every time I see more of the ‘ao3 is evil’ crap circulating I think, ‘well, tumblr is evil too and I don’t see you stop using it’
You know, the more I think about this, the more I think the real complaint isn’t that AO3 hosts “evil” content, it’s that it doesn’t allow harassment/dogpiling of “evil” creators as easily as Tumblr. Abuse won’t remove or even re-tag a work except in a handful of very specific cases, but they will suspend or ban users for harassment, including filing repeated unfounded Abuse reports. Authors also have at least some ability to screen/block comments on works, and there’s no direct messaging system outside of commenting on works through which to pursue harassment. You can follow a creator but you can’t block them (much less encourage others to do the same).
Tumblr, by contrast, generally ignores any abuse report that doesn’t involve the DMCA, and aggressive anons can and have driven bloggers off the site entirely. The fact that the same tactics are used by social justice bloggers and neo-Nazis (for instance) doesn’t matter – they’re the affordances of the site, by accident or design, and an entire fannish generation have gotten very used to performing their fannish (and moral) identity in this fashion.
(I thinks it’s relevant that AO3 was designed by fandom’s LJ generation and in some respect mirrors the affordances of LJ circa 2010. Tumblr is a very different site and that, moreso than age differences, seems to be at the root of this – though of course age intersect with site experience in a non-trivial way.)
ding ding ding ding.
Ao3 requires you to police your own consumption of content. Ao3 won’t let you destroy someone’s online presence simply because you don’t like it. Ao3 won’t let you impose your own morality on other without cause.
If you have issues with this, and the fact that Ao3 requires you to have responsibility and agency, then you seriously need to sit down and have a damned good long hard look at yourself.
I remember, years and years ago, when I first tried to get into Tumblr. I left because of the dogpiling, and only came back because there was almost no one left in my old fandom environments on LJ.
There is a LOT of content policing on Tumblr, and most of it seems to becoming from the kind of people who have no idea what Strikethrough is, or who have no idea that FFN used to host “M+” content – and why it doesn’t, anymore.
I’ve said before, Tumblr is the platform of BNF’s, and is very anti-community. It’s strength lies in things like sharing and discoverability, but the fact of the matter is that compared to previous fandom forums – listservs/mailing lists, message boards, forums, journal comms, etc. – Tumblr’s design put the kibosh on fandom communities. It became a website centered around individual people, and BNFs thrive here for a reason.
There’s a reason why the term “BNF” became in insult in Ye Olden Days of fandom – it was associated with bullying and prostelyzing.
Tumblr is a website that not only allows bullies, but enables them. AO3 makes bullying extremely difficult, if not impossible to sustain, and that’s why so many people on Tumblr hate it.
merlin 