Antis will continue to be like “proshippers shouldn’t tag things with relevant main tags because I don’t like it” and not see how that is the most batshit selfish take ever
Once again, tags are to be added not taken away. Use mains tags but also use trigger tags. It’s not a hard concept to grasp
We talk a lot about how antis don’t seem to understand that the things that make them upset are comforting to some people, and the things that are comforting to them are upsetting and traumatic to some people.
We also talk about how it’s okay to block anyone for any reason.
Yesterday we had to block someone who was a frequent poster in one of our favorite fandom tags.
This person was not doing ANYTHING wrong by posting their content. It was all correctly tagged and 100% legal, and allowed by tumblr’s TOS.
But their posts were extremely triggering to Toko, to the point where he was getting extremely upset any time we’d see their content in the tag, which was frequently.
What were they posting?
Posts about loving, happy, normal nuclear families. Posts about pregnancy, and babies, and being excited to be a mother. Posts about being the mother of small children.
Totally normal, twee, cutesy, heteronormative comfortable family and romantic posts.
And they had Toko on the verge of a breakdown due to his own trauma. Seeing that particular kind of content, over and over again, specifically for certain characters was extremely triggering for him. Made him feel nauseous, anxious, upset, and genuinely unsafe.
So we blocked that person.
They were not doing anything wrong.
You NEVER know what kind of content is going to be upsetting or triggering for someone. What is extremely wholesome content to you might be extremely repellent and upsetting, and triggering to another person.
Just because you are uncomfortable with one type of content doesn’t mean someone else is.
One person might be triggered by violent, sexual, aggressive or strange content, and another person, like us, like Toko, might find that same content comforting and safe.
Another person might be triggered by what you think is wholesome.
Please think about that before you try to tell people what kind of content they are or aren’t allowed to post according to you.
It also makes it harder or impossible for people who are triggered by those things to create strong filters online to keep from seeing them.
If you’re talking about rape, and you write it r*pe, then someone who has the word “rape” filtered will now SEE THAT POST that they were trying to avoid.
Censoring words that way is explicitly useful for GETTING AROUND FILTERS on sites that automatically filter those words. Censoring them is to avoid machine censorship so that the topics can be discussed, it is not to help people who don’t want to see them.
On a site like tumblr that doesn’t autocensor topics like that the best thing you can do is write them out fully so that people who are trying to filter them out can do so.
I don’t really see a problem with it so long as it has appropriate warnings and/or tags. if people don’t want to see that content they can filter it out
If people don’t tag their problematic content with the main fandom tags, then it not only becomes unsearchable, it also becomes unfilterable.
What if I hate undertale, and I don’t want to see any undertale posts?
If people who post problematic undertale content don’t tag it as undertale, then I can’t filter it out, and I end up with a bunch of problematic undertale content on my dashboard that I’d rather avoid.
Use the main tags.
The main tags are for everyone.
Tags are not a community.
If you really want a community tag that isn’t for problematic posts then post them as “#fandomname community” or something.
TAGS ARE INFORMATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL.
TAGS ARE NOT COMMUNITY.
If people don’t tag their problematic content with the main fandom tags, then it not only becomes unsearchable, it also becomes unfilterable.
I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH.
I have so many posts, most by antis, fall through my filters bc they refuse to tag properly or they censor things.
Tags are used to find but also filter, and it’s just good fandom etiquette to tag properly (or just don’t tag at all so it won’t appear in the main tags)
