An (over)analysis of an April Fools joke

[CountVonNumenor]

It has been over a month since that special day of the year, but I have seen a reply I have written at the time has caught some new attention, so long after the fact. And in particular, I think it was a fragment of it:
 

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[Meta] Emergency New Rules For /r/touhou [Important]

Hello, r/Touhou!

Due to the recent events that occurred in the last few weeks, such as the official DMCA notice against the piracy site, the Touhou Wikipedia drama, as well as some other phenomenons we have observed, the moderator team has decided to implement new rules from here on out.

Effective to “Found Fanart” posts exclusively from dead sources: An image rehost is no longer acceptable, where you must post the Danbooru link as the main post together with a link to the artist.

Effective to “Found Fanart” posts exclusively from the same artists or albums: A temporary blacklist will be issued to forbid particular artists’ artworks from being posted for a short period, in the case of their artworks being milked by multiple users.

ZUN and his legal team have made clear their stance regarding piracy. Any posts and comments that violate Rule 3 will remain in the public’s view. You are entitled to act morally superior and gatekeep against any pirates, as long as your reply does not violate Reddiquette. However, any offenders will receive a ban from r/Touhou, as well as a message notifying you that you will need to hire a lawyer to dispute the DMCA claim from ZUN and his legal team. To appeal the ban, please show concrete evidence that your copies of Touhou games are from legitimate sites together with your purchasing receipt.

Notes regarding “Game Discussion”, “Book Discussion”, “Fan Discussion” posts: All statements or arguments must be written in an objective and neutral manner accompanied by proper citations from official media if possible. You are legally allowed to tell others to “shut the fuck up” if they are found making subjective, biased or otherwise inaccurate statements. To have an opinion, *please verify yourself as an experienced player.

*required evidence may include perfect Lunatic clear of multiple stages, captures of “Pristine Danmaku Hell”/ “Yin-Yang Divine Orbs” etc as Marisa, or, full completion of Violet Detector.

Unless prior confirmed artists do not mind rehosting their work, Rule 9 will now be extended to cover Doujinshi. Safe-for-work images extracted from the H-sites will be banned since most works have the phrase “無断転載” on their last few pages.

Team Shanghai Alice has already taken down the shrine, and we will expect further actions targetting sites that pirate official Touhou doujins. As such, Rule 3 will now be extended to cover official printed works. ^Any mentions of “Mangadex”, “Free PDF download from the Wiki” or others will be treated the same as mentions of “Moriya Shrine” or other pirating statements.

^free pass will be granted if you can provide your own legal copies and require a scanlated version.

Sorry for the mild inconvenience caused by the new sets of rules. We, the moderation team, will continue to monitor every activity within r/Touhou, and make changes accordingly. Here is a quick tutorial on how to follow the rules. We hope to find a way to make a balance between artists’ rights and user conveniences.

 This has been an interesting farce created by r/touhou administration on the 1st of April 2022, merely days after the DMCA event. Had the events not struck just before this, probably things would have hit differently. So anyway, going through the text itself.

 

Spoiler

Hello, r/Touhou!

Due to the recent events that occurred in the last few weeks, such as the official DMCA notice against the piracy site, the Touhou Wikipedia drama, as well as some other phenomenons we have observed, the moderator team has decided to implement new rules from here on out.

So, we are starting with a brief reminder of the events that took place that week. As everyone can remember, on the 25th of March 2022, the Touhou community got hit by two dramas. We are not foreign from the concept of a drama going on in here, but having two in the span of a few hours (or in my case, waking up in the morning with both news) has been quite different. Even if it was the 1st of April, let's see what the administration had to say and what measures did they allegedly want to apply...

 

Spoiler

Effective to “Found Fanart” posts exclusively from dead sources: An image rehost is no longer acceptable, where you must post the Danbooru link as the main post together with a link to the artist.

This does not seem like an over the top request. In many of the big communities I have see, there seems to be a tendency towards preferring to give a direct link to the artist instead of any image hosting website. However, no such ban has ever been implemented, despite not being the preferred option for posting. 

 

Spoiler

Effective to “Found Fanart” posts exclusively from the same artists or albums: A temporary blacklist will be issued to forbid particular artists’ artworks from being posted for a short period, in the case of their artworks being milked by multiple users.

More than likely in regards to the Fusu art posting drama. For anyone unfamiliar with the events, I will try explaining what happened. Some 9 months ago, a user called "The Entire Circus" has started uploading translated art of a creator called Fusu. Fusu's art usually revolves around the idea of a PoV drawing in which one of the Touhou girls is confessing how much she likes you, and would like to go somewhere with you. The posts and dialogue were very fanservice-y and cheesy, but the art in itself was not bad. Therefore, Circus got usually between 1000 and 1500 upvotes per such post. In time, people have started to complain about the repetitive nature of the posts, as the whole trend lasted for at least 2 months on a daily basis. Initially, the complains were not very vocal, being like 1-2 comments per post. Some of the complains were about the cheesiness of the posts, others about how repetitive they are, and some were directly referring to the fact Fusu has an entire second half of his works that is very NSFW (basically, a part 2 of the confession drawing that ends up with things getting...physical). However, at the end of November 2021, something changed. What seemed like local outrage started to turn into an actual revolution. People were going against the Circus and complaining everywhere, demanding for an end of these posts. Everybody reacted differently: some became violent in the posts, others made memes mocking the Fusu trend, while others made counter-art in parody of the actual Fusu works like this and this. Soon afterwards, the whole Fusu-posting disappeared, but it took at least a week for the people to finally calm down as both sides of the conflict started clogging the community with posts.

 

Spoiler

ZUN and his legal team have made clear their stance regarding piracy. Any posts and comments that violate Rule 3 will remain in the public’s view. You are entitled to act morally superior and gatekeep against any pirates, as long as your reply does not violate Reddiquette. However, any offenders will receive a ban from r/Touhou, as well as a message notifying you that you will need to hire a lawyer to dispute the DMCA claim from ZUN and his legal team. To appeal the ban, please show concrete evidence that your copies of Touhou games are from legitimate sites together with your purchasing receipt.

Again, a reference to the anti-piracy policy promoted by the big communities. Places like Moriya Shrine are seen as anathema, and any mention of them will bring you a ban from that server. I mean it is fair; this is a place of piracy, and at least in the rest of the world (Romania seems to be an exception), piracy is seen as a big crime. And indeed, we do have the games on Steam, at least from Touhou 9 to 18, so you would not need to pirate them (plus, the paid money would go to support ZUN). I think here in Romania we are kind of a weird place. Not only we (as well as most of Eastern Europe and Balkans) are not just a safe heaven for pirates and hackers, but also online piracy is seen as quite the norm. Even businesses, especially the smaller ones, pirate their software, while televisions wake up in the middle of their transmission on screens with messages like "Activate Windows". usually, the act seems to be justified here through the "we are too poor to afford a license or actually buy the thing", which seems to be come more and more true nowadays. We are built differently (something I have also explained in the preamble for my "Art Fixing" thread). 

A bit too much of a tangent towards life in Eastern Europe. If we are going back to the manifesto, it says that sense of superiority and gatekeeping are perfectly justified against pirates. OK... As for needed a lawyer, good luck tracing me under this rock of an area I live in. Otherwise, guess I have to sell a kidney in order to gain Touhou 6-8 legally, and sell my house if I ever wanted to touch PC-98.

 

Spoiler

Notes regarding “Game Discussion”, “Book Discussion”, “Fan Discussion” posts: All statements or arguments must be written in an objective and neutral manner accompanied by proper citations from official media if possible. You are legally allowed to tell others to “shut the fuck up” if they are found making subjective, biased or otherwise inaccurate statements. To have an opinion, *please verify yourself as an experienced player.

Hmm, time for a cheeky reference towards the Touhou Wiki vs User + Twitter drama. While all of us were focusing on the DMCA takedown, this thing happened the very same day. I have already explained it numerous times, and the fact it got dragged to Twitter just made it even more stupid. So yeah, we need to be neutral in all we say, which in a way is a good advice for me at least as I am now part f the academic field and neutrality is very important for our research (especially in the field of politics). I have nothing against the idea of using proper citation, honestly I actually like it, at least as long as you can find that fragment. Always nice to see something the way it was written.  However, don't just go and stfo someone who has been a little more subjective or opinionated. In a discussion like something we have here on this forum, it is ok. In something like an encyclopedia or the wiki though, I think objectivity should be a priority, as much as it is possible. Also "eUgHh, sHipS rUiN tHiS sErIeS aNd FaNdOm bAsEd On A fIcTiOnAl uNiVeRsE reeeeeeee"


 

Spoiler

*required evidence may include perfect Lunatic clear of multiple stages, captures of “Pristine Danmaku Hell”/ “Yin-Yang Divine Orbs” etc as Marisa, or, full completion of Violet Detector.

GOOD. FUCKING. LUCK.

On this logic, I believe 90+% of the community would get excluded out of any discussion, since many did not even touch the games and are more used to fanon works (to be fair, they very much overwhelm anything ZUN has made, so it is more likely to get introduced into Touhou by a fan derivative work instead of a canon one). Also never again should anyone use the words Violet Detector; that game is pain, and just seeing Asprey play it made me think it is enough for me. 


 

Spoiler

Unless prior confirmed artists do not mind rehosting their work, Rule 9 will now be extended to cover Doujinshi. Safe-for-work images extracted from the H-sites will be banned since most works have the phrase “無断転載” on their last few pages.

Probably a general reference to the "Found Fanart" tag and how many posts come under it. "Found Fanart" has been the original Fusu-posting and long outlived it, and people complain it is just another way for "karma farming". What Rule 9 says? I will get back to that at the end when getting into the actual set of rules. Interesting that perfectly safe for work images from an otherwise H-doujin work get fully banned though. I have no idea what that characters say, so if anyone can translate it, that would be nice. 


 

Spoiler

Team Shanghai Alice has already taken down the shrine, and we will expect further actions targetting sites that pirate official Touhou doujins. As such, Rule 3 will now be extended to cover official printed works. ^Any mentions of “Mangadex”, “Free PDF download from the Wiki” or others will be treated the same as mentions of “Moriya Shrine” or other pirating statements.

^free pass will be granted if you can provide your own legal copies and require a scanlated version.

Yet another throw at Moriya Shrine. Many must have celebrated that day "the fall of the evil pirating website", and "the victory of the forces of good led by our Almighty Lord ZUN and his legal team". Unintentionally, I think such a rule would create even greater problems, and would lead to further gatekeeping. Banning any mention of the places where you could read the manga and official works, and TRANSLATED IN ENGLISH could be in the longer run detrimental since it would make even less people get into the official materials. You are complaining already too little of the Touhou fans actually know anything from the lore. Don't just make it even worse. Like I said earlier, good f-ing luck trying to find a printed copy of the manga and be in English.

 

Spoiler

Sorry for the mild inconvenience caused by the new sets of rules. We, the moderation team, will continue to monitor every activity within r/Touhou, and make changes accordingly. Here is a quick tutorial on how to follow the rules. We hope to find a way to make a balance between artists’ rights and user conveniences.

Good thing this has been just an April 1st joke. In my opinion, ont that was in quite poor taste given the context in which it came, but a joke nonetheless. But at how these big communities interact, I do not see the implementation of such rules. They already have some silly ones, no matter if it is Discord or Reddit, so these are not so far from a possible reality. This is one situation at which I was laughing quite a bit when it happened, because if my buddies from another server and their posts (disclaimer, all still in the safe area, questionable at worst) in the "waifu channel" were done on the Discord group, all of them would have been banned. This is what being a Discord partner does out of you...




Anyway, to answer the question about Rule 9. These are the real rules for r/touhou (some of you might be familiar with them):

 

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1. Follow Reddiquette.

https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439

 

2. Keep content Touhou-centered and substantial.

This means putting Touhou art/music in your memes/videos, your own thoughts in the main text of a discussion, your own choices & explanations for them in polls, Touhou characters in every chapter of your fanfic, troubleshooting methods you've already tried in a help post, etc. A post must be able to stand by itself without anything in the comments section. Low effort or title-only posts will be removed. (Note: Moderators have the final say on what is "Touhou-centered" and "low effort".)

 

3. No piracy!

Do NOT name, talk about, or link to websites that pirate games and/or music you can easily find on a legal digital sales platform. Discussing where to get abandonware (PC-98 games) is still okay, but you will be removed as soon as you even whisper about forbidden websites that have Steam-available games.

 

4. Do not post endings (including text) of the official games.

This is one of the very few restrictions that ZUN has imposed on us Touhou fans and we will definitely respect his wishes.

 

5. Do not repost the same content from the last 3 months, even if they're from different links.

Try using RepostSleuth if you're not sure. You can also try the Reddit search bar if it's something RepostSleuth can't handle ("url:content_ID", where content_ID is the unique ID part of a YouTube link, Pixiv link, etc.). (Note: Minor improvements on the same material also count as reposts!)

 

6. Each user is limited to a maximum of 3 posts per day.

Going over this limit will get your posts removed. Comments are unlimited unless you're obviously spamming.

 

7. If your post involves other people's work AT ALL, then follow these sourcing guidelines:

• If possible, you must directly submit the primary source as your post to give more traffic to the artist.
• If direct submission is impossible due to technical limits (e.g. took a pic from an album; used in your own work; used in a meme; etc.), then put primary sources in the comments.
• If a primary source is not online (e.g. game, manga, etc.), then name the artist, the title of the work if applicable, and include the ch./ep. # if it's a series.
• Do NOT break the NSFW rule.

 

8. A primary source is NOT Danbooru (or ANY booru), Zerochan, wallpaper sites, wikis or HOTLINKING!

Hotlinking is the worst offense here because it's stealing bandwidth from the artist AND it's still not giving the artist any credit. You can use reverse-image-search engines such as SauceNAO, ascii2d.net, TinEye, and even Google to help you find the proper primary source, i.e. the original publishing page as used by the artist. Don't make us call you a donkey!

 

9. Respect an artist's wishes if they do not allow rehosts or reuse of their work.

We will remove any posts that go against the artist's wishes. Posting links to their publishing pages is still fine, since that's how the artist intends for us to view their work.

 

10. User-created albums of found fanart should be focused on a topic and be from different artists.

• Custom albums that have no unifying subject/topic are NOT allowed.
• Aggregating images from a single artist is NOT ALLOWED.
• We will also step in and intervene if you've submitted too many images from the same art album (the maximum is either 3 images, or 1 less than the album capacity, whichever is smaller).

 

11. A Touhou meme should contain Touhou art/music, or be well-written if it is in text form.

Moderators will remove meme posts that are too low effort (try /r/2hujerk instead if that's the case). And whether you personally made a meme or not, it should still follow Rules 7 & 8 for all the components involved in the meme, e.g. that Marisa hat someone else put into the picture is now your responsibility to source. Speaking of hats: when in doubt, add a Touhou hat.

 

12. NSFW rule: Do not post outright porn/hentai, and lolis are NOT ALLOWED to be sexually suggestive!

Admins have no patience for the "But she's 495 years old!" excuse, so don't even try. Porn/hentai should go to /r/Touhou_NSFW. NSFW content (when allowed) should be clearly tagged/labelled. Allowed NSFW content:

• Anything that can be shown on daytime US TV (e.g. swimsuits).
• Nudity/mild sexualization for art or comedy.
• if your source contains porn/hentai or questionable lolis, just name the artist, the title (if applicable), and album ID (if applicable). DO NOT LINK!

 

13. Do NOT misflair other people's work as OC! Maliciously doing so is a bannable offense!

Please remember to flair your posts as a matter of courtesy. If you're not sure what/how to flair, you can ask a mod for help. Commissioned art counts as "Found Fanart" and follows Rule 7. OC stands for "Original Content", meaning something that you personally created (which includes but is not limited to original characters). When posting OC, please follow Rules 7 & 8 if you've referenced/borrowed other people's work, otherwise your post will be removed.

(Annex document: something that was released on the 2nd of April, in continuation to the post from previous day from the admin team. This one is not sure if to be treated as a belated joke - in m area, it was already 2nd of April, but for others it could have still been 1st, or an actual reason of concern)
 

Spoiler

Good News r/touhou (This is a Meta post for clear news)

 

Touhou 6-9 are actually releasing on Steam so get your cash upon Western Touhou because you want achievements for beating the Phantasm Stage in PCB (Really Hard 2nd Extra Stage). Yukari will like that the pirating websites got fucked by ZUN and his legal team, and to you poor people out there. Get a fucking job or use your mom's credit card (please don't because it's stupid, and this comment is a joke). Btw, let's wait for audiobooks of the Touhou manga to get released on ZUN's website for people to buy. Western Touhou will clearly like this because shipping prices fucking suck ass, and you don't have to pirate (i.e get fucked by ZUN's legal team) to not worry about importing prices. AmiAmi is now a scam because Japanese shipping prices go over the price for Touhou games for the west. ZUN actually gets the full price for his work so it's a great thing for him.
 

And to you crying about that. Get fantasy sealed bozo. Pirating is a fucking crime.

Anyway, thank you for bearing with my mostly useless over-analysis of a joke that was done on the 1st of April, and see you in the discussions below. 
 

[Isaac]

1 hour ago, CountVonNumenor said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Effective to “Found Fanart” posts exclusively from the same artists or albums: A temporary blacklist will be issued to forbid particular artists’ artworks from being posted for a short period, in the case of their artworks being milked by multiple users.

More than likely in regards to the Fusu art posting drama. For anyone unfamiliar with the events, I will try explaining what happened. Some 9 months ago, a user called "The Entire Circus" has started uploading translated art of a creator called Fusu. Fusu's art usually revolves around the idea of a PoV drawing in which one of the Touhou girls is confessing how much she likes you, and would like to go somewhere with you. The posts and dialogue were very fanservice-y and cheesy, but the art in itself was not bad. Therefore, Circus got usually between 1000 and 1500 upvotes per such post. In time, people have started to complain about the repetitive nature of the posts, as the whole trend lasted for at least 2 months on a daily basis. Initially, the complains were not very vocal, being like 1-2 comments per post. Some of the complains were about the cheesiness of the posts, others about how repetitive they are, and some were directly referring to the fact Fusu has an entire second half of his works that is very NSFW (basically, a part 2 of the confession drawing that ends up with things getting...physical). However, at the end of November 2021, something changed. What seemed like local outrage started to turn into an actual revolution. People were going against the Circus and complaining everywhere, demanding for an end of these posts. Everybody reacted differently: some became violent in the posts, others made memes mocking the Fusu trend, while others made counter-art in parody of the actual Fusu works like this and this. Soon afterwards, the whole Fusu-posting disappeared, but it took at least a week for the people to finally calm down as both sides of the conflict started clogging the community with posts.

Thanks for clearing this up. I don't use Reddit at all, so I never knew about the controversy (apart from R-18)  that you guys mentioned in other threads. I didn't realised people disliked those confessions so much unless they knew about the other artwork. I discovered their work on Pixiv and thought it was cute, so I even tried translating some of my favourite ones. This was well before I realised that the artist had been making R-18 content this whole time.

[CountVonNumenor]

1 hour ago, Isaac said:

Thanks for clearing this up. I don't use Reddit at all, so I never knew about the controversy (apart from R-18)  that you guys mentioned in other threads. I didn't realised people disliked those confessions so much unless they knew about the other artwork. I discovered their work on Pixiv and thought it was cute, so I even tried translating some of my favourite ones. This was well before I realised that the artist had been making R-18 content this whole time.

That period has been quite messy, and I think I have witnessed like 2 months out of it at the time before everything turned into a riot. 

[CountVonNumenor]

Wanna see more of this kind of thread when I get the chance to find another text for (over)analysis?

[Isaac]

51 minutes ago, CountVonNumenor said:

Wanna see more of this kind of thread when I get the chance to find another text for (over)analysis?

This would be nice to see, it's interesting to hear the discussions going around the community on various topics.

[CountVonNumenor]

8 hours ago, Isaac said:

This would be nice to see, it's interesting to hear the discussions going around the community on various topics.

Sure. If there is anything catching up my attention, I will get back to it. That is why I also started the "News Roundup" thing in the Lost Word thread, so that to present a bit the general thinking in regards to various aspects of the game and new updates for it. Also to presen the news. Any more opinions on your side about this big April Fools joke would also be nice. Until now, I am glad you brought your contribution