the passing down of fandom history

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

I've got a tiktok account where I post videos about how to use AO3. It helps people who are new to the site learn how to navigate and search/filter etc. and I also get to teach people who've been around for a while some new tricks they might not otherwise know. 

Yesterday, I someone asked about the Citrus Scale, so I posted about that. Which lead to posting about the FFN purges of 2002 and 2012. Which led to posting a brief and incomplete timeline of fandom purges. 

And somewhere in there, someone left a comment that said, "Wow. I hope AO3 never purges adult content."

And that's when I realized that so many people who are either new to fandom or new to AO3 have no idea how it came to exist or why it is the way it is. 

So I guess I'll add that to my list of things to make videos about? 

Brainstorm time: what do you wish your fellow fans knew about? What are cool tags or tropes or traditions or history that you think would be interesting to share? 

Comments

[mozaikmage]

I think single-fandom forums have been replaced by fandom-specific Discord servers in terms of their function in the fandom ecosystem, actually! They serve as spaces where internet users with nothing in common but their fandom get together to discuss their interest in even more specific fandoms.
Although Discord servers have their own differences and downfalls compared to forums: Private instead of publicly perusable by lurkers, the whole over/under 18 nsfw channel Stuff, linkrot when the Tumblr and Twitter posts people share in them get deleted or their URLs changed, 2000 character limit for messages, etc etc, there is no expectation for a Discord server to be pan-fandom. I've even seen servers dedicated to single rare ships in the sports anime fandoms I'm in.

[thewickling]

I enjoy Discord servers but for some reason I can't put my finger on getting involved in a Discord server feels like a lot more effort than getting involved in a forum. Maybe a part of it is that there's a little less anonymity unless you're willing to make different Discord accounts.

Discord I also think is bad as a platform for sharing fic. You could post fic directly to Discord but that's ephermal so a lot of people end up sharing links to gdocs or screencaps and that's not really accessible.

I do think Discord ends up as a good place to find community if you're willing to put yourself out there and really get involved.

[catgang]

Discord servers as I have experienced them are just big groupchats. I'm not the most familiar with the forum style of internetting, being a bit young to have really gotten any before social media took over, but everything feels much more fast paced on Discord. Even with notifs off there's this kind of demand for your attention - like everyone is talking at you that's hard to shake. For me that's why they feel like so much effort compared to (for example) this comment thread where I can peruse at my leisure.

[thewickling]

Yes that's it! Because Discord has more of a chat format even if you can divide up channels - it always feels like I am entering in the middle of a conversation.

Discord is very chronologically sensitive. I don't feel weird replying to a dreamwidth post a week later but if there was a topic on Discord I wanted to talk about - I would feel like the conversation was over already