memorizingthedigitsofpi

I'm not really on social media these days. I run an ask blog on tumblr and I have a separate personal tumblr account that I post on occasionally, but I mostly just scroll when I'm bored and that's about it. I only really engage with other users when I'm answering asks about AO3. 

Yesterday I had an interaction that, while having it, I realized "oh, this person is REALLY online" and I had to take a moment and analyze how I had come to that conclusion. The interaction went like this (and no, I'm not super proud of my side either)

Someone: Can I report fics on AO3 that were written by AI?
Me: No. Those fics aren't against the TOS. What you can do is mute people who post those fics so that you never have to see them.
Really Online Person: I'm going to report them anyway
Me: That's an asshole move, but if you wanna be an asshole 🤷‍♀️
ROP: So you support AI fics? I'm so disappointed

I replied to that ask as well and I really shouldn't have. Both are now unrebloggable - but that's not the point that I'm getting at. It was them concluding that I "support AI fics" (or whatever their phrasing) that made me conclude that they were entirely too online. That's what I wanted to examine more. 

In my response to that last ask, I included the fact that some people with disabilities use AI to assist them. More than one person came to the conclusion that my sentence (1 sentence in a 5 paragraph response) was claiming that people who are anti-AI are ableist. At least one person decided that me saying someone was an asshole for reporting something that isn't against the TOS means that I am pro-AI.

I think my conclusion about the "online-ness" of these people comes from the fact that every statement made is in some way a reflection of someone's character, opinions, morality etc. This is also why everyone frontloads these conversations with "here is my stance" because simply stating facts invites that kind of leap. If you don't write 200 words about why AI is awful before your 1 sentence about how it's not against the TOS, then clearly you love AI. 

I've heard the phrase "post-fact society" used before, specifically about the US. But I think it can be broadly applied to the English-speaking internet. Facts don't matter when you're that online. What matters is where you stand on an issue and whether we're on the same side. If you say something that doesn't align with what I think, then we're on opposite sides. The friend that doesn't think 100% like me is my enemy. 

It's so incredibly similar to all of the "anti" stuff around fanfic. If you state that a certain kind of fic is allowed by the TOS or that writing something "controversial" is in any way okay, the conclusion isn't that you're making a factual statement. The conclusion is that you're stating your own preferences, values, personal habits etc. 

I'm rambling now, but I can't stop thinking about how this also lines up with performative social justice and virtue signalling etc. If everything you say online is meant to be part of a construct of you as a person, and if you want to be seen as a good person, then everything that gets said online aligns with "goodness" or "badness" in some way. There is no neutrality. There are no facts. There are just signs that you're on one side of an issue or another.

me: writes a thank you post to AO3 volunteers so tumblr folks have a place to drop words of encouragement that aren't Support's inbox
random tumblr user: congratulations on supporting a double genocide
me: .....
me: .....
me: ma'am, this is a Wendy's

Like, even with the fact that I can unfortunately guess where they got that idea from, I'm just flummoxed because what power do they think a charitable organization dedicated to the archiving of fanworks has in an international conflict? Even if AO3 or OTW did take a side, how would that affect anything literally at all???

I know I'm chronically online, but that kid is chronically. online.

You know that overwhelming urge you get to post a correction when someone is wrong on the internet? I'm currently feeling that with a vengeance. But the problem is that if I post a correction, that'll just draw more attention to the wrongness.

In this case, it's probably best to let the wrong exist in relative obscurity and just bite my fucking tongue until it bleeds.

I just hate the fact that people will read 1 person's account of a complex situation and just say, "yes, that is 100% truth and an exactly correct interpretation of everything. There is certainly nothing being left out or spun. nope. this random username I've never seen before can be trusted implicitly."

And like, I don't have any "inside information" to add, really. I just have critical thinking skills and an ability to smell bullshit from a mile away.

The OTW inhabits this weird dual space in my mind (and possibly in reality but I'm not bold enough to state this quite that affirmatively).

On the one hand, it's An Institution of Fandom - caps used because it's just that huge. Its hugeness is only partly related to the number of works and the number of registered users and the number of hits, etc. Its size within fandom is much more about the ideas it represents. Fan creators own their own works. Transformative works are legitimate creations. Own the servers and tell "the man" to go to hell. Fannish culture is worth preserving. By fans, for fans.

On the other hand, it's a bunch of cobbled together fannish projects. Like, imagine whatever zine or big bang or [insert thing you're into] got big enough that it had millions of people interested in it. Imagine the people running that zine in their free time because they love their fandom now trying to provide a service to millions of people literally every day. Now imagine the kind of drama you hear about with any particular fannish project and expand that out over a thousand volunteers - some of whom have been around for over a decade.

I don't really have a point here. I'm mostly just trying to find words to express ideas that I'm still working my way through. I spent a long time thinking of OTW as The Institution and it hasn't really been all that long at all since I realized it's actually just another fannish project and therefore subject to all of the same issues that every other fannish project is subject to - but scaled up by a factor of a hundred.

Been a while since I posted some thinky thoughts. Figured I might as well.

So I watch a lot of booktok and this week, a lot of discussion has happened around a white author who wrote an interracial (I believe?) book in which at least one of the characters used a slur. I haven't seen the author's own video, just the reactions to it, and I haven't read the book but it's made me think about the idea of "writing diversely" and "reading diversely" and how a lot of it is just performative when it's done by white people.

White readers who "read diversely" talk so much about the fact that the characters in the book are non-white, but they rarely talk about why that matters or how they connected to them. They just reference the fact that they exist and then rate the book however they do. So many of them also seem to be reading this books as if they're eating their vegetables or something. They want to do something that the community has deemed "good" and they want to get credit for being "good" as a result.

The same seems so true of white authors a lot of the time. They know that readers want diverse characters and so they put "diverse" characters in their books. But the problems arise when the author doesn't actually know any people of colour in their daily life. An acquaintance isn't a good basis for a character. Watching TV and movies won't give you true insights. That's how these authors keep writing in stereotypes. It's because they're basing their characters on a surface-level understanding of who a person actually is.

Ben Aaronovitch is a white author based in England, and he writes characters of Nigerian background. He does a great job of it (according to Nigerian creators I follow) because he is friends with Nigerians and is surrounded in Nigerian culture. If I tried to write the same thing, it would turn out horribly because I know a handful of Nigerians, but only well enough to chit chat about work and the weather etc.

"Write what you know" is a trite saying, but I kind of think it applies here. So does "write what you love." If you're including Black or Indigenous or other POC characters because you have a true appreciation and understanding of the real human beings in those communities, your characterization is going to be a lot deeper and more nuanced than it will be if you're writing BIPOC characters in order to sell books or score points on twitter.

All that said, I'm very out of my lane on this one. I'm white and I've never attempted to write Original Fiction. I don't post on booktok or booktube, and I'm only tangentially interested in the romance genre. This is just something that I've been trying to work my way through this week as I watch these creators whose opinions I value.

I just looked up thanfiction on fanlore and the first paragraph alone was so much. Then I did a quick ctrl+f on the homicide mentioned and saw the way they updated their FFN profile in 2013.

I have known my fair share of dramatic people in my life, but thanfiction is an entire folio. holy fuck. the mind boggles.

I don't know how many of you have ever been on tiktok, but it's one of those apps that causes me dismay. At one point, I decided never to install it and I kind of wish that I'd stuck with that decision. But then back in February I was having a conversation about how "the youths" had no idea how to use AO3 and that everything available to help them learn is aimed at an audience more familiar with web 1.0 than with apps. 

So I downloaded tiktok and started making video tutorials. And because of the nature of the app (it starts showing you random things as soon as you open it and again after you post), I started seeing what was there. 

Tiktok is like other social media but faster. I see all the usual things: undisclosed sponsorships, people wearing their own merch, "link in bio", "shadow banning", the same memes I've seen on tumblr and twitter and facebook and even LJ. I see the same rise and fall and the same paths that creators take when their videos are monetized - whatever blew up becomes a "series". In a lot of ways, it just makes me tired. When I'm not overthinking it and how it could be used for research because it all happens at 5 times the speed of elsewhere.

But the part that's currently giving me all of the thinky thoughts is the filters. Tiktok has really great filters. I was on instagram for literally 10 minutes or less so I don't know if their filters do the same thing, but on tiktok there's a filter that can give a person a full face of makeup. From nothing to blush, highlight, bronzer, eyeshadow, lashes - and it moves with the person's face. There's another filter that will give you a beard. Another one that flashes you from male to female when you change the lighting. 

All of that requires some pretty intricate mapping of faces. Tiktok probably has millions of them stored away somewhere. I can't imagine what that database full of incredibly detailed information about a racially diverse, statistically significant number of humans could be used for - but my brain keeps thinking it's something terrible. 

So, to that end, here are some ideas for a cyberpunk dystopia based on the nightmarish thoughts that tiktok filters have dropped into my brain:

• in a world where political unrest leads to protests in the streets, the government has built its greatest asset to protect law an order - the Dataset
• at the start of the novel, protestors are being arrested at their jobs/homes etc and they have no idea how they're being identified
• a low level coder who works on the Dataset realizes what it is and has to convince the protest leadership that they're legit
• everyone starts wearing masks over their faces to hide their features - the masks are built out in caricatures or with other features that can hide the bone structure of the person underneath
• coder needs to keep working on the Dataset while now being an undercover protestor - will they get caught? several close calls occur
• eventually, coder finds other like-minded individuals also working on the Dataset. They band together to figure out a way to take it down.
• the story culminates in a massive, world-wide protest against the powers-that-be. Coder and friends use that moment to implement the solution they've figured out. The Dataset is deleted. All backups are erased. 
• Most people don't know what happened, but those who do still wear masks. 

I just saw the video game name "Kentucky Route Zero" in text for the first time and holy shitballs folks, this entire time I've thought the middle word was "Rot" 🤣

this game is like 8 years old at this point. omg. XD

 I started off strong over here on DW and now I'm flagging. Sorry about that. These days I can only sustain active engagement with other human beings for so long before I need to recuperate XD

I've been reading through the comments on my posts though and, y'all - you're so amazing  ❤

Sometimes you just need to make a bulleted list.

• all posts are public, leading to epic levels of wank
• people reply at different points in the conversation, also leading to wank but more importantly, obscuring parts of the conversation and also making the full conversation only viewable to the initial poster
• sharing anything automatically shares it with everyone you know on that platform because you can't have subgroups for your content unless you make multiple accounts
• real fucking names
• constantly changing usernames (looking at you tumblr) makes it impossible to know who you're even following/who's following you. it also makes it hard to keep track of friends
• platforms are maximized for "engagement" not for community, so it's all about getting the likes and shares and who cares about deep diving anything
• priority is mostly given to short form content which makes nuance difficult
• everything moves so fast that it's difficult to have a follow up conversation on anything you post because people can't find the initial thought
• everything is presented without the context of the posts that came before and after them - especially on sites that don't give you a date/timestamp
• tags are communal rather than personal, so you never really know what you'll find in there. Everyone wants to organize their own space, but the items they put in their containers might be something you're allergic to (to stretch a metaphor)

I can't do twitter. Tumblr makes me feel more like either a spectator or a performer. Tiktok is every social media experience I've ever had, played through at 100x speed. No option is perfect, but some are way less perfect than others. At least for me.