New people, do you understand what the bad old days of fandom did to us? We were an underground community for a reason.
I left my name and contact in a place fandom people could see and I legit panicked. Hard. A friend didn’t get why I was so freaked but fuck, I have been in fandom for going on 17 years you guys. I remember some shit, and it doesn’t even brush the surface of how it was in the 90s, or the 80s, or fuck, the 70s.
People’s stories and accounts were deleted by moderators for writing slash or porn. People’s websites were sent cease and desist letters and shut down completely. People lost their jobs. People were sued. People’s families lost their shit. People were stalked at their work and their homes.
We have the Organization for Transformative Works and Archive of Our Own to protect against that but shit. Before JKR and Stephenie Meyer started defending and encouraging us, before Markus and McFeely shipped Stucky and Sterek was queerbaited openly by MTV, before Cassandra Clare and EL James exploded with their fanfic gone legit, we were hunted. We were targets. We were hated.
You can’t erase that paranoia. You can’t forget what it was like to be afraid that what you created would be destroyed or cause you harm in your physical life.
I still worry. I worry a lot. I am still afraid my tumblr or AO3 or Dreamwidth will be found. I’m still afraid that my art will be exposed and I will lose everything. I hate it so much but I can’t trust in anything but hiding. I just can’t.