[ SECRET POST #5865 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5865 ⌋

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


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 06 secrets from Secret Submission Post #839.
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

[fscom]

01. https://i.imgur.com/K9ola6p.png

[(Anonymous)]

fandom has always been like this

[(Anonymous)]

+1

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not that old as a fan, but I don't think it was... Sure, there were infighting and ship wars and other drama, but you were a lot less likely to have awful things assumed of you because of a ship.

[(Anonymous)]

Except in Harry Potter fandom when the Harmonians were saying that the people who thought Ron/Hermione was going to be the endgame were probably abusive in their relationships. Harry Potter always did bring out the best in people.

[(Anonymous)]

+1000

Or have awful things assumed about you just because of which characters you like or don't like, or which canons you like.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I've seen a comment from an older fan on my flist to the effect of: You haven't been in a real shipwar until someone has screamed at you at a convention for your shipping choices.

[(Anonymous)]

As an "old" (as in almost 40) in fandom since I was 13... no, no, oh dear lord NO, it has not. It's always had awfulness and wank, but it's never been this constant and pervasive. Telling people they're terrible human beings and inviting them to kill themselves for what they ship has always happened somewhere, probably, but it's never been accepted as normal and /good/ by a majority of people in any fandoms.

Defending fandom by pretending that it's no worse than before is dangerous. Fandom needs to change before more people lose their jobs or die, and it won't change as long as y'all keep saying "Oh but it's always been like this."

[(Anonymous)]

I do think some people view old fandom with rose-tinted glasses and seem to forget the wank explosions, the heated ship wars (old flavor), the sporking and bashing of fic as a normal "acceptable" pastime, the cliques and bad modding and sock drama, etc. etc. That has always been there or in some cases peaked in the past and is now less of an issue.

But fandom really hasn't always been like this in terms of the anti phenomenon. Like, yes, ship wars were always vicious and involved trying to come up with moral reasons why ship X is better than ship Y. But back then, even people who were deep in the trenches of the ship war conceptualized it like that: this is a ship war, I'm trying to have my ship "win" in the endgame, I'm competing with other ships, this is fandom drama/wank. Nowadays, the people who are doing the same old ship war shit don't actually conceive of themselves as engaging in a ship war and trying to compete with other fans or "win" against other fans. They just think they are engaged in a righteous campaign to promote morals in fandom and anyone who opposes them (i.e. ships a "bad" pairing they "shouldn't" like) is a bad person who is the enemy of the good. There's no self awareness and no layer of irony and no sense of friendly competition, all of which makes these people especially horrible to interact with.

There's also a LOT of anti behavior that doesn't fit the ship war mold and which I think is a new phenomenon. Like, antis get really het up about adults who ship canon gay ships in children's cartoons because the characters are teenagers. I think there's a real difference between (old style) having some random homophobe call you a sinful person for shipping a non-canon slash pairing in a kid-friendly canon and (new style) having an LGBT teenager call you a pedophile and a groomer for shipping a canon slash pairing in a kid-friendly canon. The former is someone who thinks slash pairings are categorically bad which is just "whatever, you're wrong" to me. The latter is someone who thinks slash pairings are perfectly fine except when *I* look at them with my sinful eyes and that is just... I don't know. A horrible way to treat other fans and way different from the phenomenon of having to deal with homophobes in fandom.

And like people have mentioned, different social media platforms have dramatically changed the way fans relate to each other. Like yes, moderated spaces had the tendency to have drama, bad modding, failed handover of admin positions, etc. that caused a nice space to suddenly break apart. But moderated spaces (where there are rules and codes of conduct and someone responsible for enforcing them) are a huge step up from the fandom anarchy we have now, where any rando can come at you in a public space where you're trying to share something, and harass and try to police you.

[(Anonymous)]

It's kinda always been like this. I'm a veteran of the Ray Wars.

Socmed just amplifies it.

[(Anonymous)]

While fandom has always had plenty of bullies (and I do not miss the homophobic bullying at all), I do find the anti brigade pretty disturbing. It bothers me to see the usual fandom spats portrayed as the ultimate arbiter of good and bad people, like if you like X pairing you're a pedophilic rapist racist.

[(Anonymous)]

Same here. Also, doxxing seems to have become increasingly common.

[(Anonymous)]

I always think people who are of the notion that fandom has gotten worse were never in wanky fandoms with abusive mods and groups of trolls who would chase people they didn’t like out. The shittyness of fandom is absolutely magnified more with how social media makes it easy to see everyone else, but it’s the same it always has been, it’s just that Pandora’s box has been opened.

[(Anonymous)]

yeah that makes sense - I use to avoid wank coms like the plague and just stuck to the shipping comms on LJ that were dedicated to individual ships to avoid the 'NO MY SHIP IS BEST SHIP' people. So I never really had the toxic experience until I started going onto Tumblr.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, mass wankiness is basically baked in to the functionality of tumblr, and I hate it. (This probably goes for Twitter too, I just don't have a Twitter account so IDK.)

There are things about Tumblr I really like, and things I think it's great for. But there is basically no such thing as personal space on Tumblr, and it is a problem.

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, I can see now that all the comments saying fandom has "always" been this bad are defining "always" as "for about 10 or 15 years" judging by their examples of bad past fandoms. That is not always. That's barely even the past. It hasn't been like this for most of modern fandom's existence.

[(Anonymous)]

yeah there was a time when fans were just glad to find like minded people, not only before the internet, but also when it was still new. We had to work harder for what we had in those days and I think people were maybe more motivated and cared more about 'fandom' because it wasn't so mainstream and it wasn't so easy to just trash and move on.

Mmmm, the olden days, but you know, fandom was around well before 21st century and 'forever'.

[(Anonymous)]

Look, I agree that it's worse now, but there really has been wank in fandom as long as there's been fandom.

[(Anonymous)]

Hey, I dated myself in my comment above about due South. And as much as I would be the first to protest someone else saying this, the 90s weren't 15 years ago...

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I've been in online fandom 30 years next year, and offline fandom about 5 years before that, and while some things haven't changed and some things have (see my comment above about not missing the homophobia) but the biggest change to me is that all content is served up in a big jumble - it's hard to cultivate a space and set norms for it. There are some positives to this (your fandom can't be dominated by That One Fan who you have to suck up to or get thrown off the only mailing list) but generally it's negative and contributes to fast turnover and general hostility. Plus expecting canon creators to conform to fandom norms and expectations because you're all jumbled in there together.

[(Anonymous)]

I know there will inevitably be “fandom has always been shitty” but there is so much less “let live” in fandom spaces now.

There are literally people who don’t understand that reading fiction is not endorsing something in real life.

Purity culture is invading everywhere.

[(Anonymous)]

+10000000

[(Anonymous)]

Just as everyone else has said; Yes. Fandom has always been like this.
But more than anything, it is also true that no matter how you dig, you'll always find shit in the end.

The platforms of today make it extraordinarily easy to pick and see the worst in people. If you get along with somebody, just take it as it is. Don't go looking into their dirty laundry because you'll always come across something you have issue with, no matter how clean they are/might seem to be.
To put it into perspective, I'm sure people read just as much into you. So, like, don't judge until you have to or whatever.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, I was just talking about this above! The platforms deliberately promote "engagement" (i.e. the wankiest and worst).

[(Anonymous)]

But the problem is that you don't have to dig anymore. The shit is just there all the time, wherever you are. And even if you try to avoid it, you'll get it flung at you.