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

[independence1776]

It's basically that because AO3 exists, nothing else needs to. It's not an attitude I understand either, but my fandom home is a Tolkien-only archive. So I'm not exactly unbiased when it comes to small sites that actually have a community.

[sabcatt]

I think it's slightly more complex than a simple "we have ao3, so we don't need anything else" attitude. I really think there's a combination of factors at work that are making AO3 the "home base" of fic fandom rn.

First of all, running your own archive is hard. (I can't say how hard, I've never done it, but I can only presume it takes significantly more time and effort than using one someone else has already set up.) In the Olden Times, because there were no alternatives if you wanted to have a place to post fic (or discuss your fandom, or whatever), people had to put in the effort to (learn how to run, and then) run their own fansites, forums and archives. However, these days, because there are so many (well, I say so many, I really mean like... four, hah) social media sites that are, if not welcoming to fandom, at least not exactly hostile, there's no longer such a necessity/incentive for people to run their own sites to engage in fannish activity.

Also, the development of major websites towards ease of use (social media's endless search for New Users makes them very "pick-up-and-play", unlike the Wild West days of the Old Net where "engagement" wasn't the sole goal) means that many people who are used to the "new" net have never had to learn HTML and CSS, let along stuff like java, javascript and SQL. (I personally only know HTML and some CSS, I'd be totally lost trying to create and code an archive.)

There's also been a massive influx of people into fandom who have simply... never experienced dedicated archives and forums. The initial post reflects on the fact that many people in fandom at current aren't really aware of "fandom history":

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.

But fandom history, such as it is, doesn't just include the details of website purges and the Citrus Scale, but also the very fact that there were (and, in some cases, still are) thriving communities (on a significantly smaller scale than the current social media free-for-all) on smaller websites (such as dedicated fandom forums and archives) or within larger websites that allowed for smaller communities to develop (such as LiveJournal and its successors, and then going back even further, GeoCities). People simply aren't aware that these communities existed, so it's not all that surprising that they're not conceiving of them being possible alternatives to our current social media-centric setup (which, as Pi reflected on in "modern social media sucks for fandom", has a loooooot of pitfalls and downsides).

Sorry for the essay, haha, (and especially sorry if it comes across as a lecture—I am very much with you on the appreciation of small sites, just adding my analysis of why they've fallen out of fashion,) but I think that simplifying the lack of smaller sites and communities down to "people are content with AO3" misses a lot of historical context of the development of both AO3 and fandom in general, especially over the last 10 years. People are (demonstrably, if you pay attention to all the yelling) not content with the way things currently are—it's just that many of them don't currently have models of alternatives so they're attempting to reinvent the wheel, without (if you'll excuse me belaboring this metaphor) even knowing what a chisel is.

[independence1776]

So… I'm a Fandom Old. My first fic on ff.net is months away from being old enough to vote in American elections. I know all of what you said; I've discussed it in other places.

I'm an active member of Tolkien fandom and I was talking specifically about the attitude in Tumblr Silmarillion fandom that the Silmarillion Writers' Guild (which has been around since 2005 and its owner and mods just switched archive software to Drupal to make sure it stays viable) is not valuable because it's not AO3. I might be misremembering this, but that is more or less what someone told the owner of SWG, that since AO3 exists everyone should be using it instead of smaller archives. This was not a case of someone needing or wanting to build something and not knowing how, but someone refusing to use something that already exists simply because it wasn't AO3. And they weren't the only person I saw with that attitude.