It just occurred to me that most of the people complaining about purity culture
| Meta | |
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| Title: | It just occurred to me that most of the people complaining about purity culture were never young teens in these early online fan spaces. |
| Creator: | thesvvordwizard |
| Date(s): | November 28 2019 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Pan-fandom (but also referencing the creator's experiences of Homestuck fandom) |
| Topic: | Purity culture, fandom toxicity, young people in online fandom and the types of unsuitable content they might be exposed to |
| External Links: | tweet |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
It just occurred to me that most of the people complaining about purity culture is the beginning of a Twitter discussion thread by @thesvvordwizard, originally posted on November 28, 2019. The original thread consisted of two tweets:
It just occurred to me that most of the people complaining about purity culture were never young teens in these early online fan spaces. They were more often already adults and never facing the brunt of the toxic environment they were making.
They don't think that kind of content could be anyone's problem because it's never been THEIR problem. Many have been the creators in the space instead of the ones barraged by the types of content they promote.
Later on, @thesvvordwizard came back to find that the thread had sparked off a number of responses from fans disagreeing with their assertion, and expanded on it:
Just woke up and damn people mad. Obviously this isn't everyone's experience but this is particular to the people I see who apparently genuinely don't know the harm it causes and don't have the stories that I see so many younger people do.
I'm honestly pretty liberal in terms of what I think is "okay" content, but there are so many things like underage/adult, incest, and stuff being written for horny reasons (and I know some people can't tell but as someone who has read a Lot of content... I can)
And OBVIOUSLY there were early early fandom spaces but that's what I MEAN. There's a radically difference in how easy it was too find genuinely disturbed content from paper/manual fandoms to placed like Tumblr where if you didn't know the block terms then you saw it all.
When I say early fandom I tend to frame it within the Homestuck fandom ages cuz I didn't expect this to blow up lmao. But some of y'all forreal bring deliberately obtuse.
And goddamn some of y'all getting mad mad. This is in response to that post in particular saying how much better it used to be before "purity culture". I'm not decorating was against older fandom members lmao, I've seen some who had ALWAYS been aware and take measures for nsfw.
It's interesting to see people's responses and qrt to this, ranging from "well I was fine as a kid!" To "if it's vaguely tagged it's fine!" To "It's just a picture/writing!". Telling me to learn "fandom history" but y'all for whatever reason have never known someone who suffered.
Also we all saw that post on Tumblr get off it lmaooooo
The original tweet gained a lot of traction (on 5 December, a week after it was posted, it had 294 replies, 604 retweets and 2,780 likes[1]) and sparked off a great deal of discussion in response, with fans posting about their own early experiences with online fandom and the kinds of content they encountered.
Responses from Fans
Yes, I Was A Young Person In Fandom
[@thesvvordwizard]
I'm glad you had such a great time and was surrounded by adults who respected boundaries. Your experience is not universal.[3]
[@FWAsteria]
So like you mean it's ok to harass and dogpile people when you see things that are inappropriate and this would somehow make the environment better and safer?[4]Someone rted to say yes. Blocked for my safety. As a Chinese person, and as the grand daughter of a man who was abused during the Culture Revolution. If you think eliminating bad creation and thoughts with violence is an act of righteousness, you're thesame as the Red Guards.
You can say early fandom was bad but this tweet seem to defend recent acts of violence in fandom spaces by saying it's necessary because bad content hurt kids.
People enthusiastic about fandom policing reminds me of the Cultural Revolution. Similar logic: this is bad, I'll eliminate it, im hurting people but they deserve it cuz they're bad.
This kind of belief is what eventually caused tremendous harm on my country and my grandpa.
Creation are not to be punished for. You can object, you can boycott, but don't say policing people is good cuz their content is bad. Currently in china people believe homoerotica is bad, hurts kids, so they are putting gay authors in jail out of good will. I see no difference.
[@songlin221]
I first got into fandom when I was nine in 1999. I wrote my first fanfiction when I was 12. There were crackpots, but I gravitated to fandom because it was perceptibly *safer* than other parts of the Internet. Purity culture is the biggest curse on fandom, full stop.[5]
[@Amythe3lder]
Age: 11ish
Year: 1997
Fandom: X-Files
There was some wild shit. I was taught never to reveal my asl and to stay in my lane. I learned to backbutton if I saw something that wasn't for me bc this was An Adult Place. Tags and warnings are the best thing to happen to fic.[6]I honestly think that's been the biggest shift: there was very much a sense of getting to stay up late at the grown-up party when I was a kid on the webs. If I wanted to watch the couple kissing in the corner, I should be quiet about it and not offer critique[7]
This is the Reason We Have Tags and Warnings Now
[@_featherweather]
Bahahaha no. I started in fandom spaces in 97 when I was <10. The net was a wild west and you had no idea what you were getting into because the only content warnings you got was maybe the site was adult only and ANs. I was very active in fandom during strikethru and I wont sit[8]
by and see people try to ruin fandom spaces again on a misguided purity campaign. People tag shit now, make it easy for you to know if you want to vore the content or not. That's a courtesy born of having to deal with early fandom spaces when that wasnt the norm[9]
[@oknolisten]
it was our problem. you could go into fanfiction and suddenly there's skullfucking. or rape. or incest. or pedophilia. or gore. or death. all without warning. the current content warning systems are BECAUSE of us. fuck off with this bullshit take.[10]
i was like 11 or 12 the first time i saw sailor moon mother/daughter incest on http://fanfiction.net untagged and unwarned. i could have avoided it if tagging existed back then. please, learn what you're talking about.[11]
[@thewolfdiscour1]
The point is we were teens on the internet, (you assumed we weren’t) in fandom spaces, being subjected to stuff we didn’t like. It was more perilous then than it is now because now it’s easier than ever to avoid triggering content through tags. Have some personal accountability.[13]
[@MitaCestalia]
Aaah lemons lol 🍋@ OP — I and many others were in fandom spaces as early teens when you were a sperm and an egg, but go off. Even without proper tagging it was less toxic than purity culture telling people to kys, being called criminals etc.[16]
"Early" Fandom?
[@RionaDaidouji]
Do... Do you think online fandom spaces started on tumblr? Like. You realise there have been online fandom spaces since the 90s, right? And until LiveJournal, shit wasn't tagged, so it was easy to accidentally stumble onto triggering subjects. -c-[17]LiveJournal actually allowed people to tag and warn for shit, and then low and behold, Conservative Christians discovered it and tried to get "The Bad Stuff" removed to "protect the children". The result? Queer content and survivor blogs got removed instead. Sound familiar?[18]
References
- ^ Archived snapshot on December 5, 2019
- ^ Tweet by @_queerioes, November 28, 2019. Archived from the original on March 24, 2021.
- ^ Tweet by @thesvvordwizard, November 28, 2019
- ^ Tweet by @FWAsteria, November 28, 2019
- ^ Tweet by songlin221, November 28, 2019
- ^ Tweet by @Amythe3lder, November 28, 2019
- ^ Tweet by @Amythe3lder, November 28, 2019
- ^ Tweet by @_featherweather, November 28, 2019
- ^ Tweet by @_featherweather, November 28, 2019
- ^ Tweet by @oknolisten, November 28, 2019
- ^ Tweet by @oknolisten, November 28, 2019
- ^ Tweet by @thewolfdiscour1, November 28, 2019
- ^ Tweet by @FujoRequiem, November 28, 2019
- ^ Tweet by @hitoshuraa, November 28, 2019
- ^ Tweet by @naiadclue, November 28, 2019.
- ^ Tweet by @MitaCestalia, November 28, 2019
- ^ Tweet by @RionaDaidouji, November 28, 2019
- ^ Tweet by @RionaDaidouji, November 28, 2019