Now that all the people who are convinced the forum is toxic are here…
I’ll start off by saying that death threats are never okay, and I’m not talking about people who choose to send them.
I’ve seen a handful of threads talking about how “toxic” the community is and or has become. While I personally do think that the community has become in fact some variation of “toxic”, I also think it’s extremely hypocritical to carefully hand pick what and what doesn’t make it toxic.
You want to talk about what makes this community toxic? Let’s talk about it then.
Let’s talk about how you can’t call out racist, homophobic, misogynist, transphobic, sexist, harmful content without getting called a bully or automatically getting thrown into the “moral police”. Or how people constantly prioritize the feelings of someone who has the option to change their repulsive story but refuses to, over the feelings of people harmed by it. Let’s talk about how a victim’s feelings are repeatedly dismissed with “don’t like it, don’t read it”, or how a 12 year old is expected to monitor what they’re reading on an app meant for them, while grown adults could be monitoring what they’re writing. Let’s discuss how tropes like “In love with the 500 year old vampire” or “Dating the mafia boss” are so normalized to the point that people will refuse to acknowledge how these stories affect our actions and thoughts and shape us as people. How is it acceptable that an author can get away with using a hairstyle meant for POC with a mediocre apology in which they make themselves the victim the whole time. (Ex: It’s just a hairstyle, and my step sister’s twice removed cousin who is white wears it too, so it’s okay). Even worse, how can someone accept an apology that wasn’t meant for them or claim to speak on behalf of a whole group of people. Why are manipulative, overly jealous male characters excused of their behavior for the sole purpose of being “hot”. Why is “cancelling” someone more problematic than the action that caused the “cancellation” itself, and most importantly, why in the world are people banned for speaking against these injustices, while actual bullies roam free on the forums.
Every single time I see someone getting called out (after a long private discussion, which may I add, the author completely chooses to ignore), a comment that says “it’s going to hurt the author’s feelings if you call them out :(((“ lingers not too far behind. An author shouldn’t be allowed to write whatever they want if people aren’t also allowed to express their opinion on it.
You can carefully select what you consider toxic all you want, but if you’re going to talk about how much you hate the community, and how “harmful” it is, just stay quiet. You can’t choose what topics you want to talk about and which ones you want to completely ignore.
