Slash Fandom & the Internet: An Escapade Perspective

Meta
Title:	Slash Fandom & the Internet: An Escapade Perspective
Creator:	Sandy Herrold
Date(s):	1997
Medium:
Fandom:	slash fandom, mailing list
Topic:	net fans vs. print fans
External Links:
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Slash Fandom & the Internet: An Escapade Perspective is a 1997 essay by Sandy Herrold.

It was printed in the post-con report for Escapade.

This essay contains about three fourths of the same content as Internet Fans Controversy Du Jour (Sandy Herrold).

Some Topics Discussed

• netfans vs printfans
• changing views of technology and fandom
• slash mailing lists
• humility

The Essay

ESCAPADE’S internet panels were almost as hot a conversational topic as Methos. Slash On The Net; net fic (vs. print fic), and are “they” different from “us” were all ideas that were addressed in various panels...

...and after a while I realized that this was different from last year’s Internet conversations, while last year’s had been different from the one before that. So, here’s my take on the last 4 years: others who have attended cons each year since 1993, please feel free to correct or flesh out (or flatly contradict) my recollections.

Virgule-l (Internet slash list) started in 1993 with just 7 members (all of whom had been in fandom for years), and for its first two years, people on Virgule-l were Internet evangelists at cons.

At Z-Con , ESCAPADE IV & MediaWestCon ’94, we were “The Connected“ and we continually tried to convince The Unconnected to buy a computer or add a modem. The Unconnected pushed back, mostly saying, “I’m not convinced there is enough out there to make the investment worth while — prove it to me, and I’ll join you.”

By 1995, we were less interested in recruiting, and more interested in each other. We eagerly attended Internet-related panels, and we had parties at cons so that we could put faces to email addresses. The slash mailing lists (there were some small ones on AOL, Genie and others, plus the first show-based slashlists) came up in panels all the time, and we just expected everyone there to know what we were talking about. More and more people were talking about getting online, soliciting information and help from The Connected. Virgule-l’s membership had increased dramatically. Jokes like the “Wave Theory” buttons were prominent at cons, and we didn’t go out of our way to explain them to The Unconnected.

At ESCAPADE VI (1996), The Unconnected fought back. People without access accused the ones with access of excluding them, and they made it sound personal. Biting comments overtly suggested classism in fandom (rich fans can afford computers, poor fans can’t, so now poor fans will be cut off from all of the stuff that suddenly is available only online). Some of The Connected felt attacked, and were fairly defensive in return. Comments about how The Connected were causing ‘The DEATH of Apas and Letterzines’ were common throughout the con. And, the first grumblings about “netfic“ began to be heard.

By ESCAPADE VII, 1997, The Unconnected were pretty quiet — I only heard a couple of people mention the unconnected/connected split at all. The new battle appeared to be between “Printfans With Modems” (i.e., most of the women on Virgule-l) vs. “Netfans”: Stuff like, “They don’t care about our traditions”; “All net writing is barely readable crap”; “if most of a show’s fandom is online (like SAAB and Voyager, to name two), it proves that the show is crap; and “They’re just writing porn.” (And the classic, “print fans don’t have beta readers; they have friends”)

Someone said, “Virgule is mostly printfans with modems; Slashpoint is more netfans.“ A discussion followed about whether that was such a bad thing... Virgule had never been explicitly mentioned over on Slashpoint, or any of the big show-specific slash lists.

One of the cool things about this years’ ESCAPADE was that there were real netfans at their first con: Jenny Shipp, the creator of slash-sis; Brenda Antrim, a noted net writer, and others. Having an actual “Netfan” in the room while people were trying to make sweeping statements about “their kind” really helped move the conversation away from the polarizing rhetoric of past conventions and on to some wonderful conversations.

Who knows what the controversy will be next year? Perhaps between the “Web Slash advertizers”, and the “Use the Web to get in touch with each other, but advertising to the net world is bad,” or some new issue we can’t even think of yet.

I think the one thing that will stay the same for the next couple of years is the conflict; slash fandom has grown so much and spread so far that some splintering must occur.

The Internet is one thing people can easily point to and say “There! That’s the culprit!” — even as more and more of us sign on every day. Like every other fannish conflict since the first two people sat down and decided to produce a slash zine, eventually we’ll probably all look back at this and laugh...