Sometimes I see people in fandom talking (Ageism In Fandom)
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| Title: | Sometimes I see people in fandom talking (Ageism In Fandom) |
| Creator: | bec - Bitter Boots |
| Date(s): | Jan 17, 2019 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | Ageism In Fandom |
| External Links: | bec - Bitter Boots on Twitter: "Ok, yall, I'm gonna salt on main for a sec. Sometimes I see people in fandom talking abt how Weird it is for Fandom Olds to be active members of the fannish community", Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Sometimes I see people in fandom talking is a twitter post by bec - Bitter Boots. The post circulated on Twitter, Dreamwidth and Tumblr.
Excerpts From The Post
"Ok, yall, I'm gonna salt on main for a sec. Sometimes I see people in fandom talking abt how Weird it is for Fandom Olds to be active members of the fannish community, & people older than their teens second guessing their places in what should be a welcoming & open space...
And, not unrelated, I also see a lot of Fake Woke purity policing poping up in the same breath. "You can't ship X because its Problematic" and "They arent blood related but they're close to eachother so its incest" and now "Multishipping is prompting infidelity!"
Fandom has always had its fair share of Good White Christian Moms showing up to tell you whats Good and whats Bad. nearly fourteen years ago I got my first "Harry Potter is the Devils child and repent for writing HP fic or you're going to hell!" message on http://ff.net
But I think its something to consider that its often the places where people 25, 35, 55+ are being pushed out that we're finding a lot of the tumblr woke bad hot takes. People without the life experience are coming together and deciding not to learn from fandom history,Deciding not to look for the lexicon of language that has been there for years to describe and explain why they dont link a thing, and not to learn the commonly accepted practice of what to do when you find fanworks you dont enjoy...
Instead of saying "I dont ship X bc its my notp" or abiding by "dont like, dont read." Spaces where that long fannish culture arent considered appear to become echo chambers where "we dont like X so now we need to come up with a justification for why" is the new normal,
And anyone who doesnt think the same way is Problematique™. And that Problematique™ content should disappear!!! Fiction impacts reality!!! If your content could hurt me it shouldnt exist!!!
Its easy to burn that torch when youve never been impacted by the loss of geocities, or by strikethrough, or heard stories from people who watched entire fanspaces burn overnight. Policing and witchhunting content bc it personally doesnt agree w you is always a factor of-These purges. Think about tumblr, and how accurate their dragnet has been while trying to make a "safe" sfw space ......[snip]
All this to say, stop, consider what you're saying and why. If you have Strong Feelings about multishipping, maybe you're just a monoshipper. That doesnt make people who arent Bad or Wrong, and it doesnt mean you're lacking or Better either. You just have a preference, one that
Is perfectly okay for other people not to share.
Tl;dr: learn from the people who were in fannish spaces b4 you. Learn that its okay to just like or dislike things, & that your preferences dont have to be law or supported by "evidence". Curate your experience.
Reaction/Commentary
On Twitter
[Dr. Katie I] As a fandom old, I feel all of this on a visceral level.
[esterbrook] I'm still relatively new TO fandom, but I'm definitely raising the average age IN fandom.
[Rho Replying to @aroundab00t]The root-cause of all this nonsense is that a good swath of the younger generation doesn't seem capable of seeing fandom for what it's always been -- an escapist place for *personal pleasure.* Instead, they see it as an *activist space & safe-space* rolled into one.
Specifically, a space that should somehow cater to every individual's sense of visceral personal discomfort with X or Y content, instead of a hedonistic, pleasure-focused environment where if something doesn't give you pleasure, you learn to filter it out / ignore its existence.
[@aroundab00t replying to Rho]I think that sometimes its easy for some to forget or ignore that some fans use fanworks as a way to personally work through issues that others in no way have the right to know about. Even works that are Problematically Focused w no joy or resolution may be someone
Taking control of an experience or intrusive thought in their own way, for them personally, and that no one else needs or has the god given right to demand an explanation. Ppl shouldnt need to explain why they write things, others should tag and curate
[mp100 hell Replying to @aroundab00t] Us adults in fandom literally built these communities. And while I fully support being very wary of older people preying on the young and naive people not all adults are predators.
[Normal Archer Replying to @aroundab00t] The thing that always gets me about this is: who do the really young fandom people, who want to drive us older fans out, think is paying the ao3 hosting bills? Who is fighting for the legal protections for transformative works to exist?
[Nea replying to Normal Archer ] Considering that the start of this nonsense seems to date back to the beginnings of gamer gate/no girl cooties in Ghostbusters, I legitimately wonder if a lot of this is a coordinated attempt to get the loud, proud older women of fandom to silence themselves. As if.
[Unsavory Crimedude replying to Nea and Noprmal Archer] This started way before that reboot
[Emily Gleason Replying to @aroundab00t] This is part of why I've started using squick again.
Kelly Schmader Replying to @aroundab00t] Why does one's age even matter with a fandom?? Seriously, WGAS how old you are...I have fandom friends both much younger and much older than I am and would hug them all if I could.
[Catherine Replying to @aroundab00t] Thank you, from someone who remembers the geocities purge, all of this!
[JammerLea Replying to @aroundab00t] As a fandom old... All of this so hard. I understand the concerns some of these people have, but some of this is getting too close to book burning imo
[ashacrone Replying to @aroundab00t] Fandom old here, and yeah. Feel this. Younger fans haven't had to face the same losses as older fans, and never lived in a time when it wasn't easy to differentiate things or grow the same kinds of thick skin. It's a weird divide happening now.
[Newmoonflower Replying to @aroundab00t]<3 I'm new to fandom in cyberspace...but one of the oldest fans in the spaces I've been in at 57. (Ask me about slash in the pre-internet
days). I love the multigenerational, international connections I've been making...But YES to all you say! Love this thread!
[G @JiskeyJasket ] I think it is so, so goddamn cool to see people from your generation, the founding generations of modern fandom, still engaging with and enjoying fandom. I hope you have the most lovely of times here.
[Deb Walsh Replying to @aroundab00t @BelovedMuerto] As someone who saw Star Wars opening week & published the very first Star Wars fanzine, I've seen shit come & go. Sadly, the one constant is fans sitting in judgment of other fans. It's a useless and stupid thing, but it's a thing. Kudos to all who try to be better than that.
[Alex @Phoenix_Sephone Replying to @aroundab00t @bakugoisaswitch] I needed this. 26 and feeling like the damned crypt keeper in some of the fandoms of things I absolutely love
[auntie merry Replying to @aroundab00t] Thank you! I am 37 and been in online fannish spaces since the internet was a young pup, raised on AOL chat rooms, Yahoo groups, and Fanforum message boards. I’ve written and read fanfic for more fandoms than you can count. We are all here for the same reasons!
[ThatCrazyRavn Replying to @aroundab00t] My aunts the one who showed me where the good stuff was. Definitely am cool with older fandom and those weirdo young people (I’m kinda apart of) are just young and stupid. (I mean the only reason fandom exists is cuz the older crowds made it so) very happy y’all here. Plz stay <3
[Deku Replying to @aroundab00t] This thread is amazing! Just tossing the idea on the heap that the ironic thing is that it’s disproportionately non cis men who are being policed, interrogated, and shamed in fandom spaces now when we already get so much of that irl /:
[@teknohada Replying to @aroundab00t] This. So much. For me, fandom as a personal experience means curating the content you want, not torching the rest. What a waste of energy.
[Azure Replying to @aroundab00t] As an old, there are so many times recently I've seen blow-ups around various fandoms, and I'm like whatever happened to just not looking at fan works you dislike? Though, I guess to be fair, shipping wars have always happened.
[Amy Replying to @aroundab00t] As an old who was once a young, it’s weird to see younger fans attacking older ones. When I was new to fandom at age 14, I idolized older fans and looked up to them for content, experiences, friendships. It just seems sad to me that younger fans don’t want what older fans offer.
[Amber Clement Replying to @aroundab00t @Byebi_] I remember I used to be involved with a magical girl fandom and there was a guy who wrote fics and he revealed he was like...40 iirc? It was kind of weird, but he was one of the better writers so at the end of the day, it was awesome that he used his talent for that!
[Stephanie [professional potato] Replying to @aroundab00t] Thank you for this thread, from a 35-year-old who's been involved in online fandom since she was 13 and Seen A Lot Of Shit
[Luc - maydei - RDC5 Replying to @aroundab00t @vix_spes] from someone who’s been in fandom more than a decade, seriously, thank you. this new old wank is exhausting to rehash.
[Nathanial Anderson Replying to @aroundab00t] I have no clue what this is, but cool?
[❄️IcyHot Energy Replying to @aroundab00t] I'm not exactly sure if I'd be considered an old only being 22, but I've been in fandoms since I was 14. I've seen endless shipping wars and a fandom or 2 crash and burn. As of lately I've actually felt like I haven't been accepted into fandoms. It's honestly really shitty ewe
[jung yohan stan ] Lol same here, not exactly old but at least with no SJW stick up my ass.
On Dreamwidth
[alexseanchai] I mean, fandom is an activist space. That's sort of an inevitable consequence of a bunch of queer women congregating to engage in and value feminine-coded activities in a vocally queer way. For that reason among others, fandom being a safe space needs to be a fannish priority.Here's the things, though.
1) Having an escapist place for personal pleasure, unrelated to activist anything, is an activist priority. Or anyway it should be a priority of any activist who wants to avoid burnout.
2) Safe for whom? Telling the child abuse survivor whose healing strategy is to read and write about fictional children in abusive situations......is not the world's most ethical way to handle this situation. No real children are being harmed....... If content creators tag and warn appropriately, then child abuse survivors whose healing strategy is to stay clear of reminders of the abuse will stay safe as long as they read the header before clicking the fic. Competing access needs are a thing, but totally barring one lot in order to protect another is not a good large-scale solution unless them as we're barring are actual Nazis, and everyone else can frankly butt out.
3) Fandom is vast. We contain multitudes.[1]
[amedia] You know, I had completely forgotten this until I read this post, but the Sock Puppeteer who tried to ruin Rat Patrol fandom was virulently anti-slash. It wasn't all that uncommon for people to dislike slash back then (late 90's/early oughty-oughts), and we also didn't talk about it in spaces that weren't age-restricted, so it didn't occur to me to mention it in the sock puppet account that I posted a while back. But it's an interesting parallel with the phenomenon described here. It wasn't just that she wasn't interested or didn't like it; IIRC, she and all her socks believed that it shouldn't exist at all.[2]