Today’s Youth’s Blind Trust On The Internet Genuinely Terrifies Me.

Today’s youth’s blind trust on the internet genuinely terrifies me.

That starts with their reliance on carrds. For one, the inherent acceptance that what is said in those carrds is all true. As though nobody would ever lie about their age or gender or anything else, especially when that person is trying to prey on minors. They won’t put “34 | real life pedo man | interested in little girls” into their carrds, they’re more likely claiming to be a fellow 13 year old girl and thanks to your tumblr blog, they know exactly what you like so they know how to open a conversation with you. Which brings me to the other bad side of carrds; minors being so trusting in strangers that they put all their own information right there for anyone to see like that’s not predator bait.

But the bigger problem that brought me here is the purity cult brainwashing that makes minors think that adults should be policed in fandom and the implications this has on minors.

To be allowed to engage with certain things, you first have to disclose whether you are a minor or an adult and if you’re an adult, you have to disclose why you engage with it.

You may be excused if you do it to deal with a personal trauma. So please disclose your personal trauma; teaching kids that they should share their personal trauma with strangers too.

But if you just enjoy it as porn, that’s disgusting and forbidden.

Might I note the utter lack of self awareness here, because quite frankly I find it much more concerning and disgusting that you spend so much time thinking about adults masturbating and what they are masturbating about. The irony of them sexualizing real actual people, while shaming those people for sexualizing fictional characters. That is so creepy and disturbing. When I was a teen, I just consumed the smut myself, I didn’t waste my time wondering if the author is an adult and thinking about them getting off to that fic I just read.

Let’s put the act of trying to police adults aside for a second to focus on the blind trust angle here too. You operate on the assumption that the author will tell you truthfully if they are a minor or an adult and then further you trust that they will be honest about their trauma or porn intention.

All adults annoyed by the purity cult could just start pretending to be 14 year old trauma survivors, just to get some peace amd quiet about this bullshit. What are you going to do, demand a copy of their ID and a signed letter from their therapist?

It is literally impossible to police who engages with fandom and how or why they engage with it. The assumption that you can is false because it relies on a non existing honesty. But there are impressionable minors, who get thaught that adults doing x is wrong and need to be policed so it’s important that everyone discloses age, gender and personal trauma, to determine who the Nasty Adults are. And in youthful naivity - and I don’t mean that as an insult; young people inherently trusting someone who projects themselves as an authority figure is how most societies work - they will disclose these things honestly and then consequently assume others will too.

Kids these days grow up in an internet culture that’s trying to breed too much blind trust in the words of strangers while also teaching them to trust blindly by disclosing too much information themselves.

And that is completely terrifying to me, because your set goal of keeping creeps at bay is not just not met, you are laying all the information real creeps need right out for them and make yourselves easy prey.