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anna_luna(and harder to avoid people who damage your fanish experience)
I posted this to my Tumblr, and I though it should go here as well.
I have been in fandom for about 17 years now and I have been lucky enough to never have had other fans put me off my fandom and pairing enjoyment. Hell, until recently I had not even heard of people leaving fandom because other members of the same fandom were unpleasant. In my experience people left a fandom for another fandom or for RL, never because the fandom turned unpleasant.
Was I incredibly lucky that my corner of fandom was predominantly nice and sweet and got along?
I was originally in Livejournal and then on Dreamwidth.
And recently on Tumblr.
Since I joined Tumblr, I have seen several people be put off by fandom (the fandoms I am/was part of on Tumblr are Inception, Marvel Movies and Teen Wolf).
And I think this is not only an issue of the fandom, but an issue of the way Tumblr works as opposed to blog sites like Livejournal and Dreamwidth. Let me enumerate:
1. People reblog articles on Tumblr. On blog sites, people share links.
So if a person writes a negative rant about a show or pairing on Tumblr, you might see this rant several times, in its complete form on your dash, sometimes with comments and expansions. On a regular blog, you would see the complete version only once if you followed the person and then only links or quotes from other blogs, making it easy not keep reading hateful articles if you don’t want to. (Personally I prided myself in not reading things that make me feel bad, because fandom is my happy place, but now I realize I am really bad at stopping reading when it is right there in my dash, and Tumblr occasionally makes me sad).
2. Tumblr notifies you when someone reblogs you. Blog sites notify you when someone comments to your post directly.
This means that if you write or reblog something, you will know who reblogged it. But also the “So-and-so reblogged you and added…” tells you immediately if someone is criticizing your art/fic/opinion.
On traditional blog sites, this would be a discussion in the comments of the article and if the commenter wanted to he could put a link to the discussion on their blog, which you probably wouldn’t be following anyway. On regular blogs, you are more unlikely to see the hate unless the persons comment directly and if they comment directly, the community does not see the hate unless they are actually reading your blog.
Further, on regular blogs the discussion is between you and the people you allow on your blog (since you can usually lock “friends only” posts or disable anonymous commenting, and if someone is really obnoxious can go so far as to freeze threads, delete their comments or block them). But more importantly, the discussion is more private, and only people who follow you or go looking for it will see it. I view it as some sort of encapsulation of rants, where you as a member of the community are not constantly passively exposed to them.
This two things are actually features on Tumblr, and I really like them when I come across opinions I do want to explore, because I can see the OP’s opinion and then several replies (often with opposing opinions) and I can draw my own conclusions. I like this especially in regards to politics and history. And when it leads to fanish creativity like fanart or mini-fics.
Personally, I do not like it so much when it is someone ranting about how much they hate a character/pairing/show I love. In that case it cuts into my fandom enjoyment to see people being mean.
I will keep being on Livejournal and Dreamwith and Tumblr, but I will try to keep in mind that the Tumblr format is different and act to distance myself from elements of fandom that cut into my enjoyment.
Always keep in mind fandom should always be fun!
I posted this to my Tumblr, and I though it should go here as well.
I have been in fandom for about 17 years now and I have been lucky enough to never have had other fans put me off my fandom and pairing enjoyment. Hell, until recently I had not even heard of people leaving fandom because other members of the same fandom were unpleasant. In my experience people left a fandom for another fandom or for RL, never because the fandom turned unpleasant.
Was I incredibly lucky that my corner of fandom was predominantly nice and sweet and got along?
I was originally in Livejournal and then on Dreamwidth.
And recently on Tumblr.
Since I joined Tumblr, I have seen several people be put off by fandom (the fandoms I am/was part of on Tumblr are Inception, Marvel Movies and Teen Wolf).
And I think this is not only an issue of the fandom, but an issue of the way Tumblr works as opposed to blog sites like Livejournal and Dreamwidth. Let me enumerate:
1. People reblog articles on Tumblr. On blog sites, people share links.
So if a person writes a negative rant about a show or pairing on Tumblr, you might see this rant several times, in its complete form on your dash, sometimes with comments and expansions. On a regular blog, you would see the complete version only once if you followed the person and then only links or quotes from other blogs, making it easy not keep reading hateful articles if you don’t want to. (Personally I prided myself in not reading things that make me feel bad, because fandom is my happy place, but now I realize I am really bad at stopping reading when it is right there in my dash, and Tumblr occasionally makes me sad).
2. Tumblr notifies you when someone reblogs you. Blog sites notify you when someone comments to your post directly.
This means that if you write or reblog something, you will know who reblogged it. But also the “So-and-so reblogged you and added…” tells you immediately if someone is criticizing your art/fic/opinion.
On traditional blog sites, this would be a discussion in the comments of the article and if the commenter wanted to he could put a link to the discussion on their blog, which you probably wouldn’t be following anyway. On regular blogs, you are more unlikely to see the hate unless the persons comment directly and if they comment directly, the community does not see the hate unless they are actually reading your blog.
Further, on regular blogs the discussion is between you and the people you allow on your blog (since you can usually lock “friends only” posts or disable anonymous commenting, and if someone is really obnoxious can go so far as to freeze threads, delete their comments or block them). But more importantly, the discussion is more private, and only people who follow you or go looking for it will see it. I view it as some sort of encapsulation of rants, where you as a member of the community are not constantly passively exposed to them.
This two things are actually features on Tumblr, and I really like them when I come across opinions I do want to explore, because I can see the OP’s opinion and then several replies (often with opposing opinions) and I can draw my own conclusions. I like this especially in regards to politics and history. And when it leads to fanish creativity like fanart or mini-fics.
Personally, I do not like it so much when it is someone ranting about how much they hate a character/pairing/show I love. In that case it cuts into my fandom enjoyment to see people being mean.
I will keep being on Livejournal and Dreamwith and Tumblr, but I will try to keep in mind that the Tumblr format is different and act to distance myself from elements of fandom that cut into my enjoyment.
Always keep in mind fandom should always be fun!
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no subject
Date: 2013-07-17 01:24 pm (UTC)Not to say there shouldn't be critical discussion of fannish things but the thing I'm most frequently witnessed on Tumblr upsetting people is the above sort of behaviour, when someone posts either something that disparages what people love or one where they start talking about such and such a ship etc is the only proper/worthwhile ship and so on and disparage people who think anything other than their One True Opinion.
I don't think that's actually much different from what I hear of on other sites. Fortunately I've mostly avoided the fanwanks in fandoms I've liked over the years, maybe because I'm more a lurker in most of my fandoms, but I do hear of some, and especially did when LJ was more used. I reckon you have just been pretty lucky if this is the first you have seen of it.
If there starts to be a pattern in users who troll and so you don't wish to see posts from, maybe you could make use of the block features on tumblr but I've not idea if that would help if anyone you do follow replies to them/reblogs with a comment.
no subject
Date: 2013-07-17 04:51 pm (UTC)Also so many people on Tumblr are like the fandom police "You must ship so-and-so or you are a horrible person" or "If you don't love theat-one-character-I-find-really-uninteresting (because of bad writing) you are a racist/mysoginist/bad person" or most recently "If you think so-and-so might become canon, you are deluded". I mean, we didn't have these issues in SGA (or at least not where I could see). Like if you wanted people to like a pairing or character, you wrote a manifesto or made a fandom fest or wrote fic or made fanart and everyone shipped and liked whoever and whatever they wanted.
I know in part it is the age group (tumblr people tend to be younger), but I really think the Tumblr format does not help.
I should really make some fanart and contribute to fandom love. :)
no subject
Date: 2013-07-18 09:24 am (UTC)Anyhow, fan art is love and always nice to see. Yours is always very lovely too so I'm sure it would bring some smiles to the faces of anyone being troubled by other things in a fandom.
no subject
Date: 2013-07-18 02:41 pm (UTC)I just need to actually sit down and draw all the crazy ideas in my head.
:)
no subject
Date: 2013-07-17 08:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-18 02:40 pm (UTC)Also on Tumblr people tend to be so extreme in their negative views: everything is racist/mysoginistic/classist and they play of each-other, making the negativity escalate.
I think I am going to make some fluffy posts with all my multi-shippy!pairings and moresomes and see how much I can cheer myself up :)