Next time antis are being, well, antis, show them this:
So a child came to you with concerns and criticism, and rather than ignoring said criticism because it wasn’t relevant to the fan work (taking your word for this), you decided to belittle them and imply their parents should be monitoring their internet use.
Cool. Cool thing you did there. Cool way for an adult to treat a child.
I wonder how they’re going to respond the next time they see something fucked up in fandom, or worse, experience it. Like the rampant sexual harassment and assault at conventions. Do you think they’re going to talk to an adult? Or do you think they’re going to internalise it as just part of the fandom and their fault for showing up?
But hey, you sure showed that middle-schooler.
If a child came to OP with concerns and criticism about adult content they shouldn’t be viewing, then their parents should be monitoring their internet usage because they aren’t obeying rating based restrictions.
If a 12 year old snuck into see Deadpool or It and then complained to the threats about it, the theater would probably call their parents and report them for sneaking into an R rated movie.
Ratings are their for a reason.
Also, ‘talk to your parents/other trusted adult’ if something upsets you is good advice. OP is telling them they need to talk to an adult, their parents, not a stranger on the internet.
If an adult has a problem with a child’s behavior offline, a light warning and speaking to the parents is how it goes, nothing odd about that. But online, as much as we would like to have an adult conversation about how little Timmy needs to stop peeking in neighbor’s windows because he’s not ready to understand swinging and pony play yet and besides he’s breaking the law, we have to interact with the children themselves in a more direct fashion. We have to rely on them to ask their parents to step up and parent, and that’s more responsibility than some of them want to handle.
What I do find ironic about this entire situation is that the children don’t hesitate to demand that the adult fans treat them like the children they are, but when we do, they’re upset. They don’t want, “The sign means ‘stay out’ Timmy,” or “I’m going to have to talk to your mother, Timmy,” but “Pour the booze down the toilet, babyproof the house and turn the whole world into a Zero Tolerance zone because Timmy exists.” For a group that’s so staunchly anti-kink, they’re very into ageplay and topping from the bottom.
Misbehaving on the internet doesn’t give anyone a free pass, not even when you’re a kid.
Way back in 2002, I was admin of a big Dutch Harry Potter forum. These were the early days of the internet, when there were no social media sites like Tumblr or Facebook, and forums were all we had to get in touch with like-minded people.
Our Harry Potter forum had an average age of about 14-year-olds, and being 20 years at the time, me and my co-admins took pride in keeping it a friendly and safe place online for all the Harry Potter fans. If someone posted something inappropriate, we deleted it and if it was a repeated offense, blocked whoever was responsible.
Now enter this Flemish 14 year old kid who creates an account and starts posting porn EVERYWHERE. We’d be gone from the forum for half an hour, come back to find hundreds upon hundreds of pornographic images all over the forum, and obviously a lot of the other 14-year-olds going “oh please, stop it! You must block him!”
So we blocked him and began the annoying process of deleting every single porn post.
Next day, kid has a new IP address, does it again.
He repeats this for most of the week and we’re freaking annoyed, because back then, there was no anti-spam measure on that forum, and he could post a hundred messages a minute if he could click a hundred times in a row.
So I’m fed up. I take a list of his last IP addresses, see that it’s all coming from the same Belgian town. I look at his profile and suddenly realize that his emailaddress that he used to register has an actual name. Not an alias, but an actual person’s name. Possibly the father’s email account, we don’t know.
Now, Belgium is a small country, and our phone book that they still distributed every year back then has ALL phone numbers (unless you specifically ask not to be mentioned in the phone book.) So I look up this dude’s name, in the town, and I find one match. Just one.
I write it down.
Another evening, another spam of porn posts begins from another account, once again the same email address. I pick up the phone, I call the number.
A kid whose voice hasn’t even broken picks up and says hello. “Yes hello, I’m CartoonJessie, in case you are wondering. Can I speak to your parents?”
Kid is quite, I can hear him thinking as fast as he can. He says they’re not home. I tell him: “Okay, then I’ll make a deal with you. Stop spamming our forums with porn and I won’t call again. If I see any porn posted again, I’ll know it was you, and I will call back, at a time that you are not home or asleep, and I will talk to your parents about this.”
I hang up.
Kid never came back to the forums, but I do have a feeling he never ever again went on a porn posting spree on any forum ever again. Do I think the kid slept badly for a few weeks after that? Probably.
Do I feel guilty for calling this kid? Hell no. Cause the 500 other 14-year-olds on our forum at least no longer had to endure watching unwanted porn images because a little asshole thought he was being “the man” by harassing an entire forum. I would do it again in a heartbeat. (but due to the way forums are built now, with anti-spam measures and everything, it’s no longer something that happens.)
What is most ridiculous to me is the sheer entitlement of the teen contacting OP to change their writing to suit them.
If the story is triggering, upsetting, or distressing, you have the responsibility to nope out. No one is making you read it. No one here has to tailor their writing to you. It doesn’t matter if they’re another teen or if they’re an adult- if you don’t like it, don’t fucking read it.
If you want to talk about the fetishization and harassment in fandom culture? That’s another conversation. There is a problem with that. There’s also a problem with that in the modern world in general. That is also not what this kid approached OP about.
Younger individuals in fandom culture seem to expect other people to parent them. To keep them safe from anything offensive while giving them the warm fuzzies, yet simultaneously demanding we allow them to interact as an adult with other actual adults. They emotional support, reassurance, and hard lines so they can know if they are right or wrong with absolute surety.
If you are looking in fandom for some nurturing, caring bond to help you learn and grow, you are going to be disappointed. Let me say this very, very loudly:
Strangers online are not your parents.
They have no obligation to younger fans, and further, many want no obligation to take on any type of caretaker or mentor role. It is not their job to hold your hand when you’re upset or cater to your preferences. It’s not their job to protect or educate you. They have no obligation to change anything they do, write, or draw just because it makes you uncomfortable by simply existing. You have no power over anyone but yourself.
To go up to someone and say “I don’t like your work and it shouldn’t exist because x” shows entitlement. It’s the same entitlement that homophobic people have when they say “queer media shouldn’t exist because it offends me.”
if it happened at all, it happened like that 