fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4569 ]

[ SECRET POST #4569 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4569 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 18 secrets from Secret Submission Post #654.
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.

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Anon question: "Can you explain how fandom is fascist and how it is a prophylactic against other strains of fascism "

Ok, you have to understand that what I’m about to do is basically puking a whole lot of theory into your mouth. this isn’t the final word on the matter, and you should probably do your own reading on the matter.

As always for this subject I recommend Adorno’s Stars Down to Earth, Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, and rubbing a different part of the same elephant is Felix Guattari’s Three Ecologies. A really good treatment of Nietzsche that isn’t the usual juvenilia from like Vox or whatever comes from Tracy Strong’s Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration. But Ecce Homo is a good quick read, and hilarious, too imho.

Again, this isn’t the final word on the matter, and no one should mistake my recommendation that you begin by trying to read these for an endorsement of everything these writers ever said about everything ever and always.

As for my take: When Nietzsche said that Europeans killed g*d and that in so doing, man (as Europeans conceived “man”) had to become worthy of the deed, perhaps become not just godlike but beyond godlike, he was saying a lot more than just presaging incendiary trolling in 280 characters or less.

Glossing over a whole lot (because again, not the final word): G*d was thrown into the arena of discourse and everything that was holy, which once anchored us and our relationship to the world and each other, was lost. What took its place was humanism. “our” ancestors stopped believing in G*d for the same reason we’re all a bunch of liberal humanists: without really knowing why or how.

What does this have to do with fandom, fascism, etc.?

Well, with fandom we don’t even have to probe all that deep to see how fandom has taken the place of where G*d used to be. Fandom uses some of the same words (canon) to describe the same processes that beset Christianity throughout its history: different interpretations of texts begot legions of followers of varying piety. True, “we”’ve yet to start burning heretics of our ‘ships and headcanons, but it’s not for lack of will (see: the death threats fandoms trade in not just among themselves, but toward authors, actors, performers, producers, etc.).

[Again, not the final word; yes there’s lots of glossing over to keep an already long post from becoming too long; no i am not trying to cover every argument, counterargument, interpretation or facet of anything. that’s why i recommended you read some of the sources.]

This is where fascism comes in - again, not the final word, but in brief. Fascists have their own ships and canons, but unlike fandom, they actually strive to acquire the ships and cannons needed to effect their interpretations of the world into reality. No fandom is going to actually grab their wands, their tardises or whatever the fuck and try and take state power to force CW to let Destiel finally fuck. The liberal bourgeoisie’s culture industry has (for now) sufficiently satiated their hunger.

But fascists are (or rather have) taken state power to start genociding.

Considering the prophylactic phrase for a moment: absent g*d (again, that’s over), without mass culture, what do you think fandummers would be doing if they didn’t have drama over slashfics to preoccupy them? Where would all that libidinal energy go if the stream of slop from marvel or netflix were cut off?

If all this masscult weren’t dulling the swinery throughout fandom into accepting their miserable, alienated lives in exchange for another marvel movie or another pokemon game as late capitalism necrotizes around them, who do you think is waiting with a ready-made answer for why they can’t enjoy their precious shows, games or movies?

I didn’t even get to the “genius of the heart” that Nietzsche talks about in Ecce Homo as THE figure that will exemplify our times, so I’ll just leave with this quote and a defiance of Nietzsche’s request that you don’t try and guess who he’s talking about in this passage. Instead, consider all the faces that float into your imagination as you read this, whether they’re “real,” from a work of fiction or somewhere in between; or whether they’re self-help gurus, tv show characters, reality show characters, or politicians:

“The genius of the heart as is possessed by that great solitary, the divine tempter and born Pied Piper of consciences whose voice knows how to descend into the inmost depths of every soul, who neither utters a word nor casts a glance in which some seduction is not to be found, a part of whose mastery is that he understands the art of seeming—not what he is but that which will bind his followers to press ever more closely upon him, to follow him ever more enthusiastically and whole-heartedly. The genius of the heart who makes the loud and self-conceited hold their tongues and listen, who polishes all rough souls and gives them a new desire to savour—the desire to lie placid as a mirror that the deep heavens may be reflected in them. The genius of the heart which teaches the clumsy and too hasty hand to hesitate and grasp more tenderly; which scents the hidden and forgotten treasure, the pearl of goodness and sweet spirituality beneath thick black ice and is a divining rod for every grain of gold long buried and imprisoned in much mud and sand. The genius of the heart whose touch enriches all, not ‘blessed” and overcome, not as though favoured and crushed by the good of others; but richer in himself, fresher to himself than before, opened up, breathed upon and warmed by a thawing wind; more uncertain perhaps, more delicate, more fragile, more bruised, but full of hopes as yet unnamed, full of a new will and striving, full of a new unwillingness and resistance”.

"G*d"

Imagine literally, non-memingly doing this.

How do you even look yourself in the mirror in the morning.

Are you for real here? What the heck

Just to be clear, I didn't write this. I just copied and pasted the text from that tumblr blog without making any changes.

I'm not sure why they used the asterisk - I had a teacher once who did that because it was supposed to be respectful to some religion that didn't write out God's name or something? I've also seen people on tumblr do it to stop their posts from being found by people searching certain terms, but I don't know who'd be searching for God on tumblr.

I've mostly seen it in Jewish contexts, where I believe, yes, it's meant to be a sign of respect not to use the divine name.

I don't know if that's how anon was using it but it's far from a novel thing.

it's also been used extensively since the 90s by atheists and pagans who wanted to censor it the same way as forums with auto-censoring censored fuck, shit, and damn. hence, where the mockery comes from: it makes people look like pretentious atheists who treat "god" like a swear word.

Uh, certain religions do it.

Doesn't mean it's not ridiculous and mock-worthy.

Guess who looks more ridiculous in this situation?

You. The answer is you.

nayrt but why? I think censoring "God" is pretty fucking silly looking.

I mean, if you're mocking a Jewish custom, that doesn't look great. Especially not in this political climate.

I'm not mocking a Jewish custom, I didn't know it was a Jewish custom. Half my family is Jewish and I've never seen any of them do this. The other half is Christian and it seems way more like something they'd do because they're the ones who tend to be uptight and censor stuff for dumb reasons. And if your response is "well, don't mock Christians, either"...no. Religion in general (but especially Christianity) is stupid and incredibly harmful to society.

Oh ffs. Don't put religious customs on an ivory tower. No religion or religious custom is above criticism.

No, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's in good taste to do so, either, especially when the custom is one that's incredibly harmless.

What the fuck. Racism and xenophobia sucks. Not allowing people to practice their religions peacefully sucks.

But religion itself and the customs going with it don't get a free pass. Especially if you're okay with us mocking Christians and other religions, but not Jewish religious customs.

Especially if you're okay with us mocking Christians and other religions,

sort of a non-sequitur, isn't it?

Is it? You are the one pointing out it's a Jewish custom instead of a generic religious one. Would you come in to white knight if someone grumbled about how the Bible capitalizes the male pronoun of God as "Him" even when it isn't grammatically correct to do so?

Re: Full text

(Anonymous) - 2019-07-11 00:46 (UTC) - Expand

Who's mocking Christians here?

Can they not say god either though? If not, doesn't make a lot of sense to censor something you can say. If so, why type and censor it in the first place? It's distracting to read and goes against the spirit of the rule.

I don't think it's a very good argument at all. I'm sure that some of that is because of the limitations of making such a broad argument in the form of a Tumblr post, so I don't want to be too harsh, but it's really just not on.

Well, with fandom we don’t even have to probe all that deep to see how fandom has taken the place of where G*d used to be. Fandom uses some of the same words (canon) to describe the same processes that beset Christianity throughout its history: different interpretations of texts begot legions of followers of varying piety.

This is sort of a facile argument - the fact that fandom has inherited certain words from religion just is not really strong evidence that fandom functions as a religion, and there's no argument really being made to show that it does. In particular, there's nothing that goes towards the specific idea of fandom fulfilling the kind of specific post-Nietzschean ideological function of religion. And I would argue that the way that the word 'canon' is used in fandom largely as a marker of a kind of hermeneutical or interpretative approach (albeit an approach that largely came to exist in religious contexts), not in some kind of a scriptural sense or anything like that. Also, I think it's significant to note that a lot of the most acrimonious arguments in fandom are in large part connected with social or political issues or ideas that aren't unique to fandom qua fandom.

This is where fascism comes in... Fascists have their own ships and canons, but unlike fandom, they actually strive to acquire the ships and cannons needed to effect their interpretations of the world into reality... The liberal bourgeoisie’s culture industry has (for now) sufficiently satiated their hunger. But fascists are (or rather have) taken state power to start genociding.

This is just, like... completely bizarre. Like it's not even necessarily wrong but it's just such a completely, completely weird way to frame the idea.

So like... OK. Yes, it's broadly true that fascists want to take power to instantiate their ideological visions and goals in a violent, forceful way. But there's no particular relationship between that & fandom except in the most absolute broad sense. The simple fact that you want to take some set of ideas, whether that's a set of interpretations of canon or an overarching ideological worldview, and turn it into something that exists in reality is a basic feature of human civilization in general. It's not in itself distinct to fascism. There has to be some much more detailed grounds for the comparison.

(I will say that I think there is a strong argument that overarching ideologies can play the kind of pseudo-religious role that the post contemplates earlier, so there could theoretically be a connection there, but I think it's a very tenuous one and you would need to do a ton more work laying it out)

Considering the prophylactic phrase for a moment: absent g*d (again, that’s over), without mass culture, what do you think fandummers would be doing if they didn’t have drama over slashfics to preoccupy them? Where would all that libidinal energy go if the stream of slop from marvel or netflix were cut off? If all this masscult weren’t dulling the swinery throughout fandom into accepting their miserable, alienated lives in exchange for another marvel movie or another pokemon game as late capitalism necrotizes around them, who do you think is waiting with a ready-made answer for why they can’t enjoy their precious shows, games or movies?

I don't think this stuff is very theoretically interesting or novel so I'm not really going to reply to it unless someone really thinks it's, like, a great point that needs to be answered.

I think overall, the post just does not do a good job of elucidating the specific nature of fandom and how they connect it to fascism. I don't think it even comes close. Even if the argument were better made, I'd be really skeptical of it, because fandom just doesn't make the kind of broad all-embracing totalitarian ideological claims that fascism does.

Considering the prophylactic phrase for a moment: absent g*d (again, that’s over), without mass culture, what do you think fandummers would be doing if they didn’t have drama over slashfics to preoccupy them? Where would all that libidinal energy go if the stream of slop from marvel or netflix were cut off? If all this masscult weren’t dulling the swinery throughout fandom into accepting their miserable, alienated lives in exchange for another marvel movie or another pokemon game as late capitalism necrotizes around them, who do you think is waiting with a ready-made answer for why they can’t enjoy their precious shows, games or movies?

Yes, "entertainment is the opiate of the masses" and fandom is just horny women looking for a fix. Never mind that shipping originated as a critique of patriarchy and heterosexism in mass media, and fans were the only people who considered that media worthy of the same kinds of critique as the official canon of Nietzsche's peers. Then there's the substantial overlap between people who do Marvel and Pokemon and the people who support radical feminist (not terf) and queer work.

*narrows eyes* This is a “fandom is the opiate of the masses” argument, isn’t it? Dude, “people need distractions from things in life that suck” isn’t a failure of capitalism particularly, and fandom/football/stamp collecting/mountain climbing aren’t using energy that would be better spent on revolution, or whatever. I’ve never lived in an egalitarian enclave, but I’m pretty sure people like stories and games and pretty things and nice scenery etc etc no matter what political/economic system they live with/under.

Can someone translate for us slow students?

Throwing around those big words to sound smart but can't even tell their canons from their cannons.

But yeah, that's a huge pile of really faux-intellectual but actually pretty dumb pretentiousness. I hope they write a whole essay on this for that Philosophy 101 class they obviously go to and get the F they deserve.

What a lot of crap.

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[ SECRET POST #4569 ]

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