Because There's A Difference Between Civil Discussion On The Factual Nature Of Something And Telling

Because there's a difference between civil discussion on the factual nature of something and telling someone when their views are blatantly bigoted (i.e; "all gay people should die") vs telling someone to kill themselves because they wrote Stefan x Damon Salvatore fanfiction.

Harassment =/= any and every negative response or neutral correction to something.

I'll admit, perhaps "call out" was aggressive phrasing. How about we try; "point out." "Educate." "Initiate civil corrections and/or discussions." "Respectfully challenge a bigoted or incorrect statement with intent to correct it or explain why it is bigoted/incorrect."

If I say to someone;

"Hey, just so you know, this information in your post in incorrect." "Actually what you're saying is harmful transphobic rhetoric so unless its your intention to be transphobic, you should consider finding alternate statements or take time to recess and evaluate your opinion." "It might be better if you allow people with more knowledge on this subject to speak rather than speaking from a place of limited understanding."

That is not harassment. And that is the intention of my statement. I hope you understand now. My apologies if my phrasing in one paragraph prompted you to misinterpret the entirety of my post.

Anti-censorship simply means the inherent freedom of something to exist. It does not mean that it has the inherent freedom to exist without response.

I also genuinely can't get over you saying misinformation should remain uncorrected as long as the original poster is happy. Like. What a way to ruin any outstanding point you might've had otherwise.

(Also, likewise, I was not solely referring to fanfiction in the matter you seemed to imply. I am referring to all content as a whole, because harassment is not and has never been limited to just fanfiction, although its a frequent victim.)

It might help you, perhaps, to re-evaluate your understanding of harassment and what it entails. Harassment is a specific type of behavior with a specific type of intention, not just literally saying anything that isn't positive.

Actually there's nothing wrong with blocking or reporting people, deleting comments and refusing to respond/engage with hate and baiting on any level whatsoever. They are not owed your time or explanations. They are not owed your energy. You are not immature or incapable for choosing to refuse to engage instead of choosing to argue and expend energy.

Obviously if you're making uneducated, incorrect or bigoted content then yeah, be prepared for people to call you out and challenge your statements and views, but I'm talking in general.

Hate comment on your fic? That's cool, baby. Just delete it.

Someone's trying to bait you into arguing about your stance on something? Whatever. Its all groovy. Block 'em.

You got a clear visual that someone's just gonna keep coming back at you? Have a report button. Its free. I'll give you as many as you need.

You don't need to facilitate that. You don't need to see it. You don't need to spend your time trying to challenge someone who's obviously either in a bad mentality or is just a shitty person as a whole. You simply Do Not. You don't need to allow that person to have a space and a voice within yours. You don't need to allow them to be able to spew their bullshit for you and everyone else to see outside of their own little bubble.

Next time you get a hate comment on AO3? Wham, bam, its gone, ma'am. No thank you. Anon hate mail? Not in this household.

You have no obligation to facilitate any of it, and anyone who tries to force you into thinking otherwise is simply incorrect. Their action does not inherently demand your reaction. Plus, its objectively more hilarious to know that the sole outcome of their spitefulness and negativity is them getting even angrier because you're refusing to engage and refusing to feed their need for a response.

Disliking characters who aren't straight, white, cis men isn't inherently/always racism, internal prejudice, misogyny, homophobia, ect and every time I see valid criticism of a character being met with a siren wail of "bigotry!!" I want to physically transform myself into that Benfleck smoking meme.

When I say I hate the 911 fandom, things like this are what I mean. These came onto my dash within 3 posts of each other and were the first 911 posts I saw when I logged on.

I think we all need to learn that being wrong or undereducated isn't always something that has to be shamed and vilified. I'm going to use AO3 as an example, because its a prominent one.

I am constantly seeing people who don't actually understand the Archive, its history and its functions making suggestions for "improvements" that would actually have adverse effects when you look beyond the surface, because AO3 isn't like most other websites and these people simply don't know/understand that, so their suggestions are based on the assumptions and information of other sites.

And then I also see people who's only responses to these suggestions are insults, demeaning mockery and generally just comments that shame and criticise the person without actually helping them understand why what they're suggesting is the opposite of beneficial.

All this does is create resentment and an unwillingness to understand. Not everyone knows how to research something properly. Not everyone knows how to evaluate and understand information given to them. Sometimes, we do in fact need people to spell out what might seem obvious, because it isn't obvious to everyone.

The way I look at it is this;

Imagine if you're in school, or at home, and you ask the teacher/your parent a question. Let's say you ask them why the sky is blue. Imagine they laugh at you, mean and mocking, they sneer, and they say; what, you don't already know that? If you're too stupid to already know that, I'm not going to tell you. What a ridiculous question why don't you just automatically know why the sky is blue?

How would you feel then? Would you understand any better why the sky is blue? Would you be willing to ask again? Would you be any more motivated to know?

Everyone loves to say if you're uneducated on something, just don't speak about it, but there's not just 'educated' and 'uneducated.' Someone who's studied something for years will know more than someone who's only done a few weeks worth of research. Someone who's better at researching might be able to find information that someone who isn't as good at researching won't. Its not as cut and dry 'simply don't speak' because quite often, we assume we know enough to speak.

The incredible majority of what we know in life is secondary information. Its what we're told. What we witness and learn from other people. All life passes down knowledge generationally. Laterally. One to another.

And its okay not to know stuff. Its okay not to know everything there is to know about something. Its okay for someone else to know something you don't. And often, if you don't even know what you're looking for, it can be hard to learn what you need or want to know.

It also works both ways.

It okay to be corrected on something. Its not a personal attack. Someone telling you your information is wrong and correcting you isn't trying to humiliate you or demean you. They're just correcting your information. Say thank you, absorb the new info, and move on.

If your immediate instinct to someone who is civilly correcting you or telling you your content is incorrect is to lash out, consider why.

Listen Ian Somerhalder can own my ass for eternity but him using current world issues to plug his bourbon is not the vibe.

Tags and summaries are actually part of your storytelling. Please, for the love of god, stop making summaries that are just things like;

Read for the story

Idk I'm bad at summaries lol

Non-ownership disclaimers*

Character/Character slash fic

DON'T LIKE DON'T READ

[Ship name] highschool AU

[character] meets [character] and they work together and fall in love

Read the tags and check it out

*Which, by the way, you don't need to do, because AO3 does it for you. You don't need to tell people you don't own Marvel on AO3. AO3 would bodyslam Anne Rice for you.

Please. For my sanity. Even if you just copy and paste an interesting paragraph from the story. Your summary is supposed to summarise the story. Its supposed to tell you about the story. Your tags are also designed for that purpose; to tell the reader what you've written.

Is it an AU? Canon divergence? Crossover? Fusion? Who's dating who? Who's gay and who's just a himbo on thin ice? Is it 90s slasher gore or just a little MTV style blood splatter? First person? Third?

You don't have to tag every single aspect of the fic, especially if you want to keep some parts of it secret to not give away scenes or plot points, but please, at least give the reader enough to have a general idea of what they're going into. At least give them enough for them to decide if the fic is something they want to check out, because I know I'm not alone when I say I'll just scroll past a fic that has absolutely no visible information or detail. No matter how high the wordcount.