Some Days This Isn't Worth the Shite I Get (Rant, and Time for a Break) · 8:46pm Jun 10th, 2016
Contains sensitive topics and mentions of past drama; please at least read the giant text at the end of this blog before posting in reaction to them.
Today is one of those days. I'm just tired of everything to do with this site, and a lot of it has to do with all the shite I put up with.
I got started thinking about it recently when I realised that the only reason I'd let an ex-friend of mine continue to give me shite for so long--at least a year--is because he barely registered in the wake of all the other shite I've had to put up with on this site.
So then I got to thinking about all the other shite I put up with.
It's... a lot, and it's mostly because a long while back, I actively contributed to discussion in, and volunteered to help run, a christian group. It turns out that the kids on this site don't appreciate being told they're not allowed to use their bibles for smacking each other, or being told to stop One True Way-ing each other because it's becoming a flame war, or being told it's not kosher to call the group as a whole anti-christian for being willing to tolerate more than one set of christian beliefs or the presence of curious heathens and unbelievers.
Because of this, I've had to put up with two years and counting of the worst conduct I have been party to anywhere on the internet (note: been a party to; I avoid places on the internet known to be horrible).
I've had to put up with individuals fixated on attacking my character, whether the conduct and personality flaws they discussed had any grounding in reality or not.
I've had to put up with entire groups taking themselves private specifically so that I couldn't report them for their circlejerks about how evil I am as a person anymore, after they got frowned at for holding full-fledged "Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead" smear parties when I left another group.
I've had to put up with far too many threads about how awful I am as a human being.
I've had to deal with dozens of (often blatantly false) public attacks on my character.
I've had to put up with being openly attacked for saying that my parents' religious beliefs were involved in their abuse of me.
I've had to deal with being blamed and attacked, relatedly, for causing someone else's existential and moral breakdown.
I've had to deal with being told to my face that I'm completely unreasonable for refusing to entertain a conversation about why I, as a lesbian, should not have many basic civil rights.
I've had to deal with off-site death threats, and on-site threads that existed so OP could discuss their desire to personally find me IRL and end my life.
Let me italicise, bold, and underline that, and say it again, just for emphasis:
I've had to deal with off-site death threats, and on-site threads that existed so OP could discuss their desire to personally find me and end my life.
It is patently absurd that this kind of behaviour is tolerated on fimfiction, especially for as long as it has persisted. And I will quite boldly say that it is tolerated. Would you like to know the consequences of this prolonged pattern of harassment, attacks, and general bullshit?
Mod frowns, a handful of locked or deleted threads, and one person got two very short bans.
Aside from that abysmal failure to accomplish anything in the face of a multi-year series of attacks, smears, and worse, and a conversation during which a site moderator personally attacked me and basically said I was legitimately insane over an otherwise-civilised difference in sociopolitical beliefs, I have two further reasons for having lost faith in the site staff's ability to moderate:
I've acquired, for various incredibly stupid reasons (for example, one person's insane troll "logic" declared that I fuck children), a small circle of people who downvote my stories for the asinine reason that they don't like me. Now, downvotes happen, but this particular behaviour used to be forbidden, and with good reason--story votes were supposed to be about the story, a policy I still agree with. Those rules changed specifically because the mods couldn't enforce them. This impacts one of my lesser motivations to write horse words onto fimfiction: Downvotes make it extremely difficult for stories to gain rank on the site, even if they deserve a higher rank.
Knowing that nothing I do will ever be good enough to rank well on the site not because I will never be good enough, but because a handful of morons decided they hate me and they're allowed, will downvote everything I write... it doesn't exactly fill me with determination, you know?
You could argue that if downvotes just weighed less in the rank calculation or weren't factored in, this wouldn't be a problem. In fact, this isn't my only ongoing technical problem (for example, I'm currently the founder of a group but not an admin of it, somehow). But not only is it a problematic behaviour to which the moderator response was throwing up their hands and letting it happen like the time my dad explicitly permitted one of my brothers to punch me in the head for making him angry, the next problem is purely one of moderator concern.
Fimfiction's groups are rapidly devolving into cesspools due to their policy of letting groups moderate themselves. Because nothing fits the site better, apparently, than nearly every group of significant size and activity turning into a bunch of ass-backwards manchildren whining because women, LGBT people, and black people have rights and have the gall to say you're a disrespectful jerk when you act like a disrespectful jerk.
Whew. Okay, that all really needed to get off my chest.
The tl;dr is I'm taking a break because I badly need one and have lost faith in the site's moderation.
I have a few things to say before I go:
First, this is not the place to debate or discuss any of the sensitive issues I may have mentioned. Do not explain to me how your religion isn't evil, no really it isn't. I say, at the risk of risk of repeating myself: Do not explain to me why MRAs or SJWs are right/wrong. Do not post here just to tell me you're right about how horrible I am. This isn't the place, I am not interested in such conversations regardless what side you're on, and I will linger long enough to delete your comment if it contains any such things, for both of our sakes.
Second, I may not return. It's unlikely, but possible; I'll sit back and consider whether to return once I've had enough of a break. It's somewhat less likely, but still possible, that I will later decide to not only not return, but completely terminate my involvement in this community. That means tearing down my profile, removing my stories, etc. What I'm trying to say is, if you actually like anything I've ever written, it would be a good idea to download backups of my stories very soon. It's not likely that they're going away, but it's possible.
Third: No, seriously, don't come here just to be an apologetic for one of the groups or people (or yourself) that's caused me so much trouble over the past two years. I've probably blocked you, but if you can post here, and you intend to post something that isn't an admission of guilt and an apology for causing me so much stress, you can count on me to ignore or delete it because this blog is, again, not the correct place for such discussions (and also fuck you, I'm not entertaining any conversation in which the topic is "actually Proper you do deserve all the personal shit you get"; nobody should have to).
For those of you who have been nothing but good to me, and being fair, there are quite a few of you, I'm sorry about this drama, but I need out for a while. Double-sorry if I decide not to come back, and triple-sorry if I decide that my work and I can't be part of this website anymore. I'll do whatever I have to do, but I will have the decency to be a little bit sad about it.
Have some blatant emotional manipulation, brought to you by fans of Background Pony.
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Have a good time while you are away, I'm always around if you need someone to talk to.
You have my sympathies, Proper. I always enjoyed it when you contributed, both in stories and comments, and feel the community will be worse off in your absence. I wish it would be as simple as staying away from groups with negative atmospheres and call it a day, but if you need a break, then I hope it helps.
The internet is rarely a place to talk about personal things, it's hard to find people you can trust let alone understanding. Personally I gave up on the groups here some time ago because I wasn't allowed to talk about something that was effecting people and was aiding in raising the suicide rates.
Something to remember, haters going to hate. If people come and down vote your story but leave no comment then that vote is empty and meaningless. If they don't leave a valid comment addressing a real reason for the vote then it isn't worth your time. I understand how hurtful bad comments can be, but you can't let that stop you from doing what you enjoy. The moment you quit because of their harassment is the moment they win. It's all just a game to them, to make people rage quit but if you keep writing and brush them aside then they won't win over you.
I would know, I gave up art and writing a few years ago. Because of this I can't bring myself to write or draw anything despite wanting to. Looking around and seeing other people's work hurts now because I think to myself "I could of done something like that"
I'm sorry.
I'm not apologising for groups; any behaviour that makes you feel this way deserves far worse than a slap on the wrist and a limp "sorry".
But I will offer sympathies for the situation. As I said, being made to feel like that is pretty damn awful, so if a break away helps you feel better, by all means take it.
I hope to see you back and around sometime. In the meanwhile, though, take care, and I hope you feel better.
Well, I don't converse with you much, but I can say I've watched countless members of this site that were good, kind-hearted people get torn apart by malicious users, and nothing done to stop it. Seeing another consider leaving is saddening. Nobody should have to abandon what they love doing for another's spiteful actions.
In any case, I wish you the best of luck. And I hope you decide to stay.
Wow, just wow Fimfiction
I now feel sad, sympathetic, angry and disgusted all at the same time because of how you're treated on this site
I'm sorry all this happened o you and please accept a friendly internet hug from me.
Well...uh, hate to see you go. I hope you find peace outside FIM
WHAT THE ABSOLUTE FUCK!?
That's just fucked up, but sadly how most of the internet works...
I'm sorry that people are shitheads, and I remain one of those absurd people who expects better from this fandom in particular. If you decide to leave for good but want to keep in touch, I can share my skype name in a PM or something.
Well shit.
And here I was seeing you as a sort of Easter Egg on this site. "Oh, look! It's Proper Noun! She's a cool gal. I like that gal." And move on with my life.
The best I can suggest is, if you come back, just disassociate yourself with these toxic groups. It's worked pretty well for me.
Fetting fet fet fet. Fetting jerks...
Damn girl, what group are you part that but the best way to solve this would be to separate yourself from those groups as far as possible. Being with people that hurt you is something no one should go through, if treats you like crap they don't deserves you and you should leave them. But never let other people and their bullshit ruin your passion or your fun have here.
Well fuck. This is almost exactly what happened to Lily Peet.
I know you don't know me, but ive been aware of you enough that you really don't deserve that crap, and the site will be worse without you. I mean, fuck, I've lost count of how many times you've been the voice of reason in an otherwise idiotic situation.
I'll be sure to make backups of your stories.
I may have only gotten to know you in the past few months, but you've easily become one of my most respected people. I wish you the best of luck wherever the wind blows!
But then why make several statements that would obviously lead to people wanting to have a conversation about them? I get that you don't want it here on this blog, and I respect that.
My issue is that it's not really going to help you. You've ranted, aired your grievances, but you've decided to forbid actual discussion about them. You've given your perception of the site and its groups, but are not really allowing anyone to say anything other than agreement, lest you delete their comment. You're venting, but into a sealed room. All that heat, that anger towards things, is just going to grow hotter because it's the only perception you'll have when you think about the site.
In short, you're only going to reinforce your extremely negative views of the site and its users by not allowing discussion of those views. People won't understand your grievances any deeper than what you've said here, and won't be able to take as much action to rectify them.
By all means, a break will do you good. But use that time to think about your problems with the site, and how you and others can go about making some change, if that's what you really want. If not, then I guess this is goodbye.
Hope you indeed have a good time until you return.
I stumbled upon your profile and was curious as to why you'd left. While I don't understand your situation very well, it seems clear that you have difficulty trusting FIMfiction with your ideas and feelings. If that's the case, I know what it's like, and I miss the days when we could at least pretend there was something special, something different about being in this fandom. I no longer have the luxury of believing that. All fandoms are a microcosm of society, and in society today - at least in my country - there is precious little trust, accountability, or tolerance. It's a maelstrom of howling voices decrying, demanding a thousand different things. This fragmented and poisoned "national dialogue" frightens me more with each passing year.
But please excuse my rambling on your page. Whether you return or not, I wish you well.
Actually, the mods CAN do something about downvotes; they've always been able to, but they pretend like otherwise is the case because they don't want to have to deal with the likely thousands of authors who will come complaining to them. In several cases, I've seen downvotes reversed on stories. And a curious thing struck me about them. To wit, they all had some rather alarming similarities:
. They were all currently high on the featured list.
. They were all by authors with thousands of followers.
. They were all stories in which a mod had COMMENTED POSITIVELY on them.
In fact, when I downvoted one such story, the vote was reversed and within minutes all of my stories had been downvoted in turn. Mods actively go out of their way to protect the exalted few on this site (including - and I'm serious about this - giving out an IP address because an author suspected that they were the victim of one aggrieved person using alts to downvote them).
On what I will laughingly call my main account, an author on this site said in no uncertain terms that they, in conjunction with their many thousands of followers, would essentially downvote all of my future stories into oblivion because I didn't defer to his interpretation of the rules for posting stories.
That's how fucked up this place has become lately. The popular authors have too much power, the mods don't care any more, and us little guys are stuck dealing with the fallout when we don't toe the line.
Best wishes. I hope you can recover from this (mentally, even if you are gone forever), and... I might follow suit If I can't find evidence that something has been done to ensure moderator accountability.
(And I again find myself asking: what is so hard about Homo sapiens acting decent to one another? Is there any wonder I would rather wake up in Equestria, without regard to whether I remember humanity, when people on this plane of existence can be so horrible to one another? People, ironically, claiming to be about love, joy, peace... and I'll cut myself off there, not that this comment is likely to be deleted anyway)