[ SECRET POST #4311 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4311 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 23 secrets from Secret Submission Post #617.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

AYRT

[(Anonymous)]

But then how do you define “fandom”? What differentiates it from any other “subculture characterized by feelings of empathy and camraderie with others who share a common interest” (paraphrasing Wikipedia) other than the relative age of the source material? For instance would it be inaccurate to call intellectuals during the Renaissance “fans” of the Classical Greek/Roman eras given how much their attitudes (obsessive rereading and studying of the canon, extensive writing and artwork making use of Classical myths and characters, overall praise and celebration) parallel modern fan culture?

You do make a very good point though, that it’s quite important to talk about fandom and fan fiction in the modern sense of the term, and it’s useful to have a definition as such. The broader point I was trying to make was that a lot of the behaviors and practices we see in fandom aren’t some modern phenomenon they’ve long been parts of our culture. I get irritated sometimes when I see fannish behavior dismissed or demeaned because in my opinion the only reason it’s treated as such is because the object of fannish interest is not viewed as “worthy” of such interest or because the fandom is part of some mocked minority such as young women.

And typing this all out I realized I’ve gotten hilariously off topic so sorry OP :P.

Re: AYRT

[(Anonymous)]

But then how do you define “fandom”? What differentiates it from any other “subculture characterized by feelings of empathy and camraderie with others who share a common interest” (paraphrasing Wikipedia) other than the relative age of the source material?

Right, sure, it's a totally valid question. And I don't think that there's any one correct definition of fandom - there's a lot of really useful, different ways to talk about it.

But the way that I usually define it for most purposes - and I think it matches pretty closely with the way that people use the term in everyday conversation - is to understand fandom as, essentially, a specific subculture, a social group built around certain ways of interacting with media and pop culture with a specific, and relatively modern, history (growing mostly out of science-fiction fandom beginning in the 30s and 40s). And sometimes, even more specifically, a subset of that subculture that really deals with writing fanfiction, and shipping, and that's been associated with specific websites like FF.net, AO3, Tumblr, and Livejournal.

Of course that's only one way to define 'fandom' but I think it's a useful one. And I totally agree that nothing that fandom does is really totally new. It just takes on new features because of, like, modern cultural literacy and modern forms of communication and stuff like that. I think it's actually kind of a really interesting development. There's certainly no reason to demean it.