exhausting.

The number of call-out posts about xyz person being a bad friend or partner that get actual traction and attention is absurd. That is the definition of personal conflict and should not be taken to main to be like "guys this person didn't take our 3 weeks of twt e-dating seriously, please block and report them :(". It's all, frankly, very worrying to me. The culture of publicly calling for mass harassment of people over personal slights is one of the biggest reasons I left. It started with writers and artists and it's only grown since.

It's been about 2 years now of all this. Art is catered to getting a dranart notice (and this has gotten 10x worse since the summer) rather than making art for the sake of community. Writers don't feel safe posting fics there because the amount of people going "erm this is weird!!" over basic fucking concepts is astronomical. People who do read and enjoy fics don't even talk about it anymore and I can't help but assume it's because they worry about attracting the same kind of negative attention.

Just yesterday I saw someone raving about how much they enjoyed a fic but refused to publicly post the link or name the fic. Like this is FANDOM, the whole point is to create and share fanworks and build a community around our shared enjoyment. Once people either refuse to do that or are afraid to, shits over. Unless either a massive amount of new people who will do that come in, or the existing people all pull a 180 and own liking things even if other people might not, the soul of fandom is dead.

Not to mention that the amount of whining and bitching people do over not having new fics or art to enjoy, only to turn around and repeatedly chase writers and artists away is astounding. Zero self awareness. They don't realize that we haven't stopped creating, we've just taken away their easy access. They could still go on ao3 and search up the dnf tag or the writers they enjoy, they just don't. They don't engage unless a link is spoon fed to them, and when no one is "here comes the fic airplane!"ing them, they just assume the fics don't exist.

There's also the made up hierarchy. Some fans are seen as authorities on who is Hashtag Good or Bad purely based on follower numbers. I've seen people be 100% reasonable about things and then switch up as soon as a Big Account is like "actually you're wrong. Because I say so." And then because of the culture of harassment people just bow to it, instead of having a spine and sticking to their morals. It's fucking exhausting.

There's also the rise of casual cruelty with how people interact. While I'm sure some of that is just brainrot or memes I don't know, the whole vibe has become very negative I've found. There is no joy, there is no whimsy. There is no acceptance that different people have different thoughts and feelings. It's just "I'm right, you're wrong, *insert insult of choice*"