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superborbextrapenguin prompted: Thoughts on how fannish platforms/site structure affects fannish expression (e.g. DW vs Twitter)Quizilla! Underdiscussed as an introduction to fandom because it... died... (like many of the other fic websites at the time) and so everyone was socialized to new norms if they landed elsewhere. For those unaware, Quizilla was burst into fame with "What X are you?" type quizzes; uQuiz has very much felt like a blast from the past though I assume people will not start writing fic on there (unless?).
Obviously, these fics all required an exercise in manipulating the intended post structure (a quiz), but it was pretty easy to just stick the whole fic in the quiz result. Later exposure to the wider expanse of fandom revealed that Quizilla may have had more of certain kinds of fics (self-insert and OCs, choose-your-own-adventure, explicit fic) because they were banned from other general fic websites. However, I think the major distinguishing factor was how young everyone was; older fans congregated elseweb in that era, and it certainly felt like nearly everyone was a teen.
Unlike other fic websites, Quizilla allowed html manipulation, which made it feel more like the individual websites in creative flair, while still allowing some kind of navigation that wasn't 'webring hopping'. Still, in terms of fannish expression, I think it ended up mostly looking like a younger FFN, with more decentralized communication (no comments, but there was inter-user messaging).
Thinking about how alike Quizilla was to FFN, it occurred to me that there's two kind of parallel fannish platform lineages: the fic websites (FFN, MediaMiner, etc etc) -> AO3 and the instant messaging programs (IRC, AIM, etc etc) -> Discord. From my perspective, the fannish expression on those platforms has been very similar at their core. The fic websites are mostly fic (with some meta or resource posts), with small amounts of communication, but mostly people take it off site once the conversation gets long. The messaging platforms have the big or medium group chats where you can mingle and potentially make friends, and the small group chats and direct messages where friendships are often settled. Both of those lines of descent stay similar in their fannish expression because their platforms are so similar in what they allow.
Another line of descent, but one that has gotten cut off, is the social bookmarking one.
melannen has a recent post on del.icio.us, and though pinboard.in is still active, it's really not a center of fandom the way del.icio.us was. I mostly browse through my network's bookmarks, so AO3 actually does fill some of this niche for me, but AO3 doesn't aggregate tags in the powerful way the other two do, nor does it separate the bookmark from the author. However, the mode of fannish expression that is 'tagging' was preserved by AO3 and further developed (in mystifying ways) on Tumblr.The fascinating thing that Tumblr changed when people moved off LJ is that it reinstated a previous mode of interaction found on the mailing lists: fractal conversation. On LJ (and DW), the primary focus is a post, upon which you may comment and browse other comments; not only do you carry a history of your conversation, all conversations branching from the post are preserved. (To the first degree, obviously it may spawn discussion elsewhere.) On mailing lists and Tumblr, this isn't true; each post carries only its own conversation history and nothing else.
By making tags global-- and not just bookmark tags, but main blog tags, Tumblr globalized a fandom conversation in a way that previously didn't happen. Previously, there were limited 'everyone in the fandom interacts' spaces like del.icio.us or a central fandom website or an LJ comm, but Tumblr made everything one conversation, with limited ability to disengage from other pockets of fandom. Now instead of communicating with a limited set of already interested people, any conversation happens in the eyes of everyone following you, because posts become the last comment on a conversation. Twitter takes this global conversation aspect and runs with it. (Tangent: both end up suffering from the flaw of so much content combined with scattering conversation across so many 'end' locations that people can think they're having the same conversation and really not be.)
Also, Tumblr became the first time it was really easy to post pictures and gifs. While there are picspam and image heavy LJs and LJ comms, LJ/DW is much more text dominated; Tumblr is more image dominated. Meta, primers, and manifestos hosted on Tumblr tend to be shorter than those hosted on LJ/DW. The inability to friends-lock meant that really personal stuff couldn't be posted to a subset of your friends. So it was more of a change in balance, because technically the same types of things could be posted, but images became ascendant and personal blogs dwindled. Twitter fandom revived the more personal aspects (though without any good filtering methods, often as separate Twitters for different purposes: a practice that was quite uncommon on LJ, common on Tumblr, and very common on Twitter from what I observe), but goes further down the path of the shortening of meta and increase of visual media.
On the other hand, both Tumblr and Twitter have a passive form of expression that it turns out most people prefer: shaping a feed of content that is pleasing, and the ease of liking and reblogging/retweeting, In short, emphasizing the curation aspect above creation. I think that has always been there; after all, what are social bookmarking and linkspam and recslists but curation. But by numbers, you could argue that the predominant form of fannish expression has always been lurking, and Tumblr and Twitter give a new intermediate not fully delurked mode of engagement.
SO many interesting things to think about on this topic (where do shrines and other niche website types fit? what about the forums->reddit transition?), but it's late so I'll end here!
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