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elisemThe following excerpt is taken from an email conversation with friends about some online reactions to a screed someone had posted about how kids these days should get off of their lawn with their "fandoms" with an s and their fanwriters who are not oldphart fans, among other things. I was trying to explain to my friends how one particular misunderstanding involving the usage of "fandom" versus the usage of "fandoms" was making things so much worse, and how I had had very little luck explaining the particular connotations involved to either group of the fans involved.
Please note that the following has been edited for clarity, but I'm not guaranteeing I actually reached that destination.
That version of fandom at that time? Was how I got into fandom (or, now, fandoms, and so forth) at all. So there's a lot of First Time experiences in my memory about it, and it really truly was a revelation to finally find people who thought as fast as I did, and about some of the same stuff, and who loved math and physics and imagination and stories, and who did not slink off when mainstream people taunted them as weirdos but instead let their freak flag fly.
The thing a lot of people (who weren't there for that epoch of fandom) do not get is that fandom was an extended social network where not everybody knew each other but where you were at most two hops away from everybody. It was small. Most importantly, it was a social network, not just a set of interests. People could be fans of a show but that did not make one a fan, not back then. What people meant when they said someone is a fan, at least when I got there, was that either they publish a fanzine or get a fanzine (which were mostly available for trade for your fanzine, or you could mail a quarter or two taped to a post card -- which are called poctsards due to a typo that stuck once -- which is why there was a zine called Sticky Quarters. But I digress. Which is probably one of the most fannish things to do, digressing I mean, but anyhow, the point was that trading was preferred because then you were reading each other's stuff, and that was the ONLY WAY to do so back then, through zines and apas, which were the tiny paper version of the net before there was a net), or you went to conventions or ran conventions or wished you could afford to go to conventions, or you wrote into the prozines and your name and address was published there and then sometimes another fan in or near your home town would contact you from that, and then you usually started a club.
Finding fandom was almost always an occasion of "Holy shit, you mean there's other people kind of like me? How can I connect with them? I've been so alone!" And these days, that's not where people are coming from, so they don't see that particular web of established contact and resulting social connections between fans as "fandom"; they see the book or show or genre as the "fandom."
I think maybe this is part of why oldphart fans are sometimes incredulously angry at newstyle/young fans, because the oldpharts believed in the beauty and delight and shared sense of wonder that was the connections between people who loved stuff and the events those people built -- in the community there was -- and young/newstyle fans now, in the eyes of the oldpharts, are taking a term which used to refer to people caring about connecting with each other, and instead using it about a commercial product. It feels blasphemous, or like empty consumerism, or something. It might be a significant part of how these different groups are misunderstanding each other repeatedly. An oldphart hears "What are your fandoms? My fandoms are My Little Pony and Battlestar Galactica," and the oldphart misinterprets it as "All my good experiences are ones that I bought! People and connections? What the fuck are you talking about? Those aren't what I care about!"
I know, and you know, that the newstyle/young fans also care passionately about people and connections. But there's that misinterpretation.
I think that misinterpretation would be useful to keep in mind. And I think it's already cost us a lot.
Please note that the following has been edited for clarity, but I'm not guaranteeing I actually reached that destination.
That version of fandom at that time? Was how I got into fandom (or, now, fandoms, and so forth) at all. So there's a lot of First Time experiences in my memory about it, and it really truly was a revelation to finally find people who thought as fast as I did, and about some of the same stuff, and who loved math and physics and imagination and stories, and who did not slink off when mainstream people taunted them as weirdos but instead let their freak flag fly.
The thing a lot of people (who weren't there for that epoch of fandom) do not get is that fandom was an extended social network where not everybody knew each other but where you were at most two hops away from everybody. It was small. Most importantly, it was a social network, not just a set of interests. People could be fans of a show but that did not make one a fan, not back then. What people meant when they said someone is a fan, at least when I got there, was that either they publish a fanzine or get a fanzine (which were mostly available for trade for your fanzine, or you could mail a quarter or two taped to a post card -- which are called poctsards due to a typo that stuck once -- which is why there was a zine called Sticky Quarters. But I digress. Which is probably one of the most fannish things to do, digressing I mean, but anyhow, the point was that trading was preferred because then you were reading each other's stuff, and that was the ONLY WAY to do so back then, through zines and apas, which were the tiny paper version of the net before there was a net), or you went to conventions or ran conventions or wished you could afford to go to conventions, or you wrote into the prozines and your name and address was published there and then sometimes another fan in or near your home town would contact you from that, and then you usually started a club.
Finding fandom was almost always an occasion of "Holy shit, you mean there's other people kind of like me? How can I connect with them? I've been so alone!" And these days, that's not where people are coming from, so they don't see that particular web of established contact and resulting social connections between fans as "fandom"; they see the book or show or genre as the "fandom."
I think maybe this is part of why oldphart fans are sometimes incredulously angry at newstyle/young fans, because the oldpharts believed in the beauty and delight and shared sense of wonder that was the connections between people who loved stuff and the events those people built -- in the community there was -- and young/newstyle fans now, in the eyes of the oldpharts, are taking a term which used to refer to people caring about connecting with each other, and instead using it about a commercial product. It feels blasphemous, or like empty consumerism, or something. It might be a significant part of how these different groups are misunderstanding each other repeatedly. An oldphart hears "What are your fandoms? My fandoms are My Little Pony and Battlestar Galactica," and the oldphart misinterprets it as "All my good experiences are ones that I bought! People and connections? What the fuck are you talking about? Those aren't what I care about!"
I know, and you know, that the newstyle/young fans also care passionately about people and connections. But there's that misinterpretation.
I think that misinterpretation would be useful to keep in mind. And I think it's already cost us a lot.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-22 03:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-20 04:25 pm (UTC)Somewhere in that paragraph is the place where I should mention all the extremely intense negative reactions to the word "scifi" during certain decades. Seriously, fighting words, you know? Which is ... not how it is at all, now, when there are podcasts and TV networks that say "scifi" and "skiffy." ("Skiffy" was, at one time, a contemptuous and derogatory term that fans used to make fun of non-fans who called science fiction "scifi." That's, um, not what it is today.)
But back on leaving one community and entering another, i.e. fundie Protestant religion and fandom-as-it-was-in-the-early-80s, which was a helluva journey. Finding out that anthropology was A Thing is part of it, as is realizing that participant-observer stuff is fraught with peril, especially if you don't realize that that is what you're doing. Or probably should be doing. If you're not observing in certain ways, it's just... uncritical participating? Something.
There's also how, when I got there, fandom was so very obviously not really One Big Thing, despite the ... suggestions? assumptions? doctrine? that it was. I remember zine fans (note the modified term!) complaining that now they had a modified term applied to them when once they had roamed the Earth as giant thunder lizards of fanac, browsing on hecto jelly and twilltone, and what on Earth was fandom coming to, anyway? Not to mention the way people had applied a modifier to Trek fans or Trekfans or don't-you-dare-say-Trekkie-Ghu-dammit-we-are-Trekkers!-fans.
Anyhow, there were a lot of fights over words.
The above is why the essay is not finished yet, because gaaaah.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-20 04:31 pm (UTC)