Did you know that there was a fanfiction with so many tags

@mistavelvet

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Why it worked

The video taps into a niche but passionate online community (fanfiction readers) by discussing a specific, dramatic event that directly impacted their platform. The narrative of a single piece of content causing widespread disruption and leading to a platform change is inherently engaging and shareable within that community.

Summary

This video explains how a single fanfiction on Archive of Our Own (AO3) with an excessive number of tags caused the website to crash and eventually led to AO3 implementing a tag limit. The fanfiction, related to "The Untamed," became so popular and was updated so frequently with irrelevant tags that it disrupted the user experience for many.

Structure

1Introduction to the fanfiction's impact on AO3
2Context of "The Untamed" and its fandom
3The "Fun Times with Wangxian" fanfiction and its excessive tagging
4User frustration and website issues caused by the tags
5Author's refusal to remove tags and subsequent account restriction
6The author's return and further tagging of multiple fandoms
7The fanfiction's deletion and AO3's eventual tag limit implementation

Product placement

AO3 (Archive of Our Own): A fanfiction website where users can post and read fanfiction. It ACTS as the platform for the story being discussed. Removing it would change the video's context entirely. The Untamed (TV): A Chinese drama series. It APPEARS as a reference point for the fanfiction's popularity. Removing it would not change the video's core narrative. Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: A web novel and adaptation of The Untamed. It APPEARS as a reference point. Removing it would not change the video's core narrative. My Hero Academia: An anime series. It APPEARS as a tag in the fanfiction. Removing it would not change the video's core narrative.

Original caption

the fic that caused AO3 to create a tag limit #fandom #ao3 #fanfic #fanfiction #tumblraesthetic

More from @mistavelvet

Their other posts in the index, biggest breakout first.

On-screen text

Did you know that there was a fanfiction with so many tags that it broke the website AO3 for many users, and it forced AO3 to fundamentally change their website? In 2019, the Chinese drama "The Untamed" was released, which is one of the many adaptations of this web novel. The show received an increase of fans to the franchise, which meant more fan fictions EDIT: Changed the rating to Explicit because of the Enter: *Fun* Times with Wangxian. Wangxian is the fictional ship name between the two main characters, and the fanfic is exactly what it sounds like. It was just a steamy collection of the two Fanfics have tagged to describe how the fanfic will go. The Wangxian fan fiction started at a normal amount of tags, and then the author added THOUSANDS more. Additional Tags: Merman, New Year's Kiss, Films, Past Drug Addiction, Dabi is a Little Shit (My Hero Academia) AO3 users were not happy with this fanfiction. When fans tried to find fics with the tags that they desired, this fic kept popping up because of the amount of tags it had. The fan fiction was also constantly updating, which means that it was constantly pushed to the tops of people's feeds. It updated so much that the fan fiction was over one million words long. Error 404 The page you were looking for doesn't exist. You may have mistyped the address or the page may have been deleted. Another major problem is that AO3 kept crashing for people because of the fan fiction. Since the fan fiction had so many tags, you had to manually scroll through them all and that would crash the site for some people. But the AO3 team couldn't take action yet because they couldn't prove that this specific writer was the problem. Readers got so desperate to make AO3 normal again that they asked the author themselves to remove some of the tags, and the author wasn't too keen about this. They said that they weren't going to remove any tags and that the people bothering them about it were "Karen trolls." Sorry, you don't have permission to access the page you were trying to reach. Unjustified In 2021, the author's account was suddenly restricted, and this is because they were wishing some not so nice things onto their haters 🪦 But the victory lap for fans was very short lived because the author was not banned they were just suspended They came back full force They added even more tags and started tagging multiple fandoms in their fanfiction so that everybody was going to see their fanfiction. After all of the chaos, the author themselves DID end up deleting the fanfiction in May of 2021. This, however, did not fix the tagging problem because the author now has copycats who are doing the same thing. AO3 UPDATE Have no fear, because in September of 2021, AO3 finally fixed the tagging issue. Each fan fiction is only allowed to have 75 tags now. and It's all because of a fan fiction with over 4,000 tags.

Transcript

Did you know that there was a fanfiction with so many tags that it broke the website AO3 for many users, and it forced AO3 to fundamentally change their website? In 2019, the Chinese drama "The Untamed" was released, which is one of the many adaptations of this web novel. The show received an increase of fans to the franchise, which meant more fan fictions. EDIT: Changed the rating to Explicit because of the Enter: *Fun* Times with Wangxian. Wangxian is the fictional ship name between the two main characters, and the fanfic is exactly what it sounds like. It was just a steamy collection of the two. Fanfics have tagged to describe how the fanfic will go. The Wangxian fan fiction started at a normal amount of tags, and then the author added THOUSANDS more. Additional Tags: Merman, New Year's Kiss, Films, Past Drug Addiction, Dabi is a Little Shit (My Hero Academia). AO3 users were not happy with this fanfiction. When fans tried to find fics with the tags that they desired, this fic kept popping up because of the amount of tags it had. The fan fiction was also constantly updating, which means that it was constantly pushed to the tops of people's feeds. It updated so much that the fan fiction was over one million words long. Error 404 The page you were looking for doesn't exist. You may have mistyped the address or the page may have been deleted. Another major problem is that AO3 kept crashing for people because of the fan fiction. Since the fan fiction had so many tags, you had to manually scroll through them all and that would crash the site for some people. But the AO3 team couldn't take action yet because they couldn't prove that this specific writer was the problem. Readers got so desperate to make AO3 normal again that they asked the author themselves to remove some of the tags, and the author wasn't too keen about this. They said that they weren't going to remove any tags and that the people bothering them about it were "Karen trolls." Sorry, you don't have permission to access the page you were trying to reach. Unjustified In 2021, the author's account was suddenly restricted, and this is because they were wishing some not so nice things onto their haters 🪦. But the victory lap for fans was very short lived because the author was not banned they were just suspended. They came back full force. They added even more tags and started tagging multiple fandoms in their fanfiction so that everybody was going to see their fanfiction. After all of the chaos, the author themselves DID end up deleting the fanfiction in May of 2021. This, however, did not fix the tagging problem because the author now has copycats who are doing the same thing. AO3 UPDATE Have no fear, because in September of 2021, AO3 finally fixed the tagging issue. Each fan fiction is only allowed to have 75 tags now. and It's all because of a fan fiction with over 4,000 tags.