On Fanlore, users with accounts can edit pages including user pages, can create pages, and more. Any information you publish on a page or an edit summary will be accessible by the public and to Fanlore personnel. Because Fanlore is a wiki, information published on Fanlore will be publicly available forever, even if edited later. Be mindful when sharing personal information, including your religious or political views, health, racial background, country of origin, sexual identity and/or personal relationships. To learn more, check out our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Select "dismiss" to agree to these terms.
Rogue Judiciary
| Synonyms: | |
| See also: | Fandom Wank |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Term coined by Cryptoxin to describe Fandom Wank and related communities' function in fandom.
"I'm not calling for a hierarchicalization of fandom -- I do see its anarchy as vital. And I don't know if anarchy is the precise term -- we have a variety of local, micro-structures: the invisible bureaucracy of mods and archive builders/maintainers and organizers of cons and fic fests etc., the rogue judiciary of fandom_wank, the BNFocracy...."[1]
That is, Fandom Wank serves a constructive purpose (aside from its hilarious one) in that it defines the borders of acceptable fannish behavior (by punishing -- with mockery -- those who cross that border). As one of the few venues where fans of many flavors commingle, Fandom Wank provides a pan-fandom baseline of when righteousness has turned into ridiculousness.
Later, Cryptoxin clarified in another comment about how difficult it is to differentiate between a conversation partner who's trolling and one who's simply unable to let go of a hobby-horse:
This is why I call fandom_wank the rogue judiciary -- without them, even as a symbolic panopticon, there's no third party to whom you can address those kinds of objections.[2]
In other words, Fandom Wank also acts as an outside viewpoint that can interpret events.
Other Mentions
- Vee Fic, Why Is There Not More Shunning? (in comments), The Schrodinger's Cat of Verb Tenses, May 5, 2008 (Accessed October 2, 2008)
- Seperis, i'm avoiding my actual work, The Toybox, May 9, 2008 (Accessed October 2, 2008
- Khym Chanur, Untitled, Fandom Lounge, May 11, 2008 (Accessed October 2, 2008)
References
- ^ Cryptoxin, In Defense of Burr86 (in comments), Crypto, August 5, 2007 (Accessed October 2, 2008)
- ^ Trolls: On the Care & Feeding, Detection, Gender, and Other Miscellaneous Lore Accessed Dec. 6, 2012.