Trekkie Trash

sometimes I’m reminded that there are still people who don’t know ao3 was literally created by incest shippers — and the site’s sole purpose is to 1. be completely against censorship and 2. host all kinds of dark, taboo fics that are banned on other platforms — and the first ever fic that was posted on ao3 was a fic about an incest ship from supernatural.

you are in the house that was created by freaks. for freaks (affectionate). every disgusting thing you can think of is rightfully allowed and welcomed on ao3, because they are exactly the reasons why ao3 was created in the first place.

ao3 was created because its creators got tired of censorship, they got tired of dark and taboo fics getting banned on pro-censorship platforms, and they wanted a place that was safe for ALL FICS THAT WERE DARK AND TABOO.

ao3’s main principle is being against censorship and being proship / profic.

there are some things in fiction that make me uncomfortable, but instead of shaming people who are just minding their own business and not harming anyone in real life, I choose to curate my own internet experience by blocking/muting what I don’t want to see. ao3 has excellent tagging system, so instead of being a bitch, use their tagging system properly and you won’t see the things you don’t want to see.

it’s your job to curate what you see. it’s not other people’s jobs or responsibilities to censor themselves for your personal comfort. the world does not revolve around you.

also you cannot censor “only the things you personally hate” without expecting everything else, that isn’t of conservative beliefs, to be censored too. because censorship is a slippery slope and a fascist tool. I promise you there are people who think “why do tags for queer love even exist on ao3? they’re grooming children”.

if you allow the things that you hate to be censored — because someone with enough power gets to control what other people can and cannot create/consume, it will not stop at the things that you hate.

“It’s not about the Cheerios.”

This was in reference to a story about a kid flipping the HELL out into a full-blown panic about running out of their favorite cereal. Not a tantrum, not a whine-fest, but an all-hands-on-deck, code-red, world-is-ending blowup.

The kid had originally come from a very unstable situation and experienced food deprivation. The new adoptive parents were stumped, because look at all the other food! You’re safe! We can get the Cheerios tomorrow!

But it wasn’t really about the Cheerios, it was about that first flicker of unease triggering all the old trauma. From the outside, it looked ridiculous. To the trauma-trained reaction of the kid’s brain, it made perfect sense.

Human brains are weird, and we’re all out here trying to survive. Sometimes our brains do this in socially acceptable, convenient ways. But not often.

trick question. this is an intervention. even if you’ve never wanted that, you do now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmfbQRclFf8

this is a video of Chris Morganroth, a Quileute elder, canoe-builder, language teacher, and a fantastic storyteller. he is wearing a shirt covered in pictures of wolves: his cousin made it for him! this is a recording of a 2012 speech at the Smithsonian. it is about an hour long. it is so worth it.

And then generative ai was created.

And now I get it. I get why nobody on Star Trek spends all their free time in the holodeck. I get why all the crew are putting on stage plays, and holding music recitals, and building models, and playing poker. I get why everyone was so skeptical and mean to the Doctor on Voyager. I get why the ONE TIME we see someone obsessed with the holodeck it infringes on people’s likeness rights and permissions.

Because fundamentally at the end of the day we are human beings and we ENJOY working with our hands and making REAL human connections. A person who learns to play an instrument is always going to be viewed as an artist over someone who asks the computer to generate music for them.

Even as recent as Lower Decks they were making fun of the fact that the crew were putting on amateurish plays and holding music recitals. But after living with Ai for so long and seeing how detrimental it’s been to the world… I’d much rather watch my friends put on a stage play than “participate” in a holodeck movie.

What’s most amazing about this is that it was completely unintentional. I do not for one second think that the writers of the time in the 90’s were really thinking about the larger issues that generative ai and chatGTP would cause. How could they? Text to speech back then was still robotic as heck. More likely they wrote that stuff in because it was cheaper to film on sets the owned than try to build, film, or rent out different locations each week.

That’s the down to earth logistical real reason Data is reciting poems about his cat or Riker is in a play put on in ten forward. It’s just cheaper to do that than to build a whole new set or move production to a new location.

Yet at the end of the day, I think that unintentionally speaks to a very human need that ai is making more and more prevalent to us day in and day out.