What use Fandom?
Jun. 20th, 2006 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyblossomWell.
Okay, my involvement in the latest thingummy with fandom comes to exactly, oh, nil, so while some people have asked me for my opinion on it, since I've been around long enough and I know enough people involved, I'm just like every other person watching it in horror. I don't know. I never knew![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
msscribe. I know people who know her, but aside from a few lj comments I've never had an actual conversation with her. So I have no special wisdom or information to offer.
As someone who stayed exclusively in slash fandom, I never a) understood these particular ship wars in question, b) took a side in them (particularly), or b) was of any consequence to anyone from het fandom. To be honest I didn't ever visit GT or SQ, and I couldn't tell you the difference between them. But I remember the GT Hidden Room thing and I remember being pretty grossed out by it. There was some history and some bad blood between one group of people and another, but not knowing all the details (or, more correctly, not being able to keep all the details in my head all at once), most of it was lost on me. While slash fandom is full of wankery of its own (as well as OTPs galore), these particular gripes were mostly nonsensical to me. The conversations going on in het fandom often appeared to be in an entirely different language.
There are lots of apologies flying around right now; I'm not sure what some people are actually apologizing for. But I can say this much: I'm sorry that anyone was ever unfairly painted as a bigot, a racist, or a harbourer of evil people. I'm sorry that anyone was ever made to feel threatened or outed by fandom behaviour. If I ever aided and/or abetted such behaviour, I'm truly sorry for that. But as a sideliner, I'm not sure my feelings on the matter mean much to anyone. I can say that I think truth matters no matter how much time as passed and no matter how many people get hurt by it this time around, and if I was indeed prompted to rip into some sockpuppet in order to provide fodder for someone else's witchhunt of other people in fandom, well, I want to know about it.
Not having anything actually useful to contribute, I'm instead going to set down some thoughts that have sprung up for me around all of this. I've been thinking about my own experience in fandom, and how (and why) I came to be involved the way I was.
Reading all the things I've been reading in the last few days reminded me that for many people, fandom is a tool. It's a means to an end. I know fandom is very attractive to certain sets of people who need something from it. It's attractive to those who need more attention than they get in their real lives. It's attractive to people who want to belong to something and feel that they don't (or can't) in real life. It's definitely attractive to people who want to write something and gets lots of feedback, either to boost their egos or to help them learn to write better. Some people just really love the source material and want to talk about it. I'm sure there are as many motives for being in fandom as there are people in fandom.
I most definitely had a use for fandom.
I came to fandom at one of the lowest points in my life. I was a doctoral student and I was struggling with my program; I didn't know what I was doing with myself anymore, I didn't feel good about my work or my existence, and it was incredibly depressing. I have having a hard time just getting out of bed in the mornings. I wasn't sure if the problem was the program or just me. Right before I moved to Toronto from Boston, Two years prior I had left a horribly abusive relationship. I wondered if I was still recovering from that. I got involved in other relationship in Toronto that at least wasn't abusive, but ended very badly. I was struggling, and I couldn't pinpoint exactly why.
I saw doctors. I took pills. I joined fandom. The doctor used fandom as proof that I wasn't actually sick; I had motivation for things I enjoyed (writing) but not for thigns I clearly didn't enjoy (phd work). It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I hated the program I was in and the life I was leading and heading toward. There was nothing wrong with me beyond that. I had to turn the boat around, but I had no idea how to do that. I couldn't even concieve of other directions yet.
I went through a long, painful period of being completely lost, unemployed, and feeling entirely useless. It took me a long time to come to terms with these things (hating the only thing I've really ever done and done well and having to find something new), and fandom was a perfect escape from all of that. I didn't plan it this way, but when I discovered fandom, it allowed me to escape into a world where my real life crises didn't really matter. It was absolutely a coping mechanism for me, a way to not exactly wallow in denial, but it was a kind of snooze button to press before learning how to move past it. It let me put the confusion and depression of my situation on hold for a while. It let me concentrate of something else.
The thing I found that helped me forget about myself and my own issues is exactly the same thing that made people call me self-obsessed; I fixated on characters who were absolutely not me, living lives that were absolutely not mine, in a world where I absolutely didn't exist. So I guess I can take a moment now to apologize to anyone who was annoyed at me at the time for being so stuck in my own stories. That was something I needed to do in that place and that time. That was what fandom gave me; another reality.
And it was a reality that gave me some space, but also the chance to organize things in ways that I thought made sense, to compile lists and a glossary, and try to help provide a sense of order in the disorder. To help build a sense of community. (My knowledge ofheidi8, who (as always) has my greatest respect, is that she sees that same tendency toward chaos in this ephermeral and decentralized mess where you need a road map to find anything at all, and feels the same desire to provide some sense of "place" in fandom, some historicity, and some concrete tools for people to use when confonting fandom. I'm sure the same is true of others, though I don't know them as well, so I cannot surmise.) For me, having just been so completely cut off from other people inside a phd program, the idea of building culture digitally was completely fascinating. This is something I write about and do research on in my professional life; playing with building community tools and community resources, communities spaces, was nearly as engaging to me as writing.
While I sank further and further into fandom, I turned off real life. Real life only reminded me of the things I wasn't confronting (yet). I started sleeping during the day so that I could live without the fear of phone calls at night. I stopped checking my real life email and unplugged my phone. And in a bizarre but not unheard-of form of self-punishment, I stopped eating. I think I wrote one fic in particular (Origins) entirely fueled by iced tea.
The funny thing about all this, in retrospect, is that the process I went through (minus the fandom bit, natch) is enitrely typical of anyone dropping out of a phd program, and I've met many many others who went through it. They just didn't have the fantastical self re-invention space that I stumbled upon. I've been conflicted about my fandom experience since having mostly left it. I didn't know how to frame it or make sense of it. But now I really do see it as an amazing space that gave me the breathing room I needed, and an intensely creative space where I learned a little bit about how to write again. It taught me a million things about social software that I would never have learned out there on my own, in spite of my own long history in academic technology. Dabbling in fandom helped me redefine who I am and what I want to do with my life; I'm amazed how often things I learned in fandom come up in my current professional life. So I'm no longer conflicted about my role in fandom. Now I'd like to re-embrace it, and give it the credit it deserves for turning me around and forcing me to see what it is I really enjoy doing.
That was a heck of a long chunk of navel-gazing. Sorry about that. The point of all this was really just to say the very obvious thing; that people come into fandoms for reasons of their own. Reading what other people had to say about certain people's motives (those I know and those I don't) made me think a little harder about my own.
Okay, my involvement in the latest thingummy with fandom comes to exactly, oh, nil, so while some people have asked me for my opinion on it, since I've been around long enough and I know enough people involved, I'm just like every other person watching it in horror. I don't know. I never knew
msscribe. I know people who know her, but aside from a few lj comments I've never had an actual conversation with her. So I have no special wisdom or information to offer.As someone who stayed exclusively in slash fandom, I never a) understood these particular ship wars in question, b) took a side in them (particularly), or b) was of any consequence to anyone from het fandom. To be honest I didn't ever visit GT or SQ, and I couldn't tell you the difference between them. But I remember the GT Hidden Room thing and I remember being pretty grossed out by it. There was some history and some bad blood between one group of people and another, but not knowing all the details (or, more correctly, not being able to keep all the details in my head all at once), most of it was lost on me. While slash fandom is full of wankery of its own (as well as OTPs galore), these particular gripes were mostly nonsensical to me. The conversations going on in het fandom often appeared to be in an entirely different language.
There are lots of apologies flying around right now; I'm not sure what some people are actually apologizing for. But I can say this much: I'm sorry that anyone was ever unfairly painted as a bigot, a racist, or a harbourer of evil people. I'm sorry that anyone was ever made to feel threatened or outed by fandom behaviour. If I ever aided and/or abetted such behaviour, I'm truly sorry for that. But as a sideliner, I'm not sure my feelings on the matter mean much to anyone. I can say that I think truth matters no matter how much time as passed and no matter how many people get hurt by it this time around, and if I was indeed prompted to rip into some sockpuppet in order to provide fodder for someone else's witchhunt of other people in fandom, well, I want to know about it.
Not having anything actually useful to contribute, I'm instead going to set down some thoughts that have sprung up for me around all of this. I've been thinking about my own experience in fandom, and how (and why) I came to be involved the way I was.
Reading all the things I've been reading in the last few days reminded me that for many people, fandom is a tool. It's a means to an end. I know fandom is very attractive to certain sets of people who need something from it. It's attractive to those who need more attention than they get in their real lives. It's attractive to people who want to belong to something and feel that they don't (or can't) in real life. It's definitely attractive to people who want to write something and gets lots of feedback, either to boost their egos or to help them learn to write better. Some people just really love the source material and want to talk about it. I'm sure there are as many motives for being in fandom as there are people in fandom.
I most definitely had a use for fandom.
I came to fandom at one of the lowest points in my life. I was a doctoral student and I was struggling with my program; I didn't know what I was doing with myself anymore, I didn't feel good about my work or my existence, and it was incredibly depressing. I have having a hard time just getting out of bed in the mornings. I wasn't sure if the problem was the program or just me. Right before I moved to Toronto from Boston, Two years prior I had left a horribly abusive relationship. I wondered if I was still recovering from that. I got involved in other relationship in Toronto that at least wasn't abusive, but ended very badly. I was struggling, and I couldn't pinpoint exactly why.
I saw doctors. I took pills. I joined fandom. The doctor used fandom as proof that I wasn't actually sick; I had motivation for things I enjoyed (writing) but not for thigns I clearly didn't enjoy (phd work). It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I hated the program I was in and the life I was leading and heading toward. There was nothing wrong with me beyond that. I had to turn the boat around, but I had no idea how to do that. I couldn't even concieve of other directions yet.
I went through a long, painful period of being completely lost, unemployed, and feeling entirely useless. It took me a long time to come to terms with these things (hating the only thing I've really ever done and done well and having to find something new), and fandom was a perfect escape from all of that. I didn't plan it this way, but when I discovered fandom, it allowed me to escape into a world where my real life crises didn't really matter. It was absolutely a coping mechanism for me, a way to not exactly wallow in denial, but it was a kind of snooze button to press before learning how to move past it. It let me put the confusion and depression of my situation on hold for a while. It let me concentrate of something else.
The thing I found that helped me forget about myself and my own issues is exactly the same thing that made people call me self-obsessed; I fixated on characters who were absolutely not me, living lives that were absolutely not mine, in a world where I absolutely didn't exist. So I guess I can take a moment now to apologize to anyone who was annoyed at me at the time for being so stuck in my own stories. That was something I needed to do in that place and that time. That was what fandom gave me; another reality.
And it was a reality that gave me some space, but also the chance to organize things in ways that I thought made sense, to compile lists and a glossary, and try to help provide a sense of order in the disorder. To help build a sense of community. (My knowledge of
heidi8, who (as always) has my greatest respect, is that she sees that same tendency toward chaos in this ephermeral and decentralized mess where you need a road map to find anything at all, and feels the same desire to provide some sense of "place" in fandom, some historicity, and some concrete tools for people to use when confonting fandom. I'm sure the same is true of others, though I don't know them as well, so I cannot surmise.) For me, having just been so completely cut off from other people inside a phd program, the idea of building culture digitally was completely fascinating. This is something I write about and do research on in my professional life; playing with building community tools and community resources, communities spaces, was nearly as engaging to me as writing.While I sank further and further into fandom, I turned off real life. Real life only reminded me of the things I wasn't confronting (yet). I started sleeping during the day so that I could live without the fear of phone calls at night. I stopped checking my real life email and unplugged my phone. And in a bizarre but not unheard-of form of self-punishment, I stopped eating. I think I wrote one fic in particular (Origins) entirely fueled by iced tea.
The funny thing about all this, in retrospect, is that the process I went through (minus the fandom bit, natch) is enitrely typical of anyone dropping out of a phd program, and I've met many many others who went through it. They just didn't have the fantastical self re-invention space that I stumbled upon. I've been conflicted about my fandom experience since having mostly left it. I didn't know how to frame it or make sense of it. But now I really do see it as an amazing space that gave me the breathing room I needed, and an intensely creative space where I learned a little bit about how to write again. It taught me a million things about social software that I would never have learned out there on my own, in spite of my own long history in academic technology. Dabbling in fandom helped me redefine who I am and what I want to do with my life; I'm amazed how often things I learned in fandom come up in my current professional life. So I'm no longer conflicted about my role in fandom. Now I'd like to re-embrace it, and give it the credit it deserves for turning me around and forcing me to see what it is I really enjoy doing.
That was a heck of a long chunk of navel-gazing. Sorry about that. The point of all this was really just to say the very obvious thing; that people come into fandoms for reasons of their own. Reading what other people had to say about certain people's motives (those I know and those I don't) made me think a little harder about my own.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-22 02:24 am (UTC)Well, maybe not because your activities being intimidating was all on me. That's not your problem in the least nor should it be. I was stuck, in terms of writing, and you weren't. And that made me go 'O.O' and 'I suck as a fangirl. Woe.'
At the time I was writing I wasn't very keen about talking about what was motivating me anyway. Not sure I could have really articulated it at all. Hindsight and all that.
Hindsight is a funny thing in that perspective is still, often, soooo skewed. :)