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AO3 Needs Blocking Functions, Desperately
The search filtering options are SHIT when it comes to protecting people from triggering content. And blithely telling people “it’s your job to curate your experience” without acknowledging that the site oftentimes makes it nearly impossible to do so is a real asshole move.
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Fact: Blocking individual tags quickly becomes unreasonably, absurdly tedious if you’re doing multiple searches and have over 5 tags you want to block.
And anyone who has been in fandom as long as I have has at least 10 tags they wanna permablock just counting NOTPs alone -- not even including triggers & squicks.
Overshare time!
In 2011 the Captain America kink meme was born and I developed a fondness for "tiny!Steve is tiny everywhere" fic, which later expanded into a general micropenis porn kink. In 2016, AO3's micropenis tag got flooded with Donald Trump porn.
Lemme tell you, nothing kills the mood like having to physically type the name Donald Trump into an AO3 search form to exclude it from your current porn search. That's the kinda thing you want to be able to block once and then never have to think about ever, ever again.
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Fact: The most triggering stories are always untagged.
The most offensive stories are written by people who lack the self-awareness to recognize their own racism/biphobia/misogyny/etc. Often it's not the trigger itself that is the issue, but rather how it is handled, and whether or not you were able to mentally prepare for it.
People who tag racism are actually more likely to write fic that handles racial issues respectfully. It's the people who don't tag who tend to write the cringiest, most offensive, most stereotyped representations of POC.
Blocking tags, in this case, is useless. The best way to avoid stories like this is to avoid the authors who write them.
It should be much easier to permanently exclude authors and/or specific stories from search results.
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Fact: The human brain forgets traumatic experiences.
Meaning, when I read a story that I hate, or that triggers me, I forget what it is called. I forget who wrote it. I forget what it’s about.
Until I accidentally re-read it.
And that happens OFTEN. And it shouldn’t happen at all. And it wouldn’t, if I could just permanently exclude specific stories and/or authors from search results.
There’s nothing worse than to start reading a fic and think “Wait, I’ve read this before. Why don’t I remember how it ends??” and then get 30 pages in and realize, “Oh ... that’s why. Fuck this author. Fuck this story.”
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Fact: Happy people don't kill their husbands.
We talk about how AO3 was created to be a safe haven for fanfiction authors, and not a safe haven for triggered readers.
But it can be both!
This is one circumstance where protecting readers will actually protect authors at the same time!
Allowing readers to permablock authors and tags reduces the likelyhood that readers will stumble upon a story that triggers them, which in turn shields authors from hostile audiences -- after all, you can't get at mad at a story that didn't show up in your fic search in the first place.
To borrow and re-contextualize an Elle Woods quote, creating a better user experience will make users less likely to lash out.
Block features will also make it easier for the volunteer staff to differentiate between readers who are genuinely malicious, and readers who are just fed up of being blindsided by the same triggering content every time they do a casual fic search.
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Speaking as someone who lived through multiple LiveJournal racewanks -- I read a lot of racist fic LJ without confronting any fanfic author directly, until one day I just fucking snapped and typed up a whole ass diatribe in someone's story comments and suddenly I was on fandom wank. And honestly her story wasn't even close to the most racist fanfic I'd read. It was just the straw that broke the camel's back.
Obviously racism must be addressed.
Less obvious is how. I used to think the only way to address racism in fandom was by writing angry diatribes in the comment sections of individual racist fanfic. I do still think individual callouts have a role in addressing racism. But I no longer think that’s the only, or even one of the better ways of addressing fandom racism.
Systemic fandom racism needs to be addressed at the community level, with infrastructure.
Providing nonwhite fans with the tools to avoid triggering racist content and protect themselves from racist harassment will do way more for POC in fandom than targeting individual racist commenters, or individual racist stories.
TL&DR:
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