fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5659 ]

[ SECRET POST #5659 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5659 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 28 secrets from Secret Submission Post #810.
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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I'm constantly blown away by fanart produced by teenagers.

But the fanfics...

lol well unfortunately, I am just generally much more into fic than art

My fandom has lots of terrible teen fanwriters and then I find an amazing fic that blows me away with its deft character work and deep, mature reworking of canon themes until I get to the author's note on chp 14 that there's no update this week because they had to go on a college tour because they graduate next year. And then I cry dry dusty tears of Old.

What I found is that once teenagers in fandom grow up, they usually go on to join two categories of adults: parents, who no longer have time for fandom because the only media they have time to consume is whatever their child is watching, mainly Paw Patrol and Bluey; and people, who ascend to join the industry and produce shows for the next generation of teenage fans. And then there's the smallest, third group: childless adults, who mainly hang around the nostalgic franchises, which had their peak around the time of their youth. Exceptions from these three groups exist, but are so rare as to be near a statistical error.

I feel like your anecdata needs updating there. Kids go to sleep before adults do, and if a parent wants to pick up a new fandom it's possible to make time in a day to relax and join in with the new shinies. Of course, the time that can be spared varies with number and age of children, but in my experience and the experience of several other people I met in fandom twenty years ago who are parents now, none of us are trapped exclusively in the Daniel Tiger mines. (And for those who are, r/DanielTigerConspiracy is a godsend.)

I'm happy for you, but all my fandom friends left fandom permanently after getting married and having children, and they all state lack of time as their reason for no longer having time to engage in fannish activities. Even my younger siblings and some of my younger fandom friends no longer have time for fandom after graduating university and joining the workforce. And there has to be a reason how come people of my age group used to dominate fandom, and then suddenly all disappeared one day, replaced by zoomers. They couldn't all have died, so the only explanation I can think of for their mysterious disappearance is that they either grew out of their interests, or lack time.

Older high school/college age people always dominate fandom numerically, because they're the ones who have time and freedom to really focus on it. When I was a teen in fandom, the Gen X'ers complained about how the teens (getting internet at college) were taking over fandom. The younger Boomers complained about how the Gen X'ers (who came in with newsgroups and BBSs as they got computer access at school) were taking over fandom from the people who earned their way with xerox'd zines. The older Boomers complained about the younger boomers with their shitty xerox zines that didn't take any effort, what happened to sneaking access to the mimeo machine. Heck, pre-Boomer SF Fen wanked like hell about this newfangled group called 'teens' who were taking over fandom and ruining it by getting their SF from drive-in B movies and TV shows instead of books and letterzines. (They're still doing it, the few who are still alive.)

Anyway, fandom is always dominated by teens, and a large percentage of them *do* always drop out as they get older, because there's always a certain amount of people dropping out as their lives change and as the active parts of fandom change away from them, but also because the newer generation of teens always has easier access to fandom, so there's always more of them who find there way (Also just more, because the population who takes part in English pop culture is still growing). Right now there's a massive increase of teens in online fandom because they just spent two years doing nothing but staring at screens So sure, if you haven't made any new older friends as your old friends moved on, or if you're expecting older fandom to be like high school/college fandom, you'll feel like there aren't any people of your generation (this happens with RL friends too). But they're there! They have friends their own age! Very few of my current fandom friends are the same people I talked to 20 years ago, and none of them share the same fandoms we did then, but most of them were around then (and the ones who came to fandom later in life are often the most fun.)

Most of my older fandom friends are parents.

Also, most of my older fandom friends, in all three categories you list (parents, non-parents, and people who create canon, an interesting set of three there) are currently super excited about OFMD, which has existed less than a year, and is really not a statistical error??? If you only hang around nostalgic fandoms and fandoms full of teens that's what you'll see most of (Also tbf, if you... avoid AO3, you will probably not be where most of the older, still active fans are.)

A lot of people do drop out of online fandom when their kids are young, but a lot of them come trickling back as the kids get older and take less time and energy. And a lot of people do only get into fandom for one thing, and either stick with it doggedly or leave when it loses popularity, but that is not correlated to if they have kids??? Some of my closest friends have been in TMNT fandom since the first cartoon, but they're evenly split between parents and not (some of them are now grandparents). I think you have some issues around childlessness to work out (who doesn't.)

+ infinity

I'm in my early 50s and there are plenty of people around in various fandoms who are around my age and sometimes considerably older. OFMD is a big one - the lead actors are in their 40s, so why wouldn't a significant portion of their fandom be too? Same is true of Good Omens - a lot of older folks who grew up with the book, which came out in 1990, got their passion renewed by the show. And again, lead actors in late 40s/early 50s.

I have no children myself, but a lot of my fandom friends do. Some of them go to cons and stuff with their kids - and grandkids in some cases.

My experiences are pretty different. I'd fall into the third category, but I'm in fandoms for newer franchises and mainly create fanfic for my latest OTPs, not the ones I'm nostalgic for. My two best friends are married with children, but they're still active in fandom. One of them is actually more active now than she was before she had children because writing fanfic is her "me time" and she uses it wisely.

You're forgetting the category of older folks who returned to fandom when their kids got older.

As a person who's only just hit 30, being friends with people my parents' age is about as alluring to me as being friends with 20-something college kids. I'm at the point in my life where it feels like people my age just disappear from all online spaces that aren't mommy vlogs, and my choice for friends are people much older and much younger than myself.

I have to ask: do you have friends offline?

Because if you have normal adult social interaction in person, like with jobs, hobbies, arts, etc., it's completely normal for a 30-year-old's social circle to include people from their 20s through their 60s. The idea that adults a decade or two apart in either direction can't interact normally through common interests is just bizarre in the real world.

Most of my real life friends are my own age. I work in software engineering, where teams skewer younger, but no younger than the graduate age. I also work remotely, so there aren't a lot of chances of befriending people at work, and I never liked clubbing, plus I feel like I'm getting too old for it anyway. There aren't a lot of opportunities for me to make friends in real life.

Lol, you're 30, you're old enough to be the parent of a theoretical 12-year-old in fandom, and yet you're still trying to convince yourself you're a "young" and you have nothing in common with people who are older.

You have more in common with a 45-year-old (not old enough to be your parent unless they were very underage) than you do with a teenager. Deal with it.

DA but wow big misread.

I never said I felt like I have anything in common with teenagers. I even said in my comment that I don't feel like I have much in common with adults 5 years younger than me. And considering that half of this thread is older fans talking about how annoying millenials are, and how we don't know how great all the 80s and 90s fandoms used to be, how our fandoms sucked and were not as relevant as the fandoms of old, and how we should all flock to fandoms about middle-aged people, I don't get the impression that you really find people my age very relatable either, so why do you take such offense to me not finding you relatable? I want to have friends who grew up waiting for letter from Hogwarts like me, not people who have children of the same age as my younger siblings. I don't mind becoming friends with those people in the same way i don't mind becoming friends with teenagers and college adults, but I don't see why I should find people who took classes with my mom more as a friend-material for me than people, who take classes with my brother.

I also find it funny that you think I could've been a parent at 18, but you think my parents being 18 years older than me is a ludicrous idea.

NAYRT, but you don't understand how it works. I do have more in common with people 15 years younger than me than 15 years older because I've been their age already and still remember what it was like. I haven't been the age of people older than me yet.

But the teenagers the anon below talking about, who we can't be friends with because they decided we're decrepit old losers? That's you. Your casual use of "underage" points to you being an anti, too, so go away, this place is full of the nasty old people you hate.

Anon, don't you know people instantly turn middle aged the moment the clock strikes midnight on the last day of their 29th year of life? It's a phenomenon only women experience, I believe in incel circles it's called "the wall". What it means is that if you ever want to befriend (or god forbid feel sexually attracted to) someone 2 years younger than you, it makes you gross and predatory, but you should be grateful for all those men 15 years older than you who lower themselves to hit on an such an unfuckable wrinkly hag past her prime like you.

Secret OP here. I don't get what everyone else seems to be complaining about but I agree with you, that's exactly how I feel too. I feel like I can't relate much to either age group and would like to befriend the 30-somethings, or just know where they hang out. I am in a group chat for 30-somethings who like kpop and it's fun, but it's all I have.

I wish I liked kpop. I'm personally into disney animation and I'm the oldest person in every discord server I'm in, even in 18+ discords. It's getting tiring trying to correct people 5-10 years younger than me asking me what the 80s were like, and it's even more awkward when they start talking about how ancient they feel.

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[ SECRET POST #5659 ]

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