#space social media exists and i will not take criticism

[communistkenobi]

I’ve been thinking a lot about fandom recently, both as someone who has engaged with it regularly for over a decade on various platforms and also as someone who has increasingly become disenchanted with those spaces. Not only because of pervasive issues of (especially anti-Black) racism, misogyny, transphobia/homophobia, and the like, but the particular way those things take shape within fandom.

At the most basic level I think fandom has a fundamental methodological problem with the way it approaches texts, be they shows, books, movies, etc. What I mean is that people almost invariably approach fandom at the level of character, often at the level of ship - your primary way of viewing a text is filtered through favourite characters and favourite relationships, as opposed to, say, favourite scenes, favourite themes, favourite conflicts.

This is reinforced through the architecture of dominant platforms that host fan content, particularly AO3 - there are separate categories for fandom, character and ship, and everything else is lumped together in “Additional Tags.” You cannot, for example, filter for fics on AO3 by the category of “critical perspective” or “thematic exploration”. There is no dedicated space for fan authors to declare their analytical perspective on the text they are writing about. If an author declares these things, they do so individually, they must go out of their way to do so, because there are no dedicated or universally agreed-upon tags to indicate those things, and if your fanfiction has a lot of tags, that announcement of criticality gets mushed together in a sea of other tags, sharing the same space with tags like “fluff and angst” or “porn without plot.” Perhaps one of the few tags closest to approaching this is the tag “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat,” which doesn’t indicate perspective or theme but rather that there is, broadly, some kind of “problematic content” contained therein - often of a sexual nature, frequently as a warning about “bad” ships.

Now this is not an inherent problem, as in, it is not inherently incorrect to approach a text and primarily derive pleasure from it by focusing on a given character or relationship. And I think a lot of mainstream media encourages (even requires) audiences to engage with their stories at these character- and ship-levels. The political economy of the production of art (one which is capitalistic, one that seeks to generate comfort, titillation, controversy, nostalgia, or shock for the purposes of drawing in viewership, one that increasingly pursues social media metrics of “engagement” and “impressions”, one that allows for the Netflix model of making two-season shows before cancelling them, as well as a whole host of other things) enforces a particular narrative orthodoxy, one that heavily focuses on the individual interiority of specific characters, one that is deeply concerned with the maintenance of white bourgeois middle class values of property ownership, the nuclear family, normative heterosexual sexuality and gender, settler-colonial ideas about community and environment, etc. If you do not care about the familial drama surrounding Shauna cheating on her husband in Yellowjackets, for example, because you think the institution of monogamous marriage and the nuclear family is stupid and violent and heternormative, then you will have a difficult time engaging with the show in general. We exist within a deeply normative (and frequently reactionary) media environment that encourages us to approach art in a particular way, one that privileges the individual over other narrative components (settings, themes, conflicts, ideas, political and moral perspectives, structure, tone, etc).

All of which culminates in priming fans to engage with art at these levels and these levels alone, even when that scope is deeply inappropriate. A standout example I recently encountered was browsing the fandom tags on tumblr for the movie Prey - a movie that recontextualises the original Predator film by setting it in colonial America to make the argument that the horrific violence of white colonists and imperial soldiers is identical to the violence we see the Predator do to human beings. It is a movie that makes the argument that, despite this alien monster running around killing people, the villains of the franchise are these occupying soldiers and settlers, an alien force who themselves have just as little regard for (indigenous) human life.

And when browsing the tags on tumblr, what I found was dozens upon dozens of horny posts about how hot the predator monster was. Certainly there were discussion of the film’s narrative, and these posts got a good amount of notes, but the tags were heavily dominated with a focus on the Predator itself. People were engaging with this film not as a solid action movie with interesting and compelling anti-colonial themes, but as a way to be horny about a creature that is, ironically, a stand-in for white settler indifference to (and perpetuation of) indigenous suffering. And if this is your takeaway from an extremely straightforward film with a very clear message, this is not merely a failure to comprehend the content of a text, this is something beyond it - a problem that I think is due in part to the methodological problem of approaching all texts as vessels for bourgeois interiority, individual but ultimately interchangeable expressions of sexuality, perhaps best-expressed by the term “roving slash fandom,” a phenomenon wherein fans will move from one fandom to the next in search of two (usually white, usually skinny) guys to draw and write porn of, uncaring of any of the surrounding context of the stories they are embedded in, and consequently dominating a large sector of fandom discussion.

This even gets expressed in the primary ideological battleground of fandom itself, the ridiculous partitioning of all fan conflict into “pro-“ and “anti-“ shipping compartments. Your stance on engagement with fandom itself historically was (and still is) always first filtered through one of these two labels, describing your fundamental perspective on all texts you engage with. And both of these two labels are only concerned with shipping, as if all disagreements about art can only be interpreted through the lens of what characters you think are acceptable to draw or write having sex. Nowhere in this binary is space to describe any other perspective you might take, what approaches you think are valuable when interacting with art, what themes or stories you think are worth exploring. It’s not just that the pro/anti divide is juvenile and overly-simplistic, it is a declaration that all fan conflict must be read through the lens of shipping and shipping only - the implication being that any objections raised, and criticisms offered, is ultimately just bitching about ships you don’t like.

Which, again, I think is a fundamental error of methodology. It leaves no space for people to discuss the political and moral content of a work, the themes of a piece of art, the thorny issues of representation not just as expressed through individual characters but entire worlds, narratives, settings, and themes. You are always hopelessly stuck in the quagmire of “shipping discourse,” and even rejecting that framework will inevitably get you labelled as either pro- or anti-ship anyway - and you will almost invariably be labelled an “anti” if you express any kind of distaste for the bigoted behaviour of fans or the content of the text itself, again reinforcing the idea that this is all just pointless whining online about icky ships you personally hate.

And this issue is best perhaps epitomised by reader insert fanfiction, circumventing any need for you to project onto a character by literally inserting yourself into fiction, primarily in order to write/read about a character you want to fuck. This then intersects in particularly disgusting ways with real world politics, such as reader insert fics about Pedro Pascal going with you to BLM protests. Even if this is (incredibly over-generously) interpreted as a very poor attempt at being “progressive,” it still demonstrates that many (white) fans are often incapable of thinking about anything outside of a character-centric perspective, quite literally centring themselves in the process, and consequently they think it’s totally appropriate to do things like that. The fact that this is also frequently a racist lens is not coincidental, because again, a chronic focus on (fictional) individuality prohibits any structural perspective from entering the discussion, which necessarily excludes a coherent or useful perspective on systemic issues, where people come to the conclusion that the topic of police brutality is little more than a fun stage to enact whatever romantic shenanigans you want to get up to with a hot guy.

I will stress, again, that it is not a moral sin to have a favourite character, nor is it bad to enjoy reading about two guys having sex in fanfiction. I enjoy and do those things, I engage with fandom often through a character-centric lens (see my url) - because it’s fun! But I think that this being the dominant mode of engagement inherently excludes and marginalises all other approaches, and creates a fandom space where the most valuable way to talk about media is to discuss which two characters you most enjoy imagining fucking each other

#media #effortpost #fandom discussion

[familyabolisher]

hi if u don’t mind me asking, could u please elaborate on your thoughts on the critique of contemporary anti-intellectualism (specifically on social media)? i’m legitimately curious and enjoy a lot of ur analysis and commentary i mean this in good faith :)

Broadly speaking, the philosophical concept of anti-intellectualism tends to critically describe the ideological + rhetorical relegation of intellectual production to an elitist practice fundamentally at odds with the interests of the layman; and, crucially, the treatment of these categories as fixities. I disagree with the propositions of that philosophical discourse as well, but that’s not always the form that the discourse takes on this website. On here, ‘anti-intellectualism’ is more of a vague catch-all used to describe anything from people who express frustration with the literary canon & mainstream schooling in ways that don’t coddle the sensibilities of people with literature degrees to people who come out with outright fascistic views on provocative art; it attempts to corral what are in fact very disparate positions and perspectives under the umbrella of insufficient ‘intellect,’ often shorthanded to ‘reading comprehension’ or ‘media literacy’ (or ‘[in]curiosity,’ a new favourite) without any materialist investigation into what we mean when we talk about intellect and literacy and a lack thereof or whether this is a politically expedient description of the dynamic[s] in question.

When I say materialism, I mean it in the Marxist sense, ie. as a counter to idealism—because what’s being described here is a fundamentally idealist (and therefore useless) position. The discourse of anti-intellectualism as it exists on this website relies on idealist propositions—people lack curiosity, they lack interest, they are ‘lazy,’ they are ‘illiterate’ where ‘illiterate’ is not a value-neutral statement about one’s relationship to a socially constituted ‘literacy’ but communicating a moral indictment, at its worst they are ‘stupid,’ ‘idiots’—these descriptors rely on an assumption of immutable internal properties rather than providing a materialist description for why things are the way that they are. These aren’t actionable descriptors; at best they’re evasive because they circumvent serious interrogation of the conditions they’re describing, at worst they’re harbingers of an inclination towards eugenicist rhetoric. The discourse casts those who are ���illiterate’—which in this capacity means those who fail to perform conventional literacy, who lack a traditional education, who don’t demonstrate sufficient interest in classic literature—or the more unkind ‘stupid’ (which, frankly, is what people want to say when they say ‘illiterate’ or ‘incurious’ anyway, lmao) as socially disposable and places the onus of changing one’s behaviour (so as to not be cast as illiterate/incurious/stupid) on them rather than asking what conditions have produced XYZ discourse of social disposability and responding with compassion and ethical diligence; I hope I don’t have to explain why this is eugenicist.

The discourse also lacks an ability to coherently describe what is meant by the ‘intellectualism’ in question—after all, merely appealing to ‘intellectualism’ is a similarly idealist rhetorical move if you don’t have the material grounding to back it up—and indeed tends to dismiss legitimate critiques of intellectual + cultural production as ‘anti-intellectual.’ People love to talk about ‘literacy,’ but don’t like expounding on what they’re actually describing when they do so—the selection of traits and actions that come together to constitute a correct demonstration of ‘literacy’ are built on the bedrock of eg. an ability to thrive within the school system (a mechanism of social control and stratification), fluently speak the dominant language by which this ‘literacy’ is being assessed (in online spaces like Tumblr this is usually English), and engage with the ‘right’ texts in the ‘right’ ways where ‘right’ means ‘invested with legitimacy and authority by the governing body of the academy.’ Literacy is used as a metric of assimilation into hegemonic society by which immigrant and working-class children are made rhetorically disposable unless they demonstrate their ability to integrate into the hegemonic culture (linked post talks about immigrant families being rendered ‘illiterate’ as a tactic of racism in France, but the same applies to the US, UK, etc); similarly, disabled people who for whatever reason will never achieve the level of ‘literacy’ required to not have Tumblr users doing vagueposts about how you deserve a eugenicist death for watching a kids’ show are by this discourse rendered socially disposable, affirming the paradigms which already make up their experience under a social system which reifies ableism in order to sustain itself. (This includes, by the way, the genre of posts making fun of the idea that someone with ADHD could ever struggle with reading theory.) ‘Literacy’ as the ability to understand and respond to a text is difficult and dispersed according to disparate levels of social access, and a lack of what we call literacy is incredibly shameful; any movement towards liberation (and specifically liberatory pedagogy) worth its salt needs to challenge the stigma against illiteracy, but this website’s iteration of ‘anti-intellectualism’ discourse seems to only want to reaffirm it.

Similarly, the discourse dismisses out of hand efforts to give a materialist critique of the academy and the body of texts that make up the ‘canon’—I’m thinking of a post I saw literally this morning positing a hypothetical individual’s disinterest in reading canonical (“classic”) literature as an “anti-intellectual” practice which marked them as an “idiot.” (Obviously, cf. above comments re. ‘stupidity,’ ‘idiocy’ as eugenicist constructions.) People who will outright call themselves Marxists seem to get incredibly uncomfortable at the suggestion that there are individuals for whom the literary canon is not even slightly interesting and who will never in their lives engage with it or desire to engage with it, and this fact does not delegitimise their place in revolutionary thinking and organising (frankly, in many areas, it strengthens it); they seem determined to continue to defer to the canon as a signifier of authority and therefore value, rather than acknowledging its role as a marker of class and classed affects and a rubric by which civility (cf. linked post above) could be enforced. (I believe the introduction to Chris Baldick’s The Social Mission of English Criticism touches on this dimension of literary studies as a civilising mission of sorts, as well as expounding on the ways in which ‘literary studies’ as we presently understand it is a nineteenth-century phenomenon responding to the predictable nineteenth-century crises and contradictions.) People will defer to, for example, Dumas, Baldwin, Morrison, to contravene the idea that the literary canon is made up of ‘straight white men,’ without appreciating that this is a hugely condescending way to talk about their work, that this collapses three very different writers into the singular category of ‘Black canonical writer’ and thus stymies engagement with their work at any level other than that of 'Black canonical literature' (why else put Dumas and Morrison in the same sentence, unless as a cheap rhetorical ‘gotcha’? I like both but they’re completely different writers lmfao), and that this excises from the sphere of legitimacy those Black writers who don’t make it into the authorising space of the canon; and, of course, reaffirms the canon’s authenticity and dismisses out of hand the critique of loyalty to hegemony that the ‘straight white men’ aphorism rightly imposes.

The discourse operates on a unilateral scale by which the more ‘literacy’ (ie. ability to speak the language of the literati) one has, the greater their moral worth, and a lack of said ‘literacy’ indicates the inverse. This overlooks the ways in which the practice of literary criticism wholly in line with what these people would call ‘intellectualism’ has historically been wielded as a tactic of reactionary conservatism; one only has to look at the academic output of Harold Bloom for examples of this. People will often pay lipservice to the hegemony of the academy and the practices by which only certain individuals are allowed access to intellectual production (stratified along classed + racialised lines, of course), but fail to really internalise this idea in understanding that the critical practices they afford a significant degree of legitimacy are inextricable from the academy from which they emerged, and that we can and should be imagining alternative forms of pedagogy and criticism taking place away from sites which restrict access based on allegiance to capital. Part of my communism means believing in the abolition of the university; this is not an ‘anti-intellectual’ position but a straightforwardly materialist one.

A final core problem with the 'anti-intellectualism' discourse is that it's obscurantist. As I explained above, it posits the problem with eg. poor engagement with theoretical concepts, challenging art, etc., to be one of 'intellect' and 'curiosity,' idealist rather than materialist states. In practice, the reasons behind what gets cast as 'anti-intellectualism' are very disparate. Sometimes, we're talking about a situation wherein (as I explained above) someone lacks 'literacy'; sometimes we're talking about the reason for someone's refusal to engage with and interpret art with care and deference being one of bigotry (eg. racist dismissals of non-white artists' work, misogynistic devaluing of women's work, etc.); sometimes we're talking about a reactive discomfort with marginalised people communicating difficult concepts online as a 'know-your-place' response (eg. backlash against 'jargon' on here is almost always attacking posts from/about marginalised people talking about their oppression, with the attacks coming from people who have failed to properly understand that oppression; I've been called a jargonistic elitist for talking about antisemitism, I've seen similar things happen to mutuals who talk about racism and transmisogyny). All of these are incredibly different situations that require incredibly different responses; the person who doesn't care to engage with a text in a way that an English undergrad might because doing so doesn't interest them or they lack the requisite skill level is not comparable to the person who doesn't care to engage with a text because they don't respect the work of a person of colour enough to do so. Collapsing these things under the aegis of 'anti-intellectualism' lacks explanatory power and fails to provide a sufficient actionable response.

Ultimately, the discourse is made up of a lot of people who are very high on their own capabilities when it comes to literary analysis (which, as others have pointed out, seems to be the only arena where all this ever takes place, despite the conventional understanding of ‘media literacy’ referring as much to a discerning eye for propaganda and misinformation as an ability to churn out a cute little essay on Don Quixote) and have managed to find an acceptable outlet for their dislike of anyone who lacks the same, and have provided retroactive justification in the form of the claim that not only is [a specific form of] literary analysis [legible through deference to the authority of the literary canon & the scholarship of the nineteenth century and onward surrounding it] possible for everyone, it is in fact necessary in order to access the full breadth of one’s humanity such that an absence thereof reveals an individual as subhuman and thus socially disposable. A failure to be sufficiently literate is only ever a choice and a personal failing, which is how this discourse escapes accountability for the obviously bigoted presumptions upon which it rests. In this, all materialism is done away with; compassion is done away with, as it becomes possible to describe the multiplicity of reasons why someone cannot or does not demonstrate ‘literacy’ in X, Y or Z ways in the sum total of a couple of adjectives; nothing productive comes of this discourse but a reassertion of the conditions of hegemony in intellectual practice and the bolstering of the smugness of a few people at the expense of alienating everyone else.

As I’ve said countless times before, the way to counteract what we might perceive as ‘incuriosity’ or disinterest in challenging texts is to talk about these challenging texts and our approaches to them as often as we can, to make the pedagogical practices that are usually kept behind the walls of the academy as widely accessible as possible (and to adjust our pedagogy beyond the confines of ideological hegemony that the academy imposes), and to encourage a culture by which people feel empowered to share their thoughts, discuss, ask questions, and explore without being made to feel ashamed for not understanding something. The people who cry ‘anti-intellectualism’ because they saw someone on Tiktok express a disinterest in reading Jane Eyre are accomplishing none of this.

#ask

[theotterpenguin]

I really like the nuanced take about Zutara and why it makes some people uncomfortable and I can see both sides of it. I ship Zutara now but at first I didn’t and it made me really uncomfortable but I think it was just because of certain fan content I was coming across. Some people do portray Zutara in an extremely fetishized & creepy Stockholm syndrome way that makes Katara come off like some helpless damsel stereotype. It made me feel really gross thinking about as a young WOC but rewatching the show and seeing the true dynamic of these characters made me fall in love with them again. So I guess my feeling is that in canon i really love the dynamic but I hate the way *certain fans* twist it and refuse to acknowledge the racism & misogyny in what they’re doing

this is a complicated topic with many layers to it but first - i am sorry if you have ever felt unwelcome in the zutara fandom due to experiences with racism/misogyny.

it would be ignorant to claim that the zutara fandom is somehow uniquely unaffected by systemic racism or sexism, but it would also be disingenuous to claim that these issues only exist in certain parts of the atla fandom. racism, sexism, and general bigotry exist in every fandom due to institutionalized inequality in social structures. and to make it clear, i'm not directing this criticism towards you, anon, you are entitled to your own personal experiences, but i have seen a broader trend of people attempting to use fandom racism to moralize their position in ship wars, which is diminishing from the actual problem - the focus should be on acknowledging the existence of fandom racism/sexism, combatting implicit biases, and creating spaces that can uplift marginalized voices, rather than focusing only on optics in an attempt to gain moral high ground in a silly *fictional* ship war.

however, given all this, the reason that i am still in the zutara fandom is because i appreciate how many people in the fandom are dedicated to unpacking issues of racism and sexism and cultural insensitivity in atla's source material, which i personally haven't seen in many other sides of the fandom (that often sanitize what actually happened in the text to avoid acknowledging these issues in their favorite show). of course this is a broad generalization, but that's generally why i stick with the non-canon shipping side of the fandom because fans that are willing to stray away from canon are often less afraid to engage in critical analysis.

i also do think the zutara fandom has come a long way from the early 2000s when the show first aired. for example, when i first joined the fandom i had mixed feelings on fire lady katara, but i have since read some fanfics that have done an excellent job deconstructing some of the problematic ways that this trope could be interpreted and balancing respect for katara's cultural heritage and autonomy with the political and personal difficulties of being involved with an imperialist/colonialist nation. the fire lady katara trope, capture!fic, and other complicated topics/tropes are almost never inherently racist/sexist, but rather, their execution is what matters. and all this is not to say that issues of systemic racism/sexism do not still exist in this fandom, but it personally has not significantly negatively impacted my experience in the zutara fandom due to the wonderful content that so many other fantastic people produce, though everyone's mileage may differ with what they are comfortable with. anon, i hope that you are able to find a place in the zutara fandom for you! but i also know many people that have stepped back from other fandoms due to experiences with racism/misogyny, so i understand that decision as well.

on a final note, i think it's important to acknowledge that fandom doesn't exist in a vacuum and broader issues of racism and sexism are rooted in the media, the entertainment industry, and mainstream societal norms. while i do sometimes focus on fandom dynamics/discourse in my criticisms, i think it is equally as important to acknowledge how issues of prejudice and inequality are perpetuated through larger social structures, which is why it frustrates me when the atla fandom refuses to acknowledge the flaws of the original show, which has far more influence and social power over the general public than discourse over fandom tropes ever will. personally, i don't understand the phenomenon of holding fan-made material to a higher standard than mainstream media.

#zutara #atla #atla fandom critical #atla critical #zuko #katara #racism #sexism #and i hope it's clear that i am not condoning racism/sexism in fan material - but i do think it's hypocritical to ignore the foundations #of this that is built into the source material #anon ask #my asks #my post

[betterbemeta]

As it is right now, machine learning image generation is classist. It depends strongly on the human audience's eye for pareidolia to smooth over its inconsistencies and find patterns in its noise where its procedural generation falls short.

This means that the less opportunity a person has to gain context for information, the more likely 'AI art' is to be convincing. As long as that person has been given a baseline to 'believe' the general arrangement of elements, AI art will 'make sense' even if that baseline is just exposure to more acontextual imagery. Which is what the machine learning's algorithms were trained on in the first place.

For example, 'AI' right now struggles to coherently depict plants. When it's not blurry, indistinct plant fur, leaves from different kinds of plants appear on the same stem, plants from the wrong biome are included in 'nature' images. Someone who has very little educational opportunity, but has seen movies where people walk through jungles or forests as set pieces or something, might not notice the difference. And why do you 'need' to know if the plants look right, poor person; you'll never leave your immediate area or take a biology class!

Someone without the opportunity or comfort to travel might not recognize that a cityscape has been artificially generated, depicts no actual real-world city. Is that supposed picture of Dubai or New York City or Cairo showing a real place that exists? Who cares, you're too poor to ever go there.

Searching for information about animal species, even, can get messed up by generated 'content.' Do servals have ear tufts? What kind of insect is that? What species of lizard or snake am I looking at? You don't deserve to know what kinds of animals are real. What time do you have to go to a zoo, if there's even one around you?

The less money you have, the more likely you are to be surrounded by advertising and "AI Art" is ideal for advertising because it only tells a very simple story at best. There's no complicated human emotions; its literally made of averages of what has been seen before. Marketing and advertising content often replaces actual art that might be a window into a greater world. It may even just be dropped in there to fill the awkward silence or blankness that would have otherwise surrounded marketing efforts-- commercials would be surreal without some say-nothing 'music' track behind them, and billboards would be creepy without the graphic noise that surrounds the product and its information. Someone who passes through more monetized public spaces per day will see more of it than someone who inhabits private property.

And like, at the end of the day if you are wealthy... you probably don't care about any of this. You have access to whatever you want, so why do you care what's real? You trust you can 'pay for' the real thing, right?

Plus, who knows the economic status of who generated imagery the machine learning algorithms train on? It's all stolen.

Photography has been critical in modern history for bringing 'the world' across social divisions of class, race, geographical divides. Photographers and filmmakers, along with other visual artists as well as musicians, writers, and journalists associated with all of these disciplines give us lenses, framing, voices, and perspectives to understand our greater world no matter where we are. Hell, identifying the human intentions BEHIND those lenses, framings, voices is key to our development. No matter your circumstances, with a strong grasp of media literacy anyone can sit down and say, wait a minute, is this real, would it be true for me too? Or is this someone's point of view?

To the point of view of wealth and capital, the working class and those without wealth who cannot work (disabled people, displaced people, homeless people shut out of employment, and more) do not deserve to know about reality. To that point of view, nonwealthy people don't deserve to even know who created the perspectives they're allowed to see. You can be born, get trained to work, go to work, come home to the minimum, repeat, and die having seen no images of reality for all they care. They'd like that! How can you dream of something outside the current exploitative structure if you can't even trust you know what plants and animals and cities look like, outside your tiny box?

#long post #AI art #machine learning #something something the matrix

[lol-jackles]

Whenever Anons tell me that Jared fans are just as bad as AAs and hellers, I always ask for receipts.

The reason they won't ever be able to provide this (besides the ones Jai & co have been exposed as having faked to frame Jared fans...) is they don't exist (I know you know this lol, just making a general statement). The thing is, AA's are soooo beyond sensitive that they literally think saying we don't like Jensen's outfit at a con, or that he looks tired, or that he's had botox is "hate". You say anything even remotely critical about Jensen? You must hate him. They take such personal offense to things that are barely a slight to Jensen as hate.

Jared fans on the other hand, have had over 16 years of dealing with the hate and insults and biting their tongues. They have a much thicker skin. They are getting more assertive and pushing back more nowadays, but they still had to stay quiet for 15 years to keep the peace because, for some reason, it fell on them (much like it falls on Jared).

Btw this is exactly how and why I left the Jensen fandom completely. I was a Jensen leaning J2 fan when I joined the fandom. Problem was that I didn't immediately turn on blinders to Jensen's behavior when I joined (like a good little Jensen fan is expected to). So I made a mildly critical comment about him and was dogpiled. I was told I wasn't a real fan and that I actually hated him and was just pretending to like him. I was called some pretty gross stuff and told I wasn't wanted there. And from people I really didn't expect (at the time I didn't expect it at least). That's when I realized there weren't a lot of "safe spaces" in the Jensen fandom and it was exhausting trying to get news about him from sites where I also had to see (tagged) Jared hate and them attacking other fans like me. It was just easier to not bother anymore.

I actually saw a few posts recently from TB/GenV fans who were really annoyed that Jensen had a cameo in GenV because it's annoying how he takes over and all the gifsets and everything are all him. They didn't want him on the spinoff because that was a show mostly safe from his fans. It took them less than one season to piss off TB and GenV fans. Jared fans put up with it for 15 years.

Thank you for sharing your history. This completely jives with the many private convo I had with Dean/Jensen fans laminating the lack of safe space within their fandom that doesn't include Destiel and/or hating on Sam/Jared (X) but also expected to never discuss Dean or Jensen other than a perfect victim because AAs viewed themselves as perfect victims that the world must change and cater to them. The only advice I could provide them was to go to original posts by Sam girls (because at least they respect the show's canon) and look at who are reblogging or liking with Dean's avatar or his name.

Yeah I never understood why it fell on Sam girls to keep the fandom peace by appeasing the demented Sam haters. Just like it fell on Jared to protect Jensen from Destiel hellers' campaign to slander Jensen as a homophobe (*wave hello to MallorytoyourMickey aka Heidi aka High-D aka my buddy!*) but they won't protect Jared from slanderous lies spread by their own fandom on social media.

Which is why AAs, hellers, and even Kripke get the shock of their lives when Sam/Jared girls do strike back because they're like cats - chill and indifferent but have murder mittens and Freddy Kruger hands when rudely poked.

I’ve joked that Jared’s stans’ response to the Prequel debacle was “I’VE BEEN FREED!"  They no longer have to support and defend Jensen especially now that SPN is over, then the Prequel debacle was the cherry on top because it gave them the ultimate permission to no longer do the geek social fallacy thing. And I like to think that Dean fans are also free from Ackles Army's death grip of the character now that they're moving on to The Boys fandom.

Speaking of which, I'm not surprised to hear TB/GenV fans are annoyed by the AAs. The soap opera and SPN fandom couldn't stand them, why would TB fandom be any different? As long as AAs view themselves as perfect victims, they don't believe they need to change their attitude.

#supernatural #fandom history #Ackles Army #Jensen Ackles stans #Jared Padalecki

[decepti-thots]

my take on the fact that a lot of fic recs have moved to private platforms (eg closed discord servers) is twofold:

in my experience this lines up with a far greater expectation in modern fandom spaces to never say anything remotely critical of a fic in any public setting, even if you aren't speaking directly to the author. on LJ, a lot of fic recs posted by people on their own blogs or to general fic rec comms were allowed to have a certain amount of 'love this fic, though i didn't think [xyz part] was a strong suit' in them. then came the move to social media-style platforms where public tagging and maximum discoverability of all posts all the time made this much less acceptable to many people, and authors started complaining more and more about fic recs being rude if they ever mentioned anything less than positive. but a lot of people still want to have those discussions about fics with other readers they're reccing them to. the solution was that many people now rec fics privately or at least in "closed" places like discord now. it's partly a very natural outgrowth of a change in author expectations about how their work is discussed. it is not wholly reader-habit driven.

in general, what a lot of more private discussion of fics offers readers IS that it can be a place the author cannot see what's being said out of respect for fannish etiquette. i feel like we as fic authors often fantasize that these group chats and discord servers our fics are being talked about on that are full of nothing but long, eloquent discussions of how amazing the fics being discussed are, cruelly gatekept from the very authors who would love to see these discussions. but listen. i can assure you just as many chats exist because it would be very mean to actually comment 'look, i KNOW the writing is godawful, but this kink is so rare i don't care' anywhere the author has the slightest chance of seeing it. alongside way less extreme examples. but the principle holds, yknow?

if we do want this stuff to go back to being overwhelmingly public, the trade-off is- and has always been!- that people who earnestly recommend or discuss your work in their own spaces are occasionally going to have little caveats or criticisms they think it's important to mention to anyone who might check your work out. and you have to be cool with that. and if you can't be cool with it they're going to do it in DMs where you can't see. shrug.

#since this is apparently a topic of discussion again #it's like. we can go back! but we'll be going back to having to be able to handle people who are like #'this fic was really good! the [x] characterization is a bit weird but it's really fun' and stuff on their blogs. #shrug.

[bloomeng]

my personal hot take bout izzy conversations is that you can critique his writing and his actions and i’m following but as soon as the word abuser gets thrown into the mix i’m not listening anymore

from my pov it really just sounds like ppl are mad that he threatens the sanctity of their ship which is a dumb reason to dislike a character IN MY PERSONAL OPINION and i’m not even saying that’s the reason why ppl have this opinion just that from my outside perspective it looks like ppl are reaching bc they feel like izzy threatens gb

which is a ridiculous notion considering gb is canon and was never not going to be canon and shipping izzy with either/both of them threatens nothing in canon and it’s literally just normal fandom behavior aka playing in the fanon sandbox.

it’s all so childish. the whole reason the canyon exists is childish (not the ppl who made it that’s really just curating a space online which that’s fine) like didn’t know it was ok to bully ppl who like a fictional character—who, side note, is way less problematic than most controversial characters??— you don’t like simply bc you don’t like him.

if you don’t like izzy hands. cool, i would’ve agreed with you five months ago. you’re free to enjoy gb with the majority of the fandom. shit talking a subgroup of the fandom is like the equivalent of high school mean girl behavior.

and the fact that izzy is the guy they picked to hate is so weird to me. i remember watching s1 and being like oh yah this guy is gonna be popular on the socials. he’s like the blueprint for the pathetic cringe fail moody loser older guy that fandoms eat up like hot cakes. he hasn’t even done anything egregiously wrong; fantasy violence, off screen mentions of killing peoples, saying mean things to the crew bc he was an antagonist. maybe if you were edward teach you could be personally upset that your closest… whatever they are… turned you into the british. when i tell you there are genshin impact villains more diabolical. least when ppl were arguing over hisoka from hxh i understood there were levels of nuance at play. but with izzy it makes me feel insane, like is this ppl’s first day in a fandom?

which tired argument bc liking villains doesn’t mean you condone their actions, but really what has izzy done that’s so unmoral that liking him makes you a bad person… in the eyes of the internet? it can’t be the violence bc that’s a dime a dozen literally it’s implied buttons has killed ppl with his silly teeth and no one hates him. (this is all a rhetorical question) it’s embarrassing to watch ppl make up things about him in order to justify why they hate him. like i’m telling you it’s ok to find him cringe and not like him. there doesn’t need to be a moralistic reason to dislike a character. they’re not real. well i mean in this case i guess he was real but like izzy hands from ofmd isn’t the real man who died hundreds of yrs ago.

which by the way criticism towards izzy’s actions on the show is perfectly fine it’s judging real ppl for liking him that’s the issue.

but as i’ve learned it’s too much to expect media literacy from the internet.

#ofmd #our flag means death #izzy hands #vent #txt

[akajustmerry]

hi--did the anon who told you that ladyknightthebrave thing have a source for what they said? because when scrolling through ladyknight's blusky account, it's clear that she supports an immediate ceasefire and a free and safe palestine.

she also talks about how anti-semitism in leftist protest spaces is dangerous to jewish people, unhelpful for palestinians, and misdirected overall (i.e., we should instead be criticizing the israeli government and its supporters, not generalizing to all jewish people)

idk I got a few different messages about it from users who claimed to be blocked by her. I can't verify the claims which is why I put allegedly in the edit to my post about her video essay on holocaust cinema because I do find her analysis informative when it comes to Jewish representation and antisemitism. But honestly I just don't like taking my chances, as a Lebanese person, on anyone who supports the existence of Israel, even if that person simultaneously seems to support Palestinian rights. And I'm not generalising all Jewish people. I did a thorough search of her social media after receiving those messages and found no mention of her actually supporting the decolonisation of Palestine. Supporting a ceasefire means almost nothing to me in the same way that someone saying they want to reform the police means almost nothing to me. It's milquetoast and doesn't acknowledge the need for Palestinian, Syrian or Lebanese liberation from Israel's violent occupation of our lands. Calling for a ceasefire isn't even the bare minimum to me because plenty of "liberal" Zionists have called for a ceasefire. The problem is that the mainstream view is that a ceasefire and humanitarian aid is all that's needed. While those 2 things are needed in the immediate, what is truly needed is a full decolonisation of Palestine and returning their sovereignty to them. I mean this honestly: anyone not openly calling for Palestinian liberation and decolonisation may as well be a zionist to me. It's harsh, maybe. But that's what I believe and I believe it of anyone who isn't calling for a decolonisation of Palestine, regardless of who they are or claim to support.

[she-is-ovarit]

Hello <3 I'm new to radical feminism and I wanted to know how to implement it in my life. I'm realising how passive I am, especially concerning men. I know I'm capable of good conversation and fixing genuine problems, and as a child I was fiercly competitive and took great pleasure in beating the boys at arm wrestling and sprinting. But at one point- I don't know when- I just gave up because I felt that my opinion as a woman needed to be tailored to that of the boys around me.

Just the idea of centering woman is daunting. It feels like a WHOLE new world has just appeared. Do you have any tips on how you interact with the world informed by radfems?

Thank you :)

Hey!

I do not necessarily consider myself a radical feminist so this question may be better answered by someone who is.

However, gender critical feminism I treat as more a philosophy or perspective I utilize in every day life to inform my decision making. A city planner and an ecologist on a walk through the city may have vastly different worldviews or ways of considering the urban space they are navigating. A city planner may be appreciating the buildings or finding flaws in their designs while an ecologist is observing the pigeons and mulling about effective ways to reduce waste runoff from the roads into the waterways.

The two of them might go home and be inspired to attempt to find research on the city. The city planner takes her observations from their walk earlier in the day and focuses her research to learn more about how the design of buildings within the city can be improved to better fit the needs and navigation of mothers with children, create more light around places where women seem to walk at night, and consider the location of where most women may be working and how far away they are to daycare centers to reduce the tax on mothers commuting to work while dropping their kids off at childcare centers.

The ecologist takes her observations from their walk earlier in the day and considers how to best tailor a study focusing on what ways may be best used to improve existing green spaces and wildlife habitat where women and children might be living, both to increase biodiversity and to help people's mental health. She may consider how to better nurture a relationship with women and children to nature and make a call to her city planner friend with the idea to build a learning garden, and learn about her friend's exciting plan to line the dark streets with lights. She ends the call with new homework to consider solutions in how to balance the conservation of the city's bat population and reducing environmental light pollution with women's safety.

This is a rough example of what focusing on female beings means to me. I like to do research on the myriad of nuances and ways in which women's lives are impacted. I read academic papers on Google Scholar or Pubmed through Sci-Hub, read books and PDFs on women's history and issues, learn about women's experiences through social media and from the women I talk to. I try to expand my learning the best I can on a global level, though sometimes focused knowledge on a specific place or group of women can be helpful. I then intersect or connect that knowledge with other learning and perspectives - science, Indigenous studies, prisons, psychology, history, etc.

The information and strength in learning these different perspectives and being able to consider women's place in them help me to center women in decision-making when it happens. Some women like to purchase only from women-owned businesses, choose to only date women if they're bisexual, abandon makeup, and/or only place energy on making and maintaining close female friendships and relationships. Some might create blogs focused on certain feminist topics, donate to women's charities, and join hobbies filled with predominantly women - such as rugby, book clubs, etc.

However, my biggest advice to you is to strengthen multi-disciplinary knowledge and maintain high standards for yourself. Do not just set boundaries, but learn about ways to enforce them while accepting that for some human beings - men or women - having boundaries set with them might piss them off. I like to learn skills in active listening and practice compassion and not taking reactions very personally women other women are angry with me. It doesn't mean that I need to submit to other women's ideas or agree with what they're saying, but to accept that their reaction is their reaction and be able to not have it linger too long in my mind, and learn if there's learning to do. This is an intersection of psychology and feminism.

I also like to seek out work that may especially help women. For example, I worked in a women's prison for awhile and I would like to obtain a job in higher ed since women constitute much of the student population. Having the experience of working within a prison may provide me with knowledge to help female students formerly incarcerated or who have had an incarcerated parent. I'm not seeking out work that would make me miserable for the sake of centering females, follow your passions and your natural interests and then just start considering and learning the ways it may relate to female beings, human or not, more broadly or within detailed ways. I also vote with considering how certain ballot measures may effect women particularly. Having multi-discplinary and intergenerational knowledge benefits me in making an informed voting choice, as is doing learning on systems thinking or the "bigger picture".

Finally - I suggest abandoning the idea or drive to be ideologically pure. It is not achievable and poor for mental health. We will not agree with every gender critical feminist or every radical feminist, nor will we achieve pure female centrism within every thought we have, word we speak, or action we take in life. We will not agree with every bisexual woman and we will not agree with every lesbian. Women are not a homogeneous group even within our subgroups, and even within our own online communities we do not all share the same ideas or hold the same perspectives on the environments we navigate. I remind myself to not only consider what beliefs I might hold, but place importance on what values I feel are important and to practice them in my communication. Authenticity, compassion, honesty, assertiveness, curiosity, etc.

Hope any of this was helpful!

#feminism #radblr #radical feminism #gender critical #gender critical feminism #ask

[sapphicsparkles]

r u a pro shipper

deep sigh I know this is bait, with all the effort of not even typing out full words. But hey, here's my chance to rant about how stupid anti/purity culture is. As far as I understand it "proship" has two major slang definitions: 1) supporting romantically/sexually shipping fictional characters together in general 2) supporting romantically/sexually shipping "problematic" fictional characters together I take it this ask is about the 2nd definition. There is ofc the wave of "PROSHIP DNI" on social profiles, especially young queer folks on social media, which I find highly disappointing because here is the thing: what do you consider "problematic?" In what context? And why the hell are we applying these broadly to the exploration and experimentation of fictional space as a qualifier for someone's moral standing? Why are you so adherent to what is considered institutionally approved as safe, good, and squeaky clean. Especially as a queer person who exist outside and in contradiction to cishet heteropatriarchal standards. Oh and now we've come to it: the fear of queerness being associated with things like incest and age gaps and what have you--things people generally deem problematic in shipping. The desire for queerness to be clean and wholesome and fucking acceptable. Model minority thinking if you will. Let queerness in fiction and media be soft and wholesome and healing, let it be deplorable and unforgivable, let it be wretched, let it be mean, let it struggle and grow and evolve. Let it have the breadth and humanity that cishet characters and stories are readily given. Please stop shooting yourself in the foot with this "good representation" thing. No level of internet drama and ship warring will make them want to kill any of us any less. The line for what institutionally acceptable queerness is will always move, it will always constrain and choke and kill and put us back into little boxes fit for consumption by the power structure. On the one hand, if you have things that ick you and you don't want to see, curating your online space is a good thing. That's what muting and blocking and tagging is for. But to me the "prosoship dni"/anti that I've witnessed for the most part is either model minority thinking, a false association with fictional enjoyment as irl condoning and morality, moral grandstanding, or some sort of wack performative tribalism. (Don't even get me started on the purity culture social panopticon we're living in.) Or some combination of the above. This rise of anti sentiment and the fall of media literacy is a correlation that I fear cannot be a coincidence. You can enjoy things in media that you wouldn't actually condone or even enjoy in reality, you can consume and enjoy media while also actively being aware and critiquing it for its flaws, issues, and the context it was created in. Build your critical thinking skills folks. Sometimes it's even good to encounter things you don't like to understand the world and yourself better--to understand why you don't like it and what it is connected to. Build your self awareness folks. In summary: please chill the fuck out y'all and hold grace for others.

#not what I was expecting to do tonight #i have a million more things to say but it's 3:30 am #i'm so tired of all this #be gay do crimes #ask #cali rants

[aeide-thea]

the thing is, it's always valid to discuss issues within a subculture! but it's also good to be clear, both in your own mind and in your discussion, that you are discussing a subculture, and to be clear on how said subculture's treatment of an issue fits into the larger culture's position on it—

specifically i'm thinking here of (1) discussions of transphobia, and how a lot of tumblr analysis tends to position terfism as the main face of antitrans bigotry because it's the flavor that seems to most readily infect leftist spaces, and like, within said leftist spaces that's often a reasonable line of discussion, but… we do all remember that actually transphobia is a much bigger umbrella than just a subset of a nominally leftist movement/social group, right? right??

and also i'm thinking of (2) discussions of so-called media consumption and the way people on here will often critique transformative fandom for failing to be sufficiently radical in how it engages with stories, and like, to be clear, i think a great deal of that criticism has been well-founded and well-deserved! but at the same time it's like—we are all clear that 'wanting to be spoonfed cozy unchallenging stories' is (a) not actually necessarily Inherently Problematic, right? like, certainly escapism can constitute a sidling-away from having to confront uncomfortable realities, in a sort of omelasian way it's fair to take issue with; it can also be desperately necessary nourishment for a soul in soul-killing conditions, and which of the two it constitutes for any given person is not necessarily within your power to fully accurately know and judge.

but also, to circle back to my original point here—we are all clear that plenty of normies who don't even know what fanfic is (yes, people like that do in fact exist!) are out there engaging in unexaminedly escapist media consumption of their own, right? like, that's not in fact a flavor of self-indulgence that belongs uniquely or even primarily to the AO3-adjacent, and if you're talking about it as though it is, you may want to consider how narrowly your own lens is focused…

#like specifically this was in response to this thread #https://www.tumblr.com/catmask/735373902862286848 #and it's just like. i too get annoyed by eg the reduction of every story ever to The Grumpy One And The Sunshine One #but also like. if you think FANDOM is responsible for the human fondness for a familiar story-type… #then i don't actually think you know enough about the history of stories to have this conversation in any serious way #like. hello. aarne and thompson (among many MANY others) want to talk. #ultimately i think like. fandom distills the sins of larger society #and then people skewer it because it's an easy cringey target that feels easier to bring down #and like. i too want to improve the subcultural spaces i love! but like. fandom very extremely did not invent complacency… #anyway this is very much a pushback that itself is sited in a subcultural context & so may be itself committing the sins it complains of— #other people's biases & blinders are always much more obvious than one's own!

[holyshit]

Care to spare some advice on how to not be so affected by things without stepping back from fandom for multiple years lmao? It seems like for so many people, the longer they have been here, the easier it is for them. For me it's the opposite. The longer I'm in fandom the sadder and more frustrated I get that hl's situations are what they are 12 years on. And then I get frustrated with people who act like where they're at now is no big deal or sooo much better than before. It's a cycle lol.

hmm, i think it's tough because a lot of the things that helped me are most easily achieved by distancing yourself because that's the easiest way to gain perspective about the situation. when you’re actively in it, it’s much harder to break out of patterns you’re accustomed to. but i think the main "lessons" i learned from being away were essentially:

1) recognizing my own powerlessness in their situation. being away made it especially clear that my presence in the fandom does not affect anything. i am not able to change anything about their situation. if i continued being in fandom for those 4-ish years that i was away from fandom, the situation would still be exactly the same as it is now for them. i cannot give up my own happiness for something i cannot change.

2) similarly, the need to dismantle the parasocial relationship i had with them. it’s one thing to feel compassion for human beings you don’t personally know- that is a wonderful trait and important for the world! but, it’s another thing to feel like you “owe” anything to a celebrity you do not know personally and who does not even know you exist. sometimes, when you’re in deep, it almost feels like you would be “failing” them by not being angry enough or invested enough. that’s where it gets unhealthy, because the relationship of a fan and a celebrity is one-sided, and therefore, again, it comes down to the fact that you can’t give up your own happiness for something you cannot control in the life of a celebrity you do not personally know. no one owes a celebrity they like their mental well-being, no matter how much you feel compassion for them.

3) the recognition that fandom is supposed to be fun. it’s obvious, but sometimes it becomes less clear the deeper you get that some of the things you think you’re doing for fun aren’t actually that fun to you anymore lol. obviously nearly any interest is gonna make you angry or sad occasionally (your sports team loses, your fave character gets killed off in your favourite show, etc), but if your resting state is anger or sadness, it’s maybe not in your best interest to continue, or you need to change the way you interact with said hobby. your hobby shouldn’t be making you miserable, as that is just gonna bleed into the rest of your life.

SO, for actual advice that doesn’t involve leaving for years:

taking short breaks! you don’t have to take years away to still give yourself some space from the fandom. it can be a day, a week, a month, or even just cutting down on the amount of time you spend on tumblr (or social media of choice) in general for a while without leaving completely. when i feel like something is getting me riled up a bit more than usual, i usually step away for even just a day, and even just that calms me down and gives me perspective. if you want to take a break but still want to know what’s going on, you can also just pick one or two blogs that you know don’t post much drama and solely pay attention to those blogs while you’re away.

enriching your other hobbies. take some of the time you would normally spend reading shit in this fandom, and use it to do something else you enjoy. the more time you spend “away”, even if you still are in the fandom, the less critically important everything will eventually feel in your brain and it will often be easier to detach emotionally. when you’re unhappy in other parts of your life, it’s much easier to let one thing “take over”, and it’s important to make room for other things in your life.

if you feel like you need a hyperfixation of sorts, i’d say try out different fandoms. watch that show your friend told you they know you’ll love and then try to make a sideblog or something and join the fandom. join a fandom of a piece of media you already love but never was involved in fandom for. again, it can help you distance yourself emotionally a bit without leaving entirely

figure out what parts you ACTUALLY enjoy in this fandom, and figure out what parts you may think you enjoy but are actually making you more anxious/obsessive/angry/upset than anything. as a personal example, i used to be heavily into theorizing back in 2015-2016, especially during babygate. i would be obsessed with reading up on everyone’s theories about when babygate would end, how it might end, etc, and would spend a lot of time reading about it. i thought i enjoyed it at the time, but in reality it was more of an obsession that made me much more upset than i had to be. reading up on theories, getting my hopes up, and then have them not happening was miserable and not worth it and ultimately lead me to leave the fandom

similarly, try to break some of your fandom habits and see if you’re happier without them. as another personal example, i used to pay extreme attention to stunt stuff and wanted to be 100% caught up on everything at all times. as a byproduct of that, i would keep up with every post a couple blogs that talked about stunts would make. when i got super busy with a work project, it forced me to take a break from this because i didn’t have the time to keep up with everything, and breaking that habit of needing to know EVERYTHING and be totally caught up made me snap out of the habit and recognize i didn’t need that to enjoy my time in fandom, and in fact it took a weight off my shoulder and made me realize it wasn’t actually making me happy.

unfollow blogs that make you upset!!! even if you like the person, if they talk about things that get you riled up or upset often, it’s likely not worth it. if you hate-follow people to keep up with their opinions that piss you off, unfollow! if you’re stewing in anger all the time, it’s easier to stay unhealthily invested to your happiness’ detriment.

focus on things you CAN control. you can control your fandom experience. you can contribute to fan projects that make the fandom a better place and in some cases can positively contribute to l’s or h’s experiences (like the rainbow lights projects, for example). you can control how you interact with your fellow fans. don’t give all your energy to things that you cannot control.

lol this was an essay, but i think it’s an interesting topic and i hope it can help even a little bit!

#asks #anonymous #*

[saintlupin]

i think what many people fail to realize about hp as a whole is that it has reached 100% cultural saturation. everyone has either seen the movies, read the books, or at the very least, they have some vague understanding of the overarching story line. but, still, most people are unaware of jkr’s vile bigotry, unless they are both: chronically online and in our hp-related/fandom adjacent spaces. i was actually having a conversation with a co-worker today who had no idea about jkr’s views/the active damage they have caused. yet, she’s not only queer, but also an ally to the trans community. and i think a lot of the people who go out of their way to send anon hate do so with a “white-lens” view of advocacy. that is not to say that every hater on the internet is a white person, but what i mean to say is: most of these individuals have never actually done the tedious and often exhausting work that real advocacy calls for.

it reminds me of when people think they can hastily plan for a strike, where they publicly announce that they are going to stop financially supporting a multi-billion dollar corporation for three days and assume that will “hit them where it hurts” and incite significant change. when, in reality, advocacy takes months of planning and preparation and prioritizes the needs of vulnerable populations first. people are reasonably angry, but they fail to turn that anger into action because our society as a whole makes “on the ground” advocacy work seemingly impossible.

what we do here in fandom where we dissect, pick apart, inspect, and transform canon from a critical lens or create joy and inspire imagination are quite literally revolutionary tools, and i say that with no exaggeration. this is not a new idea, in fact, it is something black activists, trans women of color, and other marginalized populations have been saying for decades.

i don’t believe fandom spaces are inherently revolutionary and i don’t think they are the end all be all of advocacy work, but i do believe them necessary specifically because they incite joy and create space for imagination. instead of a breeding ground for revolutionaries, they are a "practice-ground" for these revolutionary tools. they allow us to deconstruct the things that have caused harm and transform them into something joyful and imaginative, which is important because it does not erase the reality of what exists, but instead, allows us to engage with it under a new lens.

to want to denounce and erase all media for how problematic it is would be to disengage with works that have both failed us and brought us to where we are today. popular fiction and culture is a powerful reflection of social problems, and to erase them is to both denounce how far we've come, but also to leave us with nothing to look back on. what would the world look like if we had nothing to reflect upon? nothing to consider? nothing to dissect and say: this is what we've gotten right so far and here is what we've done wrong. it is specifically why disney+ has not removed content that is blatantly racist media, but instead added a black screen with words that read: "this program is presented as originally created. It may contain outdated cultural depictions" with the stated intention of sparking conversations about harmful stereotypes. while disney is not a shining example of allyship, this corporation has still managed to grasp an important concept: to erase, denounce, and disengage with content that is problematic is to remove examples of racism, transphobia, xenophobia and disallow the critical conversations that fandom spaces can be host to.

when we erase examples, and therefore critiques of these things, we stop being able to identify them, becoming first oblivious and then desensitized to tropes and stereotypes that find its way into the imagery of the world around us, even when they are right in front of us.

big thank you to @saintgarbanzo for your input and for helping me find the courage i needed to post this

#drarry #meta #harry potter

[ohnoitstbskyen]

Hihi Skyen :) I was wondering if you had any thoughts on the movement of bringing back old personal websites and webrings and rejecting the social media capitalistic hellscape

Last year I got into old websites and Neocities stuff, even getting into coding to make my own website there, and you come across as the type of person who could have some interesting thoughts on a subject like this :O

Such as being a content creator and being inebitably shackled to popular social media, for the lack of a better word.

I don't know, sorry if this is silly, I hope you're having a nice day :) Love your content, been following for years!

Oh I have a lot of thoughts about that actually, and not just because some of my videos are sponsored by Squarespace™

Squarespace™, build your online presence today!

In seriousness, though... I am first of all strongly in favor of the personal website (I should really get around to properly rebuilding my own). Platforms fundamentally cannot be trusted, and their amoral business interest is to homogenize their users as much as possible, the better to package them as product for advertisers, which is their business.

Personal sites are personal, they allow you to take back control of your online profile and online life, and of the things you publish. They are absolutely fantastic for any creative worker as a means of building a strong portfolio and brand, albeit at the cost of requiring upkeep and maintenance.

The thing they lack, and it is a critical thing, is discoverability. They lack the means to connect with an audience, to be found among the hundred billion websites on the global web.

It used to be Google took care of that, but its search results are increasingly bought and paid for and the scope and scale of the internet makes it functionally impossible to make it to the front page of any search result unless you have money to drop on serious SEO and, of course, advertising with Google. So now the platforms hold a functional monopoly on that feature. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr... at this point even TikTok serves that role.

I could make the videos I want, no significant number of people would ever have seen them if not for YouTube's recommendation algorithm. And because my audience is hooked to their platform, trying to get them to pick up sticks and come with me to a new one is... functionally impossible. Worse is that a vast majority of web traffic in the modern day exists on mobile, and the vast majority of THAT is locked in the ecosystems of apps, which introduce their own host of walled garden conditioning and barriers to drawing users to personal websites.

These issues can be addressed in some ways by old school means:

Mailing lists

RSS feeds

Webrings and other linkswaps

Old-fashioned networking

But it will almost certainly never reach the scope and scale of discoverability platforms can do by sheer dint of their size and resources.

Which is why I wouldn't necessarily recommend personal websites as a Content Creator's™ main form of publishing, for example, but as a supplemental way of building a presence online.

But as a thing to build for yourself, a means to stake your claim to a space on the internet that belongs to you, as a means to be creative, a personal website is a fantastic project.

#tb answers #tb essay

[the1975attheirverybest]

Brad Troemel, "Art," and S...ATVB

As promised, this is the post about Brad Troemel, his work, his connection to Matty, and what this might mean for "Still....At Their Very Best." Research sources, images of the art described, etc will all be included at the end of this post.

Who is Brad Troemel?

He's a NYC based artist in his mid-thirties who makes "post-internet art." He actually got his start RIGHT HERE on this very platform, Tumblr, in 2009.

What is "Post-internet Art"?

post-internet art is art that is made either using the internet or in association with the internet. The idea of it usually comments on or critiques i the effect of internet use on our culture, aesthetics etc.

For example, this statue of Rihanna. Or this conceptual art performance "ART WHORE"

I should point out that according to the scholarship I look at, not all experts agree that this kind of thing counts as "Art."

What kind of art does Brad Troemel make?

Troemel considers his work to be challenging the traditions of art galleries and exhibitions and thinking about how art objects can exist outside these spaces. Like, in normal, everyday life.

For example, he's made a bench out of old Apple computers (see image below) and the MacBook pic that later became a meme (see below).

He started this in 2009 posting photoshopped images on Tumblr. Later, he went on to open an Etsy store which would mail customers the materials and instructions needed to make the art themselves.

In some cases, he deliberately made art pieces that don't last (fall apart, dissolve, or disappear shortly after they are made).

He's quoted as saying that's work is both rejecting traditional rules and trying to imagine what art might look like if those rules didn’t exist. “You can’t make this with a straight face.You’d have to be a real lunatic to do that."

Some of you might recognize a meme he made during election campaigns that was mistaken for a legit ad for Joe Biden (see below). Troemel eventually had to take it down because he was accused of false advertising/ spreading misinformation/ fake news. which....ironically is his whole point about internet culture, lol.

Today, he does a weekly series of cultural commentary posts on instagram.

What does this have to do with The 1975?

Matty announced on instagram that Troemel has co-written and will be co-directing the "Still....At Their Very Best" show.

How do Matty and Troemel know each other?

Matty's been a fan of his for a while and has liked his posts online, followed him on social media, etc.

On the Ion Pack Podcast, Matty spoke about Troemel's work, describing him as "someone who has strong cultural awareness and someone who gets art from the inside and from the outside. Gets it as an artist and as a consumer of art" and someone who "lit the fire and [Matty's] ass. and that he's been using Brad Troemel's language in interviews. the guy is fuckin' goated."

What does this mean for The 1975 and the "S...ATVB" tour?

WELLL...its not entirely clear yet BUT

Matty's current highlight reel titled "SHOW," has posts that are written as if Brad Troemel made them, not Matty. Hint at what the show is gonna be like?

We know that Troemel's style lines up with, and expands on, Matty's. They both present ideas, ask questions that challenge the status quo, and love irony. So, there's likely to be a lot dramatic irony and cultural criticism within the show

Of what? The posts Matty's made so far have been commenting on cultural constructs of masculinity, so, perhaps a continuation of what he started with ATVB?

What's it gonna look like? idk, but Matty's been really leaning into the TRUMAN BLACK/ MATTY HEALY dichotomy. With the lab coat and name tag onstage and in ATPOAIM, with changing his name to "TRUMAN BLACK" on instagram, etc.

Is he going to dramatize that and "play" both characters? himself AND Truman Black? what about the absurdity that they're BOTH him!

[ will update this as we continue to receive hints about the show.]

Referenced images

Consulted Sources:

New Yorker Article about Troemel: Art Troll

Artspace Bio

Post-Internet Art

#Brad Troemel #Matty Healy #The 1975 #atvb #satvb

[northernreads]

book review

★★★★★

I'm having a hard time putting all of my thoughts into a coherent review so it is likely going to be a bit of a ramble.

While reading this book I couldn't help but be slowed down by all of the explanations for different bookish and publishing terminology, and I kept getting frustrated by it. Even though I know people outside of the bookish/publishing world don't necessarily know what all of this insider jargon means (like what ARC stands for), it felt clunky to have it spelled out. I would be reading and thinking to myself "yeah, yeah, I knoooow, you don't need to tell me" but of course not everyone does know all that stuff. And I think this sticks out so much because the audience for this book is incredibly niche. This a book written for and about the publishing industry as well as the bookish community that halos it (in particular the 'bookternet' community) all of whom don't need all of that jargon explained.

I am genuinely curious to know what people outside this community do think of this book. Does all the satire still make sense? Does it feel so cutting? Does it sting for an outsider too? I just don't think I would have gotten as much out of this book if I wasn't already so aware of everything it is satirizing and it is absolutely part of what made this reading experience so incredible and enjoyable for me.

This book is calling out the publishing industry and it's supposed goals of getting diverse stories. The token representation that is all too often still packaged for white audiences is an obvious and necessary target that Kuang takes aim at. And boy are shots fired. Also tackling the pigeon-holing of "diversity" writers as well as the issue of trauma stories so often being chosen over stories of joy or just plain existing. I hope at least some people in the industry take a good long look in the mirror, but let's be real. So few ever will.

This book is also talking to the online bookish community and it's chronic online-ness. Kuang doesn't stop at those working in publishing either. Another part of a writer's job today seems to be about promoting themselves online and maintaining a social media presence. So of course she fired shots at the 'bookternet' community too.

I was honestly impressed by how succinctly she captured the ridiculousness of being in bookish spaces on the internet. It really just captures Chronic Online-ness, which is so prevalent and loud in bookish internet spaces. Especially on twitter. I have never really gotten involved with book twitter because I never really liked twitter's format, but I have seen the drama spill out into other bookish internet spaces (like booklr) from time to time. And Kuang just got every angle of it so accurately it had me cackling. I have watched the cycle of outrage and posturing and virtue signaling followed by the inevitable turn around against the very person that was previously being defended so. many. times. I remember getting caught up with it the first couple of times over ten years ago and then realizing how shallow everyone's outrage was (including my own) and have become a morbidly curious observer over the years instead.

As I was reading these scenes I was wondering how people that still participate in these drama cycles felt about being so very called out about. And judging by some of the reviews here, it's safe to say that it's not just publishing workers who refuse to look for very long into the mirror after reading this book.

Kuang has been criticized for being too heavy handed in her writing not only for Yellowface but also her previous book, Babel. In Babel I could see why some people felt the themes about colonialism were 'too in-their-face', but that heavy-handedness, to me, was done with purpose. Kuang was not going to let people look away from the violence of Imperialism. She was going to make you confront it again and again and again. It was not a story with a goal of giving readers comfort. Since so many books are published with a white audience in mind, Kuang made sure that white people were forced to take a long look in the mirror, acknowledged their privilege, and learn about the damage of colonialism. That obviously made some white people very uncomfortable.

Yellowface seems to be a very clear response to that criticism. I did not find this book nearly as heavy-handed, instead of hitting readers of the head with The Point as was done with Babel, Kuang just keeps dropping bombs and leaving it with the reader to decide if they will take the time to mull it over. She seems to being saying 'Okay here is The Point. I am not going to spoon feed it to you. But do you even get it though?'. She's not force-feeding us this time, but she's not hiding it in a vague metaphor either. If you don't take the time to contemplate over everything, that's not on Kuang. She's meeting us readers halfway on this one.

I loved getting this book from June's perspective too, it was so well done. She was so diabolical and awful and yet, Kuang is so good and making you wonder if maybe June does have a point. She doesn't though as June is completely unlikable and that's what made this book all the sharper and more compelling.

And that ENDING. Wow. Like a cockroach.

Overall this book was brilliant and ballsy.

This is now my favourite book by Kuang and my absolutely my favourite book of the year.

#booklr #book review #book reviews #mine #rf kuang #yellowface