Marble Hornets Fandom, Sit Down and STFU For a Second

martinvanburens:

Listen, I’m gonna cut to the chase here: I’m sure a lot of you know by now there was a minor incident tonight involving a blogger who posted fanart without sourcing, and it brought down kind of a backlash. When I first saw the reposted fanart, I sent an ask politely explaining that the art needed to either be sourced or taken down. The response I got was apologetic, and the blogger indicated that they would take down the posts. The exchange was quick, polite, and reasonable. They have apologized multiple times.

So, why is it that when I went to their blog, I saw anon hate?

Yeah, not sourcing art isn’t good. It’s not proper etiquette and it’s not fair to the artist. But that’s something that can be explained in an ask WITHOUT being rude or hateful!

This alone wouldn’t have prompted me to make this post, but I’ve seen so much shit going down lately that I feel like I have to say something. Fandom, if someone does something wrong, correct them—don’t immediately start flinging nasty anons at whoever SEEMS responsible. The person running marblehornetsconfessions has gotten a shit-ton of hate for posting opinions that aren’t even hers, that doesn’t even make sense. Even if Tim or one of the guys calls someone out like they’ve done before, guess what? It’s done! They’ve been called out! Your anons really do not help the situation, and instead create an atmosphere where people are afraid to post their opinions about anything. They don’t need you to defend them—at the very least, not like that.

Dogpiling doesn’t help anyone. I know you may feel like a justice-serving vigilante when you call someone out, but fandom drama doesn’t need to end with the offender being beaten into submission by a mob of anons. If you really do have a problem with something, at least have the courtesy to remain polite, or better yet, don’t anon at all—maybe it would improve our dialogue if we all had to stick by our opinions.

I’m not completely naive. I know that, to an extent, this is something that happens in every fandom. Every fandom has its mean anons, its drama and hatemail. But our fandom is awesome, and keeping it awesome means keeping the atmosphere open to discussion and as free from drama as we can possibly make it! So please, think before you send that sort of stuff. Read the situation. See who else is sending messages. If we all work on this, we can maintain a nice, safe environment.