[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
IMPORTANT. Re: Mass deletion of stories on fanfiction.net
Hello. As most of you avid FF readers may have figured out by now, fanfiction.net has been doing a mass purge of the site and getting rid of a lot of stories that break the rules. When one of my own stories was deleted and my account was suspended for three days, I figured it was just the site moderators going through and doing some kind of routine check. However, when I found out that more and more people were having their work deleted - in some cases, just because the summary was “inappropriate” - something told me I had to look into this. The facts about what’s really going on may surprise you.
The people in charge of this mass deletion of stories are not site moderators. They are normal users of the site like anyone else. If you go to their profiles, you’ll see that they even have work of their own. They call themselves Critics United and they basically have nothing better to do except sit around and comb through the site for any story that has some kind of minor infraction. They then post it on their forum (most seem to be on either this thread or this thread, also here) so that other members of the group can go en masse to the story and not only report it for violating the guidelines, but also bully the author via review.
It’s one thing to quietly report a story that you think has broken the rules without saying a word to the author about it. However, what these people are doing is bullying. Earlier today I screenshotted some of the reviews that they’ve been leaving on the stories they go after, and some of what they say is truly sickening.
These are only a few examples. If you browse through their forum you’ll be able to see just how intense they get. As you can see from the reviews I posted above, these people aren’t just “critics” - they are bullies. The “constructive criticism” they supposedly dole out is anything but - something tells me that true constructive critics would not use words like “shitfic” or “toxic crap.” And by posting the links to these stories in their forums, it enables everyone else in the group to go and bully these authors as well.
(Funny thing is, they complain when the authors respond to them with less-than-pleasant words. I wonder why.)
Anyway, I think something needs to be done. Critics United prides itself on being strict followers of the rules and site guidelines; however, they fail to notice that they themselves are also breaking an important rule - no bullying or harassment. Unfortunately I don’t think there’s an easy solution to this problem, seeing as there’s no way to report specific users - only block them. However, I dothink it is important for everyone to know exactly what is going on. I know a lot of people were upset by what’s been happening, and they deserve to know the truth.
If you have any questions please feel free to message me on here or on my fanfiction.net account. That’s all.
I’d like to put in my two cents here that this “Critics United” is NOT a new thing. Back when I started writing fan fiction on FF.Net there was another group that writers called “flamers” that did the same thing, flocking to single fics and reporting them for minor infractions, while bullying the writer with “flames” to try to get them to take the fics down on their own. These were usually targeted at couples (especially crossover couples) that they did not support. Know that flamers (who are NOT to be confused for constructive critics, with any desire to help improve the writing of a fic writer) are bullies and Critics United is just another version of this. If you’re getting targeted, let Tumblr know so we can try to do something about it. This isn’t okay and it needs to stop.
