#non-go

If anybody responsible for the gross emails being sent to AO3 volunteers is reading this:

I won’t follow them or spread their other, shittier opinions around.  I won’t reward them for vomiting their bile all over the internet.

But that one post may be the only compensation the Universe ever gets for the insult of that asshat’s existence, and the only chance the rest of us will ever get to impress upon them that ‘Yes, this is good, this is the kind of stuff we want to see, MORE OF THIS PLEASE!’  It might also contain good information or insights that could be helpful to others who need it.

Why wouldn’t I want to help give that post the most notes the OP has ever gotten on anything?

If no one reblogs it on the grounds that the author is a jackass, then anyone who might have found it valuable will miss out.  Perhaps more importantly, all the OP will ever see on their Activity page is a bunch of their fellow jackasses reblogging their usual brain barf, and they’ll conclude that that’s the kind of content people are looking for and double down on the douchery.

If your argument is ‘But people might see that post and follow that jerk without realizing they’re a terrible person!’ then I gotta ask: how is it reasonable to expect people to check out a blog before they reblog anything from it, but not before they follow it?  And won’t anyone who does hit ‘Follow’ without doing their homework notice pretty quickly that there’s suddenly garbage all over their dash, and fix their mistake?  If they don’t notice, they’ve got much bigger problems than accidentally following a bad blog.