Worldcon Panels: Fandom Online
Fandom Online: Is the Argument Over? What Was (Is?) the Argument About?
Many SF fans are part of the online community too. Yet we seem to keep emphasising opposition rather than overlap. Are some of us always looking for a fight or is there still real cause for concern?
Claire Brialey, Chris Garcia (m), Teresa Nielsen Hayden, John Scalzi
Chris Garcia is the moderator, and hilariously needs no microphone as he reads the panel description.
TNH says the big question is if a certain person (whom I will not name) is at this convention or not.
TNH introduces herself as a fan, so does Scalzi. Chris writes a fanzine.
Brialey is Ms. Not-Appearing-On-This-Panel
TNH says this panel is about an argument that broke out at the Reno ...Corflu? No idea what correction fluid has to do with this... Apparently this guy was asking whether online fans were really even fans at all, and stuff like that.
She pauses, and Scalzi announces “She's editing!”
TNH says that when you come into fandom you have all this energy which you put into forming bonds and if you say that people aren't “real” fans for this kind of reason, you're sucking all the energy out of them.
Scalzi compares it to hipster exclusions, that if you weren't into it when or because of this limited set of things then you're no longer legit. He says Fandom comes from this mimeographed past, years and years of traditions that are changing, and that this is like the Protestant Reformation. TNH makes an argument that online fandom is true fandom, based entirely on the text of “The Enchanted Duplicator,” which has a theme that to do the perfect fanzine it gets into the varieties of repro technology, and they wind up with the magic mimeograph and what makes it work is that it has the true fan at the handle. Whatever it takes to get us together and conduct this conversation is what makes Fandom.
Scalzi asks is fandom the things we are or the things we do?
Garcia says he's only ever been in the e-era, and with this generation that's completely (or primarily) electronic, it's not a problem.
Cory Doctorow (in the audience) is called on, and he wants to expand on Scalzi's analogy, and it was lost to me. No idea what they're talking about. Something about Radio killed Vaudeville? Fuck if I know.
Scalzi points out that the question is no longer one of access, but one of interest.
TNH tells a story about her and PNH's old fanzine, and how there was a mailing list on the wall, and how that lends a personal immediacy to it.
Scalzi claims himself as an electronic native, and he does get a paper fanzine mailed to him, and to him it's literally a message in a bottle, from a different way of thinking and presentation, and part of him loves that and he wonders how long something like that can last, and he wonders if fandom is inherently conservative and concerned about the repercussions of change.
TNH says that for a lot of people, Fandom feels like the first place that we spoke to someone of our own species. That it was the first time we felt like we were somewhere with people moving at normal speed.
Audience asks why adding the internet is any different than what she did with folks on the floor of her living room in high school recording a Star Trek “radio show”.
Garcia says that the vocabulary has changed, and not just that, but that blog posts aren't fanzine articles, and they don't feel like it, but they bring in blogging vocab and memes and such.
TNH says old fans will come by displays and smell mimeographs. That there's a lot of nostalgia out there. Garcia tells a story about an electro-stenciller smelling like it was on fire.
Scalzi has a terrible Eric Cartman impersonation. Sorry, John.
TNH says she's mindful that back before there was internet, flame wars took place, but were unbelievably painful because they could last years. The worst of those that ever took place in fandom happened when people who'd been assuming they knew what each other were talking about figured out what each other were actually saying. Garcia's afraid someone's going to have an uber-Racefail post that's going to just transform the fandom, but he realizes that it can't happen, because the immediacy of exchange leads to resolution rather than soaking in resentment. TNH thinks there is something to that.
Ulrika brings up “time-binding” and how fandom keeps track of what fandom does. One of the things that's changed is that the online fandom doesn't have that shared history and shared knowledge, and Scalzi agrees, and points out that these things are decaying. TNH disagrees. When she was a young fan, unless you happened to know someone with a collection of fanzines, you were excluded and just didn't know what was going on, and that there was social drift.
Garcia asks if any of our fanac is going to be accessible in the future. How much of our Facebook activity is searchable or archiveable.
Cory says that the internet's singular characteristic is that it makes it easier for people to get together, and that the internet has reduced the adversity against the world which reduces the impetus to bond and form communities.
TNH says that fanfic at one point meant fiction about fans! Who knew!
Discussion about fan schisms, Scalzi mentions when he was nominated as fan writer for the first time, and that he was fortunate enough to look and see what he's become part of and recognize the continuity he'd entered.
More hipster humor. No real way to relate that.
What's interesting to me is that I came away from this panel feeling that all of the panelists were all “Duh, of course there's no argument, online is where fandom happens, now,” where another person I know who attended this panel came away with all the nostalgia stuff as primary. Weird.
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Many SF fans are part of the online community too. Yet we seem to keep emphasising opposition rather than overlap. Are some of us always looking for a fight or is there still real cause for concern?
Claire Brialey, Chris Garcia (m), Teresa Nielsen Hayden, John Scalzi
Chris Garcia is the moderator, and hilariously needs no microphone as he reads the panel description.
TNH says the big question is if a certain person (whom I will not name) is at this convention or not.
TNH introduces herself as a fan, so does Scalzi. Chris writes a fanzine.
Brialey is Ms. Not-Appearing-On-This-Panel
TNH says this panel is about an argument that broke out at the Reno ...Corflu? No idea what correction fluid has to do with this... Apparently this guy was asking whether online fans were really even fans at all, and stuff like that.
She pauses, and Scalzi announces “She's editing!”
TNH says that when you come into fandom you have all this energy which you put into forming bonds and if you say that people aren't “real” fans for this kind of reason, you're sucking all the energy out of them.
Scalzi compares it to hipster exclusions, that if you weren't into it when or because of this limited set of things then you're no longer legit. He says Fandom comes from this mimeographed past, years and years of traditions that are changing, and that this is like the Protestant Reformation. TNH makes an argument that online fandom is true fandom, based entirely on the text of “The Enchanted Duplicator,” which has a theme that to do the perfect fanzine it gets into the varieties of repro technology, and they wind up with the magic mimeograph and what makes it work is that it has the true fan at the handle. Whatever it takes to get us together and conduct this conversation is what makes Fandom.
Scalzi asks is fandom the things we are or the things we do?
Garcia says he's only ever been in the e-era, and with this generation that's completely (or primarily) electronic, it's not a problem.
Cory Doctorow (in the audience) is called on, and he wants to expand on Scalzi's analogy, and it was lost to me. No idea what they're talking about. Something about Radio killed Vaudeville? Fuck if I know.
Scalzi points out that the question is no longer one of access, but one of interest.
TNH tells a story about her and PNH's old fanzine, and how there was a mailing list on the wall, and how that lends a personal immediacy to it.
Scalzi claims himself as an electronic native, and he does get a paper fanzine mailed to him, and to him it's literally a message in a bottle, from a different way of thinking and presentation, and part of him loves that and he wonders how long something like that can last, and he wonders if fandom is inherently conservative and concerned about the repercussions of change.
TNH says that for a lot of people, Fandom feels like the first place that we spoke to someone of our own species. That it was the first time we felt like we were somewhere with people moving at normal speed.
Audience asks why adding the internet is any different than what she did with folks on the floor of her living room in high school recording a Star Trek “radio show”.
Garcia says that the vocabulary has changed, and not just that, but that blog posts aren't fanzine articles, and they don't feel like it, but they bring in blogging vocab and memes and such.
TNH says old fans will come by displays and smell mimeographs. That there's a lot of nostalgia out there. Garcia tells a story about an electro-stenciller smelling like it was on fire.
Scalzi has a terrible Eric Cartman impersonation. Sorry, John.
TNH says she's mindful that back before there was internet, flame wars took place, but were unbelievably painful because they could last years. The worst of those that ever took place in fandom happened when people who'd been assuming they knew what each other were talking about figured out what each other were actually saying. Garcia's afraid someone's going to have an uber-Racefail post that's going to just transform the fandom, but he realizes that it can't happen, because the immediacy of exchange leads to resolution rather than soaking in resentment. TNH thinks there is something to that.
Ulrika brings up “time-binding” and how fandom keeps track of what fandom does. One of the things that's changed is that the online fandom doesn't have that shared history and shared knowledge, and Scalzi agrees, and points out that these things are decaying. TNH disagrees. When she was a young fan, unless you happened to know someone with a collection of fanzines, you were excluded and just didn't know what was going on, and that there was social drift.
Garcia asks if any of our fanac is going to be accessible in the future. How much of our Facebook activity is searchable or archiveable.
Cory says that the internet's singular characteristic is that it makes it easier for people to get together, and that the internet has reduced the adversity against the world which reduces the impetus to bond and form communities.
TNH says that fanfic at one point meant fiction about fans! Who knew!
Discussion about fan schisms, Scalzi mentions when he was nominated as fan writer for the first time, and that he was fortunate enough to look and see what he's become part of and recognize the continuity he'd entered.
More hipster humor. No real way to relate that.
What's interesting to me is that I came away from this panel feeling that all of the panelists were all “Duh, of course there's no argument, online is where fandom happens, now,” where another person I know who attended this panel came away with all the nostalgia stuff as primary. Weird.
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