A popular fan fiction site shut down for a day. Here's why the internet was in shambles

One of the buzziest internet stories of the week sounds like a digital-age Mad Libs: Fan fiction website AO3 was taken down by a hacktivist group in a DDoS attack.

As they say, sometimes truth is stranger than fan fiction.

AO3, which stands for Archive of Our Own, is a popular website that hosts fan fiction stories written and published by users. The site crashed on July 10 due to a cyberattack and was down for just over a day.

Fans of AO3 were, to put it mildly, devastated.

“The library of Alexandria is on fire,” a Twitter user wrote above a picture of the AO3 site's error message.

“It’s been 14 hours without ao3 I’m starting to lose taste in my right eye and sight in my left leg,” another user posted.

“what if ao3 never comes back. we just saw the downfall of society,” one user wondered.

Luckily for its fans, the site regained limited function on July 11, but AO3 warned on Twitter that users may still encounter issues with the website.

AO3 fan Drake George tells TODAY.com that the site's value goes beyond entertainment, which is why the temporary crash — and the threat of losing the millions of stories archived on the site — was such a blow.

“There’s so many authentic, different experiences that you get from reading fan fiction,” George says. "It's such a melting pot of different perspectives and cultures."

Here's everything you need to know about the AO3 crash, fan fiction and why the website matters to a community of readers and writers.

Why did the AO3 site crash?

According to George, this isn't the first time the site has gone offline. AO3 has been temporarily unavailable before for site maintenance or due to wider issues affecting the rest of the web.

This time, though, AO3 was allegedly under attack.

The volunteer-run site fell victim this week to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which causes websites to crash by overwhelming their servers with online traffic from a variety of sources.

“It looks like the Archive is under a DDoS attack causing the servers to fall over,” AO3 administrators tweeted on Tuesday in response to panicked fans. “Our volunteer sysadmins are working on countermeasures. Please be patient with us, we’ll be back!”

The plot thickens from there.

In a Telegram message on July 10, a group called Anonymous Sudan claimed responsibility for the AO3 attack, citing anti-U.S. and anti-LGBTQ sentiment.

The group also claimed responsibility for a cyberattack on Microsoft that occurred in early June.

Cybersecurity firms have described the group as "politically motivated hacktivists" from Sudan. However, some researchers believe the group is affiliated with Russia.

AO3 administrators addressed the group's statement in a follow-up tweet July 10.

"We do not condone anti-Muslim sentiments under any circumstances," they wrote. "Additionally, to reiterate: cybersecurity experts believe the group claiming responsibility is lying about their affiliation and reasons for attacking websites. View the group’s statements with skepticism."

AO3 came back online on July 11, to fans' relief, though the site is still dealing with technical problems.

What is fan fiction?

Fan fiction — defined by Merriam-Webster as “stories involving popular fictional characters that are written by fans and often posted on the internet” — has been a wildly popular genre of online content since the early 2000s.

Sites like Wattpad, fanfiction.net and AO3 have served as forums for millions of fans to discuss and write about their favorite characters.

Often, fan fiction stories can seem peculiar when compared to the plotlines of the original media.

Fan fiction stories abound about the idea that Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, who were mortal enemies in the "Harry Potter" series, were secretly in love.

Other types of fan fiction, categorized as "self-inserts," imagine what would happen if the reader became part of the world of their favorite story.

Some stories center around real-life stars — which can also have real-life consequences. So many fans created content about "Larry," the name for a fictional romantic relationship between One Direction bandmates Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles, that Tomlinson became aware of it.

Tomlinson said in a 2017 interview that the fan fervor over a fictional relationship created distance between him and Styles.

"Larry" fan fiction became part of "Euphoria" character Kat's storyline in the first season of the HBO show. In a meta moment, Kat's (Barbie Ferreira) fan fiction plays out through animated renditions of Styles and Tomlinson.

Tomlinson later told the Guardian that the use of his likeness in the "Euphoria" scene left him "pissed off."

You've probably read fan fiction yourself, even if you didn't know it

A surprising number of popular novels and movies started off as fan fictions.

Author E. L. James' bestselling novel "50 Shades of Grey" began as a "Twilight" fan fiction titled "Master of the Universe." After removing all references to "Twilight" and its characters, James was able to officially publish the story as a novel, and the "50 Shades" book trilogy was later adapted into a movie series.

“That was such a high. I’ve been very lucky that I’ve been chasing that high since,” she recently told TODAY.com in an interview about her new book "The Missus."

Similarly, the "After" films were adapted from author Anna Todd's book series of the same name, which started off as fan fiction about the members of One Direction.

Some have argued, semi-jokingly, that several classic works of literature should be considered fan fiction, given that they were based on pre-existing works and characters. For example, William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" was based on the Scandinavian legend of Amleth, and Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy" could be considered as a fan fiction of the Bible itself.

Why fans love AO3

In the aftermath of the crash, Drake George posted a series of reaction videos on TikTok. George, 22, who uses he/they pronouns, posts about his love for fandom on his TikTok account “fanfiction father,” which has over 100,000 followers.

"Somehow, someway, we will persevere through AO3 being down, my fellow fan fiction readers," he said in a TikTok as "Angel" by Sarah McLachlan dramatically played in the background. The video received over 500,000 views.

Though those outside the fandom community may never have heard of the site, AO3's popularity is undeniable.

According to TechMonitor, AO3 currently hosts more than 11 million works of fan fiction.

In 2021, AO3 published a report on its viewer statistics over the previous year, revealing that the site's daily page views hit a record of 61.1 million on Dec. 27, 2020.

George is a longtime reader of fan fiction on AO3 and tells TODAY.com that he spends a couple of hours a day browsing the site in his free time. His interest in fan fiction started with "Naruto," a popular Japanese manga series, and he later began to create fandom content on TikTok.

Despite being a fan himself, George didn't initially realize just how passionate the fan fiction community is.

"I made my first fan fiction video about a year and a half ago, and it went very viral," he says. "And I remember I was just so shocked. I didn't know that so many people like this."

"It's always just a little shocking to me, because I think at times it can feel like a very niche community," he continues.

Beyond entertainment, fan fiction has a deeper meaning for George. Growing up queer, he didn't often encounter representations of his identity in popular media.

"I identify as a queer person, and much of the media that I was consuming just didn't have me in it," he says. "The really exciting thing about fandom and fan fiction is that I read fan fiction for the first time and I was like, 'Oh, that's me on the page.' For someone like me, I never expected that other people around me were sharing these experiences. And so it made me feel seen."

Fan fiction reader Nacia Goldberg, 25, tells TODAY.com that she spends approximately 11 hours reading fan fiction each day.

“When I’m waiting around to do something, like on the train, or waiting in line at the grocery store, I kind of just like pop it open and start scrolling,” she says.

Goldberg has been involved in the fan fiction community since high school.

“I think that the appeal of fan fiction is that we kind of form emotional attachments to these characters that we’re either reading about beforehand, or we’ve seen on TV or we’ve seen in passing. And we just want to continue that emotional journey with them. It’s kind of a low barrier of entry for interest, in that it’s free and easily accessible," she explains.

She adds that she enjoys “just how easy it is and how it helps me continue to read stories about characters I love.”

Despite its legions of devotees, George recognizes that fan fiction can get a bad rap.

"I think there's a bit of a stigma around fandom and fan fiction," he says.

Works of fan fiction have been accused of running afoul of intellectual property laws in the past, and several authors have spoken out about their distaste for the genre.

Fan fiction sites have also faced controversy over the graphic or sexual content present in some stories. AO3 asks users to verify their age before viewing some stories, and writers are encouraged to tag potentially triggering or graphic themes in their stories so that those who wish to avoid certain topics can steer clear.

Goldberg is in favor of AO3's content policy.

"Their whole mission is to have minimal censorship, which of course lots of people don't necessarily agree with," she says. "But I think censorship is a tool that can be pointed in both ways."

To George, the unrestricted nature of fan fiction reflects the genre's creative freedom.

"There's something about it being such an open source — you get the good, the bad and the ugly," he says. "There is something also inherently beautiful about that. There's just everything there."

In his view, fan fiction can be radical.

“I think it started as an act of defiance and as an act of longing for inclusivity,” he says. “There is something very inherently human about longing for representation in writing.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com