I’ve been thinking thoughts
about fandom lately. I’m sure it’s no surprise to anyone that I’ve been
in fandom for, oh, decades now 🙂 I’ve been in fandoms for many shows,
books, movies. I’ve been a moderator of a lot of communities, email
lists etc. I’ve gone through phases of intense involvement and phases
of ‘too exhausted by chronic illness to do more than listlessly read fic
and be grateful it was there to transport me elsewhere.’
I don’t know anyone into scifi
or fantasy who hasn’t been involved in fandom, whether peripherally or
up to their eyeballs. Genre literature/shows/movies/games seem to be
extra fertile ground for fandoms to spring up around – I love that about
them 🙂 I’m oriented more towards scifi, but given that I also love YA
literature I’ve got a strong streak of fantasy appreciation, too; I
mean, the first book I read to each of my kids was A Wizard of Earthsea!
Anyone who’s been in fandom and forums and LiveJournal and Dreamwidth and tumblr and blessed blessed AO3 [we must own the servers],
has seen different flavors of toxicity come and go and done our best to
weather them, avoid them, moderate them, block them, and sometimes
address them head on with writing and with action. People are
determined to stay in fandom because the communities of people they
build around them are so joyful and supportive and intimate and fun.
And the nice thing is, like attracts like much of the time; toxic people
attract people who want to hurt others and stir up shit, and healthy
people attract healthy people and help each other grow and become our
better selves.
My experience of fandom has
been marvelous people having a wonderful time sharing our love of
whatever story we’re all enjoying, and often becoming good friends in
the process. The reason this has been my experience, is because i have
followed/joined/etc. people or communities who were themselves healthy
and where the community standards were ‘no hurting anyone in this
place,’ with the ability to enforce that in some way. The more healthy
people I found, the more healthy friend’s-friends I met, and then
followed/friended, and on and on. I still read the blogs of people I
first followed 20 years ago – that’s how delightful and positive the
spaces those people have created.
Of course I hear about fandom
drama (tumblr will keep one apprised of it!), but I don’t want that
energy in my happy-place so I steer clear and block as many keywords as
it takes to keep drama out of my tumblr dash, twitter feed, etc. On the
rare occasion fandom drama lands on my door step and wants me to weigh
in, I have two strategies: if someone is being trashed, I’ll pull out
my Fandom-Old badge and say that this is not the way, that we’re here
for fun and a break from all the crap in the ‘real world’ and then bow
out; or I’ll bow out in a simple, ‘not joining in right now,’ fashion.
I seldom engage unless someone
is being hurt, and I do that because when fandom gets crazy it can be
incredibly assaulting. People with imagined or projected intentions, an
entitlement to demand creative work from others, malicious attacks
intending to cause harm, and on and on…and amazingly, there’s a tendency
for a crickets and tumbleweeds level of silence from the bystanders
(there’s extensive research on bystanders to bullying and why they don’t
defend the victim – fun fun fun to read about, give it a try). Someone
has to stand up and say, ‘All these accusations are projections/not
made in good faith/deliberate slanders/insert dysfunctional concepts
here, and the poor person on the receiving end is being REAL LIFE
injured by this whole spiral of dogpiling and it is not okay.’
For the person being attacked, even if only one person names the
situation for what it is it can make all the difference to their sense
that everything just went crazy. For the bystanders who know they are
witnessing someone getting hurt but can’t bring themselves to say
something, it’s a chance for them to speak up.
(if a good conversation seems
to be starting, I’ll keep writing, encouraging deescalation pathways so
the whole thing doesn’t just reverse the direction of the dogpile)
Fandom has given me so much
– endless fascinating meta conversations, friends, community, insights,
personal growth, improving my own emotional intelligence and developing
strategies for helping groups do the same, and just the joy of squeeing
with people in love with a particular story 🙂 It’s one of the central
parts of my life! Having chronic illness has been made so much better
since the internet came along – online friendships and playing in the
worlds we enjoy watching/reading are my social life, support system,
circle of friends. How isolated I would be without it! I hate to
imagine the past two decades without my pocket friends and all we do
together.
It’s for these reasons that I
still expend the spoons to try to help make fandom an ever-improving
place, where people can come and play without fear of irrational attacks
or being subjected to drama one thread/discord channel/reblog over from
where they’re sitting. There will always be dysfunction in fandom –
people are people. But the more communities we build where the expected
behaviour is ‘be kind, or don’t be here,’ the better the world gets.
We can only influence the
world one interaction at a time, over and over. Fandom is not some
abstract online imaginary place – fandom is made of real people in the
real world who experience real emotions and impact on their real lives.
We need to remember that truth, and to always weigh our words before we hit ‘post.’
Change the world one action at
a time. Even the smallest actions have impact, and some times they
have a much bigger impact than you realize. Be good to each other 🙂
