Rambling about ffa

[sqbr]

Man I'm still never entirely sure what I think about ffa (fail_fandomanon) I've been thinking about it recently after a friend of mine had to leave because the incredibly nasty things people say there about a group she's in were bringing her down. I wish there was somewhere I could go for active fannish conversations that was less likely to randomly dissolve into intense ableism/transphobia/whatever and that didn't assume anyone there was, by definition, "anti-sj". (I mean I am against "sjw"s by the definition of "bully or abuser who uses social justice terminology". Because I'm against all bullies and abusers! But there are plenty of people there who are against any serious attempt at social change, and/or whose definition of sjw includes me and many of my friends)

It took me a long time to learn to recognise the difference between trolls who don't represent the average views at all and more mainstream opinions. It's not fair to hold up the worst of the group as representative of the whole, and there's a pretty wide range of opinions even once you exclude the outliers. But (a)Knowing someone's a troll doesn't always remove the sting of what they've said and (b)The mainstream opinions can still be pretty awful. And that's just on abstract topics, once they start talking about individual fans it can get nasty, hypocritical and just WRONG (the reactions to my own meta haven't been too meansprited, but they tended to miss the point or focus on trivialities. Which admitedly can in part be blamed on my own lack of clarity)

Urg, I'm tired, I'm not expressing this very well. Guess I'm not up to much beyond reading ffa and feeling weird about it :/

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I am absolutely certain what I think about FFA, and I would never post those thoughts publicly, and so far, have not posted them behind a friendslock because some of my friends participate in FFA.

>>It's not fair to hold up the worst of the group as representative of the whole

I suppose not, but nor is it fair to expect people to ignore the worst and only judge the good parts.

[sqbr]

If my friends are doing something I hate I tend to want to talk about it more, see if they can be persuaded/persuade me. But I can understand not wanting to poke it.

I suppose not, but nor is it fair to expect people to ignore the worst and only judge the good parts.

Absolutely. And there's a conversation to be had about the ways the setup there (where comments are only deleted under VERY specific circumstances, and only certain kinds of "wank" get frozen/modded) affects the discourse. And what it means to engage in the conversation that results. (though my response to such a conversation would probably be to flail incoherently as in this post)