Found You in the Algorithm ~ Sam golbach

3

@melindaaaaa (Replying to @tripletssiinked):
"It's very clear.

Chris? He's terrified of relationships. He always backs out when it starts getting serious — and I don't think he does that because he wants to hurt people. I think he does it to protect himself. Either he's been deeply hurt by a girl or he's never found a kind of love that made him feel safe enough to open that locked part of himself.

And Matt? Matt's anxiety? The fandom makes it worse. Not better. Actually, y'all make it ten times worse. And that's not what a fandom is supposed to do.

You're supposed to make your faves feel safe. Not like they're walking into a war zone every time they open their phone.

Nick is gay. ACCEPT IT. Celebrate it. He's a fucking icon. You don't get to 'ship him straight' just to feed your own daydreams. That's not support — that's erasure.

And don't even get me started on the stalker situation. The fact that people got mad the boys didn't speak out?

Listen to me:
That.
Is.
Their.
Right.

They don't owe you that story. They don't owe you their trauma. They don't have to perform pain for your closure.

And I have a strong-ass feeling a lot of the triplet fans are really young — and hey, that's fine. But let me make something very clear:
1. They're not gonna date you if you're 15.
2. They don't even know you exist.
3. They do not belong to you. In any fucking way.

If they wanna take a month off YouTube and disappear, that is their right. This is their job. Their livelihood. Not yours.

Yeah, you have the privilege of watching them on your phone or TV or iPad. But that's all it is — a privilege. Not a pass. Not ownership.

And you especially don't have the privilege to get mad when someone says, "Matt is the pretty one." "No, Chris is the pretty one." "No, it's Nick." WHO CARES. They're brothers, not fucking Hunger Games tributes.

Oh — and let's talk about smut with real people for a second.

Writing smut about actual, real-life people? Is disgusting. I don't care if you call it 'fanfiction.' It's invasive. It's violating. It's not 'creative freedom' — it's crossing a boundary they never consented to.

You wanna fantasize about them? That's your business. But you don't get to make it their problem. You don't get to post porn links or write 10k-word fics and tag them. You don't get to put them in situations they didn't choose to be in — just because you're obsessed.

Imagine opening your app and seeing your face in a sexual edit you never agreed to. Imagine being a 20-something guy just trying to make videos with your brothers and seeing your own body in something explicit that you didn't create. That is genuinely terrifying. That messes with your mental health. Bad.

This fandom?
It's toxic as hell.
And it needs to do better.

If you actually love the Sturniolo triplets? If you actually want them to keep doing YouTube, to stay here, to feel safe?

Maybe try something radical.
Like respect."