modern social media sucks for fandom

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

Sometimes you just need to make a bulleted list.

• all posts are public, leading to epic levels of wank
• people reply at different points in the conversation, also leading to wank but more importantly, obscuring parts of the conversation and also making the full conversation only viewable to the initial poster
• sharing anything automatically shares it with everyone you know on that platform because you can't have subgroups for your content unless you make multiple accounts
• real fucking names
• constantly changing usernames (looking at you tumblr) makes it impossible to know who you're even following/who's following you. it also makes it hard to keep track of friends
• platforms are maximized for "engagement" not for community, so it's all about getting the likes and shares and who cares about deep diving anything
• priority is mostly given to short form content which makes nuance difficult
• everything moves so fast that it's difficult to have a follow up conversation on anything you post because people can't find the initial thought
• everything is presented without the context of the posts that came before and after them - especially on sites that don't give you a date/timestamp
• tags are communal rather than personal, so you never really know what you'll find in there. Everyone wants to organize their own space, but the items they put in their containers might be something you're allergic to (to stretch a metaphor)

I can't do twitter. Tumblr makes me feel more like either a spectator or a performer. Tiktok is every social media experience I've ever had, played through at 100x speed. No option is perfect, but some are way less perfect than others. At least for me.

Comments

[vriddy]

I set things up to get notified of new messages on this post since everyone's made so many interesting points, and so are you now!! I've got a post percolating somewhere around commercialisation in fandom, and what you mention about marketing really connects with that.

Like, I'll be reading a fic on AO3, and the end author note will say "Twitter saw it first!" because building engagement/followers is so important...? I don't remember seeing that kind of things before, it feels different than just dropping a link to your blog so people can chat with you.

Or something else that keeps making me go "this isn't my experience of fandom" is people circulating the first few pages of awesome fanart/comics they write, and at the end explain how you can buy the rest because it won't be shared on social media.

And I understand people need to make a living and capitalism is so tough on people, but this is so foreign to my experience of fandom. This isn't what I come here to do. And I don't know if it's something new or if it was always there and it's just accelerating now. I think maybe people always sold merch and fanzines and fanart at conventions? I do remember buying postcards with cool fanart. But I don't remember that exhausting marketing push at the time. Maybe I'm just more tired nowadays...??

[krait]

Yes! Continual reminders at the bottom of every chapter to follow the author on platforms X and Y, or 'like this? check out my original works at link!' seem FAR more common now than I remember. To me it's almost redundant? To me it's perfectly natural that, if I liked your fic, I'd try to see if you were on LJ, friend you or join your fic-posting comm, etc. But that doesn't seem like quite the same thing as following someone on Twitter or Tumblr (or Patreon), and there wasn't that same push to do it as a means of engaging with the fic. (It gives me the impression there's someone on the other end of the Tumblr going, 'if I post a fic and only get 6 new followers in the first week, is the fic a failure?')

The shifting usernames and lack of continuity seems to go hand in hand with there being more focus on what one's fandom presence is 'about' in some very broad sense, as though one is locked into a fandom track once one starts out, and can only escape by destroying it and starting over from scratch.

In some ways, we've always had the idea of fannish paths or personas; things like "I'm a slasher," or "Rabid Sephiroth Fangirl," go way back. "I am ExcWriter2001 and all I do in fandom (that you know of) is write for exchanges" feels different, though - rather as if a PR firm or marketing consultant was involved and said, choose which persona you should project for maximum engagement, and hide anything that doesn't fit to avoid breaking the illusion. It reminds me of authors (i.e. paid professionals) having different pen names for different genres, because you can sell more erotica AND more fantasy novels if shoppers know that an Anne Rice book is fantasy and an AN Roquelaure book is erotica. I don't get that vibe with "yaoi fangirl." It comes across as something between a statement of fact, a badge of pride, and a warning, not a constraint.

As far as actual things for sale go: Fancomics are... interesting. Because the very first thing I thought of was doujinshi; "buy my fancomic" certainly has a long history, especially on the anime/manga side of things. And zines, certainly, though I think it was considered poor ettiquette to sell them for more than the production/shipping costs? Fan-made merch of other types has a long history, as well; I own some of it going back at least to my HP days! (You'll take my Homestuck amigurumi over my dead body, even though I'm not really in the fandom anymore.) :D

Looking at the 'historical' versions, what strikes me is that it almost seems like the fan is the product now. (Or perhaps that the product is the product, but what they're really trying to sell is the "brand.") Instead of 'be my LJ friend and discuss my fic' it's "be a follower of my FemslashSmutWriter Ao3 account"; instead of 'buy a doujin' it's "become a Patreon supporter and get a doujin page per week."

That's what's so antithetical to my experience and view of fandom, really. I'm here for friendship, not followership. I want to cheerlead your fic chapters or ask you what you thought about Episode 7 or make a stupid pun about our favourite character's name. Five years down the line I want to still be cheerleading your fic chapters, even though you're now writing for a fandom I'm not in! Sure, we might part ways because I bear an irrational grudge against SG:A for taking all my HP friends you can't stop talking about some guy named Rodney, but then again, maybe your posts about Rodney are funny enough for me to keep reading. I'd prefer either to waking up one morning to find your journal deleted, and wondering where you are and if you're okay, when all the while you're still right here, being rodneyrox whose fannish history starts and ends with SGA.