Supernatural is not the Jersey Shore of Fandom (An Essay)

[girlguidejones]

This started out as a simple comment reply to the post referenced below, but it kept growing until it felt tangential enough to warrant a post on my own journal, rather than monopolizing someone else's.  If anyone's a lover of irony, it should be noted that the last time I posted was back on June 3, which was to rec a story with the pairing (which

Comments

[zimshan]

Here through dot's link.

Thanks for this! This is generally how I've come to view SPN' fandom and its wank too, coming into the show with left over scars from other fandoms. And I do think it shortchanges the fandom AND Fandom as a whole by brushing the wank off as just crazy. It's definitely been a part of the fannish process for a while, and crops up everywhere.

My first fandom was late 90's Dawson's Creek, of all stupid things, and let me tell you, no one can wank like a bunch of 14 year old girls who just discovered the internet and how to type their favorite show's URL into the address bar because the WB told them to after the episode aired. I laugh at ship wars after experiencing them there, you don't know mean, vitrolic hatred until you have 90% of fandom on forums defending the character that most resembled their current boyfriend of the time. LJ makes things a breeze by comparison, even when things got toxic in the VM fandom, it was much easier to scroll past and finally get out of when I couldn't take it anymore. Of course, with LJ, I think there's also this false sense of security where you assume you're in more of a safe zone with your flist and flock posts. So when fandoms dissolve into backstabbing and anonmemes, it suddenly makes things feel alot worse.

But fandom has always required some thick-skin. That doesn't mean it's not a sad to see fandom energies being concentrated into such negative activities and cloud the much more positive aspects of fandom creations. But I do think we all have to realize it's part of putting things out there in the first place and we have to be prepared to let it roll off our backs every once in a while. Sometimes haters are just going to hate, especially in old, huge fandoms where resentments have brewed and short of smoking out that stupid anonmeme through some sort of fandom handholding solidarity, I'm not sure there's much we can do. :/

[girlguidejones]

Oh, VM. I thought TWOP was gonna implode over VM.

"That doesn't mean it's not a sad to see fandom energies being concentrated into such negative activities..."

Can you imagine how much more awesome fic and art there would be if all that effort was redirected into creation instead of destruction?

Thanks for stopping in...meeting new people has been an unexpected pleasurable outcome of making this post. :)

[zimshan]

Can you imagine how much more awesome fic and art there would be if all that effort was redirected into creation instead of destruction?

That's EXACTLY what I'm talking about! "Make Art, Not Wank", I was just quoting to dot, but I can't for the life of me remember who that came from. One of the Buffy veterans, I'm sure. Whatever it's a good thing to live by. Say no to destruction, fandom! (Falling on dead ears already, I know!