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]

I think one of the things is that different areas of fandom have different cultures-- and that includes different areas of the same fandom. (I have a link to a paper presentation/blog post about that for Tolkien fandom if anyone's interested.) It's okay to take a few days to get a lay of the land before jumping in.

The second is related: how different sites are set up on an architectural level affects how cultures form there. For example, AO3 emphasizes romantic/sexual relationships; ff.net emphasizes characters and genres. So if you're a newcomer to a place (archive, Discord, forum, DW/LJ comm, etc.), just because it's set up differently than you're used to doesn't mean that's a flaw. Deliberate choices were made.

And specifically on a fandom history level: fandom existed before AO3 and Tumblr. Fandom exists elsewhere than AO3, Tumblr, and DW/LJ. Those sites did not invent fandom. It's utter arrogance to declare that Tumblr fandom invented fandom (which I saw people claim about my long-established fandom). Just because you didn't or don't know about it doesn't mean it didn't or doesn't exist. And that AO3 is not the culmination of fannish history. Not all roads actually lead there.