Graying of Fandom

Synonyms:
See also:	Fandom Decline, Juvenilia
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The graying of fandom is a phrase most commonly -- but not exclusively -- used in literary science fiction fandom circles in discussions about the future of long-running conventions, clubs, and other organized fan activities where the average age of participants is trending older due to lack of young people joining.

The reasons for the graying of fandom to occur can sometimes be intrinsically linked to the attitude of the veterans of certain fandoms when young fans step into the middle of fanatical culture and decide to go to conventions.

Arguments about the lack of new blood in fandom vary along different lines of thought. Some believe that younger people are not interested in being part of fandom or going to conventions, while others think that the younger ones who go to them distort the meaning of the event by acting unpretentiously, never fixating on anything for long.

Fans Comment

[Mathew Gasper]

Looking past that, Nugent is talking about something he calls “the graying of the old-school nerd” or “the graying of fandom.” There is apparently a concern that many activities that were considered popular for nerds, such as reading sci-fi and going to conventions to talk about the sci-fi novels nerds read, is disappearing and being replaced by a new set of nerds. Nugent writes:

"Now, of course, the middle-aged and the elderly are the rank and file, and the high-school-to-college demographic is a fringe. The people who would have been voracious readers of sci-fi and fantasy in previous generations are spending their time other ways. Computer and console games offer the same themes (adventure, battle, groups of heroic characters with diverse abilities on a quest to thwart a force of evil). They demand less time than books, they link hundreds of thousands of players through the Internet, and they are increasingly portable. The clubhouse has become endangered."

In the same way that part of Roger Ebert fears the rise of the video game industry because of his close involvement with the film industry, the old-school nerd is threaten because their numbers are diminishing. Nugent is right; video games are the status quo. It is much easier to play video games in the quiet of your own home, potentially with thousands of others, than go to big conventions and meet to talk about the nerd-o-scape. Video games even allow people to hide their nerd tendencies, something that may be important to younger people that are trying to maintain an air of cool so as not to become outcasted in an increasingly judgmental and alienating social system known as high school. Your peer group doesn’t have to know you’re in a World of Warcraft guild or Call of Duty clan. Video games also let people connect over similar interests regardless of geographical location; a group of videogamers can be transnational, and people can group together over what they want to do fictionally without ever seeing each other. For all of these reasons the traditional nerd is graying.

But the concept of nerd may also be evolving. Traditional nerds may be holding onto a system that no longer has any market value; in order to gain new members, organizations have to offer something that is valuable. Maybe traditional nerd structures are having trouble doing this. If it’s more valuable to hide nerd tendencies while connecting with like-minded individuals than go to public conventions and display the ultimate nerd in you, than video games will inevitably be more popular.

[Kevin Riggle]

I watched a guy at Worldcon (not me), probably in his forties, who was obviously not part of fandom but interested, come up to an open filk circle which had just sung a fairly martial song (based on Harry Turtledove’s WORLDWAR books) asking if they could sing something more peace-loving — asking to be included — and instead of saying, “here, sit down, have a NESFA hymnal, find something and we’ll sing something you want to sing,” they rebuffed him. They missed an opportunity. And they missed it for me too and anybody else watching, because seeing that I would hardly have felt welcome to go up to the group and try to participate myself. I would say that missed opportunities like that were the rule rather than the exception in my observation at Worldcon. And even though I had brought him to the event and was trying to welcome him (into a group of which I still do not feel a part!), I couldn’t cover for other people who weren’t so welcoming, at what was ostensibly an open event.

Much has of course already been made of the problem of “the graying of fandom”, and this will no doubt be read in that tradition by those that know it. I want to cast that phrase on a purely personal level, though, make it concrete for you: when you say “the graying of fandom” what you mean is “all my friends are getting old and grey”. I submit that if you show up to a big event like a Worldcon where new people reasonably abound and you aren’t looking to make new friends — if you don’t in fact make new friends younger than you with some frequency — then you have only yourself to blame that all of your friends are getting old! I can’t be your friend if you don’t want me.

[matociquala]

[...] I hear a lot about the graying of fandom. I hear a lot about the death of science fiction. I hear a lot about how SF is getting old, and not enough young people are coming in.

Dudes. I just got back from Space City Con. It was crawling with twenty-somethings. I can go to any anime convention in the land and be the oldest person in the room. Steampunk conventions are full of youthful faces. DragonCon, which is four times the size of a Worldcon, also skews about twenty years younger.

Have you been on Tumblr?!

Fandom is not graying. Fandom is evolving. Maybe our friends are graying, but fandom is not just our friends.

And that's what this is about. Fandom is not just our friends anymore, and the ideas and people we grew up comfortable with. And rather than finding that threatening, maybe what we need to do is make room for lots and lots of new friends and new ideas. Listen to some new music. Get out and dance.

Make some room in the Hugo balloting process for new kinds of fans, and young people on a budget. And then live with the results, which, I am sorry to say, is going to be girls and queers and brown people all up in the awards along with the straight white cis dudes.

It's okay. It's a good thing.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Move on.

[ursulav]

The problem of Worldcon, sez I, and of a subset of SF fandom in general is not that it is full of old people. All my fandoms are full of old people. So far, it hasn’t been a problem. They’ve generally been glad to see me, and I’ve been glad to see them.

[...]

No, the problem is that it is insular and intransigent and run by rules (Robert’s Rules of Order, ahem***) that favor the status quo over change. It is that it has problems, and one of the manifestations of that problem is that young people aren’t showing up.

I am not saying that Worldcon would be infinitely better if it was run by the young whippersnappers. I am saying get your shit together, because whatever’s going on is making sure there are no young whippersnappers.

Chuck Wendig has just written a post about The Worldcon Youth Problem. I saw some of that with my own eyes -- while waiting in line for the Hugos to open, a pair of gentlemen in front of me were talking with not-even-thinly-veiled contempt about 'media fandom,' as though it weren't possible to like books and movies and games all at the same time. But they're right -- those people aren't real fans in the sense that they don't belong to the Fandom Culture that is rooted in print zines and written letters. The culture that effectively owns and operates Worldcon. And more to the point: those people (and by that I mean people like me) aren't quite welcome there. Tumblr isn't fandom. Apparently.

This is related to the Fake Geek Girl problem -- a tribe of people who feel they should have authority over who does and doesn't get to be included in their tribe. Suggesting that to be a true fan of SF/F, first you must read the Holy Trinity of Heinlein, Clarke and Asimov is... let's just say it's a little old-fashioned.

In our Sunday episode of The Cultures, I talked about how Worldcon is an incredibly intimidating event for a newcomer to come into. Speaking here as a game designer, this is a structural problem with Worldcon (and other cons like it) as a fan-run event.

Fan-run cons are a recipe for creating events that increasingly and over time favor the long-timers and become closed social groups. It's not inevitable, but preventing it requires a certain mindful attention.

[...]

Have you ever tried to come into a close-knit group of people for the first time? Where they've all known each other for ten, twenty, even thirty years? They have their own language (smof, concom, fannish) and their own in-jokes and traditions (badge ribbons). No matter if they are the most welcoming group in the world, it's going to be super hard to feel like you really belong there.

[...]

They know you have to invite people in by baiting the hook with stuff they love already, and not just stuff you love. Once you invite them in, though, you can introduce them to new things and old traditions alike. People come to cons to celebrate things that they love -- but you know what? If you can get them in the door, they can also discover new things to love.

So this is something Worldcon and the very particular fannish culture that runs it needs to do some soul-searching about. Are you OK being a closed social group for people who like the same things that you liked twenty, thirty years ago, or who are good friends with someone who does? Or do want this thing to survive and thrive into another generation, maybe even one that also likes games and comics and movies?

Because you can't have both.

— Andrea Phillips

Other SF conventions and expo style events are attracting larger numbers. Supanova will soon be offering its own, very successful and different, style of event to Perth. Swancon is failing to grow its numbers. Fandom overall is graying, and fracturing. Big areas of fandom donʼt see Swancon as the event for them. Is the way we run conventions becoming inappropriate for fandom? Are we doing some things wrong, could we change without losing what makes Swancon the event we like?

— The Politics of Fandom - University of Western Australia: Swancon Program public draft

Meta & Resources

• ‘Fandoms’ Can Be Surprisingly Beneficial for Teen Mental Health essay (Aug 4, 2017)