Thoughts

[feuervogel]

I had an interesting discussion about fandom and its demographics and the greying of fandom recently, sparked by my reading of the Hugo packet, which shows a marked delineation between "old school" and "new school" SFF fandom. The old guard are, obviously, older, but there are younger people who are part of the old school definition of fandom, which is limited to a small subset of SFF, being books and fanzines (and con running, and being officers of the SF club, whatever). The new guard is younger and more diverse, and seems to me more likely to have had their first fannish experiences on Yahoo!Groups or livejournal.

I've been working my way through the fanzine entries, and, to be quite fucking honest, they're excruciatingly dull. 4 of the 5 nominees are people talking about their experiences in fandom. In one of them, File 770, there was a rather long opinion piece saying that the writer, Taral Wayne, didn't want to be a member of fandom if he couldn't "leave a mark" and be a big fish in a small pond.

Well. Apparently, the purpose of Old Guard Fandom is self-aggrandizement. Not sharing squee with other people who like your favorite book/show/movie, not having conversations about the symbolism or deeper meanings of texts, not talking about things like how privilege affects writing or how the Old Guard Fandom is killing itself slowly by being exclusionary jerks. No, the only reason to be in fandom, for Taral Wayne and others like him, is to be famous (in a small town; as he put it, being Andy Rooney in Mayberry).

If I can organize my thoughts, I'd like to put a quasi response to this, with my thoughts on yaoi the delineation in the Hugo nominees, on my real blog. I'll probably draft it out and post here to get y'all's feedback on coherence, etc.

Fandom has changed. Fandom is changing. Dinosaurs like Taral Wayne are going extinct. Thank fucking god. Us young folks who like books AND media aren't going anywhere. (Except we're not going to the grey-haired people's Old Guard cons like Boskone and BayCon, too bad so sad.)

Comments

[warpig1979.livejournal.com]

Like I say, some people can't just enjoy the treehouse without they also get to hang out the NO GURLZ ALLOWD sign. Or NO KIDZ or NO OTAKU or NO BUFFY or what the fuck ever.

The Andy Griffith reference is hilarious. He's a bitter old man and he doesn't care who knows it.

[feuervogel]

He seriously said that small pond fandom should be called small town fandom, and big tent fandom should be called big city fandom, and that people get lost in big city fandom so he can't be special.

I have no words that aren't vulgar.

[warpig1979.livejournal.com]

It's amazing what getting picked last at kickball will do to some people.

[feuervogel]

I seriously do not understand the mindset that the purpose of participating in fandom is to be someone everyone's heard of. If that were teh case, there would be hundreds of big name fans and it would just be a stupid circle jerk.

Though, yeah, I think your comment on twitter that they just want to be back in 1972 is spot on.

[warpig1979.livejournal.com]

Yeh. There's a little childhood nostalgia and a lot of schoolyard trauma at work here. They spent their formative years on the outside of the in-crowd. Now they want fandom to serve as the vehicle for their fantasies of being one of the cool kids in junior high.

[tiurin.livejournal.com]

Where are these entries?

[feuervogel]

http://akiko.livejournal.com/1196959.html has the discussion in it.

[tiurin.livejournal.com]

Oh, I thought they were online for some reason.

[feuervogel]

A couple weeks ago in my lj is online ;) I'm only in the thinking stages for a post right now.

[tiercel]

Errr... Andy Rooney in Mayberry?

"Do you ever wonder why this town even has two cops?"

[feuervogel]

Dur. Griffith.

[tiurin.livejournal.com]

That reminds me...I wonder how they came up with the "dynamite-eating goat" episode on the Andy Griffith show.

[beth_leonard]

In one of them, File 770, there was a rather long opinion piece saying that the writer, Taral Wayne, didn't want to be a member of fandom if he couldn't "leave a mark" and be a big fish in a small pond.

It occurred to me recently that for some, this is fantasy -- being well-respected in a world where people who like this sort of thing just aren't typically well respected and well known. For the average reader that's a fantasy world they want to enter into. When you are a teen or pre-teen and read Harry Potter, you want to *be* Harry Potter (or Hermione), you picture yourself as the lead and what you would have done, and that is the fantasy even more than the magic.

For a significant portion of fandom, the fantasy is being well known, being the big fish in the small pond. If someone can get the readers to live out that fantasy in their essays, then the writing is doing the job it was intended to do. You may disagree that someone should have that as a fantasy, but if 4 of 5 nominees have that theme, that's my best brainstorm guess as to why.

/me might be totally missing the point.
--Beth