An "I told you so" two years in the making...

[fortfrolic]

Sigh.

So, this is good news. Great news, in fact. Still, I sort of loathe to admit it, because I promised myself I'd never be one of those people...

Comments

[praetorianguard]

I think it's timely *and* interesting, and something I've been poking at desultorily for a while. I think if you asked 100 fans about the good/evil/meh of mainstreaming fandom, you'd get 100 different answers based on privacy, based on safe spaces, based on being used, based on acceptance...based on wanting people to buy their CDs.

I'm also seeing a lot of people, especially post-Terminus, talking about the rise of the fan-celebrity with disgust. While this isn't a new concept to me, my being one of the most disgusted, it's more widespread than I thought, and I think Terminus solidified it for a lot of people. I've seen a lot of "I'm so over wizard rock" and the underlying sentiment seems to be either wizard rock's predominent (in some circles) reputation as wizard rockers first and (maybe) fans second or hardcore, old-skool fans being tired of hanging around with the new fen, perhaps the fen that the mainstream dragged in. (And of course, there's that nasty little gender issue in there, but that's rarely commented on; I'll be curious to see if the current (and perhaps growing) disenchantment here will lead to more.)

2 random notes:
1) Did you ever read the Salon article after Phoenix Rising? It created a *HUGE* hullabaloo in certain circles because despite there being very little "OMG FREAKS" in there, especially for a mainstream press article on a con, there was some -- and some debate followed, though not as much as fandom needs, about whether mainstream (which might cut the OMG FREAKS factor) is worth the loss of perceived safe space.
2) You saw the Michaela Ecks/Laura Hale/partly_bouncy wiki wank, yes? Because that prompted a lot of HP fen debate about when it is and is not okay to make money off fandom. And interestingly, while TLC comes up in these debates a *lot*, wizard rock rarely does, probably due to the old-skool-ness of the fans in the debate.

Anyway, YES, timely AND fascinating. Go you!