I don't recall 2 or 3. o-o

i wish i was a cave-dweller too sometimes

If you don't remember 2, it's because the policy of FA is "not spreading drama" by deleting any mention of the rape accusations.

you. i like you

nohomo

Would you like me to?

People complaining about problems is just as annoying as having a serial rapist on staff?

Yes.

Because a few of the people who complain don't have their facts and/or priorities straight, and end up trying to incite riots and ruin things for the rest of us.

Pretty much this to be honest. Adding to the drama will start something, whether you want it to or not. I have my own opinion on the whole sidebar matter, but I feel that talking about it in FA would make it worse and I'd rather have things simmer down first.

Yeah it's really annoying when other people "ramble" about a rapist and their history with this site.

So annoying and it's making me feel so fed up!

I just want to, like...second this.

rapists in admin? well that i can abide but having a partnership with imvu? well now you've just gone beyond the fucking pale

i dont remember the first one

but i sure as heck remember a whole bunch about the notes debacle

Remember to never relay personal information through FA's notes system kids

it's a bad time

Bartender! Another round of bullshit plz?

But seriously. Some people really need to sort out their damn priorities...

I suppose that speaks to our priorities. When individuals are awful people, well who cares, we can retreat into our tribes and forget the rest of the world exists. But when our site joins up with a faceless machine and tries to change things up? Too much man, too much.

If IMVU could draw furry porn instead of stupid anime humans no one would care.

this is EXACTLY what I've been telling people the past two days

I've been incredibly disappointed in everyone :I

Yeah, quite frankly!!!

And yet, here we are

Speak for yourself, I stopped posting my art here over a year ago.

yeah, but you did enough to catch my attention, and I live under a rock

Good. You should know about what's going on in the community you participate in.

why, are we paying these people?

Yeah, with social capital.

I've been paying for their problems through losses of commission revenue for leaving and a loss of social standing for talking about this. The women of our community have been paying through feeling like they're less important than the status of a famous furry pornographer. Every vulnerable person has been paying. Hiding under a rock and pretending these things aren't problems for the whole community ain't staying neutral on this, yo. It's showing everyone where your priorities lie.

Convincing point, but... If there's a rapist, go to the police. If there's an animal abuser, go to the SPCA. If these steps are taken and nothing is done, then it all boils down to just more unsubstantiated drama. I'm not buying it.

Yeah, totally, go to the police in this age where the guy who's been coercively manipulating you into having sex with him has the potential to post all of the dirty laundry you mistakenly shared with him before you knew he was going to rape you to 4chan and ruin your life completely. Squeal on the guy who's already posted chat logs between the two of you trying to discredit you, and he's already convinced his thousands of fans that you're the manipulative one.

Yeah, totally, go to the police in this age where the guy who's been coercively manipulating you into having sex with him has the potential to post all of the dirty laundry you mistakenly shared with him before you knew he was going to rape you to 4chan and ruin your life completely. Squeal on the guy who's already posted chat logs between the two of you trying to discredit you, and he's already convinced his thousands of fans that you're the manipulative one.Just out of curiosity... (And it really is just curiosity, so I don't need a long involved explanation or anything...)

Are you attempting to imply that rape victims should not report their rapes? Or are you mocking the people who have that belief?

Because I genuinely can't tell. (Poe's Law strikes again.)

That is Swatcher's way of saying that rape victims have a lot of difficulty with reliving all the details of their assaults, and the perpetrators will use it as impetus to send further psychological abuse their way free of consequence. And reporting sex abuse rarely leads to conviction since evidence is so difficult to provide. I suspect Swatcher is exasperated at people not understanding it by this point.

...rape victims have a lot of difficulty with reliving all the details of their assaults, and the perpetrators will use it as impetus to send further psychological abuse their way free of consequence. And reporting sex abuse rarely leads to conviction...Yes, this is true in most cases.

But this doesn't really justify deliberate silence. Even if abuse victims believe they can't report their abuse and get a satisfactory result, that doesn't mean they shouldn't try.

...since evidence is so difficult to provide.That was probably true in the 90s, but things have progressed since then, and will continue to progress. DNA testing, polygraphs, psychological profiling, and a whole field of experts dedicated to determining whether or not anyone has been abused (sexually or otherwise). The system exists, and victims should be willing to use it. (Regardless of whatever psychological forces, if any, say otherwise.)

To some people the potential for backlash or fruitless effort DOES justify silence, I suppose. Reporting sexual abuse to strangers inclined to doubt you is not like asking a parent to buy you ice cream. It's not even like reporting that somebody robbed you. If a government entity tells you "we don't think anybody really did something to you, sorry" it would only mess you up further.
Victims do the minimum that they can handle. It is difficult to apply conventional investigation methods to human crime scenes who find it demeaning to be investigated.

I agree that it can look like a lot of excuses, especially when you get into "triggers," so that a topic may not even be acknowledged. But I say that as someone who has read accounts and not experienced that level of trauma. As for what method IS prefered, if not official investigation, I have no idea. This is what I get for picking up someone else's argument.

I would like this site to acknowledge the accusation in some way, even if only to say "we stand by the accused, in the absence of any official accusation, and think it is ridiculous that so many people are furious over what amount to rumors." The Cosby defense, that is, no defense, and just expecting people to shut up and forget about it, doesn't work. Or not quickly, anyway.

As for what method IS prefered, if not official investigation, I have no idea.Exactly. The system we have, we have because we don't have a better one.

This is what I get for picking up someone else's argument.If you think about it, this is what folks are doing every time they complain about what people-they-don't-know may or may not have done to other people-they-don't-know.

I would like this site to acknowledge the accusation in some way, even if only to say "we stand by the accused, in the absence of any official accusation, and think it is ridiculous that so many people are furious over what amount to rumors."Yes, 100% yes! I couldn't have put that any better myself!

The problem here is that we both fell toward an easy answer for a complicated problem. You say "hey it's the best system we have so deal with it" while I say "we should aspire toward a better system but I have not personally researched it recently because I don't have the emotional energy for going that deep into the topic today and good lord I'm so sick of feeling like I have to be offended on someone else's behalf on the internet anyway."
I think people should report their rapes if that is prudent for them, but I believe that there are circumstances in which that is not a viable option or where that would only make your life as a victim more difficult.

You say "hey it's the best system we have so deal with it"That's not what I meant.

"we should aspire toward a better system but I have not personally researched it recently because I don't have the emotional energy for going that deep into the topic today and good lord I'm so sick of feeling like I have to be offended on someone else's behalf on the internet anyway."That's pretty much what I meant!

Here is the problem with rape culture:

muskyotie wrote:I'm not buying it.

...and a loss of social standing for talking about this.It sounds like you need someone to explain to you exactly why you're losing "social standing". (Because it's not "for talking about this".)

People bitched and moaned about all of those, and in en masse. You can't really draw a comparison. It's also worth noting that there's a shitton of grey area in a few of them.. you can't just take a bunch of internet drama at face value and make an accurate and definitive assessment of the truthfulness of either side of it.. i.e. we should stay the fuck out of it as a community at large because we will almost never get it right. :P

You're saying I can't draw a comparison, but I just did. How about them apples?

I mean, you can compare them because they're all exactly the same. There was a furious uproar about each of them. What do you want to happen differently?

If you don't get it by now, you never will.

The amount of angry people for all of the events listed were just as much as this one. Zidonuke got removed from staff. Can't remember how rapist guy situation ended up, but people were pissed about that too.

People aren't going to leave FA, even though most people think it's awful. And they can't be blamed for it. It's a paradox of social inertia. People won't leave until people leave. Same reason people are still using Skype despite all its flaws.

I don't know what you want out of the userbase here, and I don't think you know what you want either. If you want to respond with something less sarcastic to fill me in, go ahead, but at this point your rage seems kind of uninformed.

Oh hey, I missed that Zidonuke resigned. Good.

And yeah, people are going to leave FA. They're doing it right now. I still participate in comments and journals here because it's where the community is, but I've severely limited my involvement by no longer uploading my art here. My gallery's still up to preserve the comments and favs.

Continuing to support FA by drawing the community to it with new art isn't remaining neutral. It's showing where your priorities lie. The community can do whatever the fuck it wants, and I'm not a dictator. HOWEVER. Failing to use your moral agency w/r/t issues like rape culture doesn't mean you get to stay neutral on it.

Some will leave FA, and hopefully the rest will follow, but it isn't going to happen immediately and it'll be an extremely uphill battle. It's difficult to pack up and move your entire social/content life, especially when the majority of people aren't available elsewhere. The transition will take time and each of these incidents will help push more people to other sites, in turn opening more people up to being pushed away.

It isn't going to happen overnight, and you can't blame people for not wanting to abandon communities they're heavily engaged with, even if those communities are run poorly and staffed by (extremely) dubious people.

People prioritize people, people that they interact with, and people who feel very directly present and real over the threat of a terrible administrator, something one doesn't interact with so much one is aware of. To blame them for that is to blame them for being human.

I'm not laying blame, I'm laying responsibility.

How am I supposed to fetishize a sidebar?

I'm only here to watch the fire burn at this point.

I mean you could be all passive aggressive about it.

Or. Or. Maybe you could do not.

I'm gonna be w/e I want. You're not concerned that there's a serial rapist still on staff, but my passive aggressiveness is a problem. Cool.

No, because you have given me a claim and no evidence. If I see a conviction I will begin to get upset, but right now it's just another person yapping.

The linear nature of those events is something worth considering. Personally, I was willing to give Dragoneer the benefit of the doubt and excuse his actions based on the intent behind them, but it got harder each time, and now I can't.

Besides, that's only one context to approach this with, The other is that while the other three events were morally suspect, there are complexities and different viewpoints to consider. The sidebar might not rate on the "morally reprehensible" scale but it was Just plain dumb. Like, really, really dumb. And on the back of the IMVU thing can easily be seen as a portent.

Either that, or by nature many people don't care about things until it affects their own convenience. It's a sad fact, but true. Guilt and justice are great motivators that I'm sure will factor into people's decisions to use a service or not, but for people set in their ways, nothing so readily prompts action as personal inconvenience.

At any rate, if you don't mind me asking, where is it that you're posting your art these days? (Edit: Never mind, I actually looked and got my answer.).

Yo the way that rape culture and animal abuse are discussed as nuanced topics w/ many viewpoints, but rectangles with JPGs are an Absolute Wrong, is a symptom of something seriously wrong with our subculture.

I don't disagree with the sentiment, but again, context counts. On my resolution, at least, the sidebar was taking damn near half the screen for a tiny bit of text. It's hard to make a positive case for that. It's dumb and inconvenient from a design perspective.

I don't think anyone will say that animal abuse or rape are in any way good things. But as someone who likes to think the best of people, I found excuses for Dragoneer and the website. I could go into rambly explanations as to why, but ultimately I don't think that matters.

There may be skewed priorities at work, but I just don't think it's as black and white as "You care about a sidebar but you don't care about rape and animal abuse". They're completely different contexts and not really comparable. And they present different obstacles and opportunities for rationalisation. Whether that rationalisation is at all a good thing is another matter. (And I'm kinda doing it now, a bit, but when one relies heavily on rationality it's a hard habit to break.)

It took you *this* long to realise there was something seriously wrong?

"Our" subculture? In the immortal words of Tonto, "What do you mean 'we', paleface?"

All the journals I've seen about the sidebar having ever existed were from people who have already left the site.

I thought you told me never to contact you again. That ain't fair when you're leaving comments on my journal, yo.

"Action expresses priorities"

People complained about all of these things, but only the last one got changed because it's easiest for the FA staff to do.

Hhhhhhhhh
There are still people out there doing that tired old "Heh, You'll Be Back" routine, like abusive husbands taunting their beaten wives. What do you get out of that, some sort of catharsis from putting down other people? When people point out this shit, it's always "boy, you complain a lot" and not actually thinking critically. People are creating cardboard cutouts of each other and spending all their mental resources dismantling the "reactionary drama" and not actually talking to each other. It is beyond frustrating.

Furries did complain about all of those things you listed. I was on a few sites that detailed those events. People were furious when Zaush was hired, not only because of his allegations, but also because he had very little coding experience. I've seen a huge bunch of artists just bolt to SoFurry or Weasyl when that happened; they had a huge rise in users that day.

I was stoked to see that you came back, but after reading this, now I'm just drained. If I see one more journal over this sidebar stuff, I'm going to toss my computer screen out the window.

This hardly seems to be a problem unique to furries. There are plenty of real world issues that should upset people, but don't. But if someone makes an edgy offensive comment on Twitter, watch out. But climate change? Institutionalized racism? Growing income inequality? Forget it. If people can't like something on Facebook or use a hashtag on Twitter, they don't care. It's just part of human nature, sadly. For furries and everyone else.

To some degree I took the sidebar matter as an additional chapter in the same book of furaffinity gaffes, but certainly for the people inclined to ignore them, this one, being a visual aspect of the website itself, was harder to do that with and proceed as usual. Somebody could see it without knowing anyone else, or without checking the comment threads on the site-wide updates. And of course this one the administrators can acknowledge and apologize for without incurring any legal liability, and without having to purge any sex offenders from the staff for sex-offense related reasons.

Don't worry, Swatch. You've got support in this.

Drama on FA? Don't remind me.

Well, also, the rape accusations were discredited. But I guess it's more fun to ignore that.