Hey Sam! Since it's currently AO3 donation time, I'm wondering what your thoughts are on it? I'm asking because you've written RPF and it's one of many "anti-AO3/anti-AO3 donations" people's favourite things to bring up when they're complaining about AO3 getting so many donations that it continuously obtains an excess of its donation goal whenever donation time rolls around? (Wow, how many times can I say "donation" in an ask?)
Sorry if this question bothers you! I don't mean to offend or annoy.
Hey anon! Sorry it took a while to get to this, I don’t even know if the drive is still going on, but the question came in while I was traveling and I didn’t really have the time for stuff that wasn’t travel-related. In any case, let’s dig in! (I am not offended, no worries.)
So really there are two issues here and as much as some people who are critical of AO3 want to conflate them, they are different. While some criticism of AO3 may be valid, rhetoric against AO3 tends to misinterpret both in separate ways.
First there’s the issue of what AO3 hosts – RPF, yes, but more broadly, varied content that some people find distasteful or think should be illegal, which is a misunderstanding of the purpose of the archive and more broadly a dangerous attitude towards the concept of freedom of expression.
Second, there’s the issue of AO3 generally outpacing its fundraising goals while not allowing monetization, which is a misunderstanding of the legal status of AO3 and to an extent a misunderstanding of philanthropy as a whole.
The longer I watch debates about content go on, the more I come to the conclusion that I was fortunate to have a teacher who really wanted to instill in us an understanding of free speech not as a policy but as an ongoing dialogue. It’s not only that freedom of expression “protects you from the government, not the Justin” as the meme goes, but also that freedom of expression is not a static thing. It’s an ongoing process of identifying what we find harmful in society and what we want to do about it.
Should the freedom to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater be restricted? Should the freedom to yell slurs at drag performers? Should the freedom to teach prepubescent kids about gender, sexuality, and/or safe sex? Should the freedom to wear a leather puppy hood at Pride? Who gets to say, and why?
I was nine when my teacher did a unit on freedom of speech and the intersection of “harm prevention” and “censorship”, which is (and should be) a discussion, not a set of ironclad rules. This ambiguity has thus been with me for over thirty years, and I’m comfortable with the ambiguity, with the process; I’m not sure a lot of people critical of AO3’s content truly are. Perhaps some can’t be, especially those affected by hate speech, but RPF is not hate speech. It’s just fiction. Or is fiction “just fiction”? This is a question society as a whole is grappling with, although fandom seems to be a little out ahead of society in terms of how explicitly we discuss it.
Does anyone remember what happened to Radio Shack?
They started out selling niche electronics supplies. Capacitors and transformers and shit. This was never the most popular thing, but they had an audience, one that they had a real lock on. No one else was doing that, so all the electronics geeks had to go to them, back in the days before online ordering. They branched out into other electronics too, but kept doing the electronic components.
Eventually they realize that they are making more money selling cell phones and remote control cars than they were with those electronic components. After all, everyone needs a cellphone and some electronic toys, but how many people need a multimeter and some resistors?
So they pivoted, and started only selling that stuff. All cellphones, all remote control cars, stop wasting store space on this niche shit.
And then Walmart and Target and Circuit City and Best Buy ate their lunch. Those companies were already running big stores that sold cellphones and remote control cars, and they had more leverage to get lower prices and selling more stuff meant they had more reasons to go in there, and they couldn’t compete. Without the niche electronics stuff that had been their core brand, there was no reason to go to their stores. Everything they sold, you could get elsewhere, and almost always for cheaper, and probably you could buy 5 other things you needed while you were there, stuff Radio Shack didn’t sell.
And Radio Shack is gone now. They had a small but loyal customer base that they were never going to lose, but they decided to switch to a bigger but more fickle customer base, one that would go somewhere else for convenience or a bargain. Rather than stick with what they were great at (and only they could do), they switched to something they were only okay at… putting them in a bigger pond with a lot of bigger fish who promptly out-competed them.
If Radio Shack had stayed with their core audience, who knows what would have happened? Maybe they wouldn’t have made a billion dollars, but maybe they would still be around, still serving that community, still getting by. They may have had a small audience, but they had basically no competition for that audience. But yeah, we only know for sure what would happen if they decided to attempt to go more mainstream: They fail and die. We know for sure because that’s what they did.
I don’t know why I keep thinking about the story of what happened to Radio Shack. It just keeps feeling relevant for some reason.
well we had a terrible run guys. just absolutely godawful. the worst anyones ever done it. i forgot where i was going with this
for anyone whos dash hasnt updated yet:
the fact that they did this the day AFTER the @wip inbox closes so people cant give feedback until next week……….
(Full disclosure, I haven’t been hit with the update yet and tend to use Tumblr on a fairly large desktop monitor, so the left-hand side has always been a large swathe of unused space.)
Sincerely, and genuinely without malice, I don’t understand why this is bad. It’s more cluttered visually, I understand that, but it’s more user-friendly, especially for people coming from other websites (Twitter, Reddit, Facebook…). I’m curious why people don’t like it?
So, as my own disclosure, I keep everything on the right side hidden, so it was just blank on either side.
A few thoughts about why people might hate it:
It’s change. It’s change with no warning and only some of us being used as guinea pigs without volunteering. There are people who would love to be in the beta. There used to be(?) a toggle box for it! Set a beta group and get actual feedback.
Completely fucked with our muscle memory.
I think this is breaking some things people were able to hide before, and they’re being hit with old and new changes at once.
It’s so blatantly a twitter clone- the user group people wanted the least back on tumblr. And a site people actively (rightfully) have a lot of hate for.
All of the left side is now VERY in your face, were before it was just up top, out of the way. It makes it feel very invasive.
It is a lot on my tablet/laptop screen.
OH GODS THE SIDE BLOG PAGE IT BURNS US
It’s just… so much at once.
Absolute visual overload.
I’m reblogging yours since it’s the most concise and also sums up what everyone else is saying.
I understand now! Thank you. I agree with some of what you’re saying, but I’m waiting to see what it’s like when I get my hands on it.
My name is Jesse, I’m a disabled trans man, and I really need help to move away from my unsupportive family and a state that’s becoming increasingly hostile. I have a place to go, I just need to get there by the end of the year.
If you can help, I would appreciate it more than I can say.
Hey guys.
This is my very good friend Jesse of many years, who is in a nasty position, and who we are hoping can move in with me as soon as possible. We’ve worked out a timeline and cost breakdown but due to his poor health and other complications, he frankly needs all the funding he can get.
We’ve worked out a timeline, budget and execution plan, all we need is the funds, and donating really will help save his life in a very material way.
Thank you all who can donate, or who can help boost this.
Hey, PSA for my fellow disabled people: UPS workers are trying to negotiate a new contract, and it looks like it’s leading to a strike soon. Now, I am absolutely all for this, they need safe working conditions and should strike if need be, but for us?
Please contact your doctors and make sure you’re prepared in any way possible. This will affect many of you, whether that’s through med deliveries, oxygen tanks, or other one-use supplies. If you live in America, try to get in contact with an insurance case worker for resources and advice if you’re able.
Stay safe, and hope that the precaution isn’t necessary.
In a statement to The Post, a spokesperson for NBCUniversal claimed the tree work is simply an annual ritual at this time of year. “We understand that the safety tree trimming of the Ficus trees we did on Barham Blvd. has created unintended challenges for demonstrators, that was not our intention. In partnership with licensed arborists, we have pruned these trees annually at this time of year to ensure that the canopies are light ahead of the high wind season,” they wrote. “We support the WGA and SAG’s right to demonstrate and are working to provide some shade coverage. We continue to openly communicate with the labor leaders on-site to work together during this time.”
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If those trees were pollarded annually, the cut areas would NOT look like that. There would be big knobs of old growth at the trimming sites. Not seeing any of that here. The way those trees were topped (not pollarded, which is a very careful process that has to begin when the tree is immature) is excellent way to kill them due to loss of hydration, open sites to infection and parasitism during the best time of year for both, lack of nutrition due to so little greenery and new budding growth being left, sunburn and other exposure damage, and a myriad of other possibilities. Plus, if they were topped annually, they would not have the lovely drooping branches seen in the other picture but would have tons of vertical suckers instead.
This is what an annually pollarded mature tree should look like:
If this was done by the city, the public works arborists should be protesting in front of city hall and screaming their heads off right now. I’m not hearing about that, so… Tree law!
The Studios: *speak*
Botanists and other Tree Experts:
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Update and confirmation of Imminent Tree Law:
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He mentions later in the thread that not only do they not trim the trees annually, they’re trimmed at best once every 18 years. Supposed to be every five, and only in dormancy, which even my layman’s ass knows about tree trimming.
And yes, Universal can probably eat the fine. But it’s gonna be a whopper even if the trees survive (which is as mentioned kinda unlikely), California is a triple damage state for tree law, and it may increase dramatically if there were nesting birds in the trees.
All this to be a Captain Planet filler villain to some writers. And yes, it’s currently just the writers officially picketing there; SAG-AFTRA recommended against it for petty bullshit like this and the suddenly necessary sidewalk construction.
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