If fandom were an office, I'd like to be in customer care
I'm not involved very much with fandom as such, so excuse me if all this has been already said a decade ago by someone far more intelligent and coherent than I could ever dream of being. But something about the way the recent Concrit/Reviews Discussion and its various spin-offs quickly turned into varieties of us-versus-them struck me from the beginning. I think I'm able to put my finger on it now.
Somewhere on my f-list, someone said the current discussion over fandom's dos and don'ts was an attempt to "codify behaviour and rules", a "struggle toward deciding what is acceptable behaviour". I find that an interesting observation because I think that yes, that strikes me as what part of the people involved are indeed trying to do. Except that implies there is a "we", that fandom is one united community instead of a multitude of hugely diverse circles that overlap here and there. How do you make one set of rules for a collection of groups, without exceptions? The US haven't managed that. Germany hasn't managed that, and we're way smaller.
How do you unite people from all over the world, with different cultural backgrounds, different interpretations of what is and isn't acceptable behavious, different personalities? And if, against all likelihood, you do manage to reach consent, who is going to enforce those rules? Because like with good politicians, anyone who volunteers for the job is probably the last person you actually want to choose.
Or, to strain the office metaphor some more: to some people, critical reviewers will be that sexy manager who'll take you out for a ride in their Ferrari to show you the interesting parts of town. To others, they'll be that unwashed guy from accounting who'll treat their foot fungus on the caféteria table whilst telling you all about the sticky stuff their haemorrhoids have been leaking lately. Are you going to visit accounting any time soon? Probably not. Are you going to kick fungus-guy out of your office should he start snooping around in there? Hell yeah you are, though you can do it as politely as you like.
But are you going to shun accounting? Are you going to have people patrolling the corridors evicting everyone with haemorrhoids? I mean, seriously?
Have you given up on the metaphor yet? I hope you have, because I'm starting to confuse myself here. ;)
Thing is, there will be no set of rules that's acceptable to everyone. Unless you're going to do a poll, go with the majority vote and kick the minority into compliance (and again, who's going to be arrogant enough to volunteer for that?), there will be no way to resolve anything and not have this discussion pop up again and again and again and again to the point where even fandom_wank is bored to tears (it would seem we're there). Evidently, we can be civilised and agree to disagree (as seen several times in varoius journals), so why oh why do we need to keep discussing this?
Here's a suggestion: Stay away from accounting, even if it means closing your eyes, slapping your hands over your ears and chanting LALALALALA to get to your office. If you do decide to go in there, don't complain if you hear something you don't want to know. And if you're from accounting, keep to your own office and don't send nasty emails to the other clerks with a cc to everyone. THESE ARE MY RULES! EVERYONE, OBEY THEM!
Somewhere on my f-list, someone said the current discussion over fandom's dos and don'ts was an attempt to "codify behaviour and rules", a "struggle toward deciding what is acceptable behaviour". I find that an interesting observation because I think that yes, that strikes me as what part of the people involved are indeed trying to do. Except that implies there is a "we", that fandom is one united community instead of a multitude of hugely diverse circles that overlap here and there. How do you make one set of rules for a collection of groups, without exceptions? The US haven't managed that. Germany hasn't managed that, and we're way smaller.
How do you unite people from all over the world, with different cultural backgrounds, different interpretations of what is and isn't acceptable behavious, different personalities? And if, against all likelihood, you do manage to reach consent, who is going to enforce those rules? Because like with good politicians, anyone who volunteers for the job is probably the last person you actually want to choose.
Or, to strain the office metaphor some more: to some people, critical reviewers will be that sexy manager who'll take you out for a ride in their Ferrari to show you the interesting parts of town. To others, they'll be that unwashed guy from accounting who'll treat their foot fungus on the caféteria table whilst telling you all about the sticky stuff their haemorrhoids have been leaking lately. Are you going to visit accounting any time soon? Probably not. Are you going to kick fungus-guy out of your office should he start snooping around in there? Hell yeah you are, though you can do it as politely as you like.
But are you going to shun accounting? Are you going to have people patrolling the corridors evicting everyone with haemorrhoids? I mean, seriously?
Have you given up on the metaphor yet? I hope you have, because I'm starting to confuse myself here. ;)
Thing is, there will be no set of rules that's acceptable to everyone. Unless you're going to do a poll, go with the majority vote and kick the minority into compliance (and again, who's going to be arrogant enough to volunteer for that?), there will be no way to resolve anything and not have this discussion pop up again and again and again and again to the point where even fandom_wank is bored to tears (it would seem we're there). Evidently, we can be civilised and agree to disagree (as seen several times in varoius journals), so why oh why do we need to keep discussing this?
Here's a suggestion: Stay away from accounting, even if it means closing your eyes, slapping your hands over your ears and chanting LALALALALA to get to your office. If you do decide to go in there, don't complain if you hear something you don't want to know. And if you're from accounting, keep to your own office and don't send nasty emails to the other clerks with a cc to everyone. THESE ARE MY RULES! EVERYONE, OBEY THEM!