I'm surprised that BBC Sherlock fandom is still active.
WELL FRIEND, LET ME TELL YOU.
This response is going to be a little heavy, so content warning for mentions of sexual assault and victim blaming, I guess?
The BBC Sherlock fandom has reached the point at which the fandom is its own fandom, I think. Because the fans don't have much to speculate on and react to except each other, there's a fan wank bubble that's been growing larger as the fandom itself grows smaller. There are multiple locked comms here on Dreamwidth for hosting wank and reporting wank and discussing wank, and there's apparently all sorts of Livejournal-era silliness going on, like people breaking f-lock to post screencaps of posts and comments. I haven't been paying attention to any of that, but the wank on Tumblr has been so public and visible that it's difficult for even a low-level user like myself to escape it, even though I don't run in those circles.
The way I see it, the most epic wank began in 2014 with what people called "TJLC," an acronym for "the Johnlock conspiracy," which refers to the belief that the John/Sherlock ship is the official canonical endgame for the series and that the creators have been dropping not-so-subtle clues all along. (I apologize if I'm telling you something you already know, but just in case.) This seems like a perfectly innocuous fan theory, but it was partially formulated in response to the accusation that the show engages in queerbaiting, which was a fairly serious charge in the minds of a lot of fans. Instead of arguing over whether or not the ship was canon, the fans started arguing about issues surrounding representation in popular media. Things got really nasty, and totally normal people – people who said things like "maybe it's canon, maybe it's not, or maybe it's both at the same time" – were attacked for being homophobic, bad feminists, not media literate, etc. A lot of people, not knowing the history of the wank, got caught in the crossfire; and, instead of making the argument itself transparent, the loudest voices instead decided to wage a "why you're doing feminism wrong" education campaign, which obviously did not go over well.
Disputes over modes of symbolic representation devolved into an almost Orwellian policing of female sexuality, and by the beginning of 2015 kinkshaming had become the dominant mode of "discourse." This is where a lot of the "you can only talk about rape if you can provide receipts for your own personal rape" nonsense got started, although that sort of thing had of course been brewing in other fandoms off and on for years. This all came to a head at 221b Con, in which a group of trolls appeared at a panel for the specific purpose of derailing the conversation and making at least one of the panelists uncomfortable. Here is her account:
As you might imagine, this turned into a huge big thing, with a lot of people saying "never again."
Except this year it happened again. There's still a lot of dust in the air, so I don't want to link to anything specific, but the prevalence of kinkshaming has made a number of people feel as if they need to take a stand and provide ALL THE RECEIPTS for the sexual violence they have experienced in their lives. Because Tumblr is so public, many of these people have posted long "fandom meta" pieces on AO3 with graphic accounts of how they've been raped and how their experiences are related to the fic they read and write. The resulting conversation on Tumblr has now turned to delineating what should be a safe space, and for whom. This seems like a good conversation to have, and it most certainly would be were it not for all the victim blaming of newly vulnerable individuals.
Obviously I don't think any of this wank is healthy or conducive to any real discussion of social justice. Because flames spread so rapidly on Tumblr, what should have been a temporary bonfire lit by a small number of trolls expanded way out of proportion. The closest analogy I can make is what happened on Twitter with Gamergate, as the Sherlock wank is just as much of a non-conversation about "representation" as Gamergate was a non-conversation about "ethics in gaming journalism."
Fun times, bro. Fun times.
TL;DR: I think you got out of Tumblr while the getting out was good.
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Date: 2016-10-07 08:34 pm (UTC)WELL FRIEND, LET ME TELL YOU.
This response is going to be a little heavy, so content warning for mentions of sexual assault and victim blaming, I guess?
The BBC Sherlock fandom has reached the point at which the fandom is its own fandom, I think. Because the fans don't have much to speculate on and react to except each other, there's a fan wank bubble that's been growing larger as the fandom itself grows smaller. There are multiple locked comms here on Dreamwidth for hosting wank and reporting wank and discussing wank, and there's apparently all sorts of Livejournal-era silliness going on, like people breaking f-lock to post screencaps of posts and comments. I haven't been paying attention to any of that, but the wank on Tumblr has been so public and visible that it's difficult for even a low-level user like myself to escape it, even though I don't run in those circles.
The way I see it, the most epic wank began in 2014 with what people called "TJLC," an acronym for "the Johnlock conspiracy," which refers to the belief that the John/Sherlock ship is the official canonical endgame for the series and that the creators have been dropping not-so-subtle clues all along. (I apologize if I'm telling you something you already know, but just in case.) This seems like a perfectly innocuous fan theory, but it was partially formulated in response to the accusation that the show engages in queerbaiting, which was a fairly serious charge in the minds of a lot of fans. Instead of arguing over whether or not the ship was canon, the fans started arguing about issues surrounding representation in popular media. Things got really nasty, and totally normal people – people who said things like "maybe it's canon, maybe it's not, or maybe it's both at the same time" – were attacked for being homophobic, bad feminists, not media literate, etc. A lot of people, not knowing the history of the wank, got caught in the crossfire; and, instead of making the argument itself transparent, the loudest voices instead decided to wage a "why you're doing feminism wrong" education campaign, which obviously did not go over well.
Disputes over modes of symbolic representation devolved into an almost Orwellian policing of female sexuality, and by the beginning of 2015 kinkshaming had become the dominant mode of "discourse." This is where a lot of the "you can only talk about rape if you can provide receipts for your own personal rape" nonsense got started, although that sort of thing had of course been brewing in other fandoms off and on for years. This all came to a head at 221b Con, in which a group of trolls appeared at a panel for the specific purpose of derailing the conversation and making at least one of the panelists uncomfortable. Here is her account:
http://thegreenirene.tumblr.com/post/116696525144/what-happened-at-221b-con-2015-the-gender
As you might imagine, this turned into a huge big thing, with a lot of people saying "never again."
Except this year it happened again. There's still a lot of dust in the air, so I don't want to link to anything specific, but the prevalence of kinkshaming has made a number of people feel as if they need to take a stand and provide ALL THE RECEIPTS for the sexual violence they have experienced in their lives. Because Tumblr is so public, many of these people have posted long "fandom meta" pieces on AO3 with graphic accounts of how they've been raped and how their experiences are related to the fic they read and write. The resulting conversation on Tumblr has now turned to delineating what should be a safe space, and for whom. This seems like a good conversation to have, and it most certainly would be were it not for all the victim blaming of newly vulnerable individuals.
Obviously I don't think any of this wank is healthy or conducive to any real discussion of social justice. Because flames spread so rapidly on Tumblr, what should have been a temporary bonfire lit by a small number of trolls expanded way out of proportion. The closest analogy I can make is what happened on Twitter with Gamergate, as the Sherlock wank is just as much of a non-conversation about "representation" as Gamergate was a non-conversation about "ethics in gaming journalism."
Fun times, bro. Fun times.
TL;DR: I think you got out of Tumblr while the getting out was good.