I've been receiving an increasing number of scam comments on my fic lately. It used to be very rare, and now I've had two in just the past couple days. It may be because my work is still available when you're not logged-in (because I didn't want to put barriers between people and my work) or because they're easier to write now thanks to AI.
I can't always see the endgame of it—like, what are these people trying to gain? Or is it just bullying for kicks? But this is just a PSA so that when you see one of those, you don't freak out, delete your account, spiral, etc. They are not real people and they didn't read your fic. Don't think of it like hate mail, it's more like a nastygram blown by the wind that ended up plastering itself across your face. It's unpleasant, but it isn't a reflection on you.
The classic kind is where they praise your work and claim to want to make a comic or video of it. This is a perfectly normal thing to do in fan spaces, the only problem is they expect you to pay. Payment is not the norm with fan work, and you have no idea what the quality of the work would be or if they really intend to make it at all. So never agree to these out-of-the-blue requests.
I haven't gotten many of these; most people asking to transform your work are legit. So (if you want the thing) just say "yes, I would love to see it! Please share it with me if you do, I'll link it!" and leave it at that. Decent artists will be happy with this, and people who are trying to separate you from your money can't work with that.
They're getting a little sneaky now though. They know they're not supposed to advertise anything for profit on AO3. So they try this approach:
I was riding high on the praise till the last line. Then I realized this person is essentially no different from somebody offering candy from a van. They tempt you with flattery, everybody likes that. Then they try to get you to a second location. To which I say,
A normal person could have gone to my tumblr, which is linked in one of the notes, and DM'd me. They would have started out in a normal way, meaning along with praise for the fic they would probably have something they actually wanted to talk about, like "hey I liked your worldbuilding ideas, do you think that the Gorn might also do XYZ?" Or "I wrote my own fic on the same topic, would you like to look at it?" Everybody wants something and I am way more comfortable once I know it's a normal thing that normal people want: a conversation, attention, craft advice, a discord invite, whatever.
It's not weird for someone to say "hey my tumblr is XYZ if you want to connect there." It IS weird to ask to move to an undisclosed "other app" when we weren't even really having a conversation that was going anywhere. That's how I almost got scammed for a huge amount of money by a job that didn't exist earlier this year. Scammers want to go to another app because a) the app they are on has robust anti-scam rules, and/or b) they do not have an established identity on this app, so they want you to join them on an app where they've stolen someone else's identity to look more legit than they are.
Remember that a stranger is a stranger even if they are very nice about your fic!
The last one, I don't understand the endgame of at all. The call-to-action varies and sometimes there isn't one. But the root of it is that they accuse you of being AI.
Now, I hate AI. I also can detect it pretty easily. I suspect this comment is AI. I'm not sure, but the weird over-the-top word choices and the clunky phrase "bordering on an AI's calculated formality" definitely give me that vibe.
That said, I don't believe in AI witch hunts. The best proof of AI isn't generally the text, it's that it's shared by someone without a real personality or history, or someone who posts more rapidly and at more length than a human could. (Like facebook pages that post thousand-word essays every hour around the 24. That's not a person.) In this case, I can't check that. They're not logged in, and the name they're using is almost certainly stolen from someone else. (It's a real person who hasn't been active in a long time and isn't in this fandom.)
But, AI or not, they came here to bully. This comment is calculated to make me question whether I'm robotic in my writing or should be using more colloquialisms. (Failed at that, because I'm literally writing from an alien POV; the nonhuman vibe was by design.) Once they've triggered my insecurity, they want ....an audio clip? Unclear what they could do with that, but since I am uncomfortable sharing my voice anywhere—most of my closest internet friends have never heard it, because I'm insecure about it—I didn't even consider complying. Never let insecurity or the desire to prove you're a real person make you jump through whatever hoops they think would prove something. (It wouldn't even prove anything! AI prompters are people and can easily do real-person things to support their AI creation.)
I think we should make two norms in this community:
We don't use AI, ever. There's nothing to gain. We're here for the joy of creation.
We don't accuse other people of using it, ever. It's such a crushing criticism to receive for your genuine work. Even one false positive would be unacceptable. The only surefire proof a fic is made by AI is that they said it was.
If someone accuses you of being AI, don't panic. It's almost certainly a drive-by attack that has nothing to do with you or your work. Either ignore it, or briefly state that it isn't AI and your genuine readers know that. This isn't for the commenter, but for other people in the comments who might see it. Save your effort and attention for any real comments you get. If you were a robot, you wouldn't be pleasantly engaging with your friends in the comments, now would you?
I hope this is some comfort if you've received any weird or upsetting comments. Unfortunately making your work available to readers means it is also visible to bad actors. Don't let them steal your joy in creation and participation in fan community. If you get a comment that strikes you as odd, reach out to your fandom friends or here on tumblr and ask. Very often it's part of a new scam that others have seen as well.
