fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2118 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2118 ⌋

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

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

__________________________________________________

08.

__________________________________________________

09.

__________________________________________________

10.

__________________________________________________

11.

__________________________________________________

12.

__________________________________________________

13.

__________________________________________________

14.

__________________________________________________

15.

__________________________________________________

16.

__________________________________________________

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 102 secrets from Secret Submission Post #303.
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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Kind of a serious question, I want to know where all the fandom oldies hang out. I'm 31 and sometimes I feel like I am often the oldest person in the room.

It's not inherently a bad thing but every once in a while you do come across that "Oh my god you're THAT old" attitude. My IRL friends ages vary from 23-40s so I'm not really against age gaps, but it is nice to meet people my age too.

-General sci-fi/fantasy conventions that cover anything and everything (as opposed to cons for just anime or just gaming or a just particular TV show).

-Fandoms that have been around for a relatively long time, like Tolkien, Star Trek, etc. Obviously, some specific fandom spaces will still be mostly or exclusively younger folks, but the old people are out there, too!

-Groups that get together in-person but aren't affiliated with a college or university - book clubs, film clubs, D&D groups, etc.

-Situations where fandom overlaps with adult stuff like child-rearing and home decorating.

-Professionals in traditionally "geeky" fields.

Speaking as an older fan (much older than you at 45+): a lot of us are less sanguine about announcing personal stuff like our ages and mixing online and real life stuff.

Personally I have become a generally silent participant, having been in fandom long enough to grow tired of the in-fighting that accompanies active participation.

That is also why I prefer commenting anonymously whenever possible: and since anonymity is going the way of the dodo, I may become entirely invisible soon.

But there used to be a large older contingent in SGA fandom until a couple of years ago, since part of the attraction of that show was the fact that the leads were in their forties and not teenagers.

> anonymity is going the way of the dodo

Where? AO3 allows anonymous comments and Dreamwidth allows them as well. I like my anonymity too :(

Well, strictly speaking, yes, but more and more people on DW, LJ and AO3 make it clear that anon comments are unwelcome, often assimilating anonymous comments to trolling. Dismissive replies if not outright statements about how anon comments make them feel uneasy or irritate them are clear indicators...

After getting the bum rush when leaving complimentary comments on a fic, one learns to shut up real fast.

Also note that both LJ and DW allow users to close journals to anon comments (to prevent spamming and trolling) and I have noticed over the past year that more and more people take advantage of such features. It's understandable - for security reasons and spam for instance, but means that anon participation is slowly disappearing.

AO3 also allows users to prevent anon commenting: authors who mark their stories as visible only to logged in users are in effect preventing anon commenting or leaving of kudos.

What I find hilarious by the way, is that more people than you'd think simultaneously close their journals to anon commenting AND complain about not getting enough feedback anymore. Some of them seem genuinely confused about this and have no clue about the correlation between these two facts!

I can think of at least half a dozen such BNFs off the top of my head, and would estimate their number to be between 10 to 20% of all fandom - based on no evidence other than my gut feelings, developed over lots of years spent in various fandom.

Hm, that's interesting. I don't remember off the top of my head if my flist disabled anon comments or not, but I have anon comments enabled and ip logging on. I'm not closing anon comments unless I get trolled hard, but there's no guarantee not anon users won't troll either.

Pairings and age of pairings are an important indicator too. Harry/Draco as teenage Hogwarts students? Mostly written by teenagers. Harry/Draco being domestic and dealing with work and kids? Probably written by adults. Find fandoms with older characters or pairings of older characters and you'll find the older fans.

Ditto the previous comments re: older fandoms. Even the ones that aren't as active anymore sometimes have their small communities here and there. I'm in one where it's just as much about the people as it is the fandom itself. I like meeting people I'd be friends with in real life, even if we didn't have that in common.

I'm 31, too, and I kind of just lurk in the shadows around LJ/Tumblr/DW and other random places that catch my fancy. I actually don't know the ages of the majority of people I interact with online, unless they're people that I have on my LJ flist, which is tiny and I'm really picky about, or people that I've known for years. In my experience you can find people of all ages in fandom anywhere, but a lot of times you just don't know.

There's plenty in the Tolkien fandom; generally among the fic writers, (The Silmarillion niche has a large percentage of older fans, and by older I mean late twenties onward) but some fan artists too. The first authors I read and got to know back in 07/08 were mainly in the thirty-plus age range. I know some brilliant people who've been Tolkien fans for decades.

totally ot for the convo but you have some incredibly beautiful icons.

Aww, thank-you. They're all character inspirations (: But they're not mine of course, so any-one can use them (or I can send them without text to any-one who wants to use them).

[ SECRET POST #2118 ]

Where the old people at?

Re: Where the old people at?

Re: Where the old people at?

Re: Where the old people at?

Re: Where the old people at?

Re: Where the old people at?

Re: Where the old people at?

Re: Where the old people at?

Re: Where the old people at?

Re: Where the old people at?

Re: Where the old people at?

Re: Where the old people at?