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superborbTwitter sent me a Twitter anniversary notif recently, it seemed like a good time to reflect on ~returning to fandom~ last year. Also I refuse to read five books in five days, I think my brain may be turning into mush.
Some disconnected thoughts:
1. I always was a little sad that the fandoms I was in were not well documented. I don't know if it was just that the fandoms were smaller (probably for the animanga ones) or more private (...definitely for jpop/kpop which had more locked stuff), but I'd go look at the some long write up in SGA or HP fandom and be-- envious. Part of this is that I have a truly awful memory, reading other people's recollections helps me remember in turn. (I'm great at googling and searching through notes though, so I can pretend!) But also, I think it's the nostalgia for a tiny slice of the internet that few people remember and that is impossible to reconstruct, so much having disappeared over the various LJ deletions and locks.
2. High school me was an idiot, which makes me look on young idiots in fandom with more tolerance. But the resurrection of high school esque clique behavior by adults is so irritating. Sometimes it feels like fandom devotes its time primarily to voyeuristically hating one person, or group, or idea, in order to solidify its in-group dynamics. Then I block on twitter or hide on DW until those things stop appearing and life is better.
3. Speaking of twitter and discord and tumblr, beyond its speed, one thing all the new generation of socmed has in common is the lack of information preservation. Articles on the youth's use of socmed made me realize this is a feature. Perhaps in some ways it's better-- more like natural communication in person. But I love backreading people's journals through tags. I miss that part of it. Tumblr could get the closest to that experience, but it's just not as easy because most people don't curate with that intent.
4. But I don't know if I have a real fandom anymore. Qihun is closest I suppose, tiny fandoms 5ever. But the bulk of my writings are-- food pictures and musings on twitter. Bookblogs and media reviews on DW. Is that still being in fandom? My reading list on DW is mostly book-and-personal, with a handful of fandoms that I'm not fully in. Don't get me wrong, I love book reviews and personal blogs. But I miss meta. Fic still being posted elsewhere and all, meta is what I feel like I lack.
5. I'm so lucky though. It turns out, it wasn't just college causing me to drift away-- it really was that I didn't understand the tumblr experience. (I've gone back to following tumblrs of interest on my RSS reader.) I can enjoy myself on twitter and discord, while keeping a reasonably active DW reading list, and be happy with that balance. It would be hard for me, coming back, if I couldn't use all of those. DW alone wouldn't have been able to feed my fannish feelings in smaller fandoms. It would be hard to make friends on twitter alone, but then it's hard to meet people through discord without an 'in'. (Though I suppose I have met good friends through discord alone.) So for me personally, I'm lucky that I could use all three.
6. I'm so lucky too, for making good friends through fandom once again, after I felt so lonely in the post-grad life. Friends who I disagree with, who challenge me, who clarify my views, who I learn so much from. Friends who are cozy marshmallows of joy. Friends who share this interest of taking something we love and making it more.
Some disconnected thoughts:
1. I always was a little sad that the fandoms I was in were not well documented. I don't know if it was just that the fandoms were smaller (probably for the animanga ones) or more private (...definitely for jpop/kpop which had more locked stuff), but I'd go look at the some long write up in SGA or HP fandom and be-- envious. Part of this is that I have a truly awful memory, reading other people's recollections helps me remember in turn. (I'm great at googling and searching through notes though, so I can pretend!) But also, I think it's the nostalgia for a tiny slice of the internet that few people remember and that is impossible to reconstruct, so much having disappeared over the various LJ deletions and locks.
2. High school me was an idiot, which makes me look on young idiots in fandom with more tolerance. But the resurrection of high school esque clique behavior by adults is so irritating. Sometimes it feels like fandom devotes its time primarily to voyeuristically hating one person, or group, or idea, in order to solidify its in-group dynamics. Then I block on twitter or hide on DW until those things stop appearing and life is better.
3. Speaking of twitter and discord and tumblr, beyond its speed, one thing all the new generation of socmed has in common is the lack of information preservation. Articles on the youth's use of socmed made me realize this is a feature. Perhaps in some ways it's better-- more like natural communication in person. But I love backreading people's journals through tags. I miss that part of it. Tumblr could get the closest to that experience, but it's just not as easy because most people don't curate with that intent.
4. But I don't know if I have a real fandom anymore. Qihun is closest I suppose, tiny fandoms 5ever. But the bulk of my writings are-- food pictures and musings on twitter. Bookblogs and media reviews on DW. Is that still being in fandom? My reading list on DW is mostly book-and-personal, with a handful of fandoms that I'm not fully in. Don't get me wrong, I love book reviews and personal blogs. But I miss meta. Fic still being posted elsewhere and all, meta is what I feel like I lack.
5. I'm so lucky though. It turns out, it wasn't just college causing me to drift away-- it really was that I didn't understand the tumblr experience. (I've gone back to following tumblrs of interest on my RSS reader.) I can enjoy myself on twitter and discord, while keeping a reasonably active DW reading list, and be happy with that balance. It would be hard for me, coming back, if I couldn't use all of those. DW alone wouldn't have been able to feed my fannish feelings in smaller fandoms. It would be hard to make friends on twitter alone, but then it's hard to meet people through discord without an 'in'. (Though I suppose I have met good friends through discord alone.) So for me personally, I'm lucky that I could use all three.
6. I'm so lucky too, for making good friends through fandom once again, after I felt so lonely in the post-grad life. Friends who I disagree with, who challenge me, who clarify my views, who I learn so much from. Friends who are cozy marshmallows of joy. Friends who share this interest of taking something we love and making it more.
no subject
Date: 2021-09-11 09:20 (UTC)I noticed this too, and it disturbs me. It bothers me as a librarian, but it bothers me even more as a member of the community, because a lack of reliable, retrievable written records makes it really hard to identify destructive, abusive or otherwise damaging patterns of behaviour. And this makes it easier for abusive individuals to flourish. I understand that the ephemeral nature of current social media is attractive because it makes things seem low pressure, but I'm a pessimistic person and my mind always goes to how easy systems are to exploit by people with bad intentions.
(And it's such a stark cultural shift that's happened in the fifteen-ish years that I've been online. When I first joined fandom, we hung out on message boards and supplemented this with real-time chat in an IRC channel, but the prevailing attitude was such that it was felt even the IRC chat needed preservation, and one of my friends set up a chatlog to save and document everything.)
no subject
Date: 2021-09-11 22:50 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-12 04:50 (UTC)Sorry to stick my head in while wandering past to comment on this specifically, but this element of the shift in the way we do fandom over the years (and the platforms we do it on) has definitely been on my radar for some time, too. There is a practicality to pessimism as part of risk assessment, even if we concurrently believe that people are vastly fundamentally good and abuses will be rare.
A lack of reliable, retrievable records really makes it hard to identify patterns and serial bad actors, but documentation of this nature is also used by serial bad actors in order to perpetuate destructive and abusive behaviour. I think the importance of documentation far outweighs how it can be misused both in methodology and practice (as deliberate bad actors will always adapt, and if we focus on trying to be entirely proactive instead of predominantly reactive, we'll inevitably paralyse ourselves into inaction), but I do feel like we (general) are overall ill-equipped to document it effectively, to critically assess such documentation when it is presented to us, and to apply it to a broader picture, pedagogy, and process of making our spaces safer. There are so many moving parts to consider, and we're often rapidly outpacing any deeper contention with them.