(no subject)

[anghraine]

I've been thinking a bit about modern fandom, and one of the things that's struck me is how much the whole purpose of being in fandom IME seems kind of out of sync with where it seems to be going? There's so much conscious cultivation of fandom personas and backlash against "cringe" and it's odd. I know people have always made attempts to cozy up to BNFs and gain the appearance of above-it-all coolness, but it always seems such a ridiculous thing in fandom spaces in particular, which were kind of inherently cringe for a long time.

I don't exclude myself at all from this, btw. I use fandom to babble about the things that the people in my life find boring or pointless or embarrassing. One of the things that makes Tumblr hard to quit is that people will engage with me over almost anything where virtually every other site but AO3 is like screaming into a vacuum. Most of my (tiny) number of Twitter followers never interact in any way and I don't know what they're around for. People only occasionally say anything on Dreamwidth or Wordpress (love them, but it is what it is) or interact on PF (when it's operational). But Tumblr is like ... I've picked up what followers I have purely through rambling about things most people find dull or embarrassing. So the really self-conscious cultivation of a fannish persona with the active goal of gaining a following is ... both weird and very un-fun from my perspective.

IDK, this isn't going anywhere. I'm just really weirded out by how much deliberation and self-consciousness I see in fandom atm. 

Comments

[redthedragon]

Honestly I'm completely with you. I don't really understand persona cultivation, and I certainly don't think it sounds like anything I'd want to do in pretty much any way.

I also hate how much of fandom seems to love like, viciously hating on parts of their fandom or canon that aren't cool, just because that sort of irony-poisoned refusal to enjoy things is cool or whatever. I can enjoy a joke or two about like, I don't know, how awful the current most hated star wars thing is, but it just gets so exhausting when any interest in anything that hasn't been popularly deemed "good" is fair game to be a punching bag at all times and any interaction with it that isn't in that sort of "eww lol cringe haha" mode constantly either gets papered over with disclaimers about how the poster *knows* it's gross and bad but still enjoys it for "some reason" or whatever. Like, I just like things. I do not care if they're cringe or whatever and I'm kind of tired of seeing people self-flagellate for the sake of not upsetting popular fandom's attitude towards whatever it is.

[anghraine]

Yes, exactly! I've definitely seen a decided uptick in the "I only enjoy it ironically, you can tell because I add 'lmao' or 'im tired' to the end of my sentences" approach to fandom, where it's not just things deemed Problematic but the approach to literally everything. Liking things without qualifying it is cringe, I guess, and it seems like a lot of people are either exploiting that or trying to avoid the appearance of it in these days of Respectability. Meh.

[lizbee]

I have a theory that one of the reasons fandom has become so ... calculated and normy (one of many reasons, obviously; fandom is not a monolith) is that the fan-to-professional pipeline has become very visible, and sometimes people see fandom as a stepping stone on the path to something else.

And I'm not exempt from that! I totally see people being openly fannish around actors and writers and think, "Nooooooooo, I want that person on my podcast one day, don't be off-putting and spoil my chances!"

But there's this ... hmm, expectation that you can and should monetise your coffeeshop AU, versus the backlash Tamsin Muir got for writing some fucked up Homestuck fic. It's a weird sort of respectability politics.

[alias_sqbr]

Huh! You may have a point, but it's funny because that's been the case much longer with fanart yet I feel like fanartists still only became so focussed on being normal at the same time as fic writers. Maybe we're too small of a minority to have had the critical mass to change the culture.

*starts rambling and realises I've reached 'make my own post' levels of rambling tangent and goes off to make it*

[anghraine]

I didn't think about fanart, but it's interesting that it both overlaps and has a somewhat different history ... I'm looking forwards to seeing your post :)

[anghraine]

I think that may well be part of it. "Calculated and normy" is a good way of putting it, and yeah, there's definitely an increased (I'd say dramatically increased) push towards monetization and other kinds of "how can I profit off this, though?"

I do understand it at one level. Like, I'm not super popular or anything, but if I could wave a magic wand and convert the following for my fanfics into a following for my original fic interests and work, it'd be a temptation to sever the fan/pro division and go for it. But there is this weird way it's tangled up in both profit and respectability as not just things that given individuals want but which everyone can and should pursue that's really questionable (and joyless in some ways).

[lokifan]

^^^^ to all of this, as an explanation, how I'm not exempt from it, and the weird respectability-politics element.

where else can we have subject lines and multiple icons though?

[elperian]

There's so much conscious cultivation of fandom personas and backlash against "cringe" and it's odd

This sounds more like influencer culture from other social media sites and catch me saying straight up that it has no place in fandom. Mmmhmm. Egalitarian culture is incompatible with people shutting people down for liking stuff or thinking about stuff.

or interact on PF (when it's operational)

I got that email today and heaved a big internal sigh. It's the effort involved when it just...was unavailable for so long.

Re: where else can we have subject lines and multiple icons though?

[anghraine]

I do love the subject lines and multiple icons :)

I can easily see influencer culture as part of the cause, or correlated in some way. And yeah, it's something that jars really strongly with fandom. Like, the concept of fandom status being something you'd even mention outside of fandom circles is pretty "wtf?" to me, much less making a brand out of it.

Re: PF, I feel like ... they really needed some more metaphorical adults in the room when they were planning the practical execution of their ideas. There's a lot I like about it, but it's never going to build a following if they can't get basic things right.

Re: where else can we have subject lines and multiple icons though?

[elperian]

they really needed some more metaphorical adults in the room when they were planning the practical execution of their ideas.

For real! The fact that the site had security problems does not make me much overeager to go back to it either.