Fandom, Social Networking, and More Frequent LJ Posts
I've been thinking about social networks and fandom for a while, specifically since LJ introduced the crosspost to Facebook/Twitter feature and everyone freaked out. A lot of people had theories/discussions about that. Here's mine: There are basically two uses for the internet. One is to talk to people you already know. The other is to find things that have been posted and post things to be found. The tension for fandom is that a large portion of fandom wants something in between: they want to find things that have been posted and post things to be found, but only within a specific network of people who are part of the community - a broader expansion of people you already know. But the internet doesn't work like that.
A lot of fandom is still invested in keeping fandom a secret from the people we're fannish about, but in a world where the existence of Wincest is canon on Supernatural and Pete Wentz tells people.com about his mom getting fan fic about him in her RSS feeds, that ship has sailed, circumnavigated the globe, and sailed again. I'm not advocating telling them about it - I still think that's incredibly rude - but I don't think hiding our existence is a viable strategy. I don't even hide it from people I know. My Facebook page says "fangirl" in the about me section and the website section links back here. My LiveJournal userinfo links back to Facebook. I don't generally bring it up in conversation, but I'm not hiding it either. Brad will often casually mention it to people I've just met, and that's made me more comfortable about talking about fannish things in non-fannish spaces. At a family dinner, I had a whole conversation with my mother about authors I refuse to read because they're anti-fan fic. I want to be clear: I am not impugning anyone else's choices here. People have their own reasons for not doing what I do, for keeping even their fannish spaces locked down, and I respect their right to those choices. (Even if I, as a reader, resent the hell out of friends-locked fic.) Everyone has different life/professional/family situations. The fact that we don't all make the same choices makes this a tough world to navigate. When friends gave me an iPod for Christmas/my birthday, I thanked them by name on Facebook and then couldn't here because all four of them keep those identities extremely separate, and I'm trying to respect that.
The thing is that I love social networking. I originally joined Facebook and MySpace because my step-grandmother's health was declining and I wanted to have an independent relationship with my step-cousins. (Years later, she's doing great.) MySpace (then) and Facebook (now) gave me a low pressure, low effort way to do that. (We may be cousins, but I'm three years older than the oldest and thirteen or fourteen years older than the youngest, and as much as I love them, I don't seem to have much in common with any of them.) Now it's expanded beyond them; I also get to see what's up with people from high school, college, and previous jobs who I would never stay in touch with otherwise - and I love that. I love knowing about other people's lives. I love knowing other people's stories. I never want to pry and make people uncomfortable, so I don't ask about people's lives very often, and this way I don't have to. As for me, I tend to use Facebook for more real life stuff (this sometimes overlaps with Twitter), but I'm still me, and it does still have a fannish bent - many of my status updates/link posts are about Empires, movies, or books.
And then there's Twitter. I adore Twitter. I follow very few people, but I love hearing what's up with them and I love Twitter for how I use it. eleanor_lavish made a post (friends-locked) about how she misses the days when people made lots of LJ posts. I've never been that person. For me, this is a place to say stuff, and I try to make that coherent and meaningful. I don't feel like that about Twitter. Twitter is a seemingly although not actually ephemeral medium (I use Tweetake every once in a while to download my tweets so I can pull out fic and plot bunnies). More importantly, you only get 140 characters. That's very low pressure, and it means that I don't feel like I'm taking time and energy away from other writing to post to Twitter. (Let me take a moment out of this post to say you should feel free to unfollow me/skip what I'm saying at any time. I talk a lot on Twitter, and I understand if that's not your thing. Brad and I have an arrangement where we follow each other but he ignores my fic writing and I ignore his hockey game live tweeting.)
The one fannish social networking/bloggish space I haven't (yet?) gotten into is Tumblr. I'm a word person, and from what I can see, Tumblr seems to be more about media.
And then there's email. I think one effect of all this social networking is that emailing someone new seems like a big deal. It's not how we communicate anymore. But then there are my friends with whom my fannish conversations take place only on email.
eleanor_lavish talked about missing people posting things they've found with commentary, but sometimes I wonder, what's the point? If I email about how Breezy is definitely our kind of woman, my friends will talk to me about it. But I don't know that anyone would if I posted it here. Because that's the other half of posting to LJ. As much as I love it for the written equivalent of hearing myself talk, I also love it for having conversations with people - and for reading the conversations other people are having with each other. I read way more things (fic and otherwise) than I comment on, and I'm sure that's true for everyone else too, which means you might read this without ever telling me you did. For larger posts, that doesn't bother me, but why bother making a lot of one-off fannish posts if they're not going to be a place for conversation? I can send an email off to people I know might care - and might talk about it - just as easily (or perhaps even easier). I've been trying all week to figure out how to say that without being whiny and sounding like I'm asking for validation, but there isn't one because I am asking for validation. I don't want to go through the effort of making LJ posts about things I found enjoyable if they're not going to go somewhere. Otherwise, I can just quietly enjoy it on my own or in those more private fannish spaces.
When when I talk about not being bothered by no one leaving feedback on things I've written, people have asked if I post to communities, and I mostly don't. I don't even know where to post for bandom, and I've been in that fandom for two years. I'm also wary of expanding my fannish reach because of a lot of the things I hear about fandom from people who are deeper in. (I'll save the rant about how we are a community of women and hating other women is not okay for another day.)
But even with all that, I know what eleanor_lavish means. On days when I'm busy, my friends list, small as it is, seems overwhelming, but on weekends I refresh and refresh and refresh and wish there were more going on. I have recently become more likely to make small, one-off posts about something I just found. (It's not really a joke when I say I'm always two to three years behind the rest of fandom. I should have all my fic uploaded to AO3 by 2015 or so.) If I did more of that, if I posted here with my favorite picture of the day (not every day, but whenever there's one I love) with commentary, if I posted small plot bunny of the day posts instead of saving them all up for one giant post, would you read them and join in the conversation or would it be too much clutter on your friends list?
TL;DR version:
A lot of fandom is still invested in keeping fandom a secret from the people we're fannish about, but in a world where the existence of Wincest is canon on Supernatural and Pete Wentz tells people.com about his mom getting fan fic about him in her RSS feeds, that ship has sailed, circumnavigated the globe, and sailed again. I'm not advocating telling them about it - I still think that's incredibly rude - but I don't think hiding our existence is a viable strategy. I don't even hide it from people I know. My Facebook page says "fangirl" in the about me section and the website section links back here. My LiveJournal userinfo links back to Facebook. I don't generally bring it up in conversation, but I'm not hiding it either. Brad will often casually mention it to people I've just met, and that's made me more comfortable about talking about fannish things in non-fannish spaces. At a family dinner, I had a whole conversation with my mother about authors I refuse to read because they're anti-fan fic. I want to be clear: I am not impugning anyone else's choices here. People have their own reasons for not doing what I do, for keeping even their fannish spaces locked down, and I respect their right to those choices. (Even if I, as a reader, resent the hell out of friends-locked fic.) Everyone has different life/professional/family situations. The fact that we don't all make the same choices makes this a tough world to navigate. When friends gave me an iPod for Christmas/my birthday, I thanked them by name on Facebook and then couldn't here because all four of them keep those identities extremely separate, and I'm trying to respect that.
The thing is that I love social networking. I originally joined Facebook and MySpace because my step-grandmother's health was declining and I wanted to have an independent relationship with my step-cousins. (Years later, she's doing great.) MySpace (then) and Facebook (now) gave me a low pressure, low effort way to do that. (We may be cousins, but I'm three years older than the oldest and thirteen or fourteen years older than the youngest, and as much as I love them, I don't seem to have much in common with any of them.) Now it's expanded beyond them; I also get to see what's up with people from high school, college, and previous jobs who I would never stay in touch with otherwise - and I love that. I love knowing about other people's lives. I love knowing other people's stories. I never want to pry and make people uncomfortable, so I don't ask about people's lives very often, and this way I don't have to. As for me, I tend to use Facebook for more real life stuff (this sometimes overlaps with Twitter), but I'm still me, and it does still have a fannish bent - many of my status updates/link posts are about Empires, movies, or books.
And then there's Twitter. I adore Twitter. I follow very few people, but I love hearing what's up with them and I love Twitter for how I use it. eleanor_lavish made a post (friends-locked) about how she misses the days when people made lots of LJ posts. I've never been that person. For me, this is a place to say stuff, and I try to make that coherent and meaningful. I don't feel like that about Twitter. Twitter is a seemingly although not actually ephemeral medium (I use Tweetake every once in a while to download my tweets so I can pull out fic and plot bunnies). More importantly, you only get 140 characters. That's very low pressure, and it means that I don't feel like I'm taking time and energy away from other writing to post to Twitter. (Let me take a moment out of this post to say you should feel free to unfollow me/skip what I'm saying at any time. I talk a lot on Twitter, and I understand if that's not your thing. Brad and I have an arrangement where we follow each other but he ignores my fic writing and I ignore his hockey game live tweeting.)
The one fannish social networking/bloggish space I haven't (yet?) gotten into is Tumblr. I'm a word person, and from what I can see, Tumblr seems to be more about media.
And then there's email. I think one effect of all this social networking is that emailing someone new seems like a big deal. It's not how we communicate anymore. But then there are my friends with whom my fannish conversations take place only on email.
eleanor_lavish talked about missing people posting things they've found with commentary, but sometimes I wonder, what's the point? If I email about how Breezy is definitely our kind of woman, my friends will talk to me about it. But I don't know that anyone would if I posted it here. Because that's the other half of posting to LJ. As much as I love it for the written equivalent of hearing myself talk, I also love it for having conversations with people - and for reading the conversations other people are having with each other. I read way more things (fic and otherwise) than I comment on, and I'm sure that's true for everyone else too, which means you might read this without ever telling me you did. For larger posts, that doesn't bother me, but why bother making a lot of one-off fannish posts if they're not going to be a place for conversation? I can send an email off to people I know might care - and might talk about it - just as easily (or perhaps even easier). I've been trying all week to figure out how to say that without being whiny and sounding like I'm asking for validation, but there isn't one because I am asking for validation. I don't want to go through the effort of making LJ posts about things I found enjoyable if they're not going to go somewhere. Otherwise, I can just quietly enjoy it on my own or in those more private fannish spaces.
When when I talk about not being bothered by no one leaving feedback on things I've written, people have asked if I post to communities, and I mostly don't. I don't even know where to post for bandom, and I've been in that fandom for two years. I'm also wary of expanding my fannish reach because of a lot of the things I hear about fandom from people who are deeper in. (I'll save the rant about how we are a community of women and hating other women is not okay for another day.)
But even with all that, I know what eleanor_lavish means. On days when I'm busy, my friends list, small as it is, seems overwhelming, but on weekends I refresh and refresh and refresh and wish there were more going on. I have recently become more likely to make small, one-off posts about something I just found. (It's not really a joke when I say I'm always two to three years behind the rest of fandom. I should have all my fic uploaded to AO3 by 2015 or so.) If I did more of that, if I posted here with my favorite picture of the day (not every day, but whenever there's one I love) with commentary, if I posted small plot bunny of the day posts instead of saving them all up for one giant post, would you read them and join in the conversation or would it be too much clutter on your friends list?
TL;DR version:
- I love social networking. You should be friends with me on Facebook. (I only ask that you let me know who you are if I don't already know your real name.) You can also follow me on Twitter.
- Feel free to unfriend/unfollow me at any time.
- I love email. You can send me some even if we don't know each other that well. You should also feel free to comment here, at any time. If you find an older post and want to comment, I have no problem with that. Talking about fannish things is my favorite thing in the world.
- I will absolutely and completely respect your boundaries around keeping your identities separate.
- I might post here more often, and I am open to suggestions as to communities I should be posting to.