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Warning: these thoughts are very preliminary and more coming from a place of instinct than well-formed thought. I am happy for anyone to push back against anything I say provided you do it respectfully.
Hannah and I were talking yesterday (in a very un-nuanced way) about how weird it is that within fandom circles, there are fewer and fewer people willing to engage in commenting/meta-writing/actual fannish conversation (or hell, even reblogging of art on Tumblr), but more and more people who think nothing of paying for online stuff? I am shocked that this ko-fi thing has taken off--I guess I'm old school enough that the thought of monetizing fandom is horrifying to me.
I mean, I guess there's an entire cohort of people who never used the internet before Facebook introduced the like button and so don't know the joy of full-on fannish engagement. And those same people are accepting the commodification of...everything.
It's just really, really weird to see. I know there was a gap in culture between the pre-internet 'zine-and-conventions fans and then the very first fans who were using the internet before the world wide web and then again my generation who started using it in the late 90s and came up on message boards and mailing lists and such. But the gap between those earlier generation of fans (and by generation, I'm very much talking about "when you got involved in fandom," not what age you are) and the current one seems like a chasm. I just don't recognize how they do fandom, and I am actually pretty sad that none of them seem to want to do it the way we do it (only, you know, with greater diversity, etc. I'm not pretending like the internet in 2001 was perfect. It was much whiter and richer, and lots of things about accessibility have changed for the better since then).
I've just always really loved that fandom is a gift economy and that the gifts go both ways. That I write fic because I want to share it with y'all, and y'all respond and engage with it, and we all have a great time together. A "content"-based view of fandom where you just ~consume~ is just so repugnant to me and I don't want anything to do with it, and I know we're not going back to a livejournal kind of fannish experience, but I'm just...really not looking forward to further changes in fandom. I don't see good developments coming down the road, and I can't figure out if this is me being all Old Man Yells at Clouds or if I'm right and things just aren't as fun anymore.
And yes, this is partially about me getting fewer comments when I write fic for a huge fandom than when I write for a Yuletide-sized fandom, but also it's about a general feeling that people just don't view fandom (or even the whole internet) as a place of two-way interaction anymore.
Hannah and I were talking yesterday (in a very un-nuanced way) about how weird it is that within fandom circles, there are fewer and fewer people willing to engage in commenting/meta-writing/actual fannish conversation (or hell, even reblogging of art on Tumblr), but more and more people who think nothing of paying for online stuff? I am shocked that this ko-fi thing has taken off--I guess I'm old school enough that the thought of monetizing fandom is horrifying to me.
I mean, I guess there's an entire cohort of people who never used the internet before Facebook introduced the like button and so don't know the joy of full-on fannish engagement. And those same people are accepting the commodification of...everything.
It's just really, really weird to see. I know there was a gap in culture between the pre-internet 'zine-and-conventions fans and then the very first fans who were using the internet before the world wide web and then again my generation who started using it in the late 90s and came up on message boards and mailing lists and such. But the gap between those earlier generation of fans (and by generation, I'm very much talking about "when you got involved in fandom," not what age you are) and the current one seems like a chasm. I just don't recognize how they do fandom, and I am actually pretty sad that none of them seem to want to do it the way we do it (only, you know, with greater diversity, etc. I'm not pretending like the internet in 2001 was perfect. It was much whiter and richer, and lots of things about accessibility have changed for the better since then).
I've just always really loved that fandom is a gift economy and that the gifts go both ways. That I write fic because I want to share it with y'all, and y'all respond and engage with it, and we all have a great time together. A "content"-based view of fandom where you just ~consume~ is just so repugnant to me and I don't want anything to do with it, and I know we're not going back to a livejournal kind of fannish experience, but I'm just...really not looking forward to further changes in fandom. I don't see good developments coming down the road, and I can't figure out if this is me being all Old Man Yells at Clouds or if I'm right and things just aren't as fun anymore.
And yes, this is partially about me getting fewer comments when I write fic for a huge fandom than when I write for a Yuletide-sized fandom, but also it's about a general feeling that people just don't view fandom (or even the whole internet) as a place of two-way interaction anymore.
no subject
- read, bookmark, comment on fics you enjoy!
- participate in exchanges and challenges that have their own discord server or dreamwidth comm created for the event - in this case, you're not entering a pre-existing social setting, and you are united in camaraderie for a specific, time-limited outcome.
- run your own event hosted on a platform of your choosing! DW is better than Pillowfort. Be aware that this might require promo accounts on social media sites, but you could find a co-mod to run them; it doesn't mean you need to be active as yourself.
- the easiest one is always, uh, find a friend who knows lots of people. I am a person who runs events and knows lots of people, so if it's one of my fandoms I can usually point others the right way.
These are pretty generic suggestions, although if you have specific fandoms or specific goals for "getting to know more of fandom," I could come up with additional ones.
no subject
"These are pretty generic suggestions, although if you have specific fandoms or specific goals for 'getting to know more of fandom,' I could come up with additional ones."
I'm not sure there was ever a time when I sought out conversations within particular fandoms (other than originalfic, which I write). Back in the old days of Yahoo Groups and LiveJournal, I usually joined lists/comms that were on topics, such as darkfic or historicalfic or litfic. That's what's missing from my fandom experience these days - those topical discussions. (Except for discussions of fandom history; those show up a lot at Dreamwidth.)
In general, I worry that I'm missing out on major discussions within fandom - which is probably silly of me, considering how much good conversation takes place here at Dreamwidth.
Thanks for your suggestions!
no subject
I think you're correct about all of this. I don't even see as much speculative fiction discussion as I used to--my flist is full of people talking about books they've read, but there aren't the kind of meta discussions that gave rise to, like, RaceFail 09 or anything like that.
no subject
"but there aren't the kind of meta discussions that gave rise to, like, RaceFail 09"
One thing to point out is that half that discussion was from profic authors/readers. There were a lot more of those types of discussions occurring at LJ, simply because the profic community and fanworks community were within the same social network.
I don't know whether such discussions are taking place now at Twitter. But they're not going to happen at DW, because the profic presence here is so much less than it was at LJ. I think that's a great shame; the profic community and fanworks community ought to be exchanging thoughts from time to time.