I was planning originally to post this sentiment on just TikTok or such since I think that’s the source of this constant headache, but it might be a good idea to put this here as well since I fear it needs repeating:
For those who follow me and my videos on YouTube and on TikTok, please remember that The Freak Circus is not a game or media meant to be played by anyone under the age of 18.
It features dark, sensitive and graphic content that is meant for an adult audience.
Myself, Neko and the entirety of the TFC team are incredibly uncomfortable that there are people under the age of 18 interacting with the game and fandom, especially when we’ve taken a great amount of care to properly tag and label things across the board— its labeled as such on itchio, the official blog is clearly labeled as well with no room for misinterpretation:
The Freak Circus is not meant for anyone under the age of 18.
We are also not the parents of other people’s children, and are not responsible nor obligated to witch hunt every single minor that posts in the TFC tag or comments somewhere. I have become incredibly wary to interact with people who do not have a posted age (though people can and do lie on the internet, I’m quite aware of that) largely because there are many people who just don’t respect that boundary.
(There are a lot of fans who don’t respect many boundaries, but that’s a separate issue and one that I can ignore a lot easier.)
There’s very little an adult creator can do to restrict access to their adult-but-not-explicit media without also risking their media to be blacklisted, banned, restricted to those who show government IDs, ect. Even if someone is an adult, they should never be forced to show their photo ID to a company or to a government in order to access the internet or to interact with a piece of media, and it’s the biggest reason I use tags instead of labels to try and find a responsible but aware balance with who can see and access my content.
For context, the whole TFC team grew up and were fundamentally part of an internet where governments and companies did not have access to people’s personal information in the same way they do now— the idea of them even asking for more than your name was strange. I know I’m not the only adult who would agree that the internet is a very different place then where it started, and very much worse in some regards (I hate the state of modern day social media and the commodification of art) but there is only so much one person can do without going completely insane.
Me and Neko have agreed on many occasions how important it is to keep the game accessible for people, because there are plenty of adults who cannot access the game otherwise if there was a price tag on it or if the game itself was restricted behind Patreon or a similar process.
We just… fundamentally disagree on restricting it in that way, and its exhausting to take every reasonable measure to communicate this boundary and still have people disregard it or get angry that we aren’t ’doing more’.
I’m not out to vilify or lay moral judgement on anyone as being a horrible or irredeemable person (please dear god keep yourself safe, don’t trust companies with your information), but I’m also not going to act like I don’t stress about how I have to hold myself or figure out ways to clearly assert my personal boundaries (as I am a creator of suggestive/explicit works) so I can avoid using broken, ill-thought or outright malicious ‘verification’ procedures various social media platforms are trying to assert across the internet.
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