Have any of you ever experienced bullying/harassment on Tapas or the Tapas forums?

Well not really, the worst that happened was a individual or two pushing me when I was in a bad mindset

Come across the occasional troll sometimes.

I tend to steer clear of any arguments or heated discussions. It gives me anxiety.

Pretty much what @nathanKmcwilliams and @darthmongoose said. I've seen some dogpiling here and there, as well as a bit of intolerance when it comes to certain viewpoints of people from non-US/English speaking countries. Admittedly I've probably done a little dogpiling myself without thinking about it. There was definitely a push for fluffy/positive mentalities that seemed to come around when there was a wave of censorship of uncomfortable or adult queer stuff going around social media. Haven't seen it so much here anymore, but the forum is pretty much made up of like 15 regulars and the occasional rando coming in the promote their stuff. With Tapas no longer promoting it, and using Discord instead.

Also Darth's point on the hostility towards creators with larger subs. Hooo boy, remembering a promo thread that popped up for creators with 1k or more subs (A single thread in a sea of promo thread for everyone.), some folks got so butthurt. x'D

(Honestly surprised I haven't been dogpiled or pushed off the forum yet. I go hard on uncomfortable shit, and controversial viewpoints, but I can be kinda parasitic with forums. Lmao!)

I wouldn't call it harassment per se, but I feel like when I initially got here there was a small population of forum users who just wanted someone to be mad at, and being an opinionated young clown I was often chosen to be that person. ^^; There was definitely a period where topics I chose to discuss "didn't belong on the forum" simply because I was the one starting them, apparently...

Fortunately, those people have moved on, and I've mellowed out, and things are a lot calmer now. ^^ A little dull, but calm and peaceable.

Favoritism from the uppers and dogpiling the lesser accepted opinions have been around but anyone who points it out is promptly ostracized for it. The people above calling it positivity police pretty much nailed it. Don't ever let dissent exist and problems will never arise.

/rant

I read a lot but rarely comment. Lots of very helpful and informative conversations of course, hence I hang around.

I haven't personally, but I've just recently started using the forums. Actually, I think forums in general are a lot quieter than they used to be, since people mostly go to big centralized sites these days....could be one reason why.

I find it strange how some people are reminiscing about the "good old days" of the forums, when I remember it being sort of a shit show when I first joined. They used to allow political talk but it got banned because people were using it to argue about the US election and to post anti-LGBT or racist shit. There was also this guy who was in a cult and would randomly show up to the forums to rant about how we were all going to hell, it was a bit insane. I remember trying to talk to him about getting help because he seemed to have had a hard childhood and sort of joined the cult instead of seeking professional help.

I think the quietness on the forums might be less of people being harassed off, and more that most people nowadays prefer Discord over the forums. I don't go on the Tapas Discord because I had people get mad at me for being queer and I have seen people post transphobic stuff and the mods just ignore it. People being awful is still here, it's just not on the forums.

I avoid the Discord as well, only posting to put friends' stories on the recommendations channel. I regret the one time I did try to take part in the chat.

That is the most random, unorganized mess I've seen for supposedly well-specified channels. Every single channel is a general off-topic chat. And its like walking into a middle school classroom at that. So @NickRowler when you say you were harassed for that, I will believe you.

And yeah, I forgot to concur with that point about many leaving the forums to go to the Discord chat.

Yeah, I get what you mean; I've talked about some pretty controversial stuff in some comments here that I've seen others get death threats for in other places, but people have been surprisingly understanding ^^;

I can see that tbh; envy is real, and I'm not just saying that in a 'pshhh people suck amirite?' kind of way - I've felt it myself. With me I do feel slightly less comfortable with more successful creators because I'm afraid of looking like I'm only trying to be friends with them to take advantage of them since I see people complaining about 'fake friends' all the time, but idk if I'm just making excuses for what's actually just envy XD

But yeah, these days it looks to me that people here generally respect and look up to you - admittedly because you give good advice but I feel like having the sub count to back it up is also a factor.

Honestly, I hate people sucking up to me and can usually spot it. It's one thing to appreciate my advice and help, but when somebody lays on the flattery too thick I'm a bit like "eugh..." because I hate insincerity, and I know I've pissed off my share of people who said a bunch of nice things about me and then I didn't promote them or subscribe to their comic. I don't give out compliments that I don't really mean, and I don't promote things unless I genuinely think they're good. If people want to subscribe to my comic, well, that's great, thanks! but I shouldn't feel under obligation to sub to theirs, and the same rules apply to them; if I ever sub to your comic or give you a shout-out, you don't owe me anything.

I want people to think of me as just a peer with more experience, mostly just gained through literally being older than a lot of people here, so I've been making comics since last century! 2k subs feels like a lot to people with like 200 or fewer, but you really need about 30k+ to earn a living on the platform, so it's not like I'm incredibly successful or giving up my day job any time soon . I'm really just somebody who can probably give advice based on having made every mistake in the book at least once and learned the hard way so you don't have to, or as somebody who has finally gained access to the kind of info the industry frustratingly keeps close to the chest and wants to freely distribute it because oh my god, book publishing in my country is SO damned incestuous and full of posh people who just help out their other posh friends and their annoyingly entitled and privileged, talentless kids.

I've got experience and maybe a bit more of an audience, but I'm a completely open book on how I did it, and I'll happily share information and advice with anyone else who wants to succeed, and probably eventually surpass me.

Le gulp. Having a history of foot-in-mouth syndrome, I've been burnt before, so that's exactly the sort of line that makes me worry. I don't exactly have much faith in the accuracy of people's 'insincerity radar' :'D I do get where you're coming from though, not saying it's wrong to dislike being sucked up to, and it definitely sucks that people act like you're obligated to support their work because they supported yours.

I suppose I'll just keep saying whatever and not-get-mad-at-people-for-not-supporting-my-work (I trust that's all you really want anyways), and try not to worry about what people think of me if I haven't done anything objectively blackmaily :'D

And yeah, it's really cool of you and others to make information and resources available to anyone willing to make use of it, so people with potential don't get stuck and have their ideas languish in obscurity because they had no means of realizing them :]

Apart from some small bouts of tension here and there, I really like the community

I’ve never experienced full on bullying from a tapas user, but I’ve experienced stalking and harassment from another author from Webnovel who followed me over to Tapas earlier this year, created an account, and used it to message all my subs and their walls, as well as comment my chapters with vicious messages. It was a mess, and thankfully tapas looked into it. It all stopped after I threatened to sue for slander.

Hahaha yeah... it buys me occasional treats like takeaway food and Warhammer minis, but people think that once you have 1000+ subs you're diving into a pool of money like Scrooge McDuck. I'm like... I know people with 10,000 subs, and all of them need to have some kind of other job outside of their webcomic. The 1k-30k subs region is usually just "solid side hustle" territory, not "at last, I can quit my job!" territory.

I don't know if it's still an issue because I haven't been here in quite a long while (hi to those who remember me), I don't think I have seen harassment of one person, usually when there was harassment it seemed to be unintentional and aimed at certain types of creators like people have mentioned. I know a LOT of people moved away from the forums here because every other day would be a new thread hating on BL comics. That's part of the reason why I stopped posting here as well. That and it's a time sink like most social media. lol

Oh god... yeah, it used to be constant a few years back. Every time one closed, a new thread would open with a title like "Why is BL so popular?" "Why is there so much BL?" and all of them had that same thing of people being like:

"i aM jUsT trYINg to uNDersTaNd whY pEopLE LiKe it So MuCH wHEn it Is bAd. i'M nOT hoMopHObiC!"
But then no matter how often the simple truth was pointed to that "people like it and are reading it" and "people read it on webcomics platforms because print publishers don't supply for the level of demand because they're slow to adapt", they'd never be satisfied.

I'm thankful that there's a lot less of that now. I can live without needing to argue for the existence of queer creators and having the opportunity to find success with LGBTQ+ themed content every week for sure. There's even thankfully less of that "Humph! There's only ONE WAY to be popular on Tapas and it's making gay stuff!" sentiment and the weird conspiracy theories that there was some kind of gay illuminati working behind the scenes of Tapas to push queer content on everyone and hide anything heterosexual.

...wow yeah, the forums were wild back then, huh?