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

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.

No. But I always observing heated threads and learn from them. (it may have discouraged me to start some topics)

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 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?

Oh my, I read all the replies here and it makes me thankful I didn't comment much (if at all) back when I joined, I joined around 2014 so I imagine it was probably a mess back then xD

I'm actually super awkward when it comes to internet friends or socializing so the forum always intimidated me, thinking people would attack me for anything I said or just ignore me completely lol I was younger so I was more sensitive to that xD besides the fact I've tried talking to people and it's always been short responses that die out the conversation or people talking to me saying 'Hi, how are you?' and nothing else. Like, I didn't know what they wanted to do by just saying those lines loool

Even on discord, when I attempted to give an opinion that wasn't about the characters romance or shipping, I got ignored really bad XD So I just gave up. I'm actually trying this time to hang around in the forum and see if I can comment on something, it's been a positive experience so I'm telling myself it's okay to comment.

Someone said something about people being intolerant when they weren't from the US, but the awkward experiences I've had were US people or maybe it was US teen talk that I didn't get? Has anyone experienced going into a chat and people like talking in a roleplaying way and saying nonsense as a way to socialize? With nonsense I mean as in people just saying animeish things to each other and writing things like "throws a cookie and explodes" to give an example lol (and any attempt to talk normally will just be ignored xD)

But I'm finding people here in the forum to be friendly and with interesting opinions, so yeah x'D I'm a friendly person and I love to talk but I turn into an awkward/shy person in the internet so I just end up reading opinions lol

Hm, as for the 'too much BL' thing, it's funny cause I always complain that there's not enough hahah xD You see, I have a thing for reading stories about girls reincarnating into "villains" in other worlds, they are always redeemed cause they're not the villan, but the point is that... there's not even stories about guys experimenting the same and it being a BL >_>

Or hey, even BL stories that are not about the couple. Like, how many stories with complex plotlines have a boy x boy main? I have nothing against cute-romantic BL couples (which are indeed abundant) but I have yet to see shonen or seinen storylines that have a main boy x boy main couple in it u_u or the main simply being gay. It's always guys with harems XD So yeah, I just wanted to comment on that. It may be abundant in one specific area, but there's little to none BL stories that aren't focused in the couple in a kind of slice of life way. (If you know any manwhas or stories that aren't slice of life and have a gay character (man) main do recommend me some pls xD)

And wow, I understand envy exists but like... Aren't people thinking that that's what they'll go through once they get there? I understand the discomfort of seeing people with more subs recommending but, at least to me, them recommending it is alright, them having 1000+ subs won't translate into anything harmful for me, on the contrary, it's discouraging to think that if I get to 1000 I won't be able to promote anymore cause people will look at me badly :S

I think people should stop thinking about pulling others down with them and instead focus on their own stories to reach the subscribers they want, it's just as useless as envying what your neighbor has Like, if you want something work for it, the person with 1000+ subscribed worked hard for it and it's your turn to do it as well.

Also, it's like just one thread, if the forum was full of 1000+ threads promoting then I wouldn't feel ok with it, because Tapas already promotes popular stories on the front page and it would be taking away the opportunity of newcomers to be seen... But yeah, one thread or a few of 1000+ promoting shouldn't be frowned upon, unless you're okay with being treated like that in the future :S

In any case, I just wanted to share this, but as I said, I understand the discomfort but would like to encourage people to focus on the bigger picture and realize this discomfort is going to be redirected to them when they ever pass the 500-1000 subscriber count.

I have like 100 subscribers and from the 100 I rarely get a comment xD I can imagine this being a problem even for larger counts, like having 500 and people not saying much either, so, I don't see what's bad for people wanting to promote themselves (?)

But who knows, since you all are saying the forum is more like mature and cool with people, those threads could be a thing now? I dunno, it would be cool the forum turned into a place where people uplift each other no matter how many subs they have

As a reader, I never care about subscribers, I only care about the story being good, the art style and maybe reviews. There's stories with millions of subscribes with really bad reviews on anime-planet for example xD so yeah, it's better to just focus on making a story you can be proud of and show others that can appreciate it for what it is ^^

As others have said here, people still need another job and having 500-1000 subs won't do much for you, so the envy is way more useless in this scenario. Be proud of your story and focus your all on it so others can see how much love it has!

Of course, promote it, but always remember there's an audience for everyone! You never know when your story has that specific plot a reader is looking for

I'm really happy to read the forum is nicer now and apparently with more mature people around!

Oh and I've gotten bullied not here but on the forum on Deviantart >_> for expressing an opinion that wasn't well received, I had to ask the staff to close the thread and it did scare me off of ever trying again to comment there.

I'm still a bit apprehensive about commenting on the forum but anyways, hope no one got offended from this x'D Just wanted to share my opinion!

Welp for Bl's with senine/shonen plots.

I got plenty in the back pocket some novels some comics. I can dm the recs

But yeah yes to all of this.

I kinda got sick of the envy people had. I will rember the day some guy blamed novels being added and romance for why his comic was no longer popular... even thou is comic although was not bad was kinda bland for a gag a day comic.

Its was very annoying and was very rampant.

I'll say compared to most places. It's pretty chill