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Why AO3 Was Down

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151 points danso | 4 comments | 05 Jul 25 02:23 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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p0w3n3d ◴[05 Jul 25 07:11 UTC] No.44470700[source]▶
Hacker News helps me everyday break my information bubble. Archive Of Our Own is something that I wouldn't walk into when wandering through the internet
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chii ◴[05 Jul 25 07:23 UTC] No.44470748[source]▶
> I wouldn't walk into when wandering through the internet

it's interesting that some people are on the internet but is very well insulated! AO3 is very well known for me...

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diggan ◴[05 Jul 25 08:51 UTC] No.44471186[source]▶
> it's interesting that some people are on the internet but is very well insulated

Not sure I'd call it "insulated", the internet is just very, very vast, even when considering "just" the English-speaking web. Then you have all the other "versions" out there too that are kind of hidden to most people :)

Anecdotal, but also first time I heard about AO3, and I'd consider myself having broad interests and generally well-read, although my interests doesn't include fanfiction so maybe not so weird I haven't heard about it before.

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jorvi ◴[05 Jul 25 09:21 UTC] No.44471327[source]▶
Its very much a gendered thing. If you have lots of female (online) friends and late night topics with them ended up trending spicy, you might hear of AO3.

FWIW the vast majority of writing on there is decidedly mediocre. There is also an even more inferior alternative called Wattpad.

Funnily enough you learn that in general we aren't all that different in our tastes, it's just that what men like to watch, women like to read / imagine.

Edit: to paint the picture, this[0] was sent to me a while back :-)

[0]https://www.tiktok.com/@alexarowe11/video/746846214634761757...

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1. diggan ◴[05 Jul 25 09:52 UTC] No.44471478[source]▶
The world of "spicy reading" isn't new to me (male), just that website in particular.

I don't think it's as gendered as you paint it, but I'd also acknowledge it depends a lot on geographic location, probably looks different where I am compared to where you are, I agree with that we probably aren't all that different in tastes in general :)

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2. Freak_NL ◴[05 Jul 25 13:20 UTC] No.44472630[source]▶
Anecdata, but it does seem like a very gendered divide on the whole. The only reason I know of Archive of Our Own is because my wife is quite familiar with it. And I do consider myself well acquainted with various smut filled corners of the internet well beyond Literotica.
3. Ferret7446 ◴[05 Jul 25 22:53 UTC] No.44476215[source]▶
Literary vs visual porn is strongly gender divided. I would be very surprised if you were into erotica and weren't aware of AO3; I find it more likely that as a male you aren't actually very into erotica, as is the norm.

I'm sure you can find lots of studies about this, but just for a very easy data point, a few years old survey shows that AO3 is ~54% cis female, ~5% cis male, rest nonbinary/trans/etc.

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4. fouc ◴[06 Jul 25 05:38 UTC] No.44478119[source]▶
Maybe that's more a statement about the type of content it has (or originally had)?

Fan Fiction isn't strictly about erotica after all, if you filter out the erotica part, the distribution might be a bit different..

I would assume webnovels.com wuxiaworld.com and r/ProgressionFantasy might be more male gendered, even though that some of type of content could easily be on ao3 too..