On inclusion and exclusion in vidding fandom: personal reflections

[bop_radar]

I've been composing this post in my head for a long, long time. Months. But it's come to a head for several reasons. I've held back from making it because I thought it was just 'my' issue and because I have a great deal of love and respect for the Livejournal/VVC-centred vidding commmunity/fandom, both as a whole and the individuals who make it up

Comments

[obsessive24]

Thank you for making the post, and being brave enough to do so. Similarly with Laura's post, there are some things that I very much agree with and some that I don't agree with (and a lot more that I know I haven't thought about so I don't have an opinion on), but I'm not good for off-the-cuff reactions and it's going to take me a long while to synthesise my thoughts on this. It's definitely thought-provoking, though, which is appreciated.

[bop_radar]

Thanks. I've let my fears silence for me for too long.

[jagwriter78]

Here via your comment on laurashapiro's post.

I just spent 15 minutes reading your post and my mind is still reeling from it, but I have one important thing to ask because your post touched on so many things that I have been wondering about but was never brave enough to ask in public: will you keep on making such posts and if you do, can I friend you?

[bop_radar]

Haha, now that I've started, you probably won't be able to shut me up. *friends*

[bop_radar]

I blamed this feeling on myself for quite awhile, chalked it up to being intimidated and insecure,
*nods* So did I, just for even longer--I'm coming up for three years vidding and four-five watching vids. The thing is, those feelings never go away. If anything, they get worse if you let them grow.

I started to reply to your comment in chunks but I could seriously reply to every sentence with: ITA.

I thought the most controversial thing you said was that meta dense vids that demand intelligence and engagement are rare in the context of post about VVC. I may be off base here, but I always got the feeling that most people believe this is where those vids ARE (and thus that they rarely exist in other contexts).Good point. I agree that there is a myth about this within the fandom. In my experience, VVC vids tend to be ones that have a point, but only a transparent one (and, if I'm to let my inner snark out: only one). And look, I can see good reason for that in a con setting: there is no capacity for multiple watching, and a whole lot of

I completely agree with many of your points...

[sherrold]

But not this one.
There are some vids that are THE SHIT in their own fandoms: get pages and pages of comments, because they really capture that zeigeist and match the perfect song to the perfect ship, for instance. They may not even get a nod from the vidding community elite because either they don't know about them or they see them as being too .. I'm not even sure what the word is... but specific to that fandom at that place in time.For a vid to show at vividcon, someone has to show it. For Premieres, Club Vivid and Nearly New (and that's 7+ hours), the vidder submits it. For the other shows, people can recommend vids -- and generally I get an underwhelming amount of recs, so when I'm VJ'ing a show, I'm likely to go with the vids I know. (And yeah, I watch around, but it's a big internet out there

Re: I completely agree with many of your points...

[bop_radar]

Mmm, thank you for the comment! By 'get a nod' I didn't actually specifically mean VVC in this instance. I meant they don't get recced by members of 'vidding fandom' versus the vidders within a specific fandom. Also, I do have to say they may not want to be part of that wider vidding community or VVC. That's cool. It's just an observation that some vids do really well in a specific fandom and others do well in vidding fandom, and there seems to be a pretty strong divide between the two.

That said: thanks heaps for the encouragement to participate! It's kind of dizzy-making. As you can probably tell from this post, I'm moving out from under the shadowy illusion that only the 'in crowd' or the 'old school' can participate. The idea of me VJing... I mean, I've only ever showed three vids there! That seems like a big leap.

The main impediments are things like time and attention and inertia.
Ain't that true! For all parties.

[allzugern]

♥

[bop_radar]

:) thanks!

[marycrawford]

There's a lot to digest here, and I'm not sure yet how I feel on some points, but I have to leap on this:

I understand that most people in the community are in the US, but would it pay people to stop and check sometimes before assuming that? And stop and think about what that means.

THANK YOU. For me, US-centricity is is already an uncomfortable, frustrating and largely unacknowledged issue within the wider LJ-based media fandom, which I am not sure how to address -- being involved in fraught discussions and/or wank makes me lose sleep at night, so I tend to shut myself up a lot instead. And this general problem is made worse by the fact that VVC, as the central hub of this particular subset of vidding fandom, is physically based in the US, for all the reasons you name.

A small addendum to the flights issue is that it also really doesn't help that VVC is based in Chicago, which is a business flight destination primarily (at least, from the Netherlands, where I live). There are really good flight deals to be had now and then to

[jagwriter78]

Before I delve into my reply to you, let me just say, we both live on the same continent (waves to the Netherlands from Germany). What I want to say is that I never really thought of Chicago to be a problematic city until you just pointed out the business flight aspect. I never even considered that. Things must be different though in the Netherlands when it comes to flights though because here in Germany, if you are flying to a big tourist destination, flights are usually more expensive than to smaller, not so much know airports. Like flying into Washington DC is more expensive than flying into Baltimore or flying to any of the New York airports is more expensive than flying to of the surrounding airports. And don't even get me started on flights to Florida, the big tourist attraction. Flights to there are way more expensive than anywhere else on the East coast, most of the time even more expensive than flying to somewhere in the MidWest

[musesfool]

I can't speak for the concom or anyone else involved, but just generally speaking as someone who used to plan conferences for a living (in the US), conference room space in hotels is generally cheaper in August in most cities, and hotel room rates in Chicago are slightly cheaper than hotel rooms in New York or San Francisco - in New York, for example, room rates are lower January through August; September through December is high season, and the rates increase accordingly. (This year has been somewhat different, due to the economy, with rooms at usually expensive hotels falling below $200/night for the first time in many years, because occupancy was falling in the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009.) [/tangent]

[jagwriter78]

conference room space in hotels is generally cheaper in August in most cities

So you mean August is off-peak season for conference space? That makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up!