LJ, fandom, and identity
sdwolfpup and boniblithe have been posting in the last few days about reaching LJ milestones; out of curiosity, I checked my own stats, and discovered that today is the fourth anniversary of my first LJ post.
In honor of the occasion, I have pulled out and spruced up one of the many little ramblings currently in my folder of LJ Posts To Maybe Someday Finish. I'm not sure I've finished this one, exactly, but here you go.
This post began as an attempt to think through the question: How well do people know me if they don't know about my fannish life?
My short answer is: about as well as they know me if they do know about my fannish life, although with different expertise from someone who shares my fannish life.
Because the thing is... fannishness hasn't changed me much. It's changed what I do with my free time, yes, absolutely, and I've certainly learned a lot of new things as a result of fandom (digital video, HTML/CSS, what Rodney looks like as a tiny dinosaur) that I would never otherwise have known. And it's challenged me to extend my analytical thinking into new areas.
But it hasn't changed who I am, because who I am is the reason I was drawn to fandom in the first place. I am a tremendous geek; I like thinking about things, I like talking in-depth with other people about texts and ideas and the creative process. I also like making things, and I like showing the things I make to other people. These are things that brought me to fandom, not things that fandom brought out in me - although, again, fandom has certainly given me supercool new venues in which to do these things and supercool new people with whom to share these things.
There are many people, mostly people I know from college, who haven't seen me in years and don't talk to me regularly and who therefore don't know the details of this stuff; they don't know much about what my life is like on a day-to-day basis. But I don't think that getting the details of my fannish life would shock them. The content might surprise them briefly, but I think they'd slot it all pretty quickly into their existing view of me, because it's just not that different: grapples with texts! likes shiny things! gets obsessive about stuff! can be terrifyingly detail-oriented about almost anything except housework!
Even the slashy stuff (because, to my great amusement, I have made a couple of pretty slashy vids, despite not identifying as A Slasher) wouldn't make anyone who knows me bat an eye; I mean, I'm queer, I read plenty of fiction by gay men, I do queer readings of texts in my professional work. So while some of my nonfannish friends might be curious about slash as a widespread phenomenon involving hetero women, my personal participation (such as it is) in slash fandom would be about 98% guaranteed to get a "yeah, you would, wouldn't you" rather than a "huh?"
The corollary question, of course, is: how well can people know me from reading my LJ?
My short answer is: dude, I have no idea.
There are hugely important aspects of who I am that just don't get that much airtime on LJ. Teaching is the biggest one; this is something I think about every day, it informs and determines most of my life, and I write about it occasionally here on LJ, but it's difficult to convey just how important a component of my identity it is. I don't write about teaching in much detail on LJ partly for reasons of privacy (my own, my students') but also because it's just... it's running in the background all the time. It's not just what I do or how I think; it's a huge part of how I approach the world, how I experience myself in relation to, you know, pretty much everything. And I know that occasionally this drives people on LJ crazy, because in certain situations I can't stop asking questions or asking other people to think through why they do what they do or to provide evidence for the claims they're trying to make. I can't always turn off the teacher mode and just shrug and say "hey, whatever, that's your deal, I'll be over here."
Politics is another one. I don't write about politics much in this LJ; I didn't write much about my union organizing, when I was doing it, in this LJ. Not because these things aren't important, but because their importance is largely internal. They're not things I write about; they're things I do. I don't as a rule talk politics with other people, perhaps because I came to my political awakening in a context where most people were basically on the same page, so I am still learning how to have civil disagreements about politics, and I don't like preaching to the choir. I do a lot of thinking and writing and a fair amount of writing letters, but not much public processing.
Anybody reading this probably knows about the vegetables, though. I think that covers a lot right there.
In honor of the occasion, I have pulled out and spruced up one of the many little ramblings currently in my folder of LJ Posts To Maybe Someday Finish. I'm not sure I've finished this one, exactly, but here you go.
This post began as an attempt to think through the question: How well do people know me if they don't know about my fannish life?
My short answer is: about as well as they know me if they do know about my fannish life, although with different expertise from someone who shares my fannish life.
Because the thing is... fannishness hasn't changed me much. It's changed what I do with my free time, yes, absolutely, and I've certainly learned a lot of new things as a result of fandom (digital video, HTML/CSS, what Rodney looks like as a tiny dinosaur) that I would never otherwise have known. And it's challenged me to extend my analytical thinking into new areas.
But it hasn't changed who I am, because who I am is the reason I was drawn to fandom in the first place. I am a tremendous geek; I like thinking about things, I like talking in-depth with other people about texts and ideas and the creative process. I also like making things, and I like showing the things I make to other people. These are things that brought me to fandom, not things that fandom brought out in me - although, again, fandom has certainly given me supercool new venues in which to do these things and supercool new people with whom to share these things.
There are many people, mostly people I know from college, who haven't seen me in years and don't talk to me regularly and who therefore don't know the details of this stuff; they don't know much about what my life is like on a day-to-day basis. But I don't think that getting the details of my fannish life would shock them. The content might surprise them briefly, but I think they'd slot it all pretty quickly into their existing view of me, because it's just not that different: grapples with texts! likes shiny things! gets obsessive about stuff! can be terrifyingly detail-oriented about almost anything except housework!
Even the slashy stuff (because, to my great amusement, I have made a couple of pretty slashy vids, despite not identifying as A Slasher) wouldn't make anyone who knows me bat an eye; I mean, I'm queer, I read plenty of fiction by gay men, I do queer readings of texts in my professional work. So while some of my nonfannish friends might be curious about slash as a widespread phenomenon involving hetero women, my personal participation (such as it is) in slash fandom would be about 98% guaranteed to get a "yeah, you would, wouldn't you" rather than a "huh?"
The corollary question, of course, is: how well can people know me from reading my LJ?
My short answer is: dude, I have no idea.
There are hugely important aspects of who I am that just don't get that much airtime on LJ. Teaching is the biggest one; this is something I think about every day, it informs and determines most of my life, and I write about it occasionally here on LJ, but it's difficult to convey just how important a component of my identity it is. I don't write about teaching in much detail on LJ partly for reasons of privacy (my own, my students') but also because it's just... it's running in the background all the time. It's not just what I do or how I think; it's a huge part of how I approach the world, how I experience myself in relation to, you know, pretty much everything. And I know that occasionally this drives people on LJ crazy, because in certain situations I can't stop asking questions or asking other people to think through why they do what they do or to provide evidence for the claims they're trying to make. I can't always turn off the teacher mode and just shrug and say "hey, whatever, that's your deal, I'll be over here."
Politics is another one. I don't write about politics much in this LJ; I didn't write much about my union organizing, when I was doing it, in this LJ. Not because these things aren't important, but because their importance is largely internal. They're not things I write about; they're things I do. I don't as a rule talk politics with other people, perhaps because I came to my political awakening in a context where most people were basically on the same page, so I am still learning how to have civil disagreements about politics, and I don't like preaching to the choir. I do a lot of thinking and writing and a fair amount of writing letters, but not much public processing.
Anybody reading this probably knows about the vegetables, though. I think that covers a lot right there.