Dear PuritanTok, Recording In Your Bedroom is not an Invite for the Government to Regulate It

 

Several weeks ago, I wrote an op-ed that never ended up getting published. In it, I argued that the Wattpad‑to‑AO3 migration was a perfect cultural microcosm of the free speech debate. You can still read that draft if you want; the sources and context are the same for this post.

But here’s the thing: I think that op-ed was wrong.

Not wrong in its First Amendment analysis, but wrong in its framing. I suggested that even people on “my side,” the anti‑censorship side, were blowing the situation out of proportion to feel heroic. I thought the panic was exaggerated. I thought the rhetoric was performative.

Then I opened TikTok to post some ship content and unboxings.

And I realized they weren’t blowing anything out of proportion at all.

The sheer volume of calls for censorship not was disturbing enough that I had to sit with the fact that I was wrong in a way that made my stomach drop.

I saw people calling for AO3 to be banned entirely.

I saw people saying Kinktober should be illegal.

I saw AO3 compared to Flock as “legal but not moral,” which is laughable because Flock is not fully legal.

I saw people calling AO3 users “fat,” “ugly,” “weird-looking”—the exact same culture‑war insults the right used against “blue‑haired liberals” in the post‑Gamergate era.

Then it got worse.

People claimed AO3 users were all white, accused them of racism, and insisted they only cared about censorship when it affected AO3. I saw soyjak/chudjak memes accusing anyone who uses AO3 of supporting incest, bestiality, or pedophilia. I saw people calling for the Hays Code—yes, the anti‑LGBT censorship regime—to come back.

I don’t speak for everyone. I have blue hair, but you can check my voter registration if you want. Maybe you’d be surprised, maybe you wouldn’t. My entire job is fighting censorship, and I take that seriously. Fandom is what inspired me to care about these issues; getting a law degree is how I plan to make meaningful change.

But what I saw on TikTok was the exact same logic we see in age‑verification laws and speech‑chilling proposals. The TikTok commenter calling for an AO3 ban is using the same arguments as Ken Paxton and the Ohio Attorney General. The irony is that the people in these comment sections are overwhelmingly left‑wing: pro‑LGBT, Palestinian flags in their bios, reposting reels of Zohran while parroting arguments that come straight from the Heritage Foundation.

Horseshoe Theory isn’t just real; I found it in the place where the evangelical preacher sings for money and the influencer whines for likes.

I’m not going to pretend I like all disturbing content. I don’t. But filters exist for a reason. Censorship is always a slippery slope. It starts with what you personally find distasteful just like obscenity prosecutions back in the day and ends with what you find tasteful being taken away. The line always moves and it never moves in your favor.

It is important to speak up not because I enjoy disturbing content, but because I know that what is considered “distasteful” today will include something I care about tomorrow.

What happened to “keep the government out of my bedroom”?

Recording in it is not an invitation for them to be let in.