Oh, dammit, it finally happened to me. I entered a new fandom and it’s filled to the brim with antis. It’s for a game that heavily features dark themes and suicide, but you’re not allowed to depict those or you ~romanticize~ suicide and self harm. A ship week posted its prompts, and among the list were entries like making out and self harm. The characters involved are both 16, and lo and behold, a whole bunch of people got angry. Couldn’t fathom why these prompts would ever be included in a ship week and started throwing around pedo accusations. “The fact that the organizers blocked naysayers instead of accepting criticism says enough” shows that they don’t want to help anyone or have a discussion, they want people to do what they say and obey, no questions asked.I’ve never been in a fandom like this. How do I keep myself safe here without going insane? I started by blocking anyone who expresses annoying sentiments, but I plan on writing some dark themes and NSFW stuff. The worst part is that it won’t even be SA/underage dark themes or kinky NSFW stuff, just standard coming-of-age and mental health stuff that can be expected between young adults with depression. I already know that people will throw a fit over these aged-up 20 y/o’s being depicted as sexual beings anyway.
Bullies like smelling blood in the water. They don’t like being told they’re stupid children whose opinions don’t count, whether that’s by you actually saying that or you just blocking them as worthless in the first place.
No, really. I was thinking about this just earlier tonight. Your well-crafted two-page essay on why it’s okay to write dark fiction will have no effect on these people, but just posting “lol” (exactly like that, all lowercase, no punctuation) will get them so mad they can’t speak, because you’re not giving them anything to punch. I used to respond to hatemail here with a picture of Zorak from Space Ghost Coast to Coast. A well-placed “u mad bro?” will do so much more to shut them up than any thoughtful reply you can give, because they don’t WANT to think.
And if you want the REAL one-two punch, reply like this AND THEN BLOCK THEM. If you’re wondering “why bother? Why not just block?”, the answer is that bullies only escalate when they think they can win. They’ll be less willing to go after you on their friends’ behalf if they know they’re going to get the mock’n’block, because if you don’t care, then they look stupid. And if they look stupid, they automatically lose.
Save up some meme images. Scan video essays about The Old Internet. You may have to deploy a few threads at first (“angry anti comment!” “lol k” *block* PERSON #2: THEY’RE RIGHT! YOU SUCK!” “ur boyfriend said you do too *loss.jpg*” *block*), but they’ll stop EXTREMELY QUICKLY when they realize you don’t care, because you caring about their opinions is the only weapon they have.
And this is why you reply. Because they’ll bombard you as long as they think they might hit. When they realize they can’t, they’ll flee.
Oh man, xe gave me internet permission to break out my old reaction images.
Enjoy, everypony!
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Holy shit, are those RAGEFACES????? I haven’t seen those in like 15 years, I’m surprised you still have them.
But yeah, definitely look into very old internet memes. Like VERY old. Like “I made u a cookie but I eated it” old. When I said “like it’s 2005,” that is EXACTLY what I meant. Our memes were deranged in a completely different way than today’s memes, and they weren’t used as a language shorthand the way modern memes are, which makes them baffling for someone trying to pick a fight. Look up the lolcat Bible and start quoting from it! “Ceiling cat is watching u masturbate” would get a ton of great mileage here.
I look forward to the endless posting of contextless images of badgers, mushrooms, and snakes.
my time has COME
part one :3
part two
part three (i love blank staring reaction images a lot lol)
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