![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Anonymity Within Fandom
Jun. 28th, 2017 11:28 amWhile I was in Tokyo I hung out with a friend who I met a good ten years ago in a semi-professional context and then stayed in touch with through Livejournal and Tumblr. She lives in Central Asia, and she was in Japan partially for business but also to meet up with a fandom friend. When she told me this, I was like, You know their name? And where they live? She was like, Of course, once you become a fandom mom everyone sort of already knows who you are anyway.
I think it's kind of cool how, once you reach a certain age in fandom, you stop caring so much about whether people can connect you to your real-life identity. To me, this actually seems like a much healthier social system than community-enforced anonymity. As someone whose job responsibilities include hiring both interns and salaried positions, I can say from firsthand experience that most potential employers are already overworked and aren't going to dig that deeply into your background as it exists as the result of a Google search; and, as someone who got balls-deep into the Gamergate nonsense a few summers ago, I can also say that anonymity isn't really going to protect you from the crazies on the internet. Real world action, whether it relates to social justice or literary and artistic movements, is based on real world communities, and anonymity within fandom precludes the possibility of such action among groups of people who are primarily female and/or minorities.
On the other hand, Super Mario Odyssey is giving me intense Peach/Bowser shipping feels, and I'm overwhelmed by the compulsion to write fic in which Peach, in full bridal gear, forces Bowser to strip until he's got nothing on except the white lace panties she's made him wear under his wedding suit.
They're both such awful pieces of shit, and I love them so much, and no one who knows me in real life can ever, ever find out about this.
I think it's kind of cool how, once you reach a certain age in fandom, you stop caring so much about whether people can connect you to your real-life identity. To me, this actually seems like a much healthier social system than community-enforced anonymity. As someone whose job responsibilities include hiring both interns and salaried positions, I can say from firsthand experience that most potential employers are already overworked and aren't going to dig that deeply into your background as it exists as the result of a Google search; and, as someone who got balls-deep into the Gamergate nonsense a few summers ago, I can also say that anonymity isn't really going to protect you from the crazies on the internet. Real world action, whether it relates to social justice or literary and artistic movements, is based on real world communities, and anonymity within fandom precludes the possibility of such action among groups of people who are primarily female and/or minorities.
On the other hand, Super Mario Odyssey is giving me intense Peach/Bowser shipping feels, and I'm overwhelmed by the compulsion to write fic in which Peach, in full bridal gear, forces Bowser to strip until he's got nothing on except the white lace panties she's made him wear under his wedding suit.
They're both such awful pieces of shit, and I love them so much, and no one who knows me in real life can ever, ever find out about this.
