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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 onyaoi 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.)
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
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.)
