on fandom, fandom culture, how it's changed and how I feel about it (ALSO FAN_FLASHWORKS)

[nanslice]

So last night I was crying on plurk about how much I seriously miss the way fandom and fandom culture use to be. How people made crappy websites on geocities and guestbooks and yahoo groups. And how journaling was the way to go, how livejournal was the hub of fannish activity. I miss it so much.

And then imperion and I went out for dinner and we talked about how we used to be able to just write. How we had a claim in every theme community and we were able to post little ficlets at least once a week. Sometimes two! It may not have been the best work of our lives but we weren't out to change the world, we just wanted to write stuff.

And you know? There's no reason why that can't still be happening. Yeah, sure, fandom at large has moved to tumblr. But...there's still things happening on journal sites. They're not the behemoths that they once were but LJ and DW aren't dead. There are people here. There's content here. I can't control fandom at large but I can control what I'm doing and how I'm interacting in fandom and if I'm not having fun, if I'm uncomfortable or unsatisfied with how fandom at large is behaving or how it has shifted culturally, welp. I don't have to interact with it. I can have my nice, cozy journal and my friends here and be perfectly happy. I mean of course, I'll still use my fic/art blog on tumblr and I'll post things on AO3 but where I actually talk about stuff, where my actual internet home is, is here.

SO. imperion and I have made a challenge for ourselves and I'm inviting everyone who reads this to join us. fan_flashworks is a fandom comm that awards achievement badges each time you, well, reach an achievement (for example, filling siz prompts consecutively). A new prompt (midnight) has just been issued. The challenge is to gain as many of these achievement badges as we can raaaaahhhhh. Okay, to start with, we just want to post three consecutive pieces and get our tags for the comm, hahaha.

It's a start. I have bingo cards to work on and my own little challenges to work on. I'm just tired of being ADRIFT ON THE INTERNET and I have the ability to change that. ;3;

Comments

[ldybastet]

I can definitely relate to this post! I miss all of that which you list, and it's so hard to find any of it these days. Everything is scattered. Yes, tumblr is one big part of it, but it also seems that at least my fandom(s) are mostly passive there, just reblogging pics, and when they're not passive, it's causing drama and wank. :( I think that tumblr in its passivity and speed has made a lot of people who used to be active and journaling and commenting too used to just scrolling and clicking a heart symbol to show they liked something.

Sadly, my main fandom refused to move to DW from LJ, and just scattered. :( Still some bits of it are still around there, but on DW it's tumbleweed. The few comms that exist here for it are now dead and I gave up on trying to keep them alive when I felt like I was just talking to myself.

I don't understand why not more people tried out DW, and chose tumblr instead. Like you say, the interface is ridiculous and it's almost impossible to comment and have a discussion or conversation.

So, I fully support your new thing! :D I think we all have to realize that we can choose to swim against the current and keep posting things here and then not give a shit that the audience is small, as long as we're having fun! :)

[nanslice]

I don't really understand fandom clinging to tumblr, except that it's a lot easier to have false fandom participation; all you really need to do is reblog stuff and people start following you. But what is even the point? They're just names. I've only managed to talk to a few people. :\

Woo! That's it exactly. Having fun is the main thing. \o/