OTW Guest Post: Brianna Dym
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | OTW Guest Post: Brianna Dym |
| Interviewer: | Claudia Rebaza |
| Interviewee: | Brianna Dym |
| Date(s): | June 9, 2019 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | |
| External Links: | "OTW Guest Post: Brianna Dym". Archived from the original on 2019-06-09.; archive link |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
OTW Guest Post: Brianna Dym is a 2019 interview done as part of a series. See OTW Guest Post.
Some Topics Discussed
- the article by Brianna Dym and Casey Fiesler for Transformative Works and Cultures called Generations, migrations, and the future of fandom's private spaces
- fandom and call out culture
Some Excerpts
Your article in TWC’s issue 28 is about fandom’s social norms regarding privacy. What led you to focus on this?
I think privacy online is important, especially in the context of fandom where seeing that privacy violated could cause serious harm to a number of users in different ways. Often, our first answer to any problem is to attempt to devise a perfect technological solution to it, but the social norms in fandom already work fairly well to preserve user privacy. I wanted to better understand how those function to better inform conversations around protecting user privacy online.
The article addresses generational differences about privacy and the relevance of what online platforms are chosen for fandom activity. What might we expect from the next generation given what we know now?
I think we are going to see different norms in relation to what should and should not take place in fandom. You see a little bit of this already with the complaints about callout culture damaging fandom. I don’t necessarily know if that set of values will replace current norms in fandom (such as the “ship and let ship” ideal), but it is something currently causing tension in the fan community. This tension affects privacy because some users feel they have a right to make public a person’s real name and other details about them if they are deemed to be too “problematic” for fandom.
I sincerely hope this trend does not stick around, because it seems to go against all prior norms in fandom. In response to this trend, in addition to the lack of fine-grain privacy controls on most platforms, many fandoms have created their own insular spaces on Discord platforms and Slack channels where they can control who is and is not involved in the space.
What fandom things have inspired you the most?
I really appreciate the queer women’s communities I’ve found myself in, where other queer women and nonbinary people author amazing stories about women in love with other women. I appreciate that these communities allow female characters to be together in ways that most major media productions don’t allow. These communities were a valuable resource for me while growing up as a queer woman.