One of the reasons that I “left” (wanted nothing more to do with, distanced myself from, have not actively participated in anything having to do with, and am literally all the happier for having done so) fandom was the fact that boundaries were so routinely, cavalierly violated. If you blocked someone, meaning that you did not want to speak to them, that you did not want them to have access to their social media, they logged out of their own social media — especially if this was Twitter and you had a public account — to read what you had to say, and in some cases screenshot for their hate blogs (don’t even get me started on those, I could write a completely separate post on those alone, and I’m not going to do it now). If you attempted to assert boundaries and the other person didn’t feel like giving you the basic human decency of honoring them, well, that was that unless you wanted to make your whole social media account private. But they couldn’t make you participate in fandom, and they couldn’t make you “discuss meta” or talk about the thing — the object of fandom — that was causing all of this drama, and all of this strife, if you just didn’t want to. That was that.
Call it a convenient loophole. Call it whatever you want. It was honest, and it worked. It works. I like that!
On top of that, once I realized that I could not fake the level of interest and passion that people had for… the things that these fandoms centered around, further realizing that I did not want to continue to fake it, my mental health dramatically improved. I want to like things when I want to like them and be able to walk away from them when I need a break from them, not discuss them for twelve-hour benders or be available to do so more time than I’m willing to commit to. Anyway, getting back on topic… me not being willing to fake fandom any longer. This has meant that I’ve watched less television shows on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, but I’ve watched what I’ve wanted when I’ve wanted, and definitely at the pace I’ve wanted (so far I am watching the Evangelion movies since I grew up with the original anime, and I am in love with it).
At any rate, I’ve begun to notice that people are willing to violate boundaries on Discord as well.
If you block someone on Discord, you expect that they won’t be able to see what you write, and you won’t have to see what they write. What’s the point if they circumvent that to see what you write because they’ve developed some sort of obsession with you? What is it with people nowadays and respecting boundaries?
