just the latest chapter in fannish fragmentation
Like everyone else this morning, I woke up to the new Delicious, a stunning example of what happens when you throw a bunch of money and developers at a problem that doesn't exist, while doing zero audience research to figure out how your service was being used. Having been largely out of fandom for about five years, when SGA was still The One Fandom and lived on LJ, before ToS fuckery and fannish migration and Delicious's role still in its infancy, the scope of what has been lost wasn't entirely clear to me until walkingshadow spent a good chunk of her day explaining it patiently through her seething rage.
But despite not having nearly as much invested in Delicious as most of you, the impact of its spectacular implosion is another setback on what is my already haphazard wade back into fandom.
Since 1994, from Sailor Moon to popslash to Stargate Atlantis, message boards and mailing lists and finally LJ, I've been a fangirl. But after graduating college, wallowing in the Smallville Slash Archive until 7 a.m. was no longer an option if I wanted to remain gainfully employed (though the coinciding tidal shift of fandom toward Supernatural didn't help either). Between my job, meeting and eventually marrying Brandon, taking up World of Warcraft, then moving to the Middle East, I've been more or less apart from fandom for about five years (the things that did pique my fannish interest - Blades of Glory, The Venture Brothers, Fullmetal Alchemist - didn't seem to resonate). Then back in June, on Brandon's encouragement that I shake off the last of a summer cold to go with some coworkers for a screening of X-Men: First Class, I suddenly and acutely felt the absence of fandom and all its goofy love, brilliant meta and mountains of fic.
But getting back into it has been a stop-and-start process. I don't feel like I missed much, in a way - a lot of the media that fannish energy seemed to coalesce around (NCIS, bandom, Sherlock, Arthur, Inception) didn't strike a chord with me even as a casual viewer. What I have missed are the new fandom etiquette rules and learning to use all the new platforms (Twitter, Tumblr, DW, delicious, etc?), not to mention learning what they're used for. Had people started dividing their fannish and personal lives, or just "doing fandom" in entirely different ways? Apparently discussions now happen on Twitter? And meta is posted on Tumblr? And some authors are even using fanfiction.net again? I was more than a little lost (though knowing that people who never left felt the same way helps a little), coming back to a decimated LJ f'list and no clue where to look for everyone. And even LJ was a foreign land - people are requesting comments to return your friend request? Why not just go to my journal and decide for yourself once you get my friend request notification? I hated auditions in school, and don't particularly want to make them part of my fannish life.
The one topic that seems to be at the forefront for everyone is privacy. For the people who don't separate their fannish and personal lives into different media, I can totally understand not wanting that line blurred in the least. But that sentiment seems to have blurred into people locking everything but fic, including meta and episode reactions, and I just feel like the fannish community is a less inviting place than it used to be. With all the many layers of locks on all sorts of content, until you've participated enough to be let in, if that ever happens, you have no way to be a part of it.
One of the things I adore about Vampire Diaries fandom is that a lot of the BNFs have either lax friending policies or open journals, and the discussions always generate dozens and dozens of comments in a way that only community posts do nowadays. But that's getting more and more rare - this has only happened a handful of times, but I'll come across the same person's comments on different communities and want to friend them, only to get to their journal and find it totally empty or they have very restrictive friending policies and everything is locked down. And seeing as I've been away for so long and despite my better efforts only managing to update my journal once a month, why would this person be inclined to friend me back, no matter how sincere I am about my interest in their fannish contribution? And if their journals are empty, like all they do is leave comments in LJ communities and others' journals, does that mean they maintain their "real" fannish presence elsewhere? More often than not there's not a link to another web platform on their profile, and I'm left even more confused.
I like LJ (and by default Dreamwidth, which I should learn to crosspost to, but oh god do not want to try to rebuild my f'list: see aforementioned lengthy absence and restrictive friending policies). And XMFC seems to have made its home here, primarily in any event, with the longstanding oldfriends and 1stclass_kink (now xmen_firstkink after the mod fiasco). But the point is, I like LJ as a web format - Twitter feels too glib, taunting me with its little red number to be wittier and more concise; Tumblr may as well be a wall of white noise, albeit with very pretty pictures but otherwise worthless because of its sheer volume and consequent ephemeral quality (also because it's resisted all attempts to change my tracked tags page to scroll on infinitely, what acid-tripping hipster moron thought that was a good idea?)
Then again, I often find myself not posting something to LJ because it doesn't rise to the "heft" of an entry, so what does that accomplish?
But even in this fragmented new world, Delicious seemed to be last place on the internet that everyone still went. The simplicity of its privacy settings was a revelation - things were either private or public; no friendslists, no filters, no barriers to fannish entry. Just click on a tag and lose yourself for a few hours. I'd venture that had to do a lot with Delicious's success in fostering what could arguably have been the largest fannish community space since the LJ schism (and why I have reservations about the picket fences evident in Pinboard's "introvert sharing" philosophy, though that seems to be where the fannish tide is drifting.) Delicious was accessible even to someone brand new to fandom, or someone like me who may as well be. Wasn't the reason we all used Delicious because it was a massive public park that all corners of fandom played in, where the little bold number of how many times something has been bookmarked meant something?
But what's done is done, and fandom has every reason to find a new berth. And hey, AO3 rose out of a dark moment too, so maybe this will all eventually be for the best. But as someone still trying to find her footing, this didn't help my already fragile grasp of the new fannish geography.
But despite not having nearly as much invested in Delicious as most of you, the impact of its spectacular implosion is another setback on what is my already haphazard wade back into fandom.
Since 1994, from Sailor Moon to popslash to Stargate Atlantis, message boards and mailing lists and finally LJ, I've been a fangirl. But after graduating college, wallowing in the Smallville Slash Archive until 7 a.m. was no longer an option if I wanted to remain gainfully employed (though the coinciding tidal shift of fandom toward Supernatural didn't help either). Between my job, meeting and eventually marrying Brandon, taking up World of Warcraft, then moving to the Middle East, I've been more or less apart from fandom for about five years (the things that did pique my fannish interest - Blades of Glory, The Venture Brothers, Fullmetal Alchemist - didn't seem to resonate). Then back in June, on Brandon's encouragement that I shake off the last of a summer cold to go with some coworkers for a screening of X-Men: First Class, I suddenly and acutely felt the absence of fandom and all its goofy love, brilliant meta and mountains of fic.
But getting back into it has been a stop-and-start process. I don't feel like I missed much, in a way - a lot of the media that fannish energy seemed to coalesce around (NCIS, bandom, Sherlock, Arthur, Inception) didn't strike a chord with me even as a casual viewer. What I have missed are the new fandom etiquette rules and learning to use all the new platforms (Twitter, Tumblr, DW, delicious, etc?), not to mention learning what they're used for. Had people started dividing their fannish and personal lives, or just "doing fandom" in entirely different ways? Apparently discussions now happen on Twitter? And meta is posted on Tumblr? And some authors are even using fanfiction.net again? I was more than a little lost (though knowing that people who never left felt the same way helps a little), coming back to a decimated LJ f'list and no clue where to look for everyone. And even LJ was a foreign land - people are requesting comments to return your friend request? Why not just go to my journal and decide for yourself once you get my friend request notification? I hated auditions in school, and don't particularly want to make them part of my fannish life.
The one topic that seems to be at the forefront for everyone is privacy. For the people who don't separate their fannish and personal lives into different media, I can totally understand not wanting that line blurred in the least. But that sentiment seems to have blurred into people locking everything but fic, including meta and episode reactions, and I just feel like the fannish community is a less inviting place than it used to be. With all the many layers of locks on all sorts of content, until you've participated enough to be let in, if that ever happens, you have no way to be a part of it.
One of the things I adore about Vampire Diaries fandom is that a lot of the BNFs have either lax friending policies or open journals, and the discussions always generate dozens and dozens of comments in a way that only community posts do nowadays. But that's getting more and more rare - this has only happened a handful of times, but I'll come across the same person's comments on different communities and want to friend them, only to get to their journal and find it totally empty or they have very restrictive friending policies and everything is locked down. And seeing as I've been away for so long and despite my better efforts only managing to update my journal once a month, why would this person be inclined to friend me back, no matter how sincere I am about my interest in their fannish contribution? And if their journals are empty, like all they do is leave comments in LJ communities and others' journals, does that mean they maintain their "real" fannish presence elsewhere? More often than not there's not a link to another web platform on their profile, and I'm left even more confused.
I like LJ (and by default Dreamwidth, which I should learn to crosspost to, but oh god do not want to try to rebuild my f'list: see aforementioned lengthy absence and restrictive friending policies). And XMFC seems to have made its home here, primarily in any event, with the longstanding oldfriends and 1stclass_kink (now xmen_firstkink after the mod fiasco). But the point is, I like LJ as a web format - Twitter feels too glib, taunting me with its little red number to be wittier and more concise; Tumblr may as well be a wall of white noise, albeit with very pretty pictures but otherwise worthless because of its sheer volume and consequent ephemeral quality (also because it's resisted all attempts to change my tracked tags page to scroll on infinitely, what acid-tripping hipster moron thought that was a good idea?)
Then again, I often find myself not posting something to LJ because it doesn't rise to the "heft" of an entry, so what does that accomplish?
But even in this fragmented new world, Delicious seemed to be last place on the internet that everyone still went. The simplicity of its privacy settings was a revelation - things were either private or public; no friendslists, no filters, no barriers to fannish entry. Just click on a tag and lose yourself for a few hours. I'd venture that had to do a lot with Delicious's success in fostering what could arguably have been the largest fannish community space since the LJ schism (and why I have reservations about the picket fences evident in Pinboard's "introvert sharing" philosophy, though that seems to be where the fannish tide is drifting.) Delicious was accessible even to someone brand new to fandom, or someone like me who may as well be. Wasn't the reason we all used Delicious because it was a massive public park that all corners of fandom played in, where the little bold number of how many times something has been bookmarked meant something?
But what's done is done, and fandom has every reason to find a new berth. And hey, AO3 rose out of a dark moment too, so maybe this will all eventually be for the best. But as someone still trying to find her footing, this didn't help my already fragile grasp of the new fannish geography.