Yesterday’s Wars (and why they mattered)
When I was active in the fictionkin (at that time, Otakukin) community it safe to say that all hell was breaking loose, day after day. Nobody really had a safe space to be fictionkin. Journals, communities and forums were, if not on a daily basis certainly on a weekly one, subjected to some of the most rigorous trolling and harassment I have ever seen in my life. In some cases it was persistent individuals, in some cases dedicated groups. In all cases, it was chaos.
Every day those of us in the community had our identities, and our sanity questioned. We lived and posted under a barrage of insults and the constant, hovering threat that even our private friends only posts would be taken, made public and subjected to ridicule. There were cases of trolls lurking in communities for months, gaining trust, only to expose themselves, post our secrets and make off into the night, laughing. Whenever we posted, we felt threatened, challenged.
Looking back, what all of this constant trolling and negative attention to the community did was make us stronger. Because we were questioned every day on our identities and what it meant to be fictionkin, we reflected every day on what these things meant to us, on why they were important. We hesitated before posting to make sure that our thoughts were organized as best to reflect that YES we were serious, and NO we were not insane. We were people with a belief, a strong belief, a belief that was constantly called into question. A belief that mattered, if only to us.
I look now and I see a community that has grown soft and idle, that no longer day after day has the bubbling pressure to defend itself. To rally together. I’ve commented already that the community feels very scattered today, and I think is part of the reason. I think that we scattered to avoid the scrutinizing gaze of trolls and harassment— to each carve out a personal place on the internet where our we could air our beliefs without threat.
I think for the most part it worked, and that, for the most part, it has been to all of our detriment.
I think without outside scrutiny many of us have lost the will to self scrutinize, and without persecution we have lost the reason to all hang together. And so I see us all hang separately. All alone in our little bubbles of what it means to be fictionkin— or otherkin— or therian. We hang separately and so our worlds become little bubbles of self reinforcement and feedback without any reason to question ourselves, to grow.
I see the problem but I don’t know what its remedy is. Certainly I don’t call for the days of constant war again, tiring, emotionally draining, and repetitive. But I think we as a community— if we are to BE a community need something to bring us together. Something to make us continue to search and question and reflect and scrutinize ourselves— not because we need to prove our beliefs to others, but because our beliefs matter.
I really don’t remember it ever being as bad as you make it sound. But perhaps I was simply missing the memo on all these so horribly many times the communities were having their private posts shared off-site? I know it has happened, but hardly enough to warrant this kind of dramatic talk. All this stuff about “war” is a big part of why people think we’re so hilarious. There’s no war and there never was. It’s the internet not a battlefield.
I hope I haven’t suddenly lost my licensee to use dramatic metaphors. That would be a real shame– sort of take away the point of writing. The reason people ‘think we’re so hilarious’ is for the most part the minority crazies who ‘think they can shoot kamehameha out their butt’.
As for whether you missed the memo or not, I don’t know. Were you on livejournal in 2005-2007? If not, you probably *did* miss the memo as this is where the action (I’m using dramatic metaphor again) was. Yes, it was a big deal. Yes it was as stressful as I make it sound. No, I know it was not literally a war.
I feel things are worse for fictionkin now, harrassment wise, than they were before. The fact that so many have migrated to public sites and forums is a big part of that. Genius move everyone, by the way. We’re not without outside scrutiny. We are just, for the most part, without providing something for them to screenshot.
Obviously as I’ve said, I’ve been out of the community for a while. Maybe the harassment *is* worse now but if that’s the case, I don’t see it when I look at the community. Maybe its just more private, but if thats the case how can I judge?
As for moving from private to public sites, if there ever was a truly private place for fictionkin, I never knew it. There were privatized communities, but any community that was advertised (and if you didn’t get people to join, what was the point? since you would have no members) was infiltrated (dramatic metaphor again) by people whose only business in the community was to wreck it.
There’s nothing beneficial about providing people with something to screenshot and take the piss out of. Beneficial would be people learning from each other and being open to questions. “FUCKING LOL THIS IS SO STUPID” does not teach anyone anything, and there’s no way to frame your belief that will stop it, so nobody has any reason to try and improve.
I’m not sure what you mean about ‘providing something to screenshot’ etc. Do you mean there’s no point in posting and discussing publicly? Because if so I very much disagree with that. Elements of fictionkin, especially people who are new to the phenomenon, and yes I’ll say it –stupid fictionkin– will always be the most visible. Those of us who have the ability to present our thoughts better need to be visible as well, to counteract this. Because otherwise no one new will come, and we’ll just disappear.
If we are to BE a community we need to stop migrating to different fucking sites all the time. That’d be a great fucking start. Truthfully I think a lot of people just don’t want a community anymore. They’re bored of it and don’t have the interest in it. They have their friends and don’t have the inclination for more than that. You get new fictionkin so fucking rarely, it’s not enough to keep a community alive.
I think you’re right that a lot of people don’t want to be a community any more. That they’re bored, or tired. That was me a few years ago. And now here I am, back and wishing there was a community again.
