Things I could do without:

[megpie71]

1) COVID-19 driving everyone crackers.
2) Idiots saying fanfiction will be responsible for the end of moral behaviour as we know it.
3) Endless popups from Avast trying to get me to buy their products - no means no, guys.

Comments

[archangelbeth]

*sits and looks at 2 for a while*

Um.

Ummmmmm.

Um.

[megpie71]

That's me sidewise referring to anti-shipping and the moral panics about oh gods how can we have anything that isn't absolutely child-safe on Teh Interwebs (you know, the thing made in university computer labs with funding from the US military; and where the major application - the world wide web - was conceptualized by an academic in a nuclear research facility. I mean, with a group of origins like that of course it's supposed to be the perfect place to leave your toddler for babysitting [/sarcasm] [/sarcasm] [/sarcasm, damn it]). Especially fanfiction, which is apparently a textual genre somehow capable of feats of attitudinal and cultural change unknown to advertising, propaganda, brainwashing, or indeed the original text on which the fanfic is based.

Oh, and apparently it is my responsibility as an older woman online to be babysitting any child (by which is apparently meant "anyone under the age of approximately twenty-five") who is in my online vicinity, regardless of whether they want it, regardless of whether their parents are in range, and regardless of whether this "child" has just done the equivalent of walking into the bar and showing a demonstrably fake ID to the barman while trying to purchase the strongest double-proof vodka in the stock (and they're now following this performance with expressions of outrage about actual-factual alcohol being sold for legal tender in a place they, a minor, can access). It is apparently my responsibility to prevent this "child" from hurting themselves, and if I don't damn near kill myself in the process, I'm Not Trying Hard Enough.

Oh, and when I passed twenty-five myself, I should have got off the internet and out of fandom because I should be dead and only interested in taxes and housework. (Joke's on them for that one - I didn't get ON the internet until I was about twenty-seven. My "being dead" is almost old enough to be dead).

Yeah... I get just a tad tetchy about the whole business.

(At least some of this may be the result of my autism!brain taking things at their face value.)

[archangelbeth]

*snicker*

I was on BBSs and frickin' Usenet, including using my college account to tunnel to UNC, where they got the alt.sex.* groups (as well as alt.callahans), and make an account THERE, so, uh...

Yeah, I'm sitting over here going, "If the fic is labeled and your kid knows where the Back button is, sit down and shaddup. We lived. Talk to your kid about issues like "grooming" yourself, 'cause I'm gonna say things like, "So, our friend here is a cop pretending to be 16 or whatever, and they can self-police their own fic" until said friend turns 18 and can stop being a cop. >_> (Which is honestly a decent sort of way to take it, come to think; if you don't say anything to someone that you wouldn't say to a cop pretending to be underage online, hey. *shrugmoji*)

So. Parents need to do the Talks about: Back button and "You Can Stop Reading" and "If People Are Getting Creepy." *waves vaguely in direction of own offspring, who seemed to turn out fine and is writing great fanfic themself*

Anyway! *hands over a virtual drink* They're idjits and should be laughed at.

[megpie71]

Well, in this case the people who are busy doing the moral panic stuff are apparently the "kids" themselves (and/or the 18 - 25 year-olds in their online vicinity who are busy striking a blow for safety, social justice, moral purity, and personal monkey politics points).

I am clearly a luddite, because I suggest old fashioned remedies along the lines of "Well, Don't Do That, Then", "you don't have to read it if you don't like it", and that old favourite "the back button works". This proves I Just Don't Understand How Things Are Today (which always surprises me, since I'm clearly doing these same things on current technology and such). I also believe in people in their teens and early twenties having to do things like take responsibility for their actions, and deal with the (physical, monetary, psychological, social, etc) consequences of same, rather than constantly expecting someone to intervene to save them from themselves.

They have to grow up at some point.