I've seen a commercial for a new 'reality show' about how 'the internet ruined my life'.  First of all, the internet didn't ruin your life, asshole...YOU did.  If you hadn't have posted that story/picture/confession in the first place, you wouldn't be in the situation in which you find yourself.  Anyone who goes on social network sites to post every little thing about their lives should expect to be humiliated and ridiculed.  It's human nature to attack those who are 'weaker' than ourselves.  And in this society, when you go online to whine about how pathetic your life is, you are showing belly to everyone who reads it.  So expect to be attacked.  Maybe, with enough 'encouragement' from your 'peers', you'll grow a pair and stop expecting everyone else to 'save' you.

Secondly, it is absolutely PATHETIC how people always want to blame someone else for their misfortunes.  Life sucks.  Get over it.  Take responsibility for your own life.  No one held a gun to your head and made you put up that extremely humiliating picture of you posing in the mirror to show off your belly flab.  No one held you over a flaming pit to force you to write that illiterate, horribly written, badly spelled story on a fanfiction site.  Nobody shoved a stick of dynamite up your ass and threatened to light it if you didn't confess your unrequited love for your furby, or your dalmatian, or your polo pony.  The point is, you were not forced to expose the minutiae of your life to hundreds of thousands of voyeurs who troll the internet looking for that next loser to rake over the coals.  Before you hit 'send', or before you hit 'publish', re-read it three times, then have some independent party read it a few times (and your mom, sister, cousin, or bestest friend don't count), and then have someone who writes semi-professionally look it over a few times.  Hell, have an English teacher scan it a couple of times.  Get as much input as you can BEFORE you post it.  Understand, however, that, no matter how well-written or well photoshopped something is, people are still going to rag on it.  We can't help ourselves.  The nature of the beast, don't you know.

Finally, don't expect that, just because you post something 'honest' and 'meaningful' on the internet that people are going to come crawling out of the woodwork, seeking your sage and wise advice on their problems.  It don't work that way.  The only people who would come to you for that kind of thing are the same kinds of losers who post on the internet in the first place.  It saddens me that schools no longer teach any kind of critical thinking.  We as a society can't think past the end of our noses.  We have no capacity to examine a problem closely and come up with a viable and logical solution.  We run to everyone else for that, and they are just as pathetically stupid as we are.  The few of us capable of this kind of thinking keep our heads down, so that we aren't inundated with stupid pleas for help in solving problems that a bright five year old can fix.  It's sad, really, how dumb we're getting.  And the internet is at the forefront of that stupidity.

I write fanfiction.  I enjoy it tremendously.  I also write songfics, utilizing songs that I find fitting for certain situations.  My fics are mainly slash, and I also have some crossovers.  My primary domain is Harry Potter, with crossovers into Death Note, Kuroshitsuji, Ouran High School Host Club, and Fullmetal Alchemist.  I tell you all of this because I have a bit of a rant.

I make absolutely NO money with these songfics.  I don't think I'm doing any of the musicians or songwriters any disservice in using their songs to base oneshots off of.  In fact, in posting the lyrics into a fanfic, I'm actually spreading the word of their musical talents and prowess, free of charge.  I'm doing them a favor, for fuck's sake.  So, I find it a little ridiculous that anyone would take offense, or be angered at the idea of songfics. Yet, when I recently posted one, a Fullmetal Alchemist songfic to the Ginuine song "Pony", I received a rather terse email, suggesting politely that I should take it down before someone reports me for it.  I've got several songfics up on the site.  In fact, I've got some that utilize relatively new songs, such as Chevelle's 'The Red'.  I've never received ANY censure for using these songs.  But Ginuine?  Really?  A song done in 1999?  Besides, the version I listen to is by a band by the name of far.  I even enclose the standard industry info at the beginning of the story.  I don't see where I'm infringing on any copyright when I'm making no money whatsoever from the 'fair use' of it.  I get the public domain deal.  I understand that it's not considered public domain until the copyright expires.  If that's true, then how do the lyrics get published EVERYWHERE.  I got them from a lyrics website.  There's tons of them out there.  As well, they're published in the liner notes included in the CDs.  Besides, don't karaoke nights constitute copyright infringement also?  I mean, you can't possibly tell me that some jackass' friends aren't filming them with their smartphones, just to post the video to YouTube.  Come on, already!

In conclusion, I don't think my harmless use of song lyrics in my fanfics harms or in any way steals anything from the artists I'm using.  I don't see what I do hurting them any more than those karaoke dipwads who end up on YouTube, to the humiliation of themselves and their families.  In fact, I think THOSE are the ones who do the artists a great disservice.  After all, who wants to hear some tonedeaf hack warble that Kid Rock/Sheryl Crow country mess duet, which gets one million hits on YouTube.  Might as well watch the auditions for American Idol, come to that.