Frowny face of a lack of popularity

[yvannairie]

Fun fact I recently extended an invitation to someone who's like lowkey fandom famous and whose work I deeply enjoy to come hang out in my Robot Server(tm), someone I have no personal relationship with, and having been emboldened by that, I kinda wanna reach out to other people in the fandom I'm aware of! Who I think are cool!

But it's become so normal for antis in the TF fandom to have gone underground and purged all mention of having participated in violent harassment campaigns in the past three years that I don't feel comfortable inviting someone off just the vibe I have of them, and I can't seem to get the server to take off word-of-mouth since almost nobody in the fandom is up for forming new social bonds either.

IDK. I feel more bold about wanting to reach people who have kind of lost the joy of the thing and come hang out with us! Because yeah, been there! That's why I started it! And I really resent being afraid of my fellow fan and not wanting to put the people who have been harassed into danger in case my own social radar turns out to be complete shit.

EDIT: I suddenly started wondering if the lack of spread by word of mouth also has to do with not just me being like this with strangers, but also people who are on this server being like this with their strangers? Like are we all just in an ouroboros of not trusting one another b/c it's so much safer to NOT have a stance on this, and those who have hard stances have often been harassed enough to be suspicious of a stranger being like "hey you're cool and I heard you'd gotten shit for stuff, would you like to come on our Anti Giving Shit To People For Stuff That Doesn't Matter" server?

Comments

[sexytronians]

Yeah. I get it on one hand because I’ve got one stalker who periodically harasses me and I’m so cautious about what spaces I join. Not because he’s there but because his allies might be.

On the other hand, I don’t think an atmosphere of distrust really helps to combat antis either. The worst culprits do tend to be known at least but as you’ve said they have wiped evidence. But fear means folks can’t band together to call bullshit when they target someone—I’d rather be trusting sometimes and know I’ve got folks at my back to defend me.

Idk personally unless it’s someone I directly know is an anti I’ll be cool with em.

(It’s late at night so idk how coherent I am rn sorry.)

[hellofriendsiminthedark]

I think in addition to distrust might also be apathy--apathy with vetting people for their stances and apathy with anti-anti spaces that just end up devolving into moralistic wank spaces all over again. It's so tiring to keep getting your hopes up about making cool connections.

[redthedragon]

for what it's worth, on my end i almost don't want to invite people because i like the server too much? it has a good vibe going and i don't want to throw someone into the mix who will mess that energy up
but also honestly i don't trust that anyone will either not be a whole anti or will not be weird about me having a "secret" discord server where i talk about robots that i only mentioned now lmao. like either i dont know them well enough or i know them tooooooo well and i should've told them already