Does @ao3org have a #troll problem?
Because of that I disabled anonymous commenting on my own fics. I'm not quite sure how others deal with them-I saw a few writers who respond to anons, some literally stop writing and withdraw, some are cool enough to ignore them.
I think the only time I left negative comments on other peoples' fics was in the very early days of my involvement in fandom-and then I naively always logged in. The idea to hide who I am didn't even occur to me. I felt obliged-if I left critique I wanted to be honest about it, and thought people would appreciate it or at least appreciate to be critiqued by someone who was brave enough to not critique anonymously.
Back in those days I didn't even know the word "anon hate".
One writer wrote something like this in their notes (paraphrasing here):
"If my spelling mistakes really really bother you, you can send me a comment about if that makes you happy or so, but I won't read it."
Someone else wrote in their notes:
"If you feel you have the right to critique a fic I wrote for free you might be an asshole. Think about it."
And I thought, yeah, pretty much, that sums it up.
Reading other people's abusive comments on fics I love, pained me. Some of these writers are incredibly talented and slave over their fics in order to get them perfect, and then someone has to go and shit on them-anonymously. Not that it makes it better if you do it logged in, but the fact the commenters don't dare to reveal their IDs says a lot about them.
Obviously I stopped my questionable practice to dole out "constructive criticism". If I don't like something I hit the back button-with one memorable exception where I found a holocaust AU. That baffled me so much I commented on it (non-anonymously) but then regretted it immediately. The fic might be in poor taste, but it was tagged and if there is one rule in fandom is, if you don't like it, don't read. If you don't like bestiality, chan, scat, timeturner fics, Hannibal bottoming, people dying, people baking cup cakes, people wearing lace panties whatever, that's cool. Just read the tags and get out of the fic. That is what warnings are for! I am a firm believer in tags and warnings. So I had no business harassing someone else for writing something I found distasteful as long as it was sufficiently tagged.
So yeah, recently when I commented on other peoples' fics (when I leave positive feedback I rarely feel the need to "identify" myself) I also noticed some negative comments, and recently more than before. Am I imagining this? Maybe I am more sensitized now to this issue? I really can't tell.
Some comments are so full of entitlement as well, "Urgh your fic has character A bottoming, and I hate character A bottoming your the worst" or "try to get that character's name right! how hard can it be?" or "Wow that was horrible O_o"
D:
What's going on? Did you ever receive anon hate? Do you receive more hate than before? Do you ever go anon? Do you think critiquing fanfiction is under certain circumstances acceptable? Do you appreciate critique?
I'd really like to read your thoughts on this.