Being in fandom in public

[thedeadparrot]

Fandom is something we do outside, out in the open, where anyone can see us. It hasn't always been this way, of course, but that's pretty irrelevant because we are now.

I found fandom through a friend of a friend, but not through 'zines. I was a lurker in those days, hunting through Geocities archives with shitty design and bad organization and always being too afraid to e-mail any authors my feedback. I remember the mailing lists, which also gave an illusion of privacy, an extra hoop to jump through, a way to prevent people from getting in when they didn't want to. I remember when you had to send an e-mail to certain archives to prove you were of legal age in order to read the porny fic. I remember the first move to LJ.

I think in some ways, fandom has always been feeling this tension between becoming more public or trying to be less public. The lines between creator and fan have been coming down especially fast now that we have things like tumblr and twitter giving us access to celebrities. And it doesn't help that tags get aggregated outside our own semi-walled journals and communities, making it even easier to stumble across each other in new and interesting ways.

People are able to find us. I don't think we'll ever be able to go backwards, to go less public, less open. Being mocked in public is a blip. (Yes, there has been a blowup in the TSN community over this, unsurprisingly.¹) Having jokes about it on SPN is a blip. Jokes at our expense are a blip. Even Strikethrough, that wonderfully epic shitshow, came and went fairly quickly.

I guess this counts as fannish history now, as it happened five years ago now (omg!), but the reason why AO3 even exists is because fandom wanted to learn how to control its own image in public, wanted to stop hiding to some degree. This isn't to say that you can't or shouldn't if you're more comfortable that way. If the OTW were that dogmatic about their views, they wouldn't give people the option to lock their fic. But the AO3 is there to be seen, to be public. The OTW does have a public relations arm. They helped Lev Grossman with his article about fanfic. They do legal advocacy for vidders. Fandom is public. It's out in the open. It lets the lurkers see us. It lets the gawkers (pun intended) see us too. There are prices we pay for that openness, but I think it's worth paying.

At this point, I don't think there's any point in trying to force the genie back into the bottle when it comes to slash fic. And to be honest, I think if we start shutting things down, if we start forcing the lurkers to stop lurker fandom will become a much smaller, much more insular place. I don't want that for us. I don't want a return of the password-protected archives. I don't want all our fic disappeared until someone can prove that their intentions are good.

Fandom means too much to me. Even though my lurker days are long since past, I remember what it was like on the outside, looking in. I don't want to take that away from anyone else.


¹ For the people who need the background: Gawker wrote an article about Mark/Eduardo and I won't link it because they don't deserve the page hits. TSN fandom is in total meltdown mode right now, not just because of the article, but because of some other stuff that is just so stupid, I won't even dignify it with a full explanation.

Comments

[the_oscar_cat]

i kinda wish the genie was back in the bottle...

but... we are weird people doing weird shit on the internet! We write (often) dirty stories about fiction and non-fiction people. Non fandom people are going to think that is weird! (Or think that they *should think* that is weird!)

but... we are not hurting anyone (apart from the idiots who bring nsfw manips to show fucking actors! or the idiot fans who threaten to sue other fans during giant wanks etc but we tend to shun people for being utter jerks. Well that and set the mice on them to point and laugh i guess.)

i feel like i should be amazed that a GOSSIP site feels it has any right to point at people a) making shit up and b)writing about sex that might or might not be happening (in our minds if nowhere else!)

but hey it's the same here in the uk where an actor can be on graham norton's chat show with the ever-present threat that he will show them something embarassing a fan did (as if that's not his audience??)

but anyway i ramble. i'm sorry that TSN fans have found themselves mocked. :(

[thedeadparrot]

Yeah, I've been trying to bring my thoughts together coherently, and this was mostly a ramble in and of itself.

I would say that I'm particularly bothered by the article and its mockery, but I'm not. It's a fairly typical 'hur hur slash fanfic writers are weird' article, and I've seen enough of them (or enough comments along those lines) that it just sort of rolls off my back now, you know? Then again, I wasn't the target of any of these articles, so what do I know.

I'm definitely not sure I approve of this latest thing where talk show hosts try to embarrass guests by making them read fanfic right now, but I don't think we can do a whole lot about it besides keep doing what we do.

We're in public. That's something we have to deal with.

[marina]

I'm not in TSN, and I've seen some of the hurt feelings and drama that's been going on (here and on Tumblr) and I totally get that it sucks to have your fandom work mocked like that. But I completely agree with you that fandom is more public now (by virtue of being on the internet longer, by virtue of becoming more mainstream the bigger it gets) and I would absolutely not have it any other way.

I love fandom, I love what we all do here, I want it to be public and acceptable and I want things to eventually get to a point where no one has to hide their fic or their vids or graphics for fear of being thought of as weird. I know that day will come in a long, long time, if ever, and everyone should be allowed to participate in fandom in locked or unlocked ways as suits their circumstances and comfort level, but ultimately I want to strive (as the OTW does) for a world where fandom is public and gets to speak for itself and define itself in the public's mind.

[thedeadparrot]

Yeah, that's how I feel, mostly! It's not acceptable, and it might not become acceptable in my lifetime, but I'm kind of sick of panicking when people look at us funny. Fuck 'em, is all I'm saying.

[zulu]

I read that article, and it seemed pretty clueless, but then, most mainstream articles about fandom do...makes me wonder how other groups gnash their teeth when they get written about, like...white-water rafters, or fantasy football people, or whomever. That guy clearly didn't know the difference from RPF and TSN fandom, you know? Who's he anyway, was my question.

[thedeadparrot]

Yeah, I bet they get things wrong about everything all the time. I'm not particularly upset about the actual article, but I am a little worried about fandom's reaction to it? And the subsequent clusterfuck?

I don't know if it's just because none of these articles have ever mentioned anything I've ever done, but I feel like fandom's reaction has been far more intense than I was expecting. It's shutting down tight, and while this doesn't bother me as much because I've always been on the periphery and I have an AO3 account, it's still hard to see people so upset by it.

I guess this is my statement of purpose that my fic is going to remain unlocked until I finally decide to troll all of fandom and delete everything I have ever done ever. HA.

[zulu]

Ah, I see--everyone's panicking! I wasn't sure what the furor was about exactly, I thought maybe they were angry at the mischaracterization of their work. The locking-everything response is pretty far from my own personal reaction that I didn't even think of it. You're right, we're out there, it's a bit late for anything but putting on our own spin.

[flourish]

I think that if I had never been in a situation to explain fandom to someone external (and if I had never been mocked for it!) I would probably have the same feelings as TSN fandom is having. I'm pretty sure that people who were on the vanguard of the publicity thing (those of us who ran Harry Potter archives, cough cough) have different feelings/expectations than the people who have been dragged into it kicking and screaming.

[zulu]

Right! My whole family knows about my fannishness, and in fact two of three siblings are fannish, as is my wife, so...I'm probably very well situated not to panic when people talk about fannishness in an everyday context. But my way of being is certainly not everyone's.

[flourish]

In retrospect, I've often wondered whether the thing that REALLY started pulling fandom into the limelight was when Warner Brothers tried to shut down a bunch of Harry Potter fansites. Slash was hosted on some of them, and yet they were run by young teens, so people took the "screw you Warner Brothers, we're going to the press!" strategy. Which definitely meant that Harry Potter fandom from the very beginning was more positively inclined towards press. (The incident with WB happened in either 2000 or 2001, I can't remember, so we're talking quite a long time ago - the kind of thing which, at the very beginning of a fandom, can really change its character, even if later entry people don't remember it.)

In fact this whole thing is making me flash back to an article in the Sacramento Bee which featured a picture of me wearing pigtails and a Harry Potter hat, taken from above, intended to make me look about 8 years old, about how fandom was a labor of love.