New bad anti-AO3 take I heard today: "The gift economy perpetuates class divide and inequality". Is this... about not being able to monetize shit? Does anyone know? Do I want to know? God.
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"I'm poor and have no skills, so I should be allowed to co-opt other people's labor to advertise my fic patreon."
That's always what it is.
Ah, well, if it’s the post that was linked to, the OP was: “We need ao3 writers to develop class conciousness. Ao3 is nothing without them. Ao3 needs them but they don’t need ao3. Labour is entitled to all it creates.”
Which is the usual delusional nonsense where people ignore that making sites is labor. Art is labor, but so is building a storefront. So is running a site. So is designing metadata structures. This type of self-absorbed fic writer ignores everyone else’s labor in favor of their own.
OTW volunteers are entitled to say that their labor is for making a nonprofit site with rules against advertising.
“They need us” is a serious misunderstanding. Everyone who uses AO3 costs it money. If it were a hundred friends posting for each other, it would be a lot easier to run. That’s not to say that you should feel bad about using it. It’s there for you to use.
But this concept of sites ~needing you~ is based on commercial sites that want to monetize your data and that are trying to extract user generated content so they can profit.
AO3 generously lets you use a service. It’s more like a food bank than whatever that other post is imagining. You aren’t doing it a favor by being there. Unlike fucking Facebook and the rest of the parasites.
I'm going to peer review myself and elevate my tag rant from my reblog of the post in question:
#AO3 is what happens when fanfic writers develop class conciousness #AO3 exists because a bunch of fans got sick of their work being deleted and went “screw it we have to own the servers” #people NEED to stop thinking of AO3 as some nebulous entity separate from fancreators #AO3 is itself a fanwork# the “our” in “Archive of Our Own” is not just for show #the name reflects that that WE wanted to host our OWN fic without outside forces trying to make money off us or tell us what not to write #you can go look up Astolat herself on AO3 if you want #the woman who founded AO3 is not a tech bro #she's a fangirl who got sick of her favourite fics being taken down
"The gift economy perpetuates the class divide" people really will just string nonsense together into a sentence and call it a hot take.
Gift economy is literally just another term for mutual aid.
What is Mutual Aid? Mutual aid is a volunteer-led initiative / project where groups of people in a particular area, or from a particular community join together to support one another, meeting vital community needs without the help of official bodies. [source]
The Organization for Transformative Works is a fandom mutual aid organization built by volunteer fan labor to provide free archival services, and free digital distribution services, and even free legal services for free fanwork.
Imagine having the unmitigated gall to tell a group of volunteers they owe you money for *allowing* you use the free services their volunteer labor provided.
Yuuuup
