Gateway Community

[Thither]

Different people in the community have different end goals for their activism. For me, the end goal is a better life for pedos (and nepis and hebes, of course). I've spent years wanting to do more to help others going through the same things I went through - depression, suicidal ideation and attempts, excessive paranoia, self-inflicted social isolation, et cetera. I've been in a variety of communities, received a lot of support from others, provided a lot of support to others, and operated in auxiliary roles that allowed others to provide support. Through all of that, I've come to the realization that the single biggest barrier we face to helping each other is the fact that most pedos don't realize that there is a community out there that wants to support them.

As such, it is my belief that outreach is the area where we stand to gain the most. But with outreach comes an increased risk. As we lower the barrier to entry for our fellow pedos, we also make ourselves much easier to find for antis. Most of our communities don't have the infrastructure to handle large-scale attacks from antis and troll groups, so if we were to suddenly push heavy outreach, it is likely that whatever communities people were invited to would quickly be overwhelmed by attacks from our enemies. As such, I propose the creation of a gateway community.

This community will be independently run and will not be intended as a long-term support home for anyone. It will be explicitly neutral on all topics, but will have fairly strict rules compared to most other communities as well. The intent is to have screening personnel talk with users for a few days at most, then provide them with guidance to find a more permanent home in the wider MAP community. There will be a centralized list of communities that can be provided to new members upon completing the screening period, and communities that wish to be kept less public may directly contact members to invite them without putting links on the central list.

As this concern has been brought up before, the intent is NOT to require communities to use this central community as their sole method of gaining new members - it is meant to help streamline the process of onboarding members if communities would like to use it for that purpose, but there is no reason that communities could not continue to recruit new members through other methods as well. The only requirement for communities to be added to the list or send representatives will be that they are strictly legal.

This gateway community is not the focus of the work that I want to do, but I see it as a prerequisite step before I can begin the work I really want to do. Providing this service will allow much heavier and more focused outreach without risking the safety of existing communities. I welcome any feedback and criticism on the system I've described as well as any suggestions for implementation or issues that we might run into.

[PorcelainLark]

I think maybe having a Vtuber or a streamer might be better. I remember when I was younger I felt afraid of going off the beaten path. The anime community with lolicon made me feel more comfortable. The more we can get a foothold in the mainstream the easier it will be for the next generation of MAPs.

[Thither]

I'm not sure I follow, what are you proposing a streamer as an alternative for?

[PorcelainLark]

I'm not sure I follow, what are you proposing a streamer as an alternative for?

As an entry point for MAPs who haven't been in the MAP community before. A public face is easier for people to trust, a forum can be more forbidding. We already have things like the b4um and Virped, but it took me years before I joined.

If you want to lower the barrier to entry and do outreach, you want to be as approachable and accessible as possible, right? Otherwise there's this potential aura that the thing might be a trap by vigilantes or law enforcement, or that it might be something illegal, which is likely to scare off newcomers. The closer you can be to the mainstream, the more likely people are to join.

A community of fans around a public figure is a good potential way to bridge people to less approachable communities.

[Thither]

The goal here isn't really to lower the barrier to entry, but to provide a place that we can advertise very publicly without massively increasing the risk of infiltration by antis and trolls in existing communities. With that said, a highly informal public-facing entity like you're suggesting could go hand in hand with this very well. It would be very useful to have someone that people can look to for support before they are ready to stop lurking and start engaging with the community directly. The community I'm proposing here isn't meant to be the main outreach effort, it's just a place that the actual outreach efforts can send people to.

[Jim Burton]

I already maintain this list for Mu, by far the most comprehensive of its type.