Manifesto
Modern fandom
Modern internet can be hard to navigate, all things considered. Advertisers, few centered social medias, overall toxicity everywhere, it can be hard to exist without having something that can be considered bad, annoying or miserable.
As a fandom person, who's internet presence mostly revolves around things he likes, the things he creates for said fandoms and other people who participate in that, it had been hard to exist without something bad going on, especially with how bad the fandom climate has been since 2020. It had always been rocky, but ever since the pandemic struck, things have gotten worse. Being in an environment that only thrives on getting 'good person' points over fictional ships and characters, giving people little to no space for headcanons that aren't approved by the majority, inability to understand that fiction and reality, while having an effect on each other, do not exist in a 'monkey see monkey do' manner many love to interpret it as, it all becomes exhausting when there's too much of it. Finding alternative ways to exist as a creative in fandom these days can be tough, but not impossible.
My indie web presence, while small and probably not important, has helped me take a step further in this. While I do not have the coding experience to make the perfect site for a creative like me (and I won't have that for a long time still), taking smaller steps is what matters. There are ways to get things to a better state, to exists here and be what you want to be in both words, the big web and small web. As with everything in life, balance is how we get somewhere, rather than completely cutting something off. I believe that is how you make things work, even on the internet.
How to survive:
Social media is not your enemy: just use it in a better way.
The more the marrier: alternatives are always a good thing.
Find creative communities
Archive your stuff.
Make anti-harassment communities.
Be a weirdo.
Social media is not your enemy: just use it in a better way
Whatever someone might tell you about it, social media is only bad if you fall into a cycle of constant doomscrolling, online walls, fighting the trolls, always engaging in some sort of discourse. Moderation might have become harder to do in some cases (looking at you, twitter) but not impossible. Using only the following page can do wonders for a person once you get used to it, searching Japanese and Chinese ship tags will also do wonders in avoiding all the annoying people who clog the ship tags with their complains about the ship.
The more the marrier: alternatives are always a good thing
Finding different socials is also a good move. With the state that Twitter is in, Bluesky and Tumblr are decent alternatives (although Tumblr won't let you post nsfw art, using outside places like Poipiku and Privatter are still an option to get around this), especially Bluesky with how well it has been functioning, with the great moderation and filtering. I will never say to jump ship until a place is actually burning down to the ground, but having alternatives is always a good thing.
And of course, having your own website. No matter if it's made from an already premade layout or made with your own blood, sweat and tears, it is your place, made just for you, where no one can tell you what you can and can't do.
Find creative communities
Finding your place on the internet can be tough, but how about just the creative part? Places like Dreamwidth are a heaven if you want to create but don't have a direction on what to do all the time. If you've used LiveJournal back in the day, this is essentially the same thing, just with no censoring now. I have never used LJ before, but I now adore Dreamwidth, it gives you a taste of what fandom used to look like before. Kink memes, exchanges, bingos, fests, all these things are there, waiting for you. It is a nice place.
Archive your stuff
Making sure your work is saved and protected ion more ways than one is important, wether you're an artist or a writer. I, myself, am a writer, so saving my writing, especially the one I have now, is important. Just now I mentioned Dreamwidth. Archiving stuff there is also a good option, though backing up stuff can feel like a chore, especially if you didn't do it chronologically. Archive of our own, or ao3 for short, is every writers place to look for when saving fanfiction. Squidgeworld is another place similar to ao3, with the same purpose. Fanfiction.net was this before the purge too, and while saving fanfiction there is still a good option, if you make explicit stuff, it might be hard.
So far, ao3 has shown to be the best option for that, with many archives and fic sites moving their works there after closing, so you will never go wrong there.
Make anti-harassment communities.
If not happy with how fandom climate is, make a small community for yourself. A discord server, a forum, community somewhere else. As long as your statement is 'harassment not allowed' you will be able to make a space that doesn't have to deal with a lot of things related to modern fandom, or at least reduce it my 90%. Nothing will ever be 100% perfect, and that's okay. Making a better place on your own is important.
Be a weirdo.
This might be the most important one of them all. Be the person you want to be, be yourself 100% Write that fucked up fanfiction. Make art of that ship people hate for no good reason. Make work related to a ship or character people find problematic. If you like it, there's no reason to not do it. It will filter out people who are mean, rude and look for 'good person' points, and will make people who can respect you even if they don't enjoy the same thing like you do stay. Sometimes to do this, you have to start from scratch. New socials, new everything. Sometimes is as easy as blocking a few people and moving on, sometimes it's leaving discord servers or making a new blog. That first step might be hard, but if you stumble upon a nice community that is able to see you as a person and not something lesser because of a weird kink or ship, you will manage to get through it.
