Re: Fun with Fandom

[rynling]

I appreciate the optismism of “build it and they will come” but i think the true frustration behind “fandoms are dying” is a multi layered problem
https://awabubbles.tumblr.com/post/676654678332915712/disdaidal-fandoms-are-dying-yeah-well-heres-a

“Make more content for your fandom” is a nice sentiment except there’s nowhere to post, no one to like it, and everybody is so goddamned scared of death threats and being cancelled they either don’t make the content to begin with or people don’t reblog/share because “what if the creator is secretly a bad person and i didnt know it and now other people think im a bad person.”

Also relevant. Especially because, as someone who appreciates older and more complicated characters, I happen to be "secretly a bad person." This is doubly relevant for zines, in which association with one "secretly a bad person" can completely derail the project through negative community feedback.

And I'm not saying that you shouldn't be careful about who you associate with online, and that some people aren't genuinely creepy and weird. In fact, there have been a handful of fandom projects I've avoided for exactly this reason. It's just that what should be a reasonable precaution for interacting with people online has turned into something truly toxic and unsustainable, and nobody is benefiting from this level of social surveillance.

In any case, I've been taking a social media break since the beginning of the year. I plan to ease myself back into the social media routine starting tomorrow, and I'm thinking about what small acts of kindness I can do to support the people I've worked with on zine projects.

Comments

[lassarina]

Yes. And it's not even just fandom; this attitude has driven me out of original fiction publishing too. And, well, existing in most "common" fandom spaces minus AO3 and here.

You want people on the playground, clean up the steaming radioactive shit you strewed everywhere to start with.

[rynling]

Now that I'm tracking more lit agents on Twitter, I think I'm starting to understand where this attitude is coming from, at least in traditional publishing.

Even indie baby agents apparently get hundreds of query letters a week. Fucking hundreds. Every week. Even if they've never made a sale before. I think maybe the intensity of the competition drives people a little crazy. If cutting other people down is the only way to feel like you have control over getting your work out of the slush pile, I guess that's what you do?

Interestingly enough, I recently read a culture essay...
https://www.thecut.com/2022/02/a-vibe-shift-is-coming.html
...that argues that we're arriving at a generational vibe shift. The essay itself probably isn't worth reading, but the author quotes someone who says that people are starting to retreat from big open corporate-owned public spaces into smaller and more closed venues. Which makes perfect sense to me.

It's a shame, though. Smaller and more closed venues are nice, but only if you're already on the inside.

[lassarina]

Yes. And meeting people, finding a way into those spaces, is so difficult when no one wants to be out there. Validly so! But it's been kind of fascinating watching people turn away from aggregated social media to personal blogs and the like. A little slower, a little less doom-scroll, but also harder to find the content you might be looking for.