July 9, 2013: A nonny, one who eventually gave off more than a slight tell-tale whiff of Eau de Troll, got shirty about this subject, titling their thread **"Fuck people who delete their fics"**:

I really hate when people erase their works. I don't care if that makes me entitled, if people have a right to remove their creative works, there's something really heart rending with coming back to a link you saved because there was a story you liked, maybe to rec it to people, and find that page has been deleted and purged.

Despite another nonny trying to explain that society still stigmatizes fanfic, the OP insisted that fic deletion is done mostly for “shallow” reasons. When informed that they don't get to make that judgment, they retorted, “Because it hurts fandom as a whole,” and elaborating here. That last comment prompted this reply: “I had no idea Fandom as a Whole was that fragile or sensitive.”

Another reply, which prompted many hell-yeahs:

No. Sorry. What is far more harmful is fans trying to control each other's behaviour with selfishly motivated over-saccharine passive-aggressive melodramatic guilt-tripping. It is harmful to make fellow fans feel bad for prioritising anything in their lives over fandom. It is harmful to insist fans must leave up work which may be emotionally troubling, socially embarrassing or personally harmful to them. It is harmful to create an environment of bad faith and judgement. It is harmful to try and enforce one single set of social norm across a whole swathe of diverse fans, all participating and interacting for their own reasons and in different ways.

OP continued to piss and moan about fandom's //"social contract,"// berate writers who delete fics for their //"carelessness and selfishness,"// claim that //" actually people are hurt by it,"// and compare deleting one's fic to burning other people's copies of books one has written.

A reply:

And by this screwy logic, the lurker who never contributes anything to a fandom is a much better fandom member than the person who writes a few dozen stories, participates in fic exchanges, discussions, and meta and then deletes their account ten years later when life or personal circumstances make that the right personal decision. Nobody owes their fanworks to the fandom at large, and fandom is ephemeral media distributed in an ephemeral format. If you're really worried about your favorite fanfic being pulled or dying with geocities, download it for your personal use.

This long comment about how overall fandom gained a sense of community via LJ, and is moving away from it as internet users have moved to different platforms, sparked an interesting discussion. One nonny questioned whether this trend was entirely a bad thing.

And, of course, there was snark: Several nonnies claimed to have been inspired by the OP to delete all their public fic, one nonny asked for the OP's email address (“I've been thinking about deleting a few of my older fics, and I'd like to get your okay on my reasons for doing so before I hit the delete button”), and then there was this:

I hear there's a secret ritual that lets you take things you find on the Internet and save them on your computer. It requires a blood sacrifice, though, and a harrowing quest, and I haven't heard of anyone doing it successfully. So maybe it's just a lie.

Oh, and yes, there was fic commenting wank.