what all the people who freak out about the dark web don’t realize is the stuff they claim only happens on the dark web actually happens on the surface web too. an actual murderer sharing pictures of their victims? posted on 4chan before. a murderer posting live videos of their murder? uploaded to bestgore and still available on the surface web after bestgore was shut down. 99% of the time the only reason any such crime is posted on the dark web instead of the surface web is to make money from it illegally. people seem to be comfortable denying that any human would in no way be ashamed of the harm they inflict on others and happily present it to others. this isn’t an edgy “humanity is evil” statement, just facing reality.
On the Internet, there are spaces that are moderated and meant to be safe for kids, and spaces that aren’t. Nintendo has very strict content rules and adults that play games like Splatoon are expected to follow those rules. When I was 10, my Mom found a lovely Animal Crossing fan forum that was run by a dedicated team of moderators who kept all content safe for kids. These kinds of spaces are deliberately carved out to create fannish spaces that are safe for child fans where adults are welcome to participate but must follow the content rules.
Tumblr and Ao3 are not spaces like this. Adults are allowed to post what they want so long as appropriate content warnings are attached. While Tumblr desktop is open for teenagers under 18 (the mobile app is still 17+) it’s a good opportunity for them to learn how to police their own consumption of content, respect the boundaries that adults set for that content, avoid things that bother them, and start to see people in different age groups as peers rather than authority figures. Don’t like it? Go back to a forum where there are adults who are willing to filter content for you. Think their content rules are too strict? Well, learning to moderate your own fannish experience is part of growing up and handling the maturity required for having your own freedom.
Looking back at this post, I’m realizing that “go to a website where the content is heavily moderated for minors” is SO MUCH BETTER to tell minors than “ask your parents to moderate your content for you.” These places exist! Go and find them! If you’re over 13 then you’re not legally required to ask your parents for permission! Tell your friends about them so they can join you there! But if the content restrictions are too tight then it might be time to evaluate how you handle content warnings on other sites.
some day “milf is a slur” discourse will break out and there will be no survivors
Indeed, the devil finally answer the knocking:
I know a lot of yall aren’t embroiled in twitter discourse because you’re smarter than i am, but i gotta add in that the op of that discourse is part of a russian cult of lesbian terfs that like do internet ceremonies and believe that the queer gene started in russia which is why it’s surpressed by the government because otherwise every woman in russia would become a lesbian and they would stop producing children for the russian military, it’s WILD how insane that group is,
who is old enough to be part of the fanfic.net era where we literally talked to our characters? like, had conversations with them?
cause I do. as a lonely child of 12 who had no friends, it was a favorite pasttime of mine to boot up the dial-up internet and type out imaginary conversations with ouran high school host club characters in the beginning notes before even starting the damn chapter (which was inevitably 500 words long and absolutely awful)
Modern Author’s Note on Ao3: might discuss some possible triggers, thank readers for comments, apologize for a delay in update, etc–talking to reader, essentially.
Author’s Note on FFN back in 2010:
Author: Y’all are gonna love this cahpter!!!! [Character] not sooooo much
Character:…wh–what’s gonna happen?
Author: Don’t worry about it! ^.^
Character: WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME??
Author: 😉
Character: D:
those were dark, dark days, man. Today’s Fandom Freshman are sure lucky they missed this.
This when right alongside the detailed disclaimers to avoid lawsuits.
Don’t forget that the author was broken into at least five separate voices, ‘Inside Out’ style.
or where you would have ask blogs for your ocs except it was just in a ff.net story. basically an entire classic authors note except people would ask questions. that was my childhood.
Y’all forgot that sometimes we also appeared in the middle of the text with notes like “(author: noooo 😡 character is such a b*tch!!!! character: I’M NOT!!!!)” And it was the crimgiest shit ever but we had fun doing it lmao
Major flashback vibes. Omg
what about the knock-out combination move of getting a different character to do a different but equally detailed disclaimer at the start of every chapter
Anyway, super pissed off at all y’all who’ve been painting any casual, social relationship between minors and adults as “grooming” or “predatory,” as I try to point an 18-year-old on Twitter whose parents are attempting to force them into ABA therapy towards possible sources of help or support, and they say they have….zero safe adults in their life who are older than 18-20.
Folks. Unrelated, decent, older adults are a vital source of support and safety when someone’s family and school are unreliable or abusive.
There are different appropriate boundaries for friendships between kids and adults than between kids and other kids, but making kids believe that zero adults in their lives are safe to have as friends is not actually making them safer.
The whole “capitalism gave you the Internet” thing is especially funny if you actually work in network infrastructure, since one of the first things you’ll learn is that many software technologies that are absolutely critical to the day to day functioning of the Internet are being maintained on a volunteer basis by small, decentralised teams working in whatever free time their day jobs leave them, and that we’d have a crisis on our hands within thirty days if any one of those maintainers were to get hit by a bus and nobody stepped up to replace them. Like, the whole commercial edifice of the Internet rests on the continuous unpaid labour of a relative handful of people who are essentially just doing it for fun.
ok so ……. why is “you don’t need to disclose your entire medical history for your experiences as a nd/disabled/etc person to be valid” a controversial take
no seriously i mean this actually. people will list their entire diagnostic histories in their little carrds out of fear that they’ll post abt something and someone will come to them and say “hey you don’t list that you’re such and such, you can’t talk about this” as if you have the right to judge ppls experiences in the first place; if someone posts a vent abt their chronic pain and your first instinct is to like check their bio and see if they list that they’ve got a health condition somewhere that “validates” their vent you should probably stop worrying about other people and get therapy or something
my opinion is that the world and its people haven’t actually changed that much but rather we’re all just becoming more aware of the level of social clownery due to excessive photo and video evidence being freely shared online
ifesbob 