[ FS Anon Meme ]

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F!S Anon Meme (the ??th)

Secrets, rants, opinions, anything you want to say about your fandom or a fandom or fandom in general, do it here! Anonymously, of course. Get it all off your chest.

Some ground rules:
1. Going anon is encouraged but not absolutely required (for those who struggle with recaptchas and stuff).
2. No autoplaying/autolooping embeds, or embeds that cover/stretch the screen.
3. No dropping personal info or IRL contact info, etc.

That's about it, though!

(Today's post is below.)

Comments

Two non-tumblr/social media reasons fandom's less discussion oriented now

[(Anonymous)]

1. No collective hubbub of interests. For instance, when I was in the Harry Potter fandom , a lot of people were also into Buffy. Then the LOTR movies came out, and HP/LOTR tended to overlap. You also had the Star Wars prequel going on. Then Firefly came out, and that got people in the same circles talking. (This isn't to say everyone was into all of those things, though many eventually went towards one because of the other, like me with Harry Potter - Firefly - Buffy.)

Don't get me wrong, I realize people are still generally in the same interest circles if you will, but I'm talking things people get nutty about - they seem to come after people have already calmed down a bit from whatever was big last time, or they don't necessarily have the same sorts of fanbases in common.

(Of course, in the case of the HP fandom, the three year summer also helped. I really think if The Hunger Games had had a wider gap between books, it probably would have come close to that amount of obsession, at least.)

2. I feel like fandom lost its sense of fun. I remember when people used to do parodies and filks and stuff... nobody does that anymore. It's sad.

Re: Two non-tumblr/social media reasons fandom's less discussion oriented now

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not sure how true (1) is - Superwholock was, like, last year - and I think (2) is essentially just begging the question.

Re: Two non-tumblr/social media reasons fandom's less discussion oriented now

[(Anonymous)]

I also think that social justice has taken over the discussion side of fandom. It isn't all bad (I am really enjoying the increased awareness of diversity in parts of the gaming community, for one) but on Tumblr it can be really toxic.

Even the completely reasonable SJ discussions can drive away people who want fandom to be escapism, and just want to talk about how awesome their OTP is without having to also discuss its Problematic Aspects. I don't think there's anything wrong with those people - you shouldn't have to be an activist to be a fan of media, but that's the way some communities are headed...

Re: Two non-tumblr/social media reasons fandom's less discussion oriented now

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

My area of fandom did get a bit SJ oriented, I was certainly a SJ type so it came up often on my own LJ back then, but it tended to be less... judgmental, and it was usually left out of actual fandom stuff. It was more sidebar conversation. I totally agree with you that people just want that escapism!

Re: Two non-tumblr/social media reasons fandom's less discussion oriented now

[(Anonymous)]

I disagree because SJ was pretty big in my fandom during its heyday (my fandom is SGA) and it created wank but it didn't decrease interaction.

Re: Two non-tumblr/social media reasons fandom's less discussion oriented now

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think one is true. I notice trends among big fandoms, like if someone enjoys X they likely enjoy Y. Which I honestly find annoying as it makes it harder for me to find people with similar interests to me, but that's my own problem. Two....yeah, not true either. I see fun around fandoms all the time.

What the hell is a filk?

Re: Two non-tumblr/social media reasons fandom's less discussion oriented now

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT
What the hell is a filk?

Aww, see, case in point. :P It's songs you make up based on other songs, as well as your fandom. I think fun might have been the wrong word though... I mean more silly kind of fun. Like filks. (Although some filks were actually quite serious, and good. There were also a lot of awful filks.)

And I agree that people absolutely do tend to like Y if they already liked X! But I mean... people aren't holding huge Supernatural watchathons, to my knowledge (I may be wrong there), there's not huge conventions just for The Hunger Games (again, unless I'm mistaken), that sort of thing.

Re: Two non-tumblr/social media reasons fandom's less discussion oriented now

[(Anonymous)]

What the hell is a filk?

Start here:

http://m.youtube.com/?#/playlist?list=PL2036F1BA9A5428FD

Re: Two non-tumblr/social media reasons fandom's less discussion oriented now

[(Anonymous)]

2. Possibly tying into your point 1, it could be that people are having just as much fun, it's just that the fun is more decentralized and therefore less easy to stumble across. Paradoxically, having tags on every platform can make it harder to find the things you might be interested in, because they allow for decentralization but have their own limitations (misuse, overuse, tags that don't even necessarily work properly in tumblr's case, etc).

I mean, I run a tumblr where I essentially RP a character from one fandom reviewing and analyzing the canon of another fandom. I made it entirely to amuse myself and my best friend, and so far we are both having a blast, and I even have a couple additional followers. Seriously, fandom has never been so much fun for me.

Re: Two non-tumblr/social media reasons fandom's less discussion oriented now

[(Anonymous)]

I think 1 actually ties into fandoms general move to Tumblr and social media. There is still that overlap, but it's not as noticeable because there isn't that centralized type of fandom or circle of friends.

2. Pointless personal feeling towards fandom that isn't really a "reason". There are still parodies and filks and fanart and crack galore out there, it's just apparently not in your cirlces. And fun is so subjective anyhow.

Re: Two non-tumblr/social media reasons fandom's less discussion oriented now

[(Anonymous)]

1. Fandom migration is still a thing, and osmosis thanks to those social media sites leads to people having similar backgrounds in what they watch (think superwholock, only with people having at least one shared fandom at some point).

2. Yeah. You sound old, and I mean that in that you aren't getting on with the times to look for it because it's still there. If I look up the filk archives or groups that were acclaimed back then, it's like they never caught up on updating their site or making their work more accessible on sites like soundcloud or youtube. This is like saying fan animations are dead because newsgrounds is nearly irrelevant.

Re: Two non-tumblr/social media reasons fandom's less discussion oriented now

[(Anonymous)]

But fandom migration denotes that a lot of fans have overlapping interests. If I had to hazard a guess as to why fandom isn't as chatty or interactive now, I might guess that it's because people shift from fandoms quickly. Has anybody considered the effect cellphone browsing has on fandom because I'm doing that right now and it does not make interacting easy but I could reblog dozens of posts right now, no problem.

Re: Two non-tumblr/social media reasons fandom's less discussion oriented now

[(Anonymous)]

Can't move for the filks in the Ace Attorney kink meme right now. I thought they'd died out long ago. Not that fond of them myself, but they get a good reaction from others.

If filks died out I wouldn't grumble.