Those were the days
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| Title: | Those were the days |
| Creator: | Gwyneth Rhys |
| Date(s): | January 17, 2006 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Those were the days, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Those were the days is a 2006 essay by Gwyneth Rhys.
For additional context, see Timeline of Concrit & Feedback Meta.
Some Topics Discussed
- Escapade
- the 2005 vid show at Escapade
- fan entitlement
- greedy, ungrateful net fans vs older fans with manners and appreciation
- the then-recent passing of fan Joan Martin
- new fans' lack of empathy, understanding of history, willingness to help out, understanding of fan community
- laziness and lack of feedback for vids
- lack of feedback/not acknowledging feedback
- password protected vids
- ungrateful BNFs
- getting out of fandom for the sake of one's sanity, therapists
- greed
Excerpts from the Essay
There are so many fans who've been around, organizing and pimping and sharing and creating, for so long, and most of them don't get their due now that fandom has exploded on the 'net and everyone coming in thinks they invented fandom, and don't care about any of the stuff that came before.
{Joan Martin's death] made me think, too, of something that's really been eating at me lately and has left me feeling very bitter about fandom -- this sense of entitlement that most newer fans, those who've only known fandom on the net, have about everything: it's all free for the taking, they have to give nothing in return, grab grab grab, gripe gripe gripe when stuff doesn't go their way, and it's all about them because the world is theirs and we only live in it. When I first came into media fandom (as opposed to SF fandom, where I first came in through the doors of obsession), there were still a lot of people like Joan, who had been contributing for years. Sure, in the early days, there were people who plagiarized or stole, or were divas, or selfish, or whatever. Those folks will always be with us. But there were enough people whose main goal was to contribute and share that there was never a sense of unbalance. Because there were no interwebs back then, it was about face to face contact and mentoring, and community. I think we give a lot of lip service to the idea of community now, but it's mostly bullshit.
Case in point (and please keep in mind that I am ranting, because I am cranky and fed up and really hating a lot of people right now). Last year, I remember reading a post-Escapade con report that made my blood boil. Some whiny bitch I will not name was complaining about everything, but especially the vid show, where her vid looked terrible and it was all the vid show person's fault and the person running the vid show review panel (whom she couldn't even refer to by name, just kept calling her "this woman" over and over) sucked and didn't talk about enough vids (there had been technical snafus at the beginning of the panel, but you know, this happens, like, every year, so most of us laugh and shrug it off), and just gripe grip gripe in the meanest way possible. The person running the vid show panel ("this woman") had a name, Katharine, and Katharine is my friend, true, but I thought it was a pretty lousy way to disprespect her purposely. The whiner complained about *everything*, but never once offered up that maybe she could, you know, fucking volunteer to help out.
What was so offensive to me, besides the sense of entitlement Whiney Cow had, was that Katharine had been vidding since before this person had ever even heard of fandom, and has done more to create a vidding aesthetic that's carried through into some of the best vidders today than that woman could ever even dream of. But because she volunteered her time and effort and contributed to the community, she gets a big target painted on her back for whiny, self-absorbed pigs to shoot poison arrows at. It took everything in me not to leave a comment for the self-centered asshat about how maybe if she doesn't like things and thinks everyone is doing such terrible things solely to her, she could then pony up and volunteer her fucking time to make things go the way she wants them. Because, you know, she never would. People like that only ever gripe, they don't volunteer, they never offer their time. I didn't say anything in the end because Gripey McGripepants is, unfortunately, apparently friends with many of my own friends, so I left it.
[Fandom has become] [l]arger and larger, and ever more disconnected and rude and thoughtless, and mostly selfish and self-centered. It's all about us: give us free stuff, perfect stuff, off your donated time and effort and money, and if there's the slightest tarnish to it, we will gripe and smear you on our LJs and talk as much nasty shit as we can. I do meet people, newer fans, who aren't like this, but they are more the exception than the rule now.
What makes me saddest of all is that so many of the fans for whom this was the rule, rather than an exception, are disappearing. They have drifted away for various reasons (sometimes just because it has become such an inhospitable place for oldsters), and we lose out on so much when they do. Not just history, but politeness, fannish manners and true community. So, I mourn Joan's passing not just because she was a good person who shared with a newbie at her first con away from home, but because she was representative of a time and a community when entitlement wasn't even a concept to most fans. Joan was the kind of fan who made fandom such a welcoming, communal place to be. It was never perfect, but it was like a family in that respect. I think many of us at Escapade this year are going to be pretty sad, and I know there will be some recognition of her there, because she was just that much of a presence. She volunteered and shared and gave to this community, and she will be sorely missed by those of us who got the chance to know her, and know that old part of fandom that seems to be disappearing.
Some Comments
[mlyn]:I hear you. You know that. *hug* I'm sorry about the fucktards who aren't giving you vid feedback.
Me, I will continue to learn, share, write, and do art, despite how often fandom can hurt my feelings. What will probably happen is I will make smaller and smaller fannish circles for myself. Case in point: Dawn and I are talking about writing a 13th Warrior SERIES, and nobody will read it but us. That's just fine.
[ aukestrel ]: Conversely (since I was apparently a Talmudic scholar in a former life) I've actually sent fb (more than once in one case) to someone whose vid I totally loved and she never even acknowledged it. Since then I am less inclined to send fb to people I don't know, or if I do it's usually only one or two sentences. That sense of entitlement to receiving feedback is ALSO a bad trend in fandom because the people who believe that they're entitled to fb can just go "Oh, yes, I *am* great!" and never have to acknowledge or respond to it.
[ merricatk ]:I was trying to explain this aspect of fandom to my therapist this past Friday, & she could not understand it. And when I further explained the kind of responses you could expect if you said anything in a serious tone about needing feed back, the ridicule & hostility--
My therapist wants me out of fandom.
[anonymous]:People send feedback on stories that feel accessible to them--I can *always* get feedback on humorous pieces, & that included when I was deeply depressed & not responding to anybody. (And, yes, I can write humor when I'm deeply depressed. Doesn't make any sense to me, either.)
What I love is the way fandom has come to rationalize not sending even the most cursory of feedback. If a writer or vidder says she's not going to create any more because she doesn't get feedback, she's ridiculed. But if a person sending feedback says they aren't going to send anymore because the artist didn't respond, *that's* perfectly acceptible!
[aukestrel]:How about a really well known writer whose site I hosted for some years? She was usually broke and the site hosting was a communal effort where everyone who could afford to paid $1/MB per year with a 10MB acct. Part of the reason I organised this was because that woman, and a couple of others, lost their space when Tripod (I think) TOSed them.
This woman never once thanked me for organising this or for fronting the money to host the site and register the domain. Every time I heard from her, it was to scream about how the site was down, or the email was down, or to complain that 10MB wasn't enough space and she needed more.
She really, truly thought she *deserved* free ToS-free webspace because she was basically a BNF. And she didn't think she had to display any kind of manners, let alone gratitude, for the webspace.
When I finally (after three years) got to the point where I said, still somewhat politely, that I didn't think the site was really meeting her needs and maybe she would be happier elsewhere, she flounced off in high dudgeon and, last I heard, was treating the next sucker person to offer her webspace in substantially the same way.
And she really truly must believe there is nothing wrong with her attitude because when I hear about her thirdhand nowadays she still complains about ME and what a crappy (free) webspace provider I was! (She never once paid a cent for her space; other people in the "commune" paid extra if they could afford it - and I picked up the difference.
[ elke tanzer ]:I don't know if it's the mechansisms we're all using for communication these days, or the speeding-up of the pace of life in general, but it seems we know more and more people, but there are more and more parts of their lives we don't know. And when we're tired and stressed, we feel frustration and anger and hurt more poignantly, and are also more likely to cause those feelings in others. It's ucky all 'round.
I don't know whether using someone's name is more or less disrespectful than using it, in different contexts I've found even people I assumed would feel similarly felt entirely different; there can be lots of reasons and variations in intent behind that choice, including just being hopeless at remembering people's names, or not knowing if it's OK to use a real first name or a fannish pseud to refer to someone.
Complex issues, these are. Easily hurtful, and painfully hurting.
And anyone who volunteers, who puts themselves out there, is wearing a target. It sucks, but it's true. Doesn't matter whether it's in person or online. Doesn't matter if it's for helping at a con, running a con, putting together a zine, or running a USENET group, mailing list, discussion forum or LJ community.
[gwyn r [original poster] replying to elke tanzer]:Well, I totally disagree on this last part (or all of it, I don't know). I don't think volunteering means you are painting a big target that says "Go ahead, act like the lousy little shit you are." Volunteering for most of us is a way to contribute and participate. It's not like we sign over a license to attack us -- I think this says more about the people you are making excuses for than for the volunteers. Volunteers don't have to be schmucks, and they sure as shit don't have to be treated like it, and by making excuses for craptastic people this way, you're only contributing to making people think that it's okay to treat people in volunteer positions badly.
To me, it's like voting -- if you don't vote, then shut the fuck up. You don't get to gripe about the government if you didn't do at least one small thing to stand up and say no to it (or yes, whatever the case may be). If people aren't going to volunteer to participate themselves, then they can shut up, or at least air their complaints with some kind of responsibility -- fill out suggestion forms, write a letter to the concom, try to communicate with the person they're complaining about. Instead of taking the backseat driver position, and letting everyone know how superior they are, while doing absolutely nothing to change the situation for what they believe is the better.
[elke tanzer replying to gwyn r]:Whoa, whoa, whoa...
I'm not saying that the sucky way things are is the way things should be. Believe me, I'm usually an utter idealist, about just about everything.
And I'm not trying to defend anyone, either specifically or in general.
I'm just saying that we don't know everything, or even everything pertinent to the situations we find ourselves in in fandom, about other fans. And that there's a huge potential for being hurt and being hurtful.
[smithereen]:I posted a fic on fanfiction.net yesterday and I've discovered the hit counter, which I didn't notice they had before. And it's kind of messing with my head. Cause it used to be when I got 5 feedbacks I figured only 15 people had read it so *shrug*. But with the hit counter I know over a hundred people have looked at the fic, and only 5 have feedbacked. And I can take that as all the rest of the people disliked it or didn't feel strongly enough to leave feedback. Which is okay. And I know I've read lots of fics I didn't feedback for lack of time or interest or whatever so I can't expect everyone else to feedback everything they read when I don't do that myself. But it still kind of bugs me to see the numbers layed out like that...
[...]
Yeah, I've seen people who make caps or who put up soundtracks for download, stuff like that, and ask just for a comment that someone is downloading and people don't do it, much less say thank you. It is a larger issue of entitlement and ingratitude, I agree with you. And I do think the Internet took some of the personal aspect and the community out of fandom. (I have one tiny old fandom that started in 1984 so they were print zine (discussion and fic zines) based for years. And it WAS a different feeling when I went to a con for it last year than for most of my other fandoms.) But then again, you look at some of the obscure teeny fandoms. Like recently I've found Bruno and Boots fic! And there's no way there'd be an organized fandom at all there without the Internet because it would be too hard to find enough people to support it offline.
But yeah...a little gratitude for time and effort (and blood and sweat) spent doesn't seem like that much to ask.
[merricatk]:I can handle the silence of strangers; it's people I know saying nothing that gets to me. And--I posted this up-thread--I was trying to explain this aspect of fandom to my therapist this past Friday, & she could not understand it. And when I further explained the kind of responses you could expect if you said anything in a serious tone about needing feed back, the ridicule & hostility--
My therapist wants me out of fandom.
[gwyn r]: Yeah, I think it is pretty gobsmacking for people to realize there's this whole segment of the world who think this kind of bad behavior, this sense of entitlement, is perfectly okay. And to me, it's not just fandom at large -- it's the way fandom ONLINE has turned it into this place. There're a lot of things I don't miss about the olden dayes, but the level of basic human decency is not one of them. It's nearly nonexistent in fandom now.
[merricatk]:I spent the whole long weekend thinking about this, about 2 therapists in a row hearing about how fandom is a place you can be pilloried simply for asking for what you need, & how both of them told me I should not be here.
This isn't sane behavior. It isn't healthy behavior. Why are we living like this?
[talking sock]:I hear this...
but there are healthier communities and less healthy communities. I know your situation is different than mine in many particulars (I myself actually haven't found a simple replacement for fandom community, actually), but fandom itself does have some bad group dynamic aspects. My cousin lives in a very very different branch of fandom, and I'm watching her go through many of the same things that so many of us have in our section. For anyone prone to feeling the problems of insecurity etc. (as I am) it exacerbated them for me. So at some level, choosing not to play can be a solution for some people.
Not that I'm advocating that for everyone...
[merricatk]:And I've been in more than one list discussion about feedback & how we must never, never, never seriously ask for feedback, that we must write & vid just for the sheer love of the writing or viding--
Which translates into: be a good girl, sit there quietly, & if you're very, very good, people will give you what you want. Which is so not true. But say that you need feedback in any serious way, the nicest thing that will happen is that you'll be ignored. If you're not that lucky, you'll be ridiculed. And why? Because you've asked for what you needed!
[maubast]:I didn't know Joan, but I knew of her. I'm very sorry to hear of her passing, because, yeah, as you said, old fandom is fading away.
I have to say that:
that entitlement thing has been driving me nuts
Oh yeah. I'm just tired of fandom and fans, and rude people, and yeah, I know I'm not perfect, but I'm tired of feeling like the people who feel that I owe them something are sucking me dry. I'm tired of being sucked dry, and yeah, I don't expect all sunshine and rainbows, but on a community I run, there's 51 people. I am the only person (well myself and my writing partner) who write in this tiny little fandom, and yet, out of the 51 people there, two comment regularly. TWO. How sad is that?
And you know, I don't think they *owe* me comments, but neither do I owe them fic or vids, do I?
It's not just them, though. It's every aspect of my fannish life, I think.
Sorry, you're not the only bitter one. All I can say is... it makes me sad that it's come to this, for both of us.
[ keiko kirin ]:I agree with your rantyness; in fact, just this evening I read a review of a new book out about how rude everyone is nowadays and was mulling over my own checklist of Rudeness Hell, which is by no means limited to fandom (talking during movies being top of my list). But it's worse in fandom -- it affects us more, I think -- because this is where we want to spend time and enjoy ourselves. It's supposed to be the place we come to get away from the Ordinary Rudeness of Real Life. And then we come here, and voila, it's just as rude, and that's a kick in the virtual nuts.
It's a bit harder for me, though, to blame the Evil Internet, because the fact is, I am a net fan. I never would have known about slash or media fandom without the Internet. And yet I know what you mean. I was a newbie net fan in 1994, which is a bit different from being a newbie net fan in 2006, but to be honest, I can remember fans decrying the Evil Internet and how it had brought to fandom the dirty and unwashed undesirables in 1994, and it's only within the past couple of years that I can let go of my own insecurity over my Internet pedigree to believe they're not talking about me when they're talking about how awful net fans are.
Yet, I *do* know what you mean. Because even though I was one of those dirty and unwashed raised-by-wolves net fans, some kind fans from pre-net days showed me unbelievable generosity back then. Of a staggering amount I don't think anyone would believe now, and for which I'm still not sure I adequately expressed my thanks.
More than tangible assets, though, their generosity constituted time spent, and trust given. Those are the things I feel are missing in a lot of fan interaction now, and those are the things I know that I'm holding back more and more. If a name unknown to me expresses a surprising interest in some obscure fandom I'm into, do I take the time to try to connect? Do I put my trust in them enough to check out their stories or vids? Most of the time, no, to be honest. We've all been fooled and burnt, we've all received blunt hostility, slaps in the face, or a wall of silence in return for time spent and trust given. So, I don't offer the time or the trust so readily anymore.
The feedback debate is going to annoy me for the rest of my years, I fear. I swear that out there there must be an Author Zero, the first one who never answered LOCs, and started the vicious cycle of "I never fb to authors I don't know/I never receive fb because readers won't write to authors they don't know". Some of the things said by the people who very kindly and generously have sent me LOCs really make me wonder if I have an ogre's reputation or if it's just fan writers in general. The most complimentary opening line is "I'm sure you have received a bunch of LOCs about this already, but..." I mean, I love that someone thinks that! Usually it's not true, but it's a compliment that someone would think that. Second of all, there is always room for one more LOC in an author's ego, believe you me. Don't believe Author Zero if she claims otherwise.
Anyway, yes. The rudeness and sense of entitlement suck, and make this an unfun place we come to to have fun.
[gwyn r replying to keiko kirin]:Yes, and I wouldn't have met you if not for the interwebs! I was coming in on the cusp of the change, myself, so I've always felt like I straddled both worlds. But I think what for me has become the biggest difference is the FREE and DOWNLOAD and TAKE attitude of everyone coming in in the past few years. People who openly post stolen software like it's their god-given right, or who criticize vidders for using --gasp! -- tape source because we didn't have HD downloads pirated to the internet where of course everyone has high speed and bit torrent tech and whatever. It just boggles my mind how freaking self-absorbed and selfish and completely unrealistic these people are.
And I think it's a huge difference from when we were coming in, because we didn't think everything was our due. We paid for zines, we wrote LOCs, we had to go to cons to watch vids or buy tape collections. We contributed and the thinking was that expenses were shared -- it cost a lot to put out a vid collection, but we made it back through tape purchases at the minimum price. Now, the consumers believe it's their due to get it all for free, and the creators are the ones paying for it, but get absolutely nothing in return. Not even thanks.
The greed and selfishness to me is mind-boggling, and depressing, and enraging. I've often tried to be in the middle on the feedback debate -- those posts I've made about the practical aspects of it, or visual vicabularies, or whatever. But a simple thanks is totally outside that debate, I guess, and maybe that's at the core of what's upsetting me so much, and being reminded of what felt like better days, to me: GREED. It's just so effing greedy of people to take and then say things like, "LOL I never send fb I'm not good at it LOL" which is just a way of saying "I've built an excuse for my lazy selfish greedy bitchass punk self and here it is, you sucker."
I think people are taken advantage of in a way you never would be in real life (well, okay, except maybe in the workforce!) in fandom these days, in a way people didn't back in the earlier days. I was unwashed and raised by wolves when I met everyone, too -- 16 years of wandering in the wastelands by myself! -- and I don't know what I would have done if there hadn't been the mentoring and community I received. I don't think there's anything like that these days, and with so few people taught manners and simple common courtesy, it's just a free for all and a greedfest.
And I am afraid there's nothing we can do about it.