100% Shonen Punk Concentrate

Well with those Im all caught up! Next week well be back on a single page update. Finally were staring to know a bit better whats going on but.. conspiracies? are we sure? >_>

I’m listening to my cousin going on about Fortnite. The kid adores the game and is talking about the battle pass and he how hopes to get it later on today.

My mum just flatly says she doesn’t know what that means and has told him to hurry up as they go through the door, not giving my cousin any wiggle room to explain what it means. Fortnite is special to him, he wants to talk about it, he wants to engage but how can he when at that moment, the adult he’s talking to shuts him down?

Why can’t some people just take a damn minute to listen, REALLY listen to what kids are saying? He’ll now sit in the car in complete silence because his aunt isn’t interested in what he likes.

“I’m not sure what that is, can you explain it to me?”

On November 24th, 2018, I posted a list of major deletions of sites or of content on sites that stripped fandom of its history. A bunch of pro-shipper blogs had just been deleted, and people were nervous. I suppose I was thinking “All this has happened before…”

On December 3rd, 2018, Tumblr’s Department of Irony announced the NSFW ban. Thanks for providing this salutary lesson to The Youth and a billion reblogs to me, I guess.

Today, we have AO3 for writing. Audio, images, and video are in as much danger as ever, yet fans attack AO3 every donation drive. For those of you who forget our past…

HERE IS WHAT HISTORY HAS TAUGHT US!

1992 - Chelsea Quinn Yarbro forces a zine to be destroyed

1995 - Viacom/Paramount goes after fansites

1995 - Anne Rice gets IWTV fic deleted everywhere

1997 - Fox and Lucasfilm go after fansites

1998 - AOL goes after X-Files fansites

2000 - Warner Brothers goes after Harry Potter fansites

2000 - Anne Rice anne rices again

2001 - Tripod Massacre

2001 - Anne Rice goes after IWTV fic on FFN

2001 - The Bronze shut down as Buffy changes networks

2002 - FFN bans porn

2002 - FFN bans RPF

2003 - Gryffindor Tower implodes

2004 - FFN bans script format

2005 - FFN bans CYOA, Readerfic, 2nd person, Songfic

2005 - Sheezyart bans adult content; y!gallery founded

2005 - Viacom/Paramount goes after fansites again

2006 - Sakura Lemon Archive suddenly closes

2007 - Strikethrough, Boldthrough on Livejournal

2007 - Youtube institutes Content ID, deleting many fanvids

2008 - Slash Cotillion closes, taking much historical m/m with it

2009 - GeoCities shuts down, taking old fannish websites

2009 - Greatestjournal shuts down; RPGs deleted

2009 - Marvel gets scans_daily deleted

2009 - imeem, major vidding hub, closes suddenly

2010 - FFN forums purged for inactivity

2010 - DeviantArt purges adult fanfic

2010 - Literate Union goes after Twilight fandom on FFN

2011 - Delicious destroyed by Yahoo’s incompetence

2011 - China arrests women for writing m/m; destroys danmei.org

2012 - major FFN crackdown on porn

2012 - Megaupload deleted for piracy; also destroys vids, podfic

2013 - Max-Dan-Wiz.com purged of fan-generated content

2014 - Quizilla shuts down

2014 - China purges m/m story websites; arrests female authors

2014 - Blip.tv deletes vids

2014 - Viddler deletes vids

2015 - Journalfen’s servers become fully robust, deleting Fandom Wank

2016 - y!Gallery deleted

2016 - Elfwood goes offline

2016 - Audiofic Archive corrupted; major blow to podfic

2017 - Chinese author jailed after being ratted out over fandom drama

2017 - Parents get queer Warrior Cats fic purged from Wattpad

2018 - Tumblr deletes pro-shipper blogs

2018 - Tumblr announces NSFW ban

2018 - Wattpad deletes accounts/fics without warning

2019 - China purges weibo of m/m; more women jailed

This is only a small taste of the many times that:

Fannish moderators got bored, ran out of money, or had a falling out, deleting a site/list/forum along the way.

Sites got bought out and closed for being unprofitable.

Fandom got hit as governments targeted piracy or political dissidents.

Fans grudge reported each other.

Official forums got deleted when the canon finished.

It’s not always malicious. It’s not always about us. But we lose every time.

Some of these purges hit everyone. Many of them hit m/m content specifically or female gaze-y material in general. This is why antis are dead wrong. This is why anti-fujoshi policies end up being anti-m/m policies. This is why we need clear labeling, not content restrictions.

This is why we need AO3.

Basically, the 1% Theory dictates that in every fandom, on average, 1% of the fans will be a pure, unsalvageable tire fire. We’re talking the people who do physical harm over their fandom, who start riots, cannot be talked down. The sort of things public news stories are made of. We’re not talking necessarily bad fans here- we’re talking people who take this thing so seriously they are willing to start a goddamn fist fight over nothing. The worst of the worst.

The reason I bring this up is because the 1% Theory ties into an important visual of fandom knowledge- that bigger fandoms are always perceived as “worse”, and at a certain point, a fandom always gets big enough to “go bad”. Let me explain.

Say you have a small fandom, like 500 people- the 1% Theory says that out of those 500, only 5 of them will be absolute nutjobs. This is incredibly manageable- it’s five people. The fandom and world at large can easily shut them out, block them, ignore their ramblings. The fandom is a “nice place”.

Now say you have a medium sized fandom- say 100,000 people. Suddenly, the 1% Theory ups your level of calamity to a whopping 1000 people. That’s a lot. That’s a lot for anyone to manage. It is, by nature of fandom, impossible to “manage” because no one owns fan spaces. People start to get nervous. There’s still so much good, but oof, 1000 people.

Now say you have a truly massive fandom- I use Homestuck here because I know the figures. At it’s peak, Homestuck had approximately FIVE MILLION active fans around the globe.

By the 1% Theory, that’s 50,000 people. Fifty THOUSAND starting riots, blackmailing creators, contributing to the worst of the worst of things.

There’s a couple of important points to take away here, in my opinion.

1) The 1% will always be the loudest, because people are always looking for new drama to follow.

2) Ultimately, it is 1%. It is only 1%. I can’t promise the other 99% are perfect, loving angels, but the “terrible fandom” is still only 1% complete utter garbage.

3) No fandom should ever be judged by their 1%. Big fandoms always look worse, small fandoms always look better. It’s not a good metric.

- explorers research game opportunities, they don’t mind playing alone, usually don’t hurt others, but sometimes they can exploit game weaknesses

- achievers play to win, to gain points, popularity. They need both explorers who know all perks, and socializers - as their followers and support

- socializers - they play because their friends are all here, they like to be together, they are usually most of the players, they can be easily led astray

- killers - for some reasons they come to hurt others, be it hurtful remarks in the chats or disturbing behavior

A tiny amount of killers is manageable and even profitable. (All four types are important). Killers raise stakes for the achievers, give socializers something to talk about in their groups and give explorers incentives to invent something new.

Angered explorers are the top predators here - but they must be seriously offended, and since they play on the outskirts of the game, killers rarely fight them. Killers usually go for the weakest (socializers) or most noticeable (achievers).

On the other hand, some of my best times in fandom have been in calm, sane corners of fandoms that I knew had raging dumpster fires going elsewhere, but I never had to deal with them because my part of the fandom was quite nice.

If you feel like a fandom is getting too toxic, that hopefully shouldn’t mean you can no longer enjoy the things you like, either the canon or the fandom. Your first step should be to stop following/engaging with people who propagate the toxic behavior and replace them with people who create things you actually like. This can include unfollowing, tag blocking, or even blocking blogs. You have to actively step away from that 1% – which might take some doing, & will likely require unfollowing more than just one person/blacklisting more than one tag, since toxic fandom types often seem closely interconnected, whether they’re friends encouraging each other’s drama or enemies constantly fighting back and forth – and go looking for the other 99.

What you can do, is say “follow me on tumblr” and promote your ko-fi on your tumblr. But I’ve seen people do the link to their ko-fi/patreon without explicitly mentioning them and still losing their accounts or getting hit by warnings cause someone reported them. (The one person I knew who outright lost their account just kept doing it repeatedly despite multiple warnings, like a doofus, so that was on them.)

Link Directly to:

Kofi

Patreon

Amazon

Your private book site where you sell your writing

Any other fundraising site such as gofundme etc

If you link and are reported your work is in danger of being deleted, but you will be given a warning and time to fix any issues.

You also cannot mention that a work was directly commissioned with $$, hide the rest of your work/novel/chapter/ or in any way paywall the remainder of your work. Things like “support my writing here!!” are usually no go.

General phrasings like trade, requested, asked for, etc are OK.

Joy is correct in saying linking to your tumblr which advertises your kofi or fundraiser is ok.

If you are reported, the AO3 team will do their best to let you know EXACTLY what works and what phrasing is not allowed. They do issue a blanket “responsible for the rest of your works” statement so be thorough.