*applauds* This is a good post and you should feel good.
Okay, I'll try to stop taking cheap shots at Tumblr.
No, don't stop. I've been there for nearly a year now, and it is so bad. On so many levels. It's like some sort of experiment in how to selectively breed for fans who can survive in environments hostile to communication, creation, and community.
I feel like a rat pushing a lever for pellets of happy fannish interaction there, and then I remember that experiment that showed rats don't act like drug addicts if you don't lock them in a horrible user interface box where they have no sources for stimulation but that lever. And then I get up and read a book. But ugh, fandom, why there?
I think it is part of the nature of fandom. We're not, by our nature, planners. We are distracted easily by the nearest, most interesting shiny thing. It's virtually impossible to see things in fandom planned one year out, much less five years out. How many WiPs have been lost to time?
I think you've got something there. Although the same could be said for tech startup culture, couldn't it? (Except that that has monetary rewards. But then, fan writers could become pro writers and get monetary rewards, and some do. Way more of them now that Kindle porn is a thing.)
Sure, organizing a lot of people takes a lot of work, but so does running a fic exchange.
And the really big exchanges, like Yuletide, also have their problems with burnout and retention and with having an internet dropped on their head every year for not doing the thing the way fandom wanted it done.
Another comparison might be cons - that's a thing requiring planning that fandom does seem to reliably do reasonably competently. And (as with vidding) there's a strong mentoring/apprenticeship tradition there that helps make new conrunners. Which is not currently happening with fannish software devs or sysadmins.
Actually, huh, the money part's probably quite a big thing. You need a certain level of financial security to do long range plans with other people and equipment that they'll depend on as well as you. And so much of fandom's young or in a low income or financially insecure demographic (including me.) And at the same time there's this cultural thing (partly the gift culture meme, but not only that) where we're above money and that people who do care about money are assholes and are not real fans, and in that environment only assholes like Laura Hale and Aja Romano have the nerve to monetise their fannish work, because there's not room to do it in a non-asshole way.
But that leaves a great big gap for outsiders to come in and sell our culture to us, which is permissible because they're not one of us, so they're allowed to be assholes and to make a profit or a living or to break even.
no subject
Okay, I'll try to stop taking cheap shots at Tumblr.
No, don't stop. I've been there for nearly a year now, and it is so bad. On so many levels. It's like some sort of experiment in how to selectively breed for fans who can survive in environments hostile to communication, creation, and community.
I feel like a rat pushing a lever for pellets of happy fannish interaction there, and then I remember that experiment that showed rats don't act like drug addicts if you don't lock them in a
horrible user interfacebox where they have no sources for stimulation but that lever. And then I get up and read a book. But ugh, fandom, why there?I think it is part of the nature of fandom. We're not, by our nature, planners. We are distracted easily by the nearest, most interesting shiny thing. It's virtually impossible to see things in fandom planned one year out, much less five years out. How many WiPs have been lost to time?
I think you've got something there. Although the same could be said for tech startup culture, couldn't it? (Except that that has monetary rewards. But then, fan writers could become pro writers and get monetary rewards, and some do. Way more of them now that Kindle porn is a thing.)
Sure, organizing a lot of people takes a lot of work, but so does running a fic exchange.
And the really big exchanges, like Yuletide, also have their problems with burnout and retention and with having an internet dropped on their head every year for not doing the thing the way fandom wanted it done.
Another comparison might be cons - that's a thing requiring planning that fandom does seem to reliably do reasonably competently. And (as with vidding) there's a strong mentoring/apprenticeship tradition there that helps make new conrunners. Which is not currently happening with fannish software devs or sysadmins.
Actually, huh, the money part's probably quite a big thing. You need a certain level of financial security to do long range plans with other people and equipment that they'll depend on as well as you. And so much of fandom's young or in a low income or financially insecure demographic (including me.) And at the same time there's this cultural thing (partly the gift culture meme, but not only that) where we're above money and that people who do care about money are assholes and are not real fans, and in that environment only assholes like Laura Hale and Aja Romano have the nerve to monetise their fannish work, because there's not room to do it in a non-asshole way.
But that leaves a great big gap for outsiders to come in and sell our culture to us, which is permissible because they're not one of us, so they're allowed to be assholes and to make a profit or a living or to break even.