5 Reasons Why I Shouldn't Have Joined the OTW (and One Why I Did)
1. I am not the joiner type. Like at all. When confronted with issues of great social import, and friends who want me to rally to their cause, my usual response is "um, can I just write you a check?" Because joining something means having to deal with *people* and getting along, and trying not to say the first thing that pops into my head and being a team player and not rising to the bait, and did I mention the part where you have to deal with people?
2. I am way on the fringes of fandom. I've been reading fanfic since 1995, and during that time I've been active in exactly one fandom. Six years ago. And I'm not even a good feedbacker. (The first time I logged onto an OTW meeting, I said, "Hi, I'm Dafna. I owe feedback to everyone in this room. Sorry.")
3. I fail at social networking. I was a very early convert to LJ, but when LJ started going after people's interests last year, I didn't have to worry what mine said about me -- because I never bothered to set mine up. In 7 1/2 years, I think I've updated my friends list maybe 6 times. I'm not kidding.
4. Acafans make me want to run and hide. It's not that I don't think research and theorizing about fandom as a social movement or whatever isn't valuable ... I just really would rather go read some nice hurt/comfort fic. Couldn't stand theory in college, can't stand it now.
5. I don't really have the time. I work a lot of hours at a job I love. I have family, friends and a dog who would like me to be there for them. In this, of course, I am no different than most people who have joined OTW, or indeed, than most people who volunteer for anything. But as you may have gathered from #1, I usually just tell people I don't have the time, sorry.
So how on earth did someone like me wind up volunteering for the Organization for Transformative Works? Why did I, a non-joining, acaspeak-hating, all-but-anonymous member of fandom, not only volunteer, but wind up chairing the Public Relations Committee? It's pretty simple, really:
1. I'm tired of journalists getting everything about fandom wrong. I don't just mean the simple stuff, like what slash is, or that we're not all 12 (or 45, or whatever the narrative is that week), I mean the whole context of fandom. You have journalists writing about mash-ups as if vidding never existed and about user-generated content as if it was something invented 2 years ago. It's just embarrassing.
Not as a fan, mind you. It's embarrassing as a journalist.
See, there used to be a time when we could all pretend that no one outside of fandom, or maybe some clued-in showrunners, knew what we were up to, over here in our corner with our stories and our vids and our cons. But if that was ever true, it's long since been blown away. The mainstream media is hip to us -- in part because so many of us now work for the mainstream media.
I work for a company you've all heard of, though I hasten to add that I am not Katie Couric. The first time I remember talking about fanfiction in the middle of the newsroom was a few years ago. Now it happens so often that I've stopped counting.
So why does reporting about fandom still suck so much? Well, without going into a treatise on the state of modern American journalism, let's just say that it is the rule, more than the exception, that most stories you do are about topics you know almost nothing about. This can be Kenyan politics, or it can be the problems of people with cat allergies -- depending on what's going on in the world (or in your assigning editor's brain). And even if your cubicle mate knows about the topic, they're probably off researching their own assignment at the same time you're doing yours. And that assignment? Is probably do in 4 hours. Go.
Fandom isn't special in this way, of course. Journalists suck at reporting a lot of specialized topics -- or perhaps a fairer way to state it would be that we do the best we can with limited resources and time. But if you know a lot about a particular area -- medicine, say, or beekeeping -- you've probably noticed that we don't always get it right.
What helps? Quick, easy-to-digest summaries of a particular topic help. Sources who don't ramble on, but who know what they want to say and say it in clear short sentences help. Lists of resources for more information help. Links to previous articles written about the topic help.
This is what I want for fandom. Someplace that's easy for journalists to find -- and that has information written for journalists in mind. A fandom press kit, if you will.
This is not the only thing the Public Relations committee is working on, of course. Nor is it the only reason I joined. This post is part of "Why I joined OTW" week, and a lot of my other reasons for joining have already been covered, in particular by Kass and Shrift. And if you still don't get why a nonprofit home for fandom (or at least, for that segment of fandom that chooses to embrace the idea) is a good thing, I direct you to Femme's post on the topic. If you just want to see our (still in development!) web site, it's at http://transformativeworks.org.
But this post is about why I joined. And honestly, the main reason is so that the next time it's 45 minutes to air and some producer calls me because they've changed the rundown again and they want to talk about Harry Potter slash but aren't sure what it is, exactly, and can I explain all of fandom in 1 minute, while standing on one foot, I can just say, "Hey, there's this web site you should read ..."