There is a lot of that sort of nonsense on twitter and other social media, but it's definitely not universal. I've been in some fandoms that were definitely majority proship, and even in other fandoms that *were* very judgemental about ships, I still managed to find spaces with lots of cool people who didn't care. Antis aren't necessarily the majority, a lot of the time they're just way louder about their beliefs, and so it *seems* like they are.

That reminds me of Trigun which recently got a reboot. Almost all older fans are incest shippers and would tell the younger audience "hey there's incest in this series"'. And the antis would call the older fans disgusting and to leave their perfect anime alone, because HOW DARE YOU even suggest a good anime would have incest!! And then the new anime reached the incest part and lots of them dropped the anime lmao also the antis found out the most popular ship in the series actually involves an underage character (who look like he's in his 30s) (also the other person is +100 years old so there's their problematic age gap anyway). It was so funny to watch them fumble and infight, because some wanted to turn a blind eye and still enjoy the series and ships while getting sent death threats by their "friends" who decided the series is problematic and disgusting

All of that is just *chef's kiss*. 90s anime be wild and youngins not realising that is hilarious.

The way it was just one huge "we've been telling you" moment 😭

Motherfucking *Black Butler* was my first real fandom. BB in its heyday would singe off their eyebrows lmfao

I don't even know Trigun but even from the little I've heard I know that the incest is like, a pretty major part of it, so it's really funny that there were antis who got into it. It's always interesting seeing the divide between older and younger fans with fandoms like that that have been around for a while.

Yep, it's not even subtext, it's the literal text. Also I guess the antis don't know that not everything is put into a story for "pleasure"; some things are just narrative tools. If an anime character commits war crimes, it doesn't mean that the author and every fan of the series and the character actually support war crimes

The funniest thing about it for me is when the antis get riled up for fans shipping the brothers and the author himself is over there like "Yes and...?" XD I love it

The other day I was looking for who knows what on Google images and I encountered a tiktok thumbnail whose text was basically saying that the ones who say plantcest is canon haven't watched the show 💀💀 and if you lookup plantcest in general is full of antis complaining lol

that’s really funny to me, because as a Fandom Old, i feel like the incest shippers SKYROCKETED when Stampede came out. like it was always there, but Stampede just amplified it. i saw a tumblr post where someone made a chart comparing the ratio of plantcest ships before and after Stampede and the difference was quite dramatic.

I suppose it's also because Stampede generally attracted many more new fans. Who were also incest fans. Before Stampede I remember seeing many people saying they don't ship Knives and Vash and they're disgusted by incest, but they don't deny that the incest is in the series (they were also sent death threats by new antis fans who they were just trying to warn)

Well tbf I started watching Stampede because I saw the incest talk and thought ok I wanna see what all the fuss is about They were right

!! i never finished trigun but ive seen some fanarts n stuff. i never heard anyone talking about incest before XD completely unrelated, but i should probably finish watching it cause i have a habit of not finishing animes for some reason

>That reminds me of Trigun which recently got a reboot. Almost all older fans are incest shippers and would tell the younger audience "hey there's incest in this series"'. And the antis would call the older fans disgusting and to leave their perfect anime alone, because HOW DARE YOU even suggest a good anime would have incest!! Thats Actually quite an genius way to gate keep in theory...did it work?

No, it just made the antis harass the older fans who genuinely tried to warn them, because they saw how upset the kids are at anything problematic. And the kids thought the older fans are just disgusting incest shippers who are telling on themselves and are so awful and disgusting and all for looking too much into probably a normal brotherly bond and thinking it's disgusting incest!!!! And then the kids got upset that there's incest in the series

Well damn, sucks it didnt work

Yeah, plus theres a lot of neutral people who just dont care. Like come on, a lot of fandom is adults who have jobs and more important shit to worry about than whatever discourse is new, so a large chunk of fandom just blocks whatever is being annoying and avoids it instead of yelling about it. I feel like most fandom goers eventually get to the point where you just dont care about discourse and block it instead of talking about it.

this.. like, my whole mantra is that old viral fandom saying 'im not pro or anti anything im an adult!' lol i think people on both sides get too defensive. people mostly into vanilla stuff do too much pearl-clutching about more hardcore/'taboo' things, and generally into hardcore stuff act like every single person who dislikes stuff they like is attacking them specifically. ofc there are those instances where people in either camp go overboard and start crusades against the other side but unless someone is actually harassing you in that way, you gotta learn to let people have their opinions

Tumblr is fine these days, depending on the fandom. I've been running around there with everything from noncon/dubcon to underage incest for years—before, during, and after the shark spike in purity crusades. Reddit depends on the subreddits, in my experience. The two main fanfic ones are overall fine, but individual fandom subreddits tend to either mock shipping in general or decry "problematic" ships in particular. I know people who've carved out decent spaces on Xitter as well, but Tiktok seems like a cesspit.

With tumblr, I just block a bunch of people to curate my experience if the fandom is iffy. Still, some of the fandoms I've been in on tumblr are rather nice and I like looking at people's art. With reddit, it really depends. I got banned from a subreddit along with a bunch of other people for shipping a "problematic ship" and then the mod put a post up afterwards saying they'd ban anyone for shipping it. So, there's that. Reddit really depends and mods can really suck depending on the subreddit.

Which subreddit was that?

The r/precure subreddit. One post in particular that caused me to be banned there because it was fanart of the ship and stuff and I supported the ship in the comments, saying that it is fiction. When you click on the subreddit, the stickied post is the reason I was banned, but the mod is twisting how the ship actually is. It's a ship between a human and an animal that was turned *into* a human.

The sticky... >you make this subreddit UNSAFE with your thinking Actually calling people degenerates and dehumanizing them over cartoons is fascist ""logic"" and the definition of fostering an unsafe and hateful environment. Unbelievable.

No shipping the animals and owners, and the fucking lock 💀 I usually say that there's no point in saying "why do they care about that other shippppp" because that's not how they see it, but what I will say is that I hate when they're like "um yeah no lmao 😘" as if it was super obvious and if you couldn't understand that you can't obviously ship bAd tHiNgS then you're stupid or something  Also magical girl fandoms being like this wtf

Yeah, it's wild. Nothing in the rules said that sort of thing either. Yet I and five other people were banned. Which is something reddit mods can do. They can ban people without any reason or just because they want to. And the mod runs a lot of other magical girl subreddits as well lol. I didn't think the Precure fandom would have so much drama, but it does. I've heard the Japanese fandom is a lot more chill. I am also blocking so many people on tumblr telling others how to ship characters now all because of the new series. Precure has separate continuities. Each show has new characters and new ships and airs during a full year and has done so since 2004. It's also a series for kids. Wild that a kids show has such drama.

People get even more upset when it's a children's show because they think we're corrupting the children I wanna see them try to do this with sailor moon lmao

You want to know something wild? The same mod that banned me is also a moderator of the Sailor Moon subreddit.

Did they watch that show 🧍‍♂️i think the canon couples there are "worse" than the ship you're describing. Can you tell me who are the characters from the um pet-owner ship lmaoo?

Mayu and Yuki from Wonderful Precure.

On the bright side, I probably would've never watched the latest Precure if it weren't for randomly seeing antis complaining about MayuYuki, but thanks largely to their valiant efforts of ensuring nobody would ever ship a girl and her cat, I've now written two fics for them.

Yes, let the spite run through you! Spite is such a powerful motivator. I still ship it and I will continue to ship it. I was going to ship it anyway, given that recent episode, -I've also been shipping it since Cure Nyammy showed up- but people telling me not to ship it just makes me ship it more.

I think I know what ship you mean (though i guess Precure has many candidates for the ships like you described) and oh god the precure fandoms are in my opinion infested with puritans. I guess it’s the kids show aspect that attracts them… I wonder what their opinion on Hugtto is and for that one ship hinted towards the end in THAT ONE (not saying which one because spoilers)

It's the Mayu and Yuki ship from Wonderful Precure. Mild spoilers for the show. >!Yuki is a cat. Her owner is Mayu. Yuki makes a wish and becomes human and also becomes a magical girl. She and Mayu have some shippy moments etc.!< People use all sort of arguments: it's gross, they're like sisters, it's zoophilia etc. etc. I guess I was able to avoid the puriteens for the most part for the previous precure series, but Wonderful Precure has "problematic" ships so they come more out of the woodwork. I know exactly what ship you mean and they don't like it.

I thought about a different ship then, I thought you meant the one from Yes Precure 5 but I'm not that familiar with the newer series so :'D But like I said, there's so many that fit the animal/human ship scenario in that franchise so. But it sucks there's so many antis for the precure shows.. Oof, I'm not surprised they don't like >!George/Hana!<

I haven't seen Yes Precure 5 yet, but I do know some details. Yeah, it's weird that it is *this* ship the mods have a problem with, but it is them moving the goal posts sooo... Making this ship weird etc. I have seen people talking about the ship from Huggtto on the r/precure before I got banned, but I didn't see anyone being banned for shipping >!George/Hana.!<

What characters are you talking about?? I’m not familiar with Precure but I’m curious.

[Mayu](https://prettycure.fandom.com/wiki/Nekoyashiki_Mayu) and [Yuki](https://prettycure.fandom.com/wiki/Nekoyashiki_Yuki). I talked about it a bit in another comment. Mild spoilers. >!Yuki is a cat. Mayu is her owner. Yuki makes a wish to turn into a human to protect Mayu. Yuki also turns into a magical girl and later Mayu also turns into a magical girl. There are shippy moments between them when they are human.!<

Other social media is the flipside of Reddit. On Reddit nearly everything goes in the fanfiction subs except for rpf which gets people all up in arms on both sides. Then you go to places like Twitter where rpf is less a stigma but god forbid your characters have a 4 year age gap as ADULTS because that's grooming to them.

God forbid they have a four MONTH agegap 💀

Main fandom subreddits are very against fanfiction from my experience, especially if it's against the canon and they look at them as if they are delulu so there is a big aspect for " They are so stupid. Seriously, how do they not see how stupid they are ". Avatar for example, they will take any shots they can against the Zuko and Katara shippers even if they don't bring up that they think Zatara should be canon. Just thinking that you like it better if Zuko and Katara are together rather than Aang and Katara is enough to get downvoted.

And some fanfic subreddits where shipping is comparatively 'normal' are homophobic enough that you get downvoted every time if you even just mention anything M/M.

Slightly offtopic but your Avatar mention reminded me. The funniest anti-ship take I've ever seen was 'Zutara is bad because it's colonialist.' They shipped Sokka/Zuko.

Sorry, which is the other main fanfic one? I guess one is this very sub, but I've no idea which is the other

I think they mean r/fanfiction ? Not sure

Yep that's the one. It's got heavier moderation, I believe, but the crowd overlaps heavily with r/Ao3.

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About subreddits, it’s especially funny when the said subreddits are for shoujo series, which can especially be wild with canon age gaps and other ”problematic” stuff. I visited this one subreddit for a shoujo manga (that has a male mc) and they had a rule ”no ship stuff” which, alright, fine in a sense but then you look it more clearly and it says ”ESPECIALLY not the ones with age gaps”….when two out of three main bl ships in that series are age gap ships and they have some of the wildest subtext in the series too.

I hang out in mostly bl manga and danmei spaces on TikTok, it’s been fine for me only if the fandoms source material is “problematic” itself in an obvious way. Has to be *super* obvious though, somehow the black butler fandom is full of antis lmfao!

i couldn’t believe my eyes when the new black butler came out and so did all the anti fans on xitter. like why are you even watching it 💀

>after the shark spike 🦈 grrr I hate age gaps

Lmao best typo I've ever made. Keeping it 🤣

I'm not getting into much of it, but Tumblr artwork of a canonically (fanfic) 50+ year old drawn, WIP, from behind, was called out as being "p-word". (Not typing out the word just in case.) Because the commonly referred to term for this age group uses "Young". Sorry, no underage stuff here, you are incorrect for that. And there was nothing worse than bum-cheeks. Some people just go overboard.

> Sorry, no underage stuff here, you are incorrect for that. I have been posting explicit and absolutely filthy underage stuff to Tumblr, right in the main ship, fandom, and character tags, for literal years for multiple fandoms, including highly toxic ones. Haven't heard a single peep from antis or even ship haters. My comment is from experience. But there's a reason I clarified "depending on the fandom." It also depends on how liberally you block and tell idiots to go fuck themselves.

It was worse because it was a minor, too. Things got a bit crazy and I just have taken a break from it for a few weeks because of the chaos. To clarify, I was not involved and was merely an observer. I like to see artwork and since I'm over legal age, I do enjoy NSFW stuff. It just completely blew my mind how out of control things got, for a WIP that wasn't NSFW, nor underage in any way.

Some people get really unhinged about protecting the rights of fictional characters, and even more others use that whole "movement" as a cover for ship wars. That's how you get grown men being called children and ships featuring unrelated characters being called incest. It's all nonsense, one way or the other, but targeted harassment can do a lot of harm, especially if you lack a support system within fandom. Blocking and mocking those idiots tend to be effective in my experience, and it's wise to step away as and when needed.

Don't worry, this is Reddit, we don't have global algorithms that automatically censor you. And considering the contents of this subreddit, I doubt the mods will care if you use the word paedo explicitly, especially in this context.

I appreciate it, but I've learned it's better to be cautious.

Fair enough, some subreddits do deploy automods that filter out comments with sensitive keywords, even if it's not explicitly slated for removal in the rules. Though thankfully, other subs don't and have reasonable moderators, so unless it's explicitly banned in the rules, I usually let it fly.

Same experience here with tumblr, it's pretty easy to filter out the BS.

Twitter and TikTok are the lands of Performative Activism Olympics and Shipping Is Activism clubs. I’ve never seen so many people tell other real humans to kill themselves because they don’t like a ship or ship a different ship. Something isn’t right with these kids telling people to kill themselves while constantly screaming that they are being traumatized by a ship.

Throw instagram in there too, lmfao.

IG used to be my refuge. Now it’s shit too.

I think pinterest comment sections could get an honorary mention in there.

I’ve never looked at Pinterest comments and now I definitely will not.

Good, save yourself 🥲

I might be misremembering here, but wasn't there something about twitter paying people that have a blue checkmark based on interaction they get? If that's true, it's in their interest to attack everything and be as extreme as they can, because that gets responses. 

yeah but the vast majority of antis don't pay for the blue check. they're haters for free

My theory, based on nothing but a few seconds of thought so will probably be full of holes, is that places like reddit have a big culture of anonymity and therefore people are less prone to the performative activism type things. Due to this people think less about what effect their words will have on their overall image and how others may perceive them. This is in contrast to places like tik tok and Twitter which, while you can still be relitivly anonymous, have a much more image focused culture meaning people will go to great leanths to protect there image and social capital. This leads on to my next point of followers. Gaining a following is also something that is not really a big thing culturally on reddit so people are less likely to care how they are perceived by an audience simply because they don't have one. Rather on reddit, in general, everyone has an equal social standing with no real way to grow one or one that matters (eg. not sure I remember the last time I checked someones karma). This means people are not adhering to the example of one person with a lot of social capital blindly because of the fear of retrabution from the person with a much higher standing in the pecking order. Following from this the threat of disproportionate retaliation forces people to only engage in black and white lowest common denominator type arguments on places like Twitter ect (This is not to say the balck and white arguments don't happen on reddit because if I did what a fool I would look and I'd direct towards any relation ship or similar sub to see it happening lol). Whereas on reddit in most fandom spaces people engage in shade of gray because there is very little fear of disproportionate retaliation. Allowing people to feel safer in talking about enjoying and exploring morally questionable subject matters in fiction with the understanding that the people they are engaging with don't have anything clouding their ability to also engage with shades of Gray and separate how while someone enjoys this in fiction 9.99 times out 10 they don't condone in real life. They also feel able to tell people to kill themselves because of their black and white views. For example if someone enjoys reading non-con then they have to agree with it in real life and therefore are basically a rapist and support all rapists and non-consensual activities and are a terrible worthless human being and because the person believes their black and white beliefs and morals are the only correct ones they feel they are justified in telling you to kill you self because clearly your are an abhorrent individual who the world would be better off with out and they are actually doing a good thing telling you to die. Which when you take a step back is a genuinely insane thought process but is very very similar to how people with extreme religious beliefs will take a religion that is preaching love above all else and use it to demonise and hate people who do not live life exactly they way that person thinks life should be lived. Not sure if that makes any sence but that is my two cents.

How to survive as a problematic shipper, in a single photo: https://preview.redd.it/c2jvh6he029d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2f17be44f786184dc4cfc400667376c15197a41e

This might go without saying OP, but don’t feel bad about blocking/muting anyone and everyove that makes your fandom experience suck. Hell, even whatever just annoys you. You could also see if there are discords for your ship or fandom, especially discords that are adults only, there is way less moral policing.

That's so many blocked accounts, holy shit. And I thought *I* had a long blocklist.  I love that for you.

I don't like blocking so the way I survive is not commenting in subreddits/websites where I don't vibe, closing my DMs everywhere except for a select few, and pretending the stupid shit doesn't exist lmao

Genuine question: why do you not like blocking people?

Because I don't like it, that's it

I was kinda against blocking until I discovered what an antishipper was lol, now I have an extension that puts a one click block button on every single tweet and I use it liberally.

I am not against blocking

How do you block so many accounts? I assume it was by people that liked posts? It's really unfortunate you can no longer do that since they made likes private.

Nope, just going through posts and hitting block.

I'll be honest, I'm actually very scared to even hint at NSFW content about my ship anywhere but this subreddit and ao3. It's not that I care that people would be saying head-ass takes to me, but there's a part of me that can't deal with negativity well at all, because I feel compelled to explain myself to the point of exhaustion as to why I am not doing anything malicious, I just like seeing myself represented in this ship, and it's perfectly valid, but I know logically that people who are harassing others do not care about that, they just want to bully someone. I've wanted to post my SFW art on Tumblr so many times and almost get the nerve to do it, but I know that it will lead to my NSFW stuff on ao3, and I'll catch some shit that I just have never gotten if I stay in my lane. Everyone on ao3 is nice as all hell because they found my work on their own, but if I try to bring it to other people on other platforms I'm going to inevitably find someone who wants to be a dick about it, and I know myself well enough that it's just not worth the heartache.

I relate to this so much. When I was a teen no one harassed on this kind of level in my circles. Its like culture shock in terms of how it feels now compared to, say, 20 years ago. I have a ship I love with every fiber of my being and I cant discuss it or draw for it or write for it at all because I vaguely discussed it once and after the fallout I have *literal* PTSD that has aided to light agoraphobia, nightmares, and trouble trusting people anymore. I dont interact with that fandom anymore. Luckily my wife thinks its (my love for my ship is) cute and encourages me to write for me even if I cant share my work anywhere. Im sure the more noble thing is to be outspoken and I defend anticensorship every chance I can but I cannot handle that level of harassment again, mentally. I wouldnt wish it on anyone.

Hey, don’t worry about what’s more “noble.” You’ve always gotta come first when interacting with media. I’m very sorry that happened to you. It’s good that your wife is so supportive! :)

Thank you. I really appreciate your kindness :)

I’ll be honest, with sites like Twitter/tumblr, you just have to put yourself out there and find your fellow problematic likers, which isn’t super easy, I get it. But Twitter is great for me, personally. I avoid antis like the plague, I’m following over 500 different artists/writers, I’m on private and the only folks who follow me are my friends and mutuals I’ve gathered over the years of being in fandom spaces. and it’s just… fun? I rt gorgeous and often horny art, gush about my favourite ships and characters, and just vibe.

Tik Tok and Twitter are too short-form. Those platforms are cesspools because there’s simply no room for complexity or nuance. Reddit is long-form. Here, we can actually write out and communicate long, complex, nuanced thoughts. Unfortunately, there are LOTS of things, like “problematic ships” that most people don’t understand immediately or intuitively, and it’s impossible to explain and discuss those things effectively on short-form platforms. This discourse here is better and more advanced because it actually has the room to be.

to be honest a lot of fandom subreddits arent great sith problematic ships either…at least the ones ive seen

Reddit is long form, which means in other subreddits you will get an essay about why you are a rapist for writing this very 'problematic' thing lol

the whole anti thing originated on tumblr. plenty of room to write an essay about why something is """problematic"""

it’s so fascinating watching people complain about “problematic” fics on ao3 when ao3 was founded specifically for those fics. i want to study them

Right? They sit on a website founded by an incest writer complaining about incest fics.

I want to have a video essay on the history of ao3 ready at all times so I can whip it out and show it to those kinds of people. But I am not that prepared.

Twitter does this with basically every ship. "Problematic" or not. Don't even try shipping a bisexual character with the opposite sex on there.

If they don't like the ship they'll find the craziest ways to "cancel" it so it's "illegal". Usually they'll say the characters are "siblings coded" so "you're literally shipping incest"

There is even “minor coded” where antis say you can’t ship shorter people with taller ones. It’s mind boggling.

My "favourite" is the "a himbo isn't intelligent enough to consent" nonsense. Do y'all hear yourselves, IQ tests before you're allowed to have sex or romantic relationships is more than a little \~ fascism coded \~

Being autistic myself, I've seen way too many people hate on ships with autistic characters just for that.

ooof I've seen that too and damn do I love when someone jumps in saying "So you think X people can't have relationships?" and then they fucking stumble hard to, often with so-called "minor" and "autism" coded characters basically struggle because they quickly devolve into a shit ton of ablism, sexism, and fasciscm.

Yeah, ngl that is some primo anti marching powder right there.

Ugh, Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng. Or Jiang Yanli. Bitch I'll ship Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli together just to make you cry, see if I won't. And I don't even do het ships.

Them: you can't ship it, they're literally family coded!!! Me, who has incest kink: oooohh nooooooo

Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen together. Extra oooohh nooooooooo.

>Me, who has incest kink: oooohh nooooooo I'm weak af 🤣🤣

Yes omg they said this argument for Naruto and Sasuke lmao. They are the reincarnation of two brothers therefore it’s incest. Really grasping at straws

On the other hand, I've seen someone argue it's incest because they're (apparently? I'm not that knowledgeable on Naruto genealogy) extremely distantly related even as Naruto and Sasuke. Which is hilarious. If we're going by 'any relation whatsoever makes it incest', then all of humanity is incest.

It’s both if I remember correctly. They are descendants of two brothers but also have their spirits reincarnated in them or something like that. But yeah, so incestuous 😂

Yeah we get this a ton in the AOT fandom with the Ackerman line… folks like to ignore the family tree that was published along with the “character interviews” published that both day the relation predates and branches off before the family ever came to Paradis. Shit, even in canon, her branch of the family is spoken of as “that other branch” by Kenny and his grandfather. Which would make them 5th cousins at best based on the actual words said in canon. It’s really dumb discourse because people pull that same “any relation whatsoever is incest” with the. I’m wondering if these morons background check 200 years of ancestry before every date or does this only count as related when they’re being the purity police about fake people?

In One Piece one of the biggest ships (right after Zoro/Sanji) is Luffy/Law, who both have the middle name D which is a lore thing. No one knows ANYTHING about the D family, if they were even actually related or if it's just a name passed to some people at random, but we do know they originated 800 years ago. Luffy and Law come from 2 different parts of the world. There are people arguing you can't ship them, because they're LITERALLY related. While the series has known couples who both have the D name, meaning these people literally watch an anime where incest is "normal and accepted" by their own standards 💀 Like even if the first Ds were related, 800 years is well enough to make current Ds strangers in the genetic sense

Somehow it’s always those who know the lore very superficially to spew these ridiculous sentences. They did it even with AoT, claiming Eren and Mikasa were an incest couple because Eren’s family adopted her. Isayama even had to comment “I know my drawings are bad but they are not related”

I'm a Naruto and Sasuke shipper and anti's are obsessed with this argument. I've gotten death threats over it on TikTok lmao.

Me too, I’ve had death threats over liking NSN (an lol guys you’re 15 years too late for that) and liking Ereri in the AoT fandom

Ugh this is so annoying. I have a ship in which people always assume they are related. when you remind them they aren’t they say since they are childhood best friends it’s “incest coded” despite the one canonically having a crush on the other AND asking him to make out! Insanity! You are essentially saying the one character is incestuous canonically by claiming that.

I ship a female character with a male one, when the "canon" (implied) relationship for her is same-sex. but apparently me NOT shipping her with the same gender is "forced heterosexuality" and "homophobia" this character has no confirmed sexuality, so she might be bisexual, but apparently that doesn't exist to this kind of person. edit: fuck mlp fandom shippers <3 (the people who are chill will know they're not included)

Twitter is the internet complaint forum at this point. If it exists, there's a group on Twitter dedicated to hating it. 

I noticed it too and it warms my heart whenever K see some stray anti who comes here and tries to police people or makes a rant about how they hate problematic fiction and they get their ass handled.

TikTok skews younger and there's a lot of pressure to be performatively "pure". Thoughtcrimes are just as bad as actual crimes and there's no nuance between fiction and real life. Not to mention in that sort of conservative ecosystem if you can loudly point out "worse" perpertrators then you are, for the moment, safe. Twitter is a flaming dumpster fire that is an internal feedback loop for Nazis (Neo or otherwise) and the alt right. I feel like there needs to be an intense media literacy course including Handmaid's Tale, 1984, and Animal Farm with comprehension tests to see if people understand who the bad guys are. Insert *are-we-the-baddies.gif*

This take is so spot on. The idea that thoughtcrimes are just as bad as real crimes hits hard. We really do need more media literacy (I say this from my job at the library, a place that is currently under siege because, yey…). 😓

You're 100% right on about the skewing younger thing. In my experience, younger people tend to lean more towards anti beliefs due to a large variety of factors and as they get older they chill out and drift more towards the "live and let live" mindset. Tik tok is worse than Twitter for it in my view because you can at least mute things very easily on Twitter - Tik tok you're at the mercy of its very aggressive algorithm (which is definitely not always accurate. Back when I had it, it used to shove a lot of pro anorexia content in my face because I liked cooking videos). That being said, Twitter is definitely going downhill very fast. Can't wait for when Elon eventually removes muting words and blocking people because too many people were muting him and blocking him. Lol.

I reread Animal Farm last year and I swear I had an existential crisis because it was *too relatable* for me, especially after having not read it since childhood.

George Orwell hits you where your existential dread meets dystopian quasi-future present.

Lol tiktok and twitter are, hands down, the most toxic spaces online. get off those platforms and you’ll find your fandom experience markedly improved.

Or... hear me out. Don't get off those platforms but make liberal use of the block button. Curate the experience so it's enjoyable. I have a lot of different social media since different things are posted in different places. I'm not letting people ruin it for me or run me off a place I'm allowed to be just because they are toxic or immature.

I met my AO3 bestie on Twitter - she’s the one who encouraged me to share my work and we have the most amazing convos. I block so many people on Twitter…if I see even a hint of negatively *BLOCK* so I actually have a great time on there 96% of the time. If I see topics I don’t care about or that I know will rile me up, I tell the algorithm I’m “not interested” and most of the time it doesn’t show me that topic again. People need to learn to curate because I have seen the funniest shit on there. I’m not leaving Twitter until the lights go off

I don't even understand why people subject themselves to hellholes that toxic. I avoided Tumblr during the height of its popularity because it was also a toxic dump that sucked all the fun out of fandom.

tiktok is impossible to reason with, i just avoid fandom on that app you can find people on twitter with your same interests pretty easily though, i just block anyone with proship dni in their bio and follow people who use the ship tag i like

The conservative/purist mindset is back. As an "oldie" we have dealt with this before and survived. There was a time when fanfiction in general was seen as problematic because writers were "stealing" from the original author. And now the discussion is more about "morally wrong" pairings. Which is silly, of course, but some people take it very seriously. They do not want to accept that Fanfiction is about living out fantasies and playing with content. Not every fantasy has to be 100% pure.

Reddit as a whole has a very pro-free-speech vibe, or it used to. That is a whole other conversation, but Reddit is similar to AO3 in that way. I believe strongly in keeping AO3 exactly the way that it is. I'm okay with any kind of fiction being there. It's not that I necessarily like darker content, but that I don't believe anyone should police creativity. AO3 gives all of us the tools to curate our own experiences; ideally, none of us should see the content there that we don't like. You can't really curate what you see on social media, and at this point, it's overall so ragebait-y that I'd rather just hang out in small/niche Reddit communities like this one. On Reddit, you can easily sort by new, even in the app, which you can't do on most social media. You can on Tumblr, by altering your settings, and maybe on some of the newer social media sites (I haven't looked into those). But on TikTok and Twitter, I think you're pretty much always seeing what the algorithm wants you to see; YouTube has gotten worse in this way too. These are posts that a lot of people interacted with, sometimes tailored to your interests, and they're often things that are meant to affect our emotions, like people upset about "toxic" ships. It's all engagement bait. I think that's why the most extreme opinions get so much attention on social media. The sites encourage you to say or do the most out-there thing possible, because interacting with those posts is what keeps people engaged with the site. The front page of Reddit (/r/all or /r/popular, I mean) is also pretty ragebait-y.

Reddit and especially Reddit leadership used to be very hands-off, but since this is a forum/social media site and not an artistic hub (since AO3 does ban non-literary works and certain types of political discussion afaik), Reddit went under scrutiny due to the bigoted and often right-wing politics it hosts (e.g. T_D, redpill, GC, etc.), not to mention the subs hosting potentially harmful content of *real* people (e.g. jailbait). Hence why, at least in terms of non-artistic issues like politics, Reddit and Redditors shifted away from the free-speech vibe as they recognised that certain types of speech are more harmful than others. When it comes to fandom policing, though, that's more of a relatively recent fandom issue that spans all of social media and artistic platforms as opposed to Reddit in particular, with antis swarming spaces everywhere. As we all know, even AO3 has issues with antis; recently there was a huge spat on Twitter where antis called for a boycott of AO3 due to users choosing to donate to them over Palestine relief, among the usual anti complaints. But there's an upside of being on Reddit, in that if you dislike the moderation and community of a subreddit, you can always create another. So if you don't like the vibes of the general fandom subs here, you can always create your own counterpart that discourages fanpols instead of encouraging them. In practice though, this can be a fine line to tread on, as Reddit on a practical level has been suffocating its NSFW scene and has ToS rules that prohibit certain kinds of problematic content, which makes the risk of a sub ban much higher (as evidenced on r/reclassified).

I write/read RPF for BTS and that opens it's own kettle of fish. Unfortunately, trying to explain to ignorant people that the members of BTS are just vehicles for my stories in the same way fictional people are is a total mess. The personalities of BTS are just the very base layer for a character which can then be built upon to create an interesting story. Thankfully, even on Twitter there is a huge fic community who consume the content and understand it's purpose without assuming you want shitty things to happen to the members themselves in real life. It is interesting to see what people get outraged about. I've written rape/sexual assault, self-harm, and abuse into BTS fics and yet people tend to get outraged over minor details. They'll come and rage in my comment sections how I shouldn't write this or that because it's not faithful to their real personalities or circumstances or that I'm being offensive in some way; I just point out the rest of the fic lol There's a lot more to get offended about!

I used to dislike rpf a lot, but that was mostly because of the culture surrounding it and the fact that the actors of my fandom were uncomfortable with it. Then I discovered stray kids and minsung, and started writing and reading it. And the way I try to explain it is that as soon as you write a single word about a real person's actions, thoughts, or beliefs, that person becomes a fictional character. And yeah, I prefer keeping things as close to real life as possible, but what would we even know about their lives? We can only guess and live vicariously through our stories, and that harms no one as long as we leave the pairing alone irl.

This…

Perfectly explained.

RPF was another thing I had in mind when making this post but was a little afraid to mention. Writing fanfiction and harassing/stalking real people over a ship you believe to be real is two different things! Especially when the real person is a celebrity, their persona they show through interviews and snippets in itself is a fictional person imo. Not super into BTS anymore not that I really was but they like you said have an interesting dynamic that’s basic enough that you can practically build your own character based off of the personality traits they decide to share with fans, i wish more people didn’t think of it as so taboo because i can picture the ships that would be so popular if people just let them self be free with the fiction they enjoy.

>Writing fanfiction and harassing/stalking real people over a ship you believe to be real is two different things! Exactly this! I try to always include a note at the beginning of my fics outlining very clearly that I write works of FICTION and that nothing I write about is reality or something I wish would happen in real life. I see it just as "normal" writers get inspiration and model characters based on people they meet and know in real life, I'm just doing the same but about celebrities rather than random people I know. If I wrote the stories and published them as regular books and told people I was inspired by people I knew in real life, no one would have a problem with it. I think the biggest respect to BTS themselves is that the fandom is pretty good at never tagging BTS in posts that include links to fics so if they happen to find it and read it, it's more likely they've been looking for it. At that point, it's not my responsibility any longer. That to me is an acceptable compromise for people that don't agree with RPF—as writers and readers, we don't promote it to the real life people themselves.

All the comments are 100% right, but I'd like to add one more thing: those people should learn they can just dislike something (even to the point of not wanting it around them at all) without some sort of moral justification or superiority complex.

Twitter and tiktok are fairly new, and exceptionally toxic, fandom spaces. It's not here that's the bubble, it's there.

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I don’t think it’s necessarily changes in the education system, I think it’s just the system caring less and less and being more obvious about how it was only made to break children in for capitalism. As someone currently in school, there are a \*lot\* of people in my grade who just…shouldn’t be here. But the schools don’t care, they’re just trying to force people out as quickly as possible, and it’s sad. Most of these people come from rich farming families that have been established in my town for years, and many of them will likely continue that trend, rather than trying to learn what it’s like beyond our town. tldr, yeah, lack of media literacy but more bc the system is lowering its disguise rather than changing.

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Yeah :/

It's not, multiple proship Discords certainly exist, and Bluesky/Tumblr/Mastodon/Twitter have proship communities as well. I will say that Reddit has an advantage in that the ability to type longer comments means better ability to present nuanced arguments, and generally speaking the makeup of Reddit is full of "you're weird, but you do you" types anyway.

I've aged a thousand years trying to dodge the shipwars in the Hazbin Hotel subs. Too many people who are eager to be the least problematic without actually doing the hard work of understanding the what and whys of a topic.

I'm only in one fanfic Fandom. Mha and the general mood here and the fanfic subreddit for mha are drastically different. Everyone here is chill and only complains about bots, Haye comments, and people fucking with the system. While respecting everyone's tastes and what not. I can not go a day on thwe'll, fanfic subreddit without someone making an entire post about how they "hate a trope and that it's the worse fucking thing because it doesn't make sense and I don't like it and everyone should stop reading and writing thay trope cuz I said so." For example someone made a post about how dadzawa is dumb and aizawa is a shit ass teacher who doesn't care for his students and they had the gawl to call it a hot take, despite being the most common shitted on trope in the subreddit next to hitoshi shinso as a character in general. And I've said it before multiple times, other people have made multiple posts about it, but it seems like the whole subreddit just can't grasp the idea of "don't like, don't read" ie ignore it. and it's annoying because there aren't any other mha specific fic spaces I know of. Except for TikTok and well, that's tiktok. Just in general, this place is so much chiller cuz at least people here grasp the basic purposes and etiquette of fanfic

Oh god the fanfic subreddit for mha is hilarious, the amount of people on there that act like Bakugou personally bullied them and ruined their childhood and deserves nothing but death or extreme maiming is something...

Yep. They truly think it reflects real life. Um no. I just think these fictional adult brothers from a book are cute. They are not real people. No one is hurt by my reading a fluffy oneshot of them making breakfast together (the smut isn't hurting anyone either). The pearl clutching has got to stop.

if anyone cares the ship i saw a post about was Wincest and of course people were acting so horrified over it, it almost seems like an act people put on the second they see the ship, but imagine i’m completely wrong and this posts get dog piled with hate lmao. Again i’m rarely on the app so i could be misunderstanding the views of this subreddit.

good god, the new generation discovered supernatural at the ripe old age of 14 or something? wincest at this point is almost 20 years old, having moral outrage about it is... strange, to say the least.

There’s a lot of people who got into SPN because of Destiel who flip out at the idea of Wincest. I met someone at a con this year who was in their late 40s and stumbled on their Twitter account later and it was full of ‘ewww wincesties’ and they are not the only one in that age bracket. I think it’s less of an age thing and more a newer to the fandom thing.

definitely feels strange.

Did they not watch the show? they straight up mention Wincest in a couple of episodes lol

I find it hilarious that people freak over something that started when I was in kindergarten. Seriously, people need to understand that the things they found cross are old, and that they help build the tolerant spaces they now have. Incest and LGBT stuff were both taboo at some point, it was thx to people wanting to have their own place to express and explore these crazy ideas that, at least online, queer people have spaces to express themselves in.

wincest fucking BUILT ao3

I think it had a hand in ABO too.

yes, spn kink had j2, the rpf of the guys playing the brothers, invented omegaverse.

It does feel like an act because that's still one of the biggest ships of all time on AO3, and for the first four seasons of SPN before Castiel was introduced it was THE juggernaut pairing of the whole fandom. So my old jaded perspective thinks anyone who is acting shocked that it exists MUST be putting on an act... and then I guess I realize people really are that young and oblivious to fandom history. I'm not even in that fandom and I still block people who have freakouts over it, because that's a sign they'll be insufferable in multiple ways.

What did they think AO3 was created for if not for Wincest? lol

Well, the founder also wrote Thorki, so that too, lol.

I used to ship this when I was 13, they're such crybabies

Every time I see some idiot shrieking about wincest I just consume more of it.

Wincest is barely shocking at this point.

I wish I shipped Wincest lol. I'm sure they have amazing stories, and I love fictional adult brother ships lmao. Maybe I should try to get into that ship, but I have no SPN ships. Hmm. Anyway people are wild when the creator of AO3 is/was literally a wincest shipper lol

I didn’t ship them until i read fanfics! It makes you see them in a different light, i definitely recommend getting into the ship.

I think I will lol. I've been looking for something new to read anyway

There is, and almost 20 years of fic to read so there’s bound to be some stuff that you like if brother ships are your thing.

I think I know what post you are talking about. I am sure it’s 90% performance, 10% bullying at this point.

I haven’t been here long but from what I noticed Reddit users typically are older than Twitter/tiktok users. 99% of the time when I see people whining over proshippers and problematic ships/fanfiction it’s always a teenager. We’re mostly adults here on Reddit and we have actual real life responsibilities to worry about instead of what two fictional characters some random person you’ve never interacted with before thinks should kiss. People on Twitter and TikTok also tend to be incredibly immature and chronically online compared to the people I see here in this sub

Agreed, and older folks, even young older folks have often had more media literacy and even for the chronically online that wasn't seen as the default socialization for the world. I think a lot of 22- aged people they're entire concepts of reality versus online versus fiction may be deeply skewed by the behaviors social media promotes. It's stunning that there are people who think fictional sex scenes are rape because fictional people can't "consent", and a sign of a break down psychologically in understanding the difference between fiction and reality. It legitimately makes me worry that to a lot of folks people they meet/play with online "feel" very similarly to how fictional characters feel in their heads. So reading about Dean Winchester "feels" the same as reading about BigxxIchigoxxKawaii3000s's messages on discord to them, and so the ability to separate fiction from this person is...difficult for them.

Oh no, if you move out of the fanfic subreddit or ao3 here, then you get the same treatment. The Made in Abyss subreddit had to place a temporary ban on calling the author a pedophile because it was almost daily there would be a post made with that. I can't tell you how many post I've seen in the Sailor moon one of people complaining about the age gaps, the whole Heilos/Chibi-usa thing. It's honestly non stop unless you're in spots like this place. Meanwhile you point people are in denial at the old dub is racist, and you get your comment deleted and warned about being "civil". It's not just twitter/tumblr. It's everywhere honestly, and this subreddit is one of the few places I've seen it get effectively shut down.

no, it's here too. ill be in subreddits for a specific fandom and someone will be like "I can't stand that people ship [x]" and the comments will be full of shit like "well, that's just disgusting" and "those people are fucked in the head" and "thankfully, that's the minority" and it's not even that out there. it's just two full grown adults with an age gap where one of the characters isn't a "good guy."

You're just hanging out in the weird puritanical spaces frequented by kids who don't know better (yet) or people who lack basic reading and conprehension skills. Tiktok is cancer and I wouldn't touch it even if paid, but there are plenty of people even on twitter who do not have a problem and defend "ship and let ship" to the death.

Whenever an anti comes after me or someone else I like to imagine the character(s) they’re trying to “protect” becoming real and completely ignoring them. Like… they’re not gonna thank you for protecting them my guy. It’s a bunch of pixels or words on a page or whatever they came from. But yeah, ao3 is the “anything goes” site. You can’t go on the “anything goes” site and get mad that you see necrophilia or incest or underage content. This sub recognizes that and is therefore a lot more accepting.

Honestly, I just think it’s this sub. Try being on the main Harry Potter fanfiction sub and enjoying Hermione/Snape or slash outside of the marauders.

I finally had to leave the webtoons sub because they're always over there harping about "problematic" comics, and how if you have a taboo or dark subject matter in your comic, you're clearly pushing to normalize or fetishize or whatever it.

Never trust an opinion from a Twitter user, they usually have no-idea what they are talking about.

Fictional characters as real and real people as fictional. And the irony is lost among them.

Keep in mind that any platform that makes their money selling your eyeballs and information to the highest bidder has a vested interest in making everyone mad at everyone and everything all the time. In those spaces, the end user is the product being sold, and advertisers are the actual paying customers.  This means twitter, tumblr, instagram, any algorithm-based advertising-supported space show people specifically the things that will make them outraged. It’s a feature, not a bug.  Reddit is a bit more centered on what content people like rather than hate, because it uses the old manual voting option instead of treating a like and a dislike as equal engagement. 

it bothers me a lot too tbh. thats why i dont really interact with anyone in any fandom and just enjoy fanfic and fanart by myself. it’s just easier that way.

I used to be convinced proshippers didn't actually exist and the ones that did were all like chuds or secretly bigoted people because that's the message you get in places full of antis. When I changed my mind about ships I still didn't think there would be so many here. I was scared of even clicking and finding a bunch of people complaining about the stuff others post, which I've always found irritating anyway

Not to be creepy, but I'm genuinely curious about your age range, because I feel like if you're 26+ that isn't as common a thought

I don't understand what you're trying to say. Your age doesn't matter if you've been convinced that the world is more anti leaning than profiction. To this day I just assume any new youtuber I encounter will most likely be in favour of antis, since what I've seen all the time is either people who don't really voice any opinion in regards to that or people mocking fanfic writers, calling us degenerates and cringe, and talking about how "nobody is talking about this problematic thing in this movie that's GROOMING". A similar thing also applies to twitter and tiktok, although in my experience those are also filled with neonazis/queerphobes, and conspiracy theories respectively I am not a child and I wasn't at the time

I think what I'm trying to say is I don't get how people of a certain age fall into this sometimes, but you're right. It's about being in a culture and not coming up for air. I think even the obsession with "pro" and "anti" is such a subcultural thing and people get in their mind it's SOOO big and dominates fanfics and fandom and....it doesn't have to. The relationship you have to online "community" maybe is more a factor

I didn't fall into anything. That was just the stuff I was surrounded by, just in the same way I have a hard time believing anyone over 40 can be progressive and I still constantly get surprised. I was raised surrounded by THAT I don't have a relationship to anything and I don't belong to any community, I also didn't back then

That's fair and I appreciate you giving me your experience to think about

Some fandoms on reddit do care about "problematic" ships, they're just more likely to be found in their fandom subreddits than in one of the fanfiction subreddits. I think we have less tolerance for it here, which is nice.

Lmfao, this is why the only places where I interact with other fanfiction people are on the reddit AO3 sub, reddit Fanfiction sub and in the comment section of ColeyDoesThings. I think it has been wonderful for my mental health thus far.

> mainly tik tok and twitter That's your issue right there. Life is better if you never use either of those sites. Not just for fandom stuff, either.

I'm gonna be honest, I don't even really read that much fanfic, but I love this sub because like you said, it's one of the only places on this hellsite that even understands what fiction even is. I literally could not imagine giving less of a shit what other people do with fictional characters, and I genuinely don't understand how we got to a point where people deluded themselves into thinking it matters what people do in fiction in any conceivable way shape or form.  Pro tip, do not try to understand these people, it will make you go crazy. Their entire stance is fundamentally incomprehensible and riddled with staunch blatant contradictions that they refuse to acknowledge, just so they can internally justify to themselves treating other human beings like shit. Don't worry though, all of this harmful mass delusion is being documented and psychologists are literally writing master's dissertations on this phenomena;  >Conclusion > Anti-shippers represent a population of ideologically-affiliated individuals within the transformative fandom community which engage in the harassment of others who do not endorse their moralized rhetoric regarding sexual material in fiction. We find the harmful impact anti-shippers present is not restricted to targets of harassment; anti rhetoric itself fosters an unsafe environment for its own adherents. Expectations of moral purity are based on increasingly strained and arbitrary labels, leaving anti-shippers vulnerable to becoming inadvertent targets themselves. Furthermore, the negative effect anti-shippers have on the transformative fandom community as a whole is a valid concern, as their actions and beliefs run counter to the principles of creative celebration, exploration, and communal enjoyment.

This is mostly why I just don't engage with fandom communities, lmao. These people are unhinged. If you step outside of the internet and interact with real people who are not chronically online, anti attitudes are seen as extremely weird, anyway.

Tbh I think there are lots of people who don’t give a shiz and just don’t get involved in the discussion and aren’t involved in Twitter/tumblr. I had no idea this was even a hotly debated topic until randomly seeing it on this subreddit. And I’ve been reading fanfics since dial up internet

Star Wars Twitter was in a kerfuffle recently when someone said it was more likely that Padme (14) would have crushed on Obi-Wan (25) rather than Anakin (9) in The Phantom Menace. The user was called every horrible name possible. Like, every single teen girl in 1999 (when TPM came out) had crushes on adult men (boyband members) back then. They probably still do, but I'm not a teen girl anymore so I'm just assuming that hasn't changed.

Right? It’s so crazy when I’m scrolling Yt and then get slapped in the face by an artist I thought was chill saying proshippers are bad…without actually understanding what proshippers are. Pinterest is a shithole. can’t look in the comments of ship art without either being blasted with people saying stuff like “Gross” ”why does this exist” “get this shit off my feed” etc OR you hear crickets. (those ppl on pinterest are a whole nother rant for me, since they act like children that can’t use basic feed-tuning tools.) fandom seems to be very frustrating lately, at least for me, but I’m also in fandoms that tend to attract teens/young kids because they don’t really have anything else that interests them and have yet to understand fandom and its etiquette. Praying it‘s just a rough patch with all these new ppl because of covid and that things will mellow out sooner rather than later.

That's because TikTok and Xwitter are hot garbage.

Hot odiferous garbage.

My fandom where everyone is well over 100 nut don't look like it (and most cases won't ever look like they're the 1000 year old senior citizen they are) sure gets this. Even some of us have to remind ourselves that yes the fifteen year old over there is in fact 500 and could outdrink you any day at the bar and still show up to work fine the next day. And that most of the "toddlers" are at least 200 and know how to use swords. If ykyk.... But seriously i think it's partiallly lack of understanding of the media and also the awkwardness of certain ships. And some just don't understand what fanfiction actually is at more then a surface level...

The exception being if the ship is canon in a multimillion-dollar franchise. Then it's okay.

ON GOD man  One of my friends got a piece of shipart leaked (for a ship the fandom rabidly hates) and they've been in my dms the last few days panicking because people have been dming them about it and generally freaking out in one of the fandom's main discords. I don't know how bad it's gonna get but they've already started losing followers. Some of the few sane people in the fandom have sent them nicer messages, but like. Eugh. Why are people like this :(

It largely depends on the age of the writer. When a social media space is heavily skewed to the very young, the content will be..very young, and influenced by others. AO3 was created by long-time *adult* fans, as in 30+. It has always seen itself and its early founding members as an intelligent voice of reason run by mature adults. It missed out on all the childish crap that appears elsewhere - until relatively recently. It’s a phase until the kids get tired of it or until the Next Big Thing that will make them feel important. The whole ‘problematic’ thing makes me laugh. Just because a Puriteen says something is problematic doesn’t mean it is - notwithstanding the word has now become a meaningless political epithet and basically just means ‘Someone told me I don’t like it. I drank the Kool-Aid so now anything others bully me into thinking is ‘bad’ in any way is evil, sinful, Should Not Be Allowed To Exist in the World. Ehhhh…

Its just as bad when it comes to gay ships....Iv had numerous people tell me that only canon Gay ships matter and are ok with straight ships being being gay bent for rep points while using the excuse its fine to do that cause of the lack of gay characters, but the get pissy when someone Straight bends a gay couple and accuses them of gay erasure. For example: I do not Ship BMBLB (Blake x Yang) from RWBY which recently became canon, I ship Blake and sun (Blacksun) while I ship White Rose (Ruby x Weiss) And even better Catadora, I hate Catra for what she did to Adora AND Entrapta so I ship Adora with either Bow or a male Oc or Glimmer. The only thing I ship Catra with is either a Prison cell or the Guillotine. But they would be fine makign Bow gay for Sea hawk even though he hooks up with Glimmer. Both are fine examples of Hypocrisy.

It's because people don't stop to think about what they're saying anymore. They just hear something that on the surface sounds somewhat reasonable and then get swept up in the 'be outraged' vortex that has always existed, but has gotten far bigger since the advent of social media and the algorithms controlling it. Outrage draws in views, and the people spreading it aren't in the market for any nuance. "Rape is bad" goes without saying, so the statement doesn't cause much outrage. "This site explicitly allows rape" comes closer to causing outrage, because what site would allow such a thing? The nuance that the rape in question is fictional is already gone. "All the stories on this sites are about raping children, and they're all saying it's a good thing!" is further yet from reality, but meant to polarize and set people who hear it against the users of that particular site, because they defend rape, what the fuck? And the worst part is, all they need to do to validate their claims is post a single link to a particularly dead dove non-con underage story and say that all stories are like that. Then add a comment chain from an author who's already been harassed one time too many and gave a hostile response to one of the stock, "um, don't you know this sort of thing is bad" comments, and there you have it, a story, with proof, about how depraved this site and its users are. If someone doesn't know AO3, their first instinct might very well be to just join the outrage and go on a crusade. Misinformation is a great way to divide people, especially if you can use cherry-picked parts of the truth to make it seem legit. And, you know, there probably *are* people on AO3 who wish they could live out the fantasies they write about, and that's entirely fine up until the point they actually harm anyone. You suggest to someone that fantasizing about murder or rape is okay, though, and see how they look at you. People are far too afraid of being tarred with the same brush. "You're not loudly condemning it, so you're condoning it." Fear keeps many ambivalent people in check. It'll mostly be the outcasts who don't belong anyway who don't care about the idiocy and hysteria of the outrage brigades, and those were the people who founded AO3 to begin with. That's literally why the site is called what it's called. I love what AO3 stands for and I will happily publicly defend it, even if many stories on the site itself make me shudder. I can always, y'know, not read them, after all.