Fandom newsletters: the capitalisation/globalisation of fandom?
I was thinking earlier about my odd relationship with the Supernatural fandom - I'm totally into it, I love the picspams, the fics, the speculation, the meta, the fanonisation... but on a grass-roots level, I'm not part of the dialogue. I don't seem to have any SPN fans on my flist. Well, I mean, I do - but they're friends I already know. I have not gained any new friends on my flist since becoming part of the SPN fandom. So I'm not an active part of creating the dialogue on a personal (as in, discussion in which temporality plays some part; not out-of-time public texts like fic or art) level.
So why is this? Because usually this is how you (I) get involved in fandom, how dialogue spaces are opened up and/or muscled in on - you find people who are interesting, who are talking about things to do with that text/fandom that interest you, whose journals you keep going back to. Until eventually you get sick of going to their journal and just friend them already - thus integrating yourself (and them) into that fandom's particular network/system. It's a pattern that I've repeated through LOTR, lotrips, 21JS, Firefly... It's the key feature of Livejournal that really changed the space, face and substance of fandom - no longer were there 'off topic' posts; you were posting in your journal, everything was on-topic, be it fandom or otherwise. So I friend you because i like your lotrips fic, but I end up privy to your went-to-work-today or played-with-the-kids-today or had-sex-with-the-hubby today posts too; thus I get to know you, you get to know me, the public (fandom)/private ('RL/personality') boundaries are blurred.
But, fandom newsletters are subverting that dynamic interplay. I don't even have to friend the communities now, let alone worry about whether everyone who's writing/creating something is posting it to that community - the newsletter (be it four_lobsters, the_cortex or spnnewsletter) is gathering all those 'public space' texts (meta, recs, fics, art, picspam, news, speculation, etc etc) and posting them all in the one place... I don't have to worry about friending someone whose stories I like. I can just wait for the newsletter to tell me when and where they post the next one. Thus terminating the possibility of being forced to 'get to know them', and thus engage with them, and subsequently participate in that fertile interplay of instantaneous thought and discussion.
So, on the one hand I love fandom newsletters because boyhowdy, they sure are handy, but on the other... I've never felt so disconnected from a fandom before. I really gotta get out there and start friending. If only because I love to have my fingers in a whole bunch o' pies.
So why is this? Because usually this is how you (I) get involved in fandom, how dialogue spaces are opened up and/or muscled in on - you find people who are interesting, who are talking about things to do with that text/fandom that interest you, whose journals you keep going back to. Until eventually you get sick of going to their journal and just friend them already - thus integrating yourself (and them) into that fandom's particular network/system. It's a pattern that I've repeated through LOTR, lotrips, 21JS, Firefly... It's the key feature of Livejournal that really changed the space, face and substance of fandom - no longer were there 'off topic' posts; you were posting in your journal, everything was on-topic, be it fandom or otherwise. So I friend you because i like your lotrips fic, but I end up privy to your went-to-work-today or played-with-the-kids-today or had-sex-with-the-hubby today posts too; thus I get to know you, you get to know me, the public (fandom)/private ('RL/personality') boundaries are blurred.
But, fandom newsletters are subverting that dynamic interplay. I don't even have to friend the communities now, let alone worry about whether everyone who's writing/creating something is posting it to that community - the newsletter (be it four_lobsters, the_cortex or spnnewsletter) is gathering all those 'public space' texts (meta, recs, fics, art, picspam, news, speculation, etc etc) and posting them all in the one place... I don't have to worry about friending someone whose stories I like. I can just wait for the newsletter to tell me when and where they post the next one. Thus terminating the possibility of being forced to 'get to know them', and thus engage with them, and subsequently participate in that fertile interplay of instantaneous thought and discussion.
So, on the one hand I love fandom newsletters because boyhowdy, they sure are handy, but on the other... I've never felt so disconnected from a fandom before. I really gotta get out there and start friending. If only because I love to have my fingers in a whole bunch o' pies.