Warning: may contain peanuts
I really don't want to wade into the shitstorm around VVC (lather, rinse, repeat). I'm really sad at seeing people I care about being attacked all over LJ, especially by people who have never/will never have anything to do with the con but feel compelled to dogpile on whatever train wreck they can, even though they offer nothing of constructive value and just feed more out misinformation that then gets perpetuated to still more people.
But I always feel like I have to be historical perspective gal. There's a reason a lot of the older fans aren't talking about the warnings "issue" -- scare quotes because I think it's a non-issue that some people want to become an issue. It's because we've been here before, at least a couple of times, and we're pretty much tired of talking about it. We also come from a very different generation and mindset of fandom, one that was told, for right or wrong, you have to take responsibility for your own shit. A lot of us grew up in a time when snack foods didn't contain warnings that they may contain peanuts or were made in factories where peanuts were used, and toys had parts that kids could probably at some point pop off and try to swallow, and a lot of cars didn't even have seatbelts in back, let alone car seats you would strap your kid into. It was basically the freaking wild wild west out there, and even though now some of those things seem kind of "duh, why didn't they fix that," it was absolutely not the mindset we grew up with.
If you think I'm being flippant by bringing this up, you're wrong. I tell you this because all of our views on the world have been highly influenced by the kind of world we grew up in -- each and every one of us. We can change our outlooks -- we're none of us locked into one mindset that can't change. But a lot of people are perfectly content with the way they look at life (either pro or anti), and when you get two really radically different outlooks on things like warnings or protection, you'll inevitably clash. This isn't the first time it's happened in vid circles, and it won't be the last, sadly. What is a little different this time is the tendency a lot of fans have toward Balkanization -- we don't like your ideas, so we're taking our ball and going off to start our own game, fuck you.
Back in the day, there weren't quite so many fans. There certainly weren't quite so many vids and vidders, and there weren't quite so many cons and places to play vids for a large audience. There was no such thing as online streaming of vids. One of the most well-known and probably the gold standard of vid shows was the Escapade premieres show on Saturday night of the con. That was the setting of the last big warnings brou-ha-ha, the place where the idea of the "overflow" room got started, and the place the whole idea of setting some loose rules of respect got going. There was no Vividcon yet -- a lot of the people who started that con went to Escapade, in fact. That's where they developed their experience and mind set.
There was a vid that showed one year -- Jo's Oz vid Prison Sex, to be exact -- that included clips of all manner of prison violence, because that's, you know, what they do on Oz. Afterward, a fan was heard to complain to the person in charge of the vid show that "something has to be done about Oz." On the Vidder email list later, she complained to a wider public (the only vidding community, really, at that time), and then the whole thing erupted into an issue because she wanted warnings on the vids. Keep in mind there were no booklets with playlists and blurbs, most things were still primarily made on VCRs or very early, dodgy computer vid setups, and outside of a run list and some response sheets, you looked at any vid show pretty much as an unknown. That was accepted -- part of the enjoyment was the unknown. For a lot of people today, it still is, and that's something that's important to keep in mind when you talk about things like warnings.
So for weeks, we had this onlist shitstorm over the warnings thing -- what, most of the vidders wanted to know, would we warn for? Everything that could possibly offend or upset anyone at any time? Like, maybe, may contain wrestling (as the Oz vid had)? Would we run those in front of the vid in some long list form? There were also some vids that year many people didn't think were fannish (I think it was either a professional wrestlers vid), so there was much argumentation about that. The discussion raged on and on. And eventually it played out, and nothing much changed except that people got cranky and there was a lot of running off with balls, and there was a further divide between people who think bags of peanuts should contain warnings that they may contain peanuts and people who think that if you've got issues, you should just go away, or skip the vid shows where you might not be able to deal with them. Right or wrong, that's what happened. (And I really don't know where this idea developed that older vids were all sweetness and light, but I can promise you, they weren't.)
Here, I'd fast forward to 2010, except that there are two other things of note about that con, and one other thing of note about the person who demanded warnings for stuff she didn't like. That was the year we first (meaning, I did) got up in front of the room and asked people to maybe not stand up and dance in front of people trying to watch the vids, or talking over them, or singing along like they were at a beer hall. During the first half of the show, people had come back to the control table and complained about the level of intrusion on the vids, and since I wasn't afraid to talk in front of a large crowd, at halftime, I went up and asked people to chill (I think I basically said "don't make me come out there"). The person who complained about the Oz vid also left in the middle of another entirely pleasant vid, with her entourage, completely disrupting most of that vid for the people seated nearby (she left because her vid had already been shown, so clearly, there was no need to stay to see the other vids, and I felt so bad for the vidder whose work she and her friends so rudely interrupted). And viewers were livid about that, so in all future vid shows, I asked that people consider leaving during the break between vids if at all possible.
That whole show that year was just... surreal, now that I look back at it. We were in a huge ballroom, with two mid-size TVs on carts -- this was before the projectors -- and I think the sheer size of it, maybe the giddiness of being in a large room with space instead of the cramped quarters we'd been in before, just made some people behave in the most appalling fashion. I was shocked that I actually had to tell people to behave like grownups. But a lot of what informed the guidelines for VVC came about through that experience -- after that year, we always started the show with my little spiel about being respectful; eventually some vidders made the cute little introductory vids that said the same thing (at both VVC and Escapade); and one more significant thing occurred: that was when we began kicking around the idea of an overflow, or noisy, room.
It took a while for us to be able to do that efficiently. We had to string and tape co-ax cable, usually through a hotel kitchen, through hallways, and into another room. Hundreds of feet of co-ax. I can't tell you how much time that took. It was miserable work, and it took four or so of us to do it, set up the room for the main show, and get the timing to synch up. At that point, we were still swapping in and out both tapes and video discs (I don't even think we had DVDs at that point, just VCDs), and stuff always went wrong. But for people who wanted to get up, move around, sing along, laugh and talk, that room was a godsend. I know a lot of folks think that type of room was set up to shunt off people with disabilities at VVC, but that's just not true. It was created elsewhere, imported into the VVC setup, and was supposed to be a thing of good, and a lot of people did enjoy it that way. We had the technology (sort of) to create spaces that could accommodate people with different needs -- from those who wanted to be in the "quiet" room to those who only wanted to see one or two vids and move about freely.
So, to bring all this tl;dr back to warnings. I've seen people make statements like "these are all people who've suffered traumatic events" and other hyperbole like that, and then on the other side, there's the equally hyperbolic whiners and crybabies tag. Neither of these does anyone any good. There are plenty of people who want the vidders (or show comm) to take responsibility for whatever their issue is and are coming from a purely selfish, may contain peanuts place under the guise of trauma. And there are plenty of people who have legitimate issues who would like the con to feel more accessible to them. There are far too many variables, and different types of people with different motivations, to say any one position is purely this or that. And all of us have to figure out how a lot of different viewpoints can be accommodated.
A long time ago, I wrote another tl;dr post about a similar issue, and how a friend of mind had been laughing at the latest kerfuffle and commented that "this has happened before." And my response was then, as it is now, "Yes, but this is the first time it's happened to them." To me, the saddest thing about all this shit flying and accusations being dropped is that so many of the most strident messages are coming from people who've never bothered to learn about the history of these things, so they make a lot of blanket assumptions and tar everyone with a very wide brush. This info is out there. There are older fans who can be resources for historical perspective on how or why things are the way they are, and how things can be changed. Yelling and screaming rarely does change anything positively, but trying to understand how things developed, and then working within those frameworks to effect change, often does. I so rarely see younger fans take any interest in the history of fandom, and try to put the issues or challenges into the perspective of that history, and that makes me just incredibly tired and incredibly depressed.
It's really easy to accuse people of bad intentions, but I would like to point out that, historically, these problems rarely develop because of bad intentions. They are often really simple core problems of experience -- people who come from vastly, wildly different circumstances and viewpoints, and don't have the perspective of the person all the way on the other side of the valley. Calling people bitches and saying they don't give a shit about how anyone else feels because they revile the concept of warnings on vids (which I saw in an LJ comment) is about as productive as saying someone who can't watch a vid showing someone being raped is a big baby. Neither comment allows us to understand the viewpoint of someone who holds a hugely different perspective from us.
I have hated seeing something I value and enjoy being torn apart like this for going on almost a year, as if this con is the only place with problems out there. But I'm also really glad I'm not going this year, because I don't even feel like being around a lot of the people I have thought of as good acquaintances before, just because so many of them are acting as if this is a new, intractable issue that can crushed by who screams the loudest.
It's not the first time it's happened, and my guess is? It won't be the last, although it certainly might be my last. As fandom becomes ever larger and ever more mainstream, and we completely lose the perspective of its history, I don't know that I have the stomach for it much anymore.
ETA: I'm screening comments on this, unfortunately, now that it's been metafandomed and the cowards are posting anonymous hate.
But I always feel like I have to be historical perspective gal. There's a reason a lot of the older fans aren't talking about the warnings "issue" -- scare quotes because I think it's a non-issue that some people want to become an issue. It's because we've been here before, at least a couple of times, and we're pretty much tired of talking about it. We also come from a very different generation and mindset of fandom, one that was told, for right or wrong, you have to take responsibility for your own shit. A lot of us grew up in a time when snack foods didn't contain warnings that they may contain peanuts or were made in factories where peanuts were used, and toys had parts that kids could probably at some point pop off and try to swallow, and a lot of cars didn't even have seatbelts in back, let alone car seats you would strap your kid into. It was basically the freaking wild wild west out there, and even though now some of those things seem kind of "duh, why didn't they fix that," it was absolutely not the mindset we grew up with.
If you think I'm being flippant by bringing this up, you're wrong. I tell you this because all of our views on the world have been highly influenced by the kind of world we grew up in -- each and every one of us. We can change our outlooks -- we're none of us locked into one mindset that can't change. But a lot of people are perfectly content with the way they look at life (either pro or anti), and when you get two really radically different outlooks on things like warnings or protection, you'll inevitably clash. This isn't the first time it's happened in vid circles, and it won't be the last, sadly. What is a little different this time is the tendency a lot of fans have toward Balkanization -- we don't like your ideas, so we're taking our ball and going off to start our own game, fuck you.
Back in the day, there weren't quite so many fans. There certainly weren't quite so many vids and vidders, and there weren't quite so many cons and places to play vids for a large audience. There was no such thing as online streaming of vids. One of the most well-known and probably the gold standard of vid shows was the Escapade premieres show on Saturday night of the con. That was the setting of the last big warnings brou-ha-ha, the place where the idea of the "overflow" room got started, and the place the whole idea of setting some loose rules of respect got going. There was no Vividcon yet -- a lot of the people who started that con went to Escapade, in fact. That's where they developed their experience and mind set.
There was a vid that showed one year -- Jo's Oz vid Prison Sex, to be exact -- that included clips of all manner of prison violence, because that's, you know, what they do on Oz. Afterward, a fan was heard to complain to the person in charge of the vid show that "something has to be done about Oz." On the Vidder email list later, she complained to a wider public (the only vidding community, really, at that time), and then the whole thing erupted into an issue because she wanted warnings on the vids. Keep in mind there were no booklets with playlists and blurbs, most things were still primarily made on VCRs or very early, dodgy computer vid setups, and outside of a run list and some response sheets, you looked at any vid show pretty much as an unknown. That was accepted -- part of the enjoyment was the unknown. For a lot of people today, it still is, and that's something that's important to keep in mind when you talk about things like warnings.
So for weeks, we had this onlist shitstorm over the warnings thing -- what, most of the vidders wanted to know, would we warn for? Everything that could possibly offend or upset anyone at any time? Like, maybe, may contain wrestling (as the Oz vid had)? Would we run those in front of the vid in some long list form? There were also some vids that year many people didn't think were fannish (I think it was either a professional wrestlers vid), so there was much argumentation about that. The discussion raged on and on. And eventually it played out, and nothing much changed except that people got cranky and there was a lot of running off with balls, and there was a further divide between people who think bags of peanuts should contain warnings that they may contain peanuts and people who think that if you've got issues, you should just go away, or skip the vid shows where you might not be able to deal with them. Right or wrong, that's what happened. (And I really don't know where this idea developed that older vids were all sweetness and light, but I can promise you, they weren't.)
Here, I'd fast forward to 2010, except that there are two other things of note about that con, and one other thing of note about the person who demanded warnings for stuff she didn't like. That was the year we first (meaning, I did) got up in front of the room and asked people to maybe not stand up and dance in front of people trying to watch the vids, or talking over them, or singing along like they were at a beer hall. During the first half of the show, people had come back to the control table and complained about the level of intrusion on the vids, and since I wasn't afraid to talk in front of a large crowd, at halftime, I went up and asked people to chill (I think I basically said "don't make me come out there"). The person who complained about the Oz vid also left in the middle of another entirely pleasant vid, with her entourage, completely disrupting most of that vid for the people seated nearby (she left because her vid had already been shown, so clearly, there was no need to stay to see the other vids, and I felt so bad for the vidder whose work she and her friends so rudely interrupted). And viewers were livid about that, so in all future vid shows, I asked that people consider leaving during the break between vids if at all possible.
That whole show that year was just... surreal, now that I look back at it. We were in a huge ballroom, with two mid-size TVs on carts -- this was before the projectors -- and I think the sheer size of it, maybe the giddiness of being in a large room with space instead of the cramped quarters we'd been in before, just made some people behave in the most appalling fashion. I was shocked that I actually had to tell people to behave like grownups. But a lot of what informed the guidelines for VVC came about through that experience -- after that year, we always started the show with my little spiel about being respectful; eventually some vidders made the cute little introductory vids that said the same thing (at both VVC and Escapade); and one more significant thing occurred: that was when we began kicking around the idea of an overflow, or noisy, room.
It took a while for us to be able to do that efficiently. We had to string and tape co-ax cable, usually through a hotel kitchen, through hallways, and into another room. Hundreds of feet of co-ax. I can't tell you how much time that took. It was miserable work, and it took four or so of us to do it, set up the room for the main show, and get the timing to synch up. At that point, we were still swapping in and out both tapes and video discs (I don't even think we had DVDs at that point, just VCDs), and stuff always went wrong. But for people who wanted to get up, move around, sing along, laugh and talk, that room was a godsend. I know a lot of folks think that type of room was set up to shunt off people with disabilities at VVC, but that's just not true. It was created elsewhere, imported into the VVC setup, and was supposed to be a thing of good, and a lot of people did enjoy it that way. We had the technology (sort of) to create spaces that could accommodate people with different needs -- from those who wanted to be in the "quiet" room to those who only wanted to see one or two vids and move about freely.
So, to bring all this tl;dr back to warnings. I've seen people make statements like "these are all people who've suffered traumatic events" and other hyperbole like that, and then on the other side, there's the equally hyperbolic whiners and crybabies tag. Neither of these does anyone any good. There are plenty of people who want the vidders (or show comm) to take responsibility for whatever their issue is and are coming from a purely selfish, may contain peanuts place under the guise of trauma. And there are plenty of people who have legitimate issues who would like the con to feel more accessible to them. There are far too many variables, and different types of people with different motivations, to say any one position is purely this or that. And all of us have to figure out how a lot of different viewpoints can be accommodated.
A long time ago, I wrote another tl;dr post about a similar issue, and how a friend of mind had been laughing at the latest kerfuffle and commented that "this has happened before." And my response was then, as it is now, "Yes, but this is the first time it's happened to them." To me, the saddest thing about all this shit flying and accusations being dropped is that so many of the most strident messages are coming from people who've never bothered to learn about the history of these things, so they make a lot of blanket assumptions and tar everyone with a very wide brush. This info is out there. There are older fans who can be resources for historical perspective on how or why things are the way they are, and how things can be changed. Yelling and screaming rarely does change anything positively, but trying to understand how things developed, and then working within those frameworks to effect change, often does. I so rarely see younger fans take any interest in the history of fandom, and try to put the issues or challenges into the perspective of that history, and that makes me just incredibly tired and incredibly depressed.
It's really easy to accuse people of bad intentions, but I would like to point out that, historically, these problems rarely develop because of bad intentions. They are often really simple core problems of experience -- people who come from vastly, wildly different circumstances and viewpoints, and don't have the perspective of the person all the way on the other side of the valley. Calling people bitches and saying they don't give a shit about how anyone else feels because they revile the concept of warnings on vids (which I saw in an LJ comment) is about as productive as saying someone who can't watch a vid showing someone being raped is a big baby. Neither comment allows us to understand the viewpoint of someone who holds a hugely different perspective from us.
I have hated seeing something I value and enjoy being torn apart like this for going on almost a year, as if this con is the only place with problems out there. But I'm also really glad I'm not going this year, because I don't even feel like being around a lot of the people I have thought of as good acquaintances before, just because so many of them are acting as if this is a new, intractable issue that can crushed by who screams the loudest.
It's not the first time it's happened, and my guess is? It won't be the last, although it certainly might be my last. As fandom becomes ever larger and ever more mainstream, and we completely lose the perspective of its history, I don't know that I have the stomach for it much anymore.
ETA: I'm screening comments on this, unfortunately, now that it's been metafandomed and the cowards are posting anonymous hate.