[ SECRET POST #5659 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5659 ⌋

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


01.



__________________________________________________



02.



__________________________________________________



03.



__________________________________________________



04.



__________________________________________________



05.



__________________________________________________



06.








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.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT

Not to be a pedant here, but the claim is not that Harry Potter was the first fandom on the Internet, the claim is that Harry Potter fandom was influential on subsequent Internet fandoms (presumably meaning shippy-fanwork-fandom specifically) in a way that Star Trek, Ranma and Sailor Moon fandoms weren't.

You can agree with that or disagree with that, but the fact that Ranma and Sailor Moon are older doesn't really address the point. If you think that Ranma and Sailor Moon influenced HP fandom - how so? In what specific ways did it influence them?

[(Anonymous)]

If you are gonna keep shifting the goal posts everytime it is pointed out fandom comes from many sources, then yeah okay. You win, fella.

[(Anonymous)]

...the statement that was objected to is "Internet fandom as it currently exists can be traced, in a very real way, to a mailing list". That does not imply it was the only source or even the largest source (or even say anything about Harry Potter fandom as a whole! A lot of people on that list were in a lot of fandoms!)

Stop hiding the goalposts behind your back and claiming somebody else must have moved them.

[(Anonymous)]

Another NAYRT

Nobody is moving the goal posts, you just have abysmal reading comprehension.

[(Anonymous)]

And I absolutely fucking disagree with this entire argument because I was active in internet fandom before Harry Potter was even published. The first real influences were usenet newsgroups, and the megafandom presence was Trek first, then Star Wars blew up around the release of the Special Editions prior to Epsiode 1. In slash terms, though, the juggernauts that took irl slash fan behavior and dialed it up to 11 were Highlander, and then Sentinal. Babylon 5 was mostly meta-rehashers, though there was some pretty good fic floating around too. It skewed more toward meta compared to the absolute batshittery of Highlander slash.

What I want to know is just what "modern internet fandom" trends the original anon claims were started by this HP archive and I'm bettin dollars to doughnuts I can point to the exact shrine sites, communities, and mailing lists that predated it that were already doing those trends. If you don't know about the drama in the Master/Apprentice archive or the flame wars on alt.trek then that's fine, but don't make a claim that your pet archive/shrine/zine of choice was the one that started the fire.

[(Anonymous)]

Original anon: it's not an archive, it's a mailing list.

I didn't claim it started any trends.

I claimed a lot of things we take for granted in modern internet fandom as a whole can be traced back to interaction between people who were members of that list (Many of whom started in Trek or Highlander or Star Wars fandom! Or X-men or Buffy or anime!) It was a place where older fans, many of whom had already been in other fandoms but were getting into Harry Potter, took refuge from the kid-majority spaces elsewhere, so it became a mixing point for all sorts of trends that had happened in other fandoms. And created a core group of fans (well, several core groups really, different friend groups went in different directions after) of a certain generation, many of whom stayed in fandom after leaving Harry Potter and built on the things and friend networks that started there. In that specific mailing list, not "harry potter fandom" as an abstract thing.

I promise I wasn't trying to claim Harry Potter was the only important fandom! I was calling out a specific cabal of SMOFs, many of whom met on that list (many of whom are still busily SMOF'ing along), in passing while trying to make a point about adult fans making themselves spaces in kid-heavy fandoms and how universal that is in all fandoms.