Hey, babies! How we doin'?

[quickreaver]

I know, I know, I've been MIA at LJ for ages now, but what with the climate on twitter getting so outrageously toxic and aggressive towards anyone who comes within 20 miles of a taboo ship or kink or, yanno, thought, I'm gonna try to be more participatory back here again in these, our last few months of SPN. Wild, that, huh? Hope you're all

Comments

[quickreaver]

It's absolutely horrifying to me right now. I mean, as a fairly peripheral Wincest shipper, I was always looking over my shoulder anyways but this new generation has the wherewithal and inclination to doxx people. They will tell your parents, your employers, whomever they can get their grubby little fingers on, because they don't have the wisdom or experience to understand nuance. They just want to fight for something that generically seems "right" but they can't extrapolate from there. At all. They cannot fathom the amount of actual damage they're doing, and it's really daunting.

I think this is (at least on the surface) a side-effect of a couple things: call-out culture, and the dissolving of the Fourth Wall meeting "stan" culture. Vying to be So-n-So's #1 Fan and get noticed, to become a twitter BNF, that takes a platform and knocking all other competitors out of the way. So you see this ignorant white-knighting for "victims" and the hunger to drag everything into the real world and involve the stars/celebs. It was the worst thing to happen to fandom, imho, but tough to avoid what with the internet.

Add to this kids home from school for the next month or two, and you get this onslaught of near-identical twitter accounts banding together to attack people. Peer pressure at its most insidious.

Some SM platforms are easier to control than others. If you're not locked up, tho? Twitter is the hottest of messes. I hate to see my follower numbers dropping but hey, them's the breaks. It doesn't really amount to any sort of real world pay-out anyways, just an ego boost. Wow will I be glad when the show ends and all these infants find a new fandom to annoy.

[roxymissrose]

Yeah...it's sad that quite a bit of this seems hinged on one ship popping up that appeared to be a solution for some desperate shippers who couldn't bring themselves to ship wincest. I understand that--from the outside I looked at wincest and was somewhat surprised too, but I got over it quickly, seeing as how I came from a fandom where non-con incest was a pretty common trope. But with the "solution" ship, and the dissolving of the fourth wall, like you say, came a lot of crap. SpN has always been an eat-your-own fandom, though people seem to have forgotten, but yes, twitter seemed to have stepped up and fine-tuned a truly shitty kind of behavior.

[quickreaver]

I'm not sure there ISN'T a fandom that doesn't at some point eat their own. Except maybe the Hannibal fandom? WHICH, IRONY. :D :D :D

[withdiamonds]

I've mostly stayed away from fandom stuff on Twitter. I'm not as engaged as I used to be anyway, but the inklings I've had about what goes on there these days makes me happy to keep my distance. You've explained it so well here. I mean, we've always been wanky, but seldom done real RL harm to folks. I hate that some people not only feel no compunction about that, but actually feel righteous about it.

I want to get back to LJ, and your post might be the impetus I needed.

The art is stunning, as always.

[quickreaver]

Thanks bunches! And it'll be awesome to see you on LJ more often. I'm definitely gonna try to be here, on the regular. It's so much more rewarding. You forget that part, what with twitter's instant gratification, but along with that comes the instant dogpiling and that NEVER feels good. LJ is worth the extra work and patience.

[withdiamonds]

Twitter is like rats hitting a button for another food pellet, and another one, and another one....It's hard not to keep going back for more.

[quickreaver]

RIGHT?! Locking up helped, though. I know there's now a limited audience and instead of checking incessantly to see WHO'S LIKING/HATING ME NOW?, I tune in to see what my circle is having for lunch, lol! It's so much more casual. That FOMO isn't quite there.