![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
(no subject)
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
I think the gift economy is the most fabulous thing ever invented. I practically wept when I discovered the fan fiction community in 2002. I had recently become visually impaired, I had practically no access to e-books, and here were millions of writers who were offering their stories for free!
That said, if there was ever a time when fandom was entirely free of commercialism, it was before my time. The first time I ever visited a dealer's room at a slash con, in 2002, it was filled to the brim with fanworks being sold: zines, vids, art, and all sorts of products like buttons and clothing.
How many of these fanworks were being sold at cost, without profit? I don't know. But I suspect that creating fanworks for fun and creating fanworks for profit wasn't considered to be entirely incompatible by some of the folks there.
Speaking as an originalfic writer, I saw originalfic being commercialized in the early 00s. So I agree with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
verity that, if it hadn't been for legal reasons, fanworks would probably have been commercialized before now.
(While we're totting up motives for commercializing fanworks, I hope we won't forget financial need. I've heard that this can be a big motive in the case of some marginalized fanfic writers.)
no subject
The first time I ever visited a dealer's room at a slash con, in 2002, it was filled to the brim with fanworks being sold: zines, vids, art, and all sorts of products like buttons and clothing.
See, I think this is another thing--I've never been in meatspace fannish spaces (except for meeting up with fannish friends a couple of times). I've never been to cons or anything like that. So the commercialization just wasn't there in my (exclusively online) experience.
So I agree with [personal profile] verity that, if it hadn't been for legal reasons, fanworks would probably have been commercialized before now.
I agree. I think the gift culture thing arose mostly because of legal fears.
While we're totting up motives for commercializing fanworks, I hope we won't forget financial need. I've heard that this can be a big motive in the case of some marginalized fanfic writers
Yeah, a few of us talked about that somewhere upthread. My own (very unrealistic) feelings are that we should work hard to unionize and get people paying living-wage jobs so that they have time to create fanworks for fun, but in the meantime, I realize that's not an answer to immediate need.
no subject
"So the commercialization just wasn't there in my (exclusively online) experience."
It was definitely less obvious online. I'm not sure whether fan artists sold their wares online - I wasn't paying attention - but the only fandom-related commercial products I remember encountering online either was originalfic or was from Eastern fandom (lots and lots of doujinshi). Or was serial-numbers-filed-off profic, which has been around for decades.
"Yeah, a few of us talked about that somewhere upthread. My own (very unrealistic) feelings are that we should work hard to unionize and get people paying living-wage jobs so that they have time to create fanworks for fun"
Totally agree! I think "not having time to do anything other than make a living" is at the heart of a lot of problems in our culture. During my lifetime, I've seen volunteerism plummet, which has totally reshaped American society in a very nasty manner.