A New History of Fandom Purges
On November 24th, 2018, I posted a list of major deletions of sites or of content on sites that stripped fandom of its history. A bunch of pro-shipper blogs had just been deleted, and people were nervous. I suppose I was thinking “All this has happened before…”
On December 3rd, 2018, Tumblr’s Department of Irony announced the NSFW ban. Thanks for providing this salutary lesson to The Youth and a billion reblogs to me, I guess.
Today, we have AO3 for writing. Audio, images, and video are in as much danger as ever, yet fans attack AO3 every donation drive. For those of you who forget our past…
HERE IS WHAT HISTORY HAS TAUGHT US!
1992 - Chelsea Quinn Yarbro forces a zine to be destroyed
1995 - Viacom/Paramount goes after fansites
1995 - Anne Rice gets IWTV fic deleted everywhere
1997 - Fox and Lucasfilm go after fansites
1998 - AOL goes after X-Files fansites
2000 - Warner Brothers goes after Harry Potter fansites
2000 - Anne Rice anne rices again
2001 - Tripod Massacre
2001 - Anne Rice goes after IWTV fic on FFN
2001 - The Bronze shut down as Buffy changes networks
2002 - FFN bans porn
2002 - FFN bans RPF
2003 - Gryffindor Tower implodes
2004 - FFN bans script format
2005 - FFN bans CYOA, Readerfic, 2nd person, Songfic
2005 - Sheezyart bans adult content; y!gallery founded
2005 - Viacom/Paramount goes after fansites again
2006 - Sakura Lemon Archive suddenly closes
2007 - Strikethrough, Boldthrough on Livejournal
2007 - Youtube institutes Content ID, deleting many fanvids
2008 - Slash Cotillion closes, taking much historical m/m with it
2009 - GeoCities shuts down, taking old fannish websites
2009 - Greatestjournal shuts down; RPGs deleted
2009 - Marvel gets scans_daily deleted
2009 - imeem, major vidding hub, closes suddenly
2010 - FFN forums purged for inactivity
2010 - DeviantArt purges adult fanfic
2010 - Literate Union goes after Twilight fandom on FFN
2011 - Delicious destroyed by Yahoo’s incompetence
2011 - China arrests women for writing m/m; destroys danmei.org
2012 - major FFN crackdown on porn
2012 - Megaupload deleted for piracy; also destroys vids, podfic
2013 - Max-Dan-Wiz.com purged of fan-generated content
2014 - Quizilla shuts down
2014 - China purges m/m story websites; arrests female authors
2014 - Blip.tv deletes vids
2014 - Viddler deletes vids
2015 - Journalfen’s servers become fully robust, deleting Fandom Wank
2016 - y!Gallery deleted
2016 - Elfwood goes offline
2016 - Audiofic Archive corrupted; major blow to podfic
2017 - Chinese author jailed after being ratted out over fandom drama
2017 - Parents get queer Warrior Cats fic purged from Wattpad
2018 - Tumblr deletes pro-shipper blogs
2018 - Tumblr announces NSFW ban
2018 - Wattpad deletes accounts/fics without warning
2019 - China purges weibo of m/m; more women jailed
This is only a small taste of the many times that:
Fannish moderators got bored, ran out of money, or had a falling out, deleting a site/list/forum along the way.
Sites got bought out and closed for being unprofitable.
Fandom got hit as governments targeted piracy or political dissidents.
Fans grudge reported each other.
Official forums got deleted when the canon finished.
It’s not always malicious. It’s not always about us. But we lose every time.
Some of these purges hit everyone. Many of them hit m/m content specifically or female gaze-y material in general. This is why antis are dead wrong. This is why anti-fujoshi policies end up being anti-m/m policies. This is why we need clear labeling, not content restrictions.
This is why we need AO3.
And it’s why we need a solution for audio, visuals, and video too.
So grateful for the historical memory and the long view on a phenomenon many of us have come to late, and/or take for granted.
And this is why AO3 generates twice its goal amount in just a few days: they are irreplaceable.
I’m gonna assume that all the other sites before AO3 allowed slavery fics and pedo shit and Nazi fics and racist ass fics and shit as well and never fixed it, like AO3. They need to fix that shit and ban it if they wanna be great. Asking for donations and not taking a stance to fix that shit don’t sit well with me.
This is a strong argument for multiple archives.
AO3 itself was set up to be a safe haven for even the most repulsive fic. (And, yes, we very much thought in those terms. A test case I brought up while we were writing the TOS was that rpf snuff porn by male authors about female celebrities. Ughhh.)
Protecting vile fanfic is central to what AO3 is. It would have to abandon its mission to be the archive you want.
I personally support this stance on content because the more restrictive archives of the past (which is most of them) did not effectively keep out anything I hate, but they did regularly go after content I want to protect. Even very reasonable “no gross stuff” policies get twisted back on the most vulnerable people and the most #ownvoices content.
But that’s no reason for AO3 to be the only archive or the only valid content policy.
Many archives of the past had mods vetting all fic, whether for content or quality. Many archives took moral stances on underage fic. I can’t think of a single instance of one explicitly trying to be a safe space for fans of color though, unfortunately.
The archive you want is valid, but it’s not AO3.
olderthannetfic: here’s a huge list of the history of fandom purges that have happened and are continuing to happen. purges almost always harm minorities first. AO3 was set up so that it could be a place where no purge ever occurred again.
lady-knuckles: AO3 needs a good purging.
We: y'all remember Fahrenheit 451?
They: omg yes what an inspiration
^^^ this has literally been said in actual [slightly less obvious and slightly more gaslighty] words by actual antis, if anyone thought that was sarcastic.
For real. We’re in the dark timeline.
Is it me or are they focusing on female fanfiction?
The people getting things deleted or me and the commenters?
In general, yes, women’s art is attacked more frequently. You see that in all types of art, high and low, fic and original. I’m sure some of the people advocating censorship are especially upset by fic because they expect women to produce didactic, clean art.
But as for why there’s an overall focus on women, it’s because fic is mostly written by women.
There are some male-heavy spaces like Spacebattles or FIMFiction, but they are the exception, and they don’t change the overall trend in fic fandom. The most relevant data we have on fic writers is probably the following:
FFN Research’s 2010 survey of new user accounts on Fanfiction.net shows:
78% female
22% male
Centrumlumina’s AO3 Census shows:
80% female
4% male
6% genderqueer
Reddit’s r/Fanfiction’s latest survey shows:
65% female
26% male
2.7% genderfluid
Bear in mind that Reddit is famously guy-centric, and their fic space is still way more than half women. The AO3 numbers are probably more representative of fic fandom on Tumblr.
So, yes, there tends to be a female focus in discussions like this on Tumblr.
This, incidentally, is also why some organizations like the ACLU will protect the constitutional rights of even people that they themselves find reprehensible. “I hate them and I hate what they are saying, but if they are safe to speak, then so are the rest of us, and if they aren’t safe to speak, then there’s no guarantee that the rest of us are, either.” Chiming in as someone who regularly criticizes racism, sexism, casual underage, etc in fandom here on Tumblr, I’m also glad that AO3 protects those fics. I think my primary fandom is racist as hell, and increasingly more and more of the fics are too. I want the fandom to be more diverse and tell better, or at least less racist, stories - but I do NOT want AO3 to be purging all the racist fics. That accomplishes nothing, and puts everything else I value in my fandom in danger and at risk.
As much as I appreciate what everyone is saying, standing up for fandoms/fandom works, regardless of how much we don't agree with them. Though I add this image to every post that I see that mentions Anne Rice and fanworks; mind the date...
(saved on my laptop as "fuck anne rice.jpg")
