It does. What sucks worse is I've disabled guest comments on my fics, when a lot of my fans comment on guest accounts for (valid) reasons. So it feels like restricting a subsection of my readers for no reason save for "one bad apple spoiled the bunch." It's absolute asscheeks that (seemingly) not much can be done against it.
Really sad because I had to do the same. I first commented as a guest reviewer, and I like when newbies get to interact with more experienced users but the spam bots are too much. I think some even followed me over from FFNet too, which really puts a damper on it ,:(
I have my own opinions on noobs in fandom/fanfic based on personal experience. Still, it is nice to be able to educate and teach people about the history and lingo of fanfic specifically. As for the spam bots, I'm not really too certain they can "follow" a specific user from a site. These bots are all essentially the same - back in 2016, on FF.Net, I was getting art commission spam comments similar to the ones here. So I would assume that those responsible for these bots are just bringing them over here due to the huge influx of new users. Because I've noticed wayyy more people making accounts in mid-late 2025 than in previous years, and the spam had gotten particularly bad in late 2024. Not saying the new users are responsible at all; I'm saying that the big focus on AO3 on TikTok and Twitter is clueing those responsible for the spambots into "ahh, this site is huge, we can make bank." It's sort of the monkey's paw in a way: we ask for more fanfic for fandoms and more attention, and this is what we get. But it's to be expected with a site like AO3, and it was really only a matter of time before those scam/spam comments came here.
I guess that makes sense :0 I guess that it's pretty unavoidable no matter what, but I'm glad FFNet has been working on taking down the bot accounts. Still sucks but whatever. I find it helpful that on AO3, you can moderate comments from people. Doesn't stop any bots from being sneaky though. I had to warn someone not to contact me again and thankfully they listened. Still sucks that I thought they were a person who actually cared. Maybe they are, I dunno. But as long as I'm online, I try to be pretty weary of others ifkwim.
People do care! Silent readers are super common, and you can find communities on Discord and such. Based on your PFP, if it's the fandom I think it is, there's probably a large amount of fans on Tumblr and Discord. It's best to be weary, but there are still ways to interact with people who aren't scummy/bots. I think the longer one is using the Internet and social medias/websites, the easier it gets to spot the bot/weirdo. Since I started disabling guest comments, I've only gotten like one scam/spam comment from an "account", so there's some positives to limiting them.
Yeah, I get it, but the problem comes is that AO3 is my only social rn. I'm also in a lot of toxic fandoms (Nintendo, My Little Pony, Digital Circus, even some teen rated stuff) so I'm barely lucky I've gone this long and was only bullied off the internet once because I misunderstood something too literally. I love silent readers and all, but FFNet makes it hard and confusing to see the stats of your stories. Either way, with FFNet's inactivity, I'm lucky I even get ten views. I mainly write for myself and all, so it doesn't bother me a lot, it just makes me feel better knowing there are other people who happen to like what I do, especially since I want to become an Indie creator some day.
Heck, I've been on the internet for years and it's still hard to juggle if somebody is being nice to you because they're a good person, or if they're attempting to use you for something. However, I do tend to be a bit too trusting, and I probably first joined social media way sooner than I should've. Sometimes I wonder if I should just refresh it all and start over (that's pretty much what I'm doing here from FFNet, after all. After all my FFNet stories are done, I'm dropping the site.)
I get that. I've been doing this for 14 years, and throughout that time, I've joined and left so many fandoms. Toxicity is everywhere, but it just depends on where you linger. Funny, you bring this up, since I just left a fandom that, ironically, cast me out, shamed me, and tormented me relentlessly for 3 years (a Nintendo one, to boot!). It's hard, but the switch helps. I dropped Discord and now only have a Dreamwidth and Tumblr, both of which are nicer places than most. My advice on trusting too much and not being able to judge people's character would just be to really build a wall and take things slowly. I'm autistic; I've been taken advantage of for trusting and having faith in people. I've learned to keep things to myself and see how the person reacts to certain things. Trust, it gets easier to read these sorts of people and see the trends.
I'd say, don't refresh completely. Just take things slowly and get a feel for the fandoms you're in. Those fandoms seem to attract a younger audience, which definitely contributes to the toxicity, as youngins are just getting to experience fandom culture, and rather than do what most of us did way back when, they jump straight into the thick of it. My best tip would be to just lurk around. Quiet, but seeing how things are and what people do. I spent a huge chunk of my fanfic life just reading and silently observing fandom culture and how it changed. You can still comment, of course, but it's best to just sit back and take note of common "tropes" that come with fandom and fanfic in general. That helped me tremendously. Good luck on your journey to being an indie creator and getting around fandom. I know it can get hard, but it does get better the more you grow used to fandom, especially since it's changed so much since 2020.
Oh wow, that's great advice! Funny you say that, because I was also shunned from a Nintendo fandom, one of the few I still love very much and consistently write for. The person even stalked me onto different accounts on websites which is why I mentioned the refresh thing and why AO3 is my only social rn. I haven't seen them in a long time though, so I think it's safe to say they've moved on lol
I had some of that toxicity affect me for a bit, to the point I started being really mean towards myself and others. I think stepping back from the internet a bit and taking a slow reentry into it has helped me kids sort myself out. I'm most likely Autistic as well, so that would explain the specific hatred towards me for doing something wrong, even if I meant well. People like you are part of the reason I love being online, you get to see, outside your own family, that you aren't alone. ❤️
Thank you for you kind words, btw! I actually was kind if grumpy this morning because I didn't feel too great, but you really helped pick up my mood! Enjoy your week!
Exactly what I felt I had to do in late January already, ending a year and a half of a "everyone feel free to comment" policy. Just like most of us, I kept getting spam comments every now and then (contrary to what people might believe, being in a non-English niche fandom does NOT save you from getting them), and when I had a shitty morning already, saw a (1) in my inbox, was excited about getting a reply I was waiting for and just get another spam comment instead, I spent the rest of the train ride changing the settings for each of my works, so everyone can access my stuff but only registered users can comment from now on. It already felt like I was punishing my guest readers who potentially MIGHT want to leave a comment for something they aren't guilty of; that was also the primary reason why I never privated my entire oeuvre, even though after the last AI scraping incident made the news, I'd quite have been in the mood to do so.
Ever since, I've remained in doubt, as there are reasons to assume that while spam bots may not be able to comment anymore, they still may be responsible for irregular influx of hits and kudos. Coming from a niche, as I said, and feeling like after the first hype within the fandom after my return to fandom, folks got bored of my stuff at some point (this isn't gonna stop me from making it, though :D ), I realized that there can be an entire week passing with no hits whatsoever, then suddenly getting either twenty hits on a side project with a long history of being ignored, or even five hits AND kudos within literal minutes, a time no human being would be able to read the work in question. Not only does that screw my nerdy stat Excel-chart over, it actively keeps me from concentrating on work because of the constant "Do I even have real readers anymore?" self-doubts which I rationally shouldn't have about stuff I primarily do for myself, anyway.
I don't even know why I felt like this had to get out right now ... ^^ Probably because when brains where distributed, they gave me a bouncy ball instead. So, thanks for coming to my TED Talk. :D
To play Devil's Advocate here for a second, those kudos that come really quickly may be from people who will read but want to show support, and then they mark it for later so they can read it at a better time. My friend does this: she kudoses my work first, then reads when she has a chance. But that may not be the case in every situation so I would take that with a grain of salt.
Limiting guest comments helps, and it does show there are real readers, at least to me. As for the dip in engagement, I think it's less "people getting bored" and more "people moving on to the next big thing." I cannot tell you how many posts I've seen across socials where new authors are going, "hey, how can I get more engagement and become popular? I started writing for [insert big popular fandom as of late], but I'm not getting enough hits". Nowadays, more kudos and comments have become "indicators" of story quality, which is just not true. Didn't use to be that way, but it is now, and there's not much we can do to change it. Social media has convinced people that the more attention something has, the more superior it is, and they come here thinking the same thing, not realizing that AO3 isn't a social media and doesn't have an algorithm. It sucks, but that's the consequence of AO3 becoming more mainstream, as well as fanfic as a whole.
I should have mentioned that I was talking about guests only. If these came from people with an account, I'd have gotten to a similar assumption, as I do know active people around here who generally press kudos before reading for similar reasons. Still a valid point, as there's no way to safely assume the intentions of everyone appearing in my kudos emails unless they also leave comments.
Since I don't use social media and Discord at all (but occasionally read along in the r/AO3 subreddit), I only have a vague idea as to how they influence people's general behavior on this site, but do see where you're coming from. I also believe that much of it comes from folks who move from Wattpad to AO3 (not literally everyone who does so, of course, but a fair amount at least) and think they need to feed some nonexistent algorithm here because that's what they've grown accustomed to, and lurking before signing up seems to have gotten out of fashion in the last couple of years. (One should assume that the waiting period in the queue actually leaves enough time for lurking even after the invitation request, but what do I know.) It's most certainly a combination of either factor, plus the cultural shift in fandom that became evident after the massive influx of newbies from 2020 on as a consequence of the Coof, that leads towards the mistaken assumption that there was a linear correlation between interaction and quality. What this conclusion does tell me is that I'm probably getting too old to care about what the current big thing is. :D And that I've probably been lucky to have timed my reappearance in a way that I've been around when my thing happened to be the current big thing, so I shouldn't worry about sticking to it, even though it isn't any longer.
Ah, I was talking about guests, too. Sorry for not clarifying hahaha.
2020 changed so much, it's almost surreal to see the huge switch-up between 2019 and 2020, and I remember it vividly. And yeah, caring about big trends is something I stopped doing once I started getting into my 20s, and now I'm at the point where I'm completely thrilled about writing a fic for a rarepair that gets hardly any traction hahaha. It's just something that happens as people mature. Sadly, I don't think this new generation of fans will ever get to that point... I mean, they're still making TOS breaking "fics" detailing why, if you ship or write XYZ, then you're a bad person. To any of those who write that currently reading my comment: you can't stop me. I'm the boogeyman. I'm going to continue haunting your tag. BEWARE! XD
And then there's me, getting back into fandom in 2024 after an unexpectedly long hiatus of nine years, finding a completely different world from the one I once left, taking this for the natural course of life until realizing that it was essentially one event that messed everything up beyond repair. Well ... :D One clear symptom of what's been going on could really be the whole "You're a bad person if you don't do what I want you to do!" attitude, something I don't recall being a thing prior to that. Now that I'm thinking about that, this would actually encourage me to keep doing what I want, if only to spite this very sort of people. ^^ But yeah, there's an amazingly slow maturing process among some of them, given that the first wave of COVID has already passed six years ago, which gives me rather little hope for the generation of fans in question ... But then again, growing older also means listening to annoyingly loud voices as little as possible. So go ahead and haunt your fandom! :D
Comment on February 2026 Newsletter, Volume 208
Nabsurdo Thu 05 Mar 2026 02:52PM UTC
Comment Actions
Hakvrei Thu 05 Mar 2026 03:07PM UTC
Comment Actions
CaramelPhoenix Thu 05 Mar 2026 05:55PM UTC
Comment Actions
Hakvrei Thu 05 Mar 2026 06:06PM UTC
Comment Actions
CaramelPhoenix Thu 05 Mar 2026 06:54PM UTC
Comment Actions
Hakvrei Thu 05 Mar 2026 07:11PM UTC
Comment Actions
CaramelPhoenix Thu 05 Mar 2026 07:19PM UTC
Comment Actions
Hakvrei Thu 05 Mar 2026 08:03PM UTC
Comment Actions
CaramelPhoenix Thu 05 Mar 2026 09:13PM UTC
Last Edited Thu 05 Mar 2026 09:30PM UTC
Comment Actions
MysteriousMihai Thu 05 Mar 2026 11:57PM UTC
Comment Actions
Hakvrei Fri 06 Mar 2026 03:45PM UTC
Comment Actions
MysteriousMihai Fri 06 Mar 2026 05:06PM UTC
Comment Actions
Hakvrei Fri 06 Mar 2026 05:25PM UTC
Comment Actions
MysteriousMihai Fri 06 Mar 2026 06:24PM UTC
Last Edited Fri 06 Mar 2026 09:30PM UTC
Comment Actions