olderthannetfic replied:

elfwreck:

olderthannetfic:

olderthannetfic:

–

“I’m poor and have no skills, so I should be allowed to co-opt other people’s labor to advertise my fic patreon.”

That’s always what it is.

Ah, well, if it’s the post that was linked to, the OP was: “We need ao3 writers to develop class conciousness. Ao3 is nothing without them. Ao3 needs them but they don’t need ao3. Labour is entitled to all it creates.”

Which is the usual delusional nonsense where people ignore that making sites is labor. Art is labor, but so is building a storefront. So is running a site. So is designing metadata structures. This type of self-absorbed fic writer ignores everyone else’s labor in favor of their own.

OTW volunteers are entitled to say that their labor is for making a nonprofit site with rules against advertising.

“They need us” is a serious misunderstanding. Everyone who uses AO3 costs it money. If it were a hundred friends posting for each other, it would be a lot easier to run. That’s not to say that you should feel bad about using it. It’s there for you to use.

But this concept of sites ~needing you~ is based on commercial sites that want to monetize your data and that are trying to extract user generated content so they can profit.

AO3 generously lets you use a service. It’s more like a food bank than whatever that other post is imagining. You aren’t doing it a favor by being there. Unlike fucking Facebook and the rest of the parasites.

AO3 is not “for all of fandom everywhere.” AO3 is for “the people who want a stable archive with very few content restrictions.”

Those people need AO3 because there is literally nothing else like it. They have to put up with AO3’s rules, including the one about no commercial links. Most of those people are very happy to go along with that rule.

Everyone else can post fic at ff.net, at wattpad, at Neocities, at Wordpress, at Livejournal, etc. They don’t have to put up with AO3’s rules.

• AO3’s creators - the ones who put the FANNISH LABOR into writing the code, tag wrangling, removing abusive and illegal content, maintaining the site itself, etc. - Did not and do not want the site used for commercial purposes.
• AO3’s users do not want AO3 to turn into an ad-infested hellscape like every other large fanfic archive on the net, and that means “NO ADS HERE” not “no ads that pay the OTW here.”

As a reader, I don’t want a “subscribe to my ko-fi!!!” at the top of every chapter.

doubleca5t replied:

doubleca5t:

It’s not that it’s supposed to match it’s more like 90% of the time no one matches their bra and underwear so when you actually do it you feel extremely powerful it’s like when you equip every piece from a set of armor in an MMO and it gives your character a stat bonus