Calculating fanfic
I like equations. I especially like it when the messy complications of humanity can be distilled down to equations. I like to think about the posting of controversial fanfic this way: one hopes that someone who posts a story on a controversial or taboo subject has done at least a smidge of thinking about possible consquences before making their decision, but what does that thinking look like? For anything that might happen as a result of the story, you judge how positive or negative that might be, how likely it might be, and how important it is to you. Some of those things may be very hard to estimate. And there are so many categories of possible consequences: consequences to you the writer, to readers who like the story, to readers who don't like the story, to the world in general as those consequences filter outward through the people they've changed, or through discussion of the story's very existence.... Whew!
And most of that decision-making is taking place at an implicit level. (If it's happening at all, and come on, when there are vast swathes of fandom who can't manage to spell, capitalize, or punctuate properly, I don't think a person can be blamed for wondering of some of those fans are not deep thinkers. But let's get back to talking about the equally vast numbers of fans who are generally thoughtful people.) It's hard enough to verbalize the mechanics of your own internal calculus, and it's not surprising that when we look at people whose answers are wildly different than our own, we're tempted to either say, "Really? You thought about that? Really?" or to assume that the difference lies in people's *values*, the importance that they place on different consequences -- because that is one factor that we intuitively understand can vary between people. Unfortunately, either of those options can lead to some pretty ugly discussions.
But there are two other factors that go into the equation: the extremity of a possible consequence, and its likelihood, and I don't think people always appreciate how different our estimates of *those* factors can be. And that's something that can be comparatively less emotional to talk about, more cognitive instead. One thing that I liked about heatherly's recent post on the topic is that she did try to address those factors and talk about why she estimates them differently than some people might, rather than jumping to the easy (but often insulting) answer of values (See, not a single "But whyyyy don't you care about the children?!?" in her post.)
And most of that decision-making is taking place at an implicit level. (If it's happening at all, and come on, when there are vast swathes of fandom who can't manage to spell, capitalize, or punctuate properly, I don't think a person can be blamed for wondering of some of those fans are not deep thinkers. But let's get back to talking about the equally vast numbers of fans who are generally thoughtful people.) It's hard enough to verbalize the mechanics of your own internal calculus, and it's not surprising that when we look at people whose answers are wildly different than our own, we're tempted to either say, "Really? You thought about that? Really?" or to assume that the difference lies in people's *values*, the importance that they place on different consequences -- because that is one factor that we intuitively understand can vary between people. Unfortunately, either of those options can lead to some pretty ugly discussions.
But there are two other factors that go into the equation: the extremity of a possible consequence, and its likelihood, and I don't think people always appreciate how different our estimates of *those* factors can be. And that's something that can be comparatively less emotional to talk about, more cognitive instead. One thing that I liked about heatherly's recent post on the topic is that she did try to address those factors and talk about why she estimates them differently than some people might, rather than jumping to the easy (but often insulting) answer of values (See, not a single "But whyyyy don't you care about the children?!?" in her post.)