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life_wo_fanlibThe Real Communications Divide: Goal-Oriented vs. Network-Based
DISCLAIMER: Sweeping generalizations about fandom follow. Also, the "fandom" I am talking about belongs solely to LJ, not because LJ is the be-all and end-all of fandom, but because it is LJ's social network that is rising against FanLib. There are plenty of people who fit into fandom but not this particular analysis of "fandom", but they're not the ones banging on drums and calling for FanLib's heads, so I'm not talking about them.
Read at your own risk.
I have been watching the whole FanLib debacle with a certain amount of glee, not the least of which because I find it thrilling to watch people shoot themselves in the foot, as FanLib has been doing in a particularly spectacular, annihilatory way. And I have reached certain conclusions: namely, that FanLib has fallen down not because they are rapacious, greedy, and not terribly bright, but because their view of the world is fundamentally opposed to the view which fanfiction writers have of their community.
FanLib has come in to the debate with a certain mindset. (I’d call it “masculine” because it traditionally is, as the social mindset fic writers have is traditionally feminine, but that would cause people to focus on the gender issue, and I am trying to talk about the communications issue.) They see a resource, they think it should be put to use, they have goals to do this and they set about reaching them. This, in and of itself, is not evil, or even wrong. It is simply one way to go about doing things. Fandom, on the other hand (and I am using “fandom” as a short hand for “the community of fanfiction writers and readers”, although I am aware that they are not the same thing), has a completely different mindset. Fandom is a community, which relies on social ties, an internally created hierarchy, and constant communication between its members. It is tight-knit and wary of outsiders, not because it has been burned in the past, but because of its intrinsic nature. Membership in the group must be established by spending a certain amount of time interacting with other members of the group, and your place in the group is determined by the network of social interactions you have set up. Again, this is not inherently good just as how FanLib thinks of things is not inherently evil, it is simply a different way to go about doing things.
This kind of group is by its very nature difficult to break into. Establishing a social network takes time and a great deal of effort, and cannot be accomplished by walking into an established group and saying, “Here I am!”* FanLib’s mistake was thinking that by showing up and “talking like they belonged” (which they got wrong, of course, but that was a symptom of not knowing the kind of community they were dealing with), they could become an accepted part of the community.
The mistake is understandable. FanLib is approaching the issue from a completely different mindset. To them it is incomprehensible that they would not be accepted immediately if they offered a “cool” product (that they thought their product held any attraction to the community in the first place was another symptom of not knowing the kind of community they were dealing with), because the kind of social networking that forms the basis of fandom is alien to them. In their world, you are judged by the product you produce, or at least the product you can promise you will produce, not by the social ties you have. In fact, social ties in the manner which fandom employs them, that is, social ties used for being social, are essentially valueless in FanLib’s world. I am not claiming (to be clear) that product is not valued in fandom -- we do like to read good fics, not crap, and (let's be honest) there is a lot of crap out there, on LJ just as much as on the infamous "Pit of Voles". In fact, the main argument about why BNFs have such a place in the social hierarchy, and I think it's a valid argument, is because the product they produce is of such quality. But in fandom, quality product fits into a social network. All product does. And that social network is valued because it is a social network, not simply because it is associated with the production of product. This is what FanLib is not getting. Since in their world value is judged solely by the products produced, the idea that the social interactions themselves are highly valued in addition to the product is incomprehensible to them.
It is obvious that FanLib was shocked and confused when they encountered the reality of fandom, and that they are (finally) trying to work with fandom, or at least no longer alienate it, as evidenced by the answers Chris Williams was willing to give to Harry Jenkings. But the mere fact that Williams refused to talk to anyone except Professor Jenkins is indicative that they have not changed mindsets – indeed, that they still are clueless about how fandom actually works. I have only the utmost respect for Professor Jenkins and the work he does with fandom, but the truth of the matter is he is not “one of us”. He is the benevolent anthropologist, an onlooker who may have established social ties with the community but not within the community. Williams stated that he was willing to talk to Jenkins and not to members of fandom because he “had dual citizenship in fandom and academia” – and that, right there, is why FanLib is failing. Williams fails to grasp that fandom is its own self-contained unit and does not appreciate intrusion from outside, and that “academia” is not a part of the community and therefore communication with an “academic” because he is an academic, even one as partial to fandom as Jenkins, is hardly going to gain you acceptance in fandom. Williams fails to grasp that to be accepted by fandom he must become part of fandom, and that that means interacting with the people who compose fandom, not those who serve as its communication to the outside world. In fact, by using Jenkins as an interpreter, Williams is firmly establishing that he considers himself part of that “outside world”, but he seems unable to realize that this means he is not going to be able to get fandom to do what he wants. Fandom does not trust the outside world not because it is the outside world, but because it is not fandom.
I am not going to start talking here about how FanLib is “doomed to fail”. They can certainly narrow their scope in such a manner that most of our objections are made irrelevant, and there is no reason why they cannot become successful by being a holding pit for all those refugees from the “BNF” culture on LJ, like a not-yet-wanky FF.net. (I am not saying that FanLib doing such a thing would lessen its risk to us, in the issue of forcing lawsuits we do not want, I am simply saying that becoming such a thing may well enable it to survive without the involvement of the pesky argumentative LJ-types. After all, I’m pretty sure they didn’t know we existed in the first place.) What I am saying is that unless there is a paradigm shift in the FanLib company, they are doomed to never gain acceptance within fandom, because they not only do not think like us, they don’t understand how we think.
And this is a divide that is impossible to communicate across – they will continue to say, “But we have an awesome product! Why don’t you like it?”, and we will continue to say, “We prefer the product we make ourselves, not because it is better than yours, but because it is ours.”
* On a side note, I think this is at the heart of the problem some people have with “BNFs” – it is not specifically their place in the hierarchy they are objecting to, it is that BNFs have a more established social network and in a community where your position is determined by the strength of your social interactions the not-BNFs feel like they are on the fringes, with the resentment that any fringe group has. And I’m not saying this as a BNF myself – I think about six people read my X-Men fic, and maybe twenty read my football (er, soccer) RPS if I post it to a community, so I hardly qualify.
Some of this has been reworked due to insightful points raised in the comments.
DISCLAIMER: Sweeping generalizations about fandom follow. Also, the "fandom" I am talking about belongs solely to LJ, not because LJ is the be-all and end-all of fandom, but because it is LJ's social network that is rising against FanLib. There are plenty of people who fit into fandom but not this particular analysis of "fandom", but they're not the ones banging on drums and calling for FanLib's heads, so I'm not talking about them.
Read at your own risk.
I have been watching the whole FanLib debacle with a certain amount of glee, not the least of which because I find it thrilling to watch people shoot themselves in the foot, as FanLib has been doing in a particularly spectacular, annihilatory way. And I have reached certain conclusions: namely, that FanLib has fallen down not because they are rapacious, greedy, and not terribly bright, but because their view of the world is fundamentally opposed to the view which fanfiction writers have of their community.
FanLib has come in to the debate with a certain mindset. (I’d call it “masculine” because it traditionally is, as the social mindset fic writers have is traditionally feminine, but that would cause people to focus on the gender issue, and I am trying to talk about the communications issue.) They see a resource, they think it should be put to use, they have goals to do this and they set about reaching them. This, in and of itself, is not evil, or even wrong. It is simply one way to go about doing things. Fandom, on the other hand (and I am using “fandom” as a short hand for “the community of fanfiction writers and readers”, although I am aware that they are not the same thing), has a completely different mindset. Fandom is a community, which relies on social ties, an internally created hierarchy, and constant communication between its members. It is tight-knit and wary of outsiders, not because it has been burned in the past, but because of its intrinsic nature. Membership in the group must be established by spending a certain amount of time interacting with other members of the group, and your place in the group is determined by the network of social interactions you have set up. Again, this is not inherently good just as how FanLib thinks of things is not inherently evil, it is simply a different way to go about doing things.
This kind of group is by its very nature difficult to break into. Establishing a social network takes time and a great deal of effort, and cannot be accomplished by walking into an established group and saying, “Here I am!”* FanLib’s mistake was thinking that by showing up and “talking like they belonged” (which they got wrong, of course, but that was a symptom of not knowing the kind of community they were dealing with), they could become an accepted part of the community.
The mistake is understandable. FanLib is approaching the issue from a completely different mindset. To them it is incomprehensible that they would not be accepted immediately if they offered a “cool” product (that they thought their product held any attraction to the community in the first place was another symptom of not knowing the kind of community they were dealing with), because the kind of social networking that forms the basis of fandom is alien to them. In their world, you are judged by the product you produce, or at least the product you can promise you will produce, not by the social ties you have. In fact, social ties in the manner which fandom employs them, that is, social ties used for being social, are essentially valueless in FanLib’s world. I am not claiming (to be clear) that product is not valued in fandom -- we do like to read good fics, not crap, and (let's be honest) there is a lot of crap out there, on LJ just as much as on the infamous "Pit of Voles". In fact, the main argument about why BNFs have such a place in the social hierarchy, and I think it's a valid argument, is because the product they produce is of such quality. But in fandom, quality product fits into a social network. All product does. And that social network is valued because it is a social network, not simply because it is associated with the production of product. This is what FanLib is not getting. Since in their world value is judged solely by the products produced, the idea that the social interactions themselves are highly valued in addition to the product is incomprehensible to them.
It is obvious that FanLib was shocked and confused when they encountered the reality of fandom, and that they are (finally) trying to work with fandom, or at least no longer alienate it, as evidenced by the answers Chris Williams was willing to give to Harry Jenkings. But the mere fact that Williams refused to talk to anyone except Professor Jenkins is indicative that they have not changed mindsets – indeed, that they still are clueless about how fandom actually works. I have only the utmost respect for Professor Jenkins and the work he does with fandom, but the truth of the matter is he is not “one of us”. He is the benevolent anthropologist, an onlooker who may have established social ties with the community but not within the community. Williams stated that he was willing to talk to Jenkins and not to members of fandom because he “had dual citizenship in fandom and academia” – and that, right there, is why FanLib is failing. Williams fails to grasp that fandom is its own self-contained unit and does not appreciate intrusion from outside, and that “academia” is not a part of the community and therefore communication with an “academic” because he is an academic, even one as partial to fandom as Jenkins, is hardly going to gain you acceptance in fandom. Williams fails to grasp that to be accepted by fandom he must become part of fandom, and that that means interacting with the people who compose fandom, not those who serve as its communication to the outside world. In fact, by using Jenkins as an interpreter, Williams is firmly establishing that he considers himself part of that “outside world”, but he seems unable to realize that this means he is not going to be able to get fandom to do what he wants. Fandom does not trust the outside world not because it is the outside world, but because it is not fandom.
I am not going to start talking here about how FanLib is “doomed to fail”. They can certainly narrow their scope in such a manner that most of our objections are made irrelevant, and there is no reason why they cannot become successful by being a holding pit for all those refugees from the “BNF” culture on LJ, like a not-yet-wanky FF.net. (I am not saying that FanLib doing such a thing would lessen its risk to us, in the issue of forcing lawsuits we do not want, I am simply saying that becoming such a thing may well enable it to survive without the involvement of the pesky argumentative LJ-types. After all, I’m pretty sure they didn’t know we existed in the first place.) What I am saying is that unless there is a paradigm shift in the FanLib company, they are doomed to never gain acceptance within fandom, because they not only do not think like us, they don’t understand how we think.
And this is a divide that is impossible to communicate across – they will continue to say, “But we have an awesome product! Why don’t you like it?”, and we will continue to say, “We prefer the product we make ourselves, not because it is better than yours, but because it is ours.”
* On a side note, I think this is at the heart of the problem some people have with “BNFs” – it is not specifically their place in the hierarchy they are objecting to, it is that BNFs have a more established social network and in a community where your position is determined by the strength of your social interactions the not-BNFs feel like they are on the fringes, with the resentment that any fringe group has. And I’m not saying this as a BNF myself – I think about six people read my X-Men fic, and maybe twenty read my football (er, soccer) RPS if I post it to a community, so I hardly qualify.
Some of this has been reworked due to insightful points raised in the comments.
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 02:32 pm (UTC)As you say, they don't understand how things are already done and have barged onward with no respect or consideration for that.
However, I believe some of their design and concept are also misguided and insufficient from within the parameters of their own milieu.
I really hate the term "Web 2.0," but that's clearly a concept they're trying to emulate. A part of it is social networking. They have the badge thing, which I haven't even observed yet how it is supposed to work. They have comments to fics, and favorites. No way for an author to reply to comments. Except by PM which is off by default anyway.
He basically expects everyone to forget about whatever they spent the last years doing, and use his system because he's announced that it's cool.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 02:44 pm (UTC)From which I return to my original point: they are trying to break into an established community by saying "Here we are! Aren't we cool?" instead of by working within the rules of the community, and until they realize that there are rules to the community and they cannot be violated if you wish to gain the community-as-a-whole's acceptance, they will continue to be unable to grasp why we don't like them.
(no subject)
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From:slightly OT
Date: 2007-05-26 02:56 pm (UTC)I agree with some of your points on the social network aspects of fandom but whenever people make statements about the nature of fandom that are to sweeping about its rules for inclusion I wonder if you shouldn't be a bit more specific about just which fandom you mean. because in the one I primarily write in plenty of people aren't there for social ties and etc, they are there for porn and a change to hate on (hockey) teams they don't like. (although as a fellow writer of sports RPS I think we both know when you live in a small fandom things can be a bit different, incidentally which teams?)
Personally, I have great friends in (my) fandom but hey some people are just 'round for the blowjobs and buttsex. (or strap-on if someone can direct me to some jennifer / aishia). But there is no reason why fanlib can't end up doing very well for the OPPOSITE the reason that some people turned to LJ in the first place. That is they wanted a place that was more about the social networking and not just the fic.
Sometimes I mourn the old days when my fandom seemed to exist primarily on Yahoo groups and personal websites because frankly through LJ I can end up knowing too much about people. How can I enjoy their Mario Lemieux / Steve Yzerman when all i can think is you said that you didn't like my favourite TV show in your LJ How dare you think Jensen Ackles isn't a talented actor one day worthy of an emmy and eventually an academy award you freak I'm not perfect, I'm sure we all have these moments.
Personally I think what will make or break fanlib is how willing they are to accept (maybe not promote as much but make room for) the more out there fics. When people know they can post their incest scat epic and not have it taken down or hidden.
Also I think we can all (myself included) sometimes rally around our fandoms when we perceive a threat like Fanlibs is to some people. So there's a lot of crap on there? Well it doesn't feel like anyone else has said this so let me, there's a lot of crap fic out there period. So fanlibs has a lot of mary sure crud? Cripes there are some sites that I share week on-week-off reading with friends so only one of us has to deal with bleeding eyeballs and burning rage from the bad (as judged by us, etc, disclaimer, we don't all like the same things) fic.
Re: slightly OT
Date: 2007-05-26 03:09 pm (UTC)But I must say that in football (*sigh* soccer) RPS, I have found networking to be just as key as in any of the fiction fandoms I have been in. Are people there for the buttsex? Of course! But the majority of people seem to be there to interact with other people who like reading and writing about footballers doing the buttsex thing, and just as much communication goes on about the games themselves, the politics of the transfer market, the concern we have over player's psychological health, picspams involving omg Higuain cut his hair why did no one tell me he was hot, bickering between fans of different teams, and talking about posters personal lives as it does about someone's particular Beckham/Owen buttsex story.
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From:no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 03:21 pm (UTC)The reason they're going to fail, in their goal of "unite all of fandom in one huge fanfic archive! Sell to media moguls!" isn't because they have bad web design or their FAQ has gaping loopholes or they "fail to address the concerns of women"... its because they aren't offering what fandom wants, which isn't "fame and free archiving and a chance to make a buck from the hobby."
Oh, I'm sure we all want those things (for some values of "fame" anyway), like I'm sure we'd all like to be billionaires... but we don't arrange our lives (or our hobbies) in order to go after them. Those aren't why we're in fandom.
And not only have they not offered what we want, they haven't even asked. All their new-improved-communication has been geared to "let us re-explain our purpose in more polite terms," not "umm, so... what ARE you looking for, if writing contests and media attention don't particularly appeal to you?"
And I don't know if they haven't asked 'cos they haven't considered the question, or because they know the answer is something that, as outsiders to fandom, they can't provide.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 03:33 pm (UTC)In their world, you are judged by the product you produce, or at least the product you can promise you will produce, not by the social ties you have.
Uh oh. I think that's my world, too. Although I enjoy the social contacts I've gained through my involvement in fanfiction (I've been reading/writing Tolkien fanfiction for five years), social contacts weren't the primary reason for my involvement, and they remain a fringe benefit, so to speak. Maybe because my focus remains primarily on fanfiction itself, rather than on "fandom" in a broader sense, I would regret losing an objective sense of the quality of the "product" in favor of "judging" authors by their network of social contacts.
In fact, social ties in the manner which fandom employs them, that is, social ties used for being social, are essentially valueless in FanLib’s world. Since in their world value is judged by the products produced, the idea that the social interactions themselves are what are most highly valued is incomprehensible to them.
I hate to say this but it's kind of incomprehensible to me too. Not passing judgment on others who feel differently, it's just not what I'm here for. I hope I never get to the point where I judge the quality of a story by the length of the author's flist.
I completely agree that Fanlib has horribly botched every aspect of its interaction with the fandom, and fell flat on its face barging into an established, self-contained, self-sufficient society and promising to show us the light and the truth and the way. There's a stunning level of arrogance and condescension there. Just wanted to get across that even those of us who are here primarily for the fanfiction rather than the socializing are just as offended.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 03:45 pm (UTC)But still, the product lies within a social network, and ultimately it is not the product that is rising up against FanLib, it is the network. The network has value in and of itself, and that is what FanLib does not understand. To produce product which the network is willing to embrace requires becoming part of the network, which FanLib is not attempting to do. (See: only communicating through a "reputable academic".)
I will try to revise my essay to reflect these points. (Fandom, I love you. I'm getting serious critique for this.)
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Date: 2007-05-26 03:53 pm (UTC)By and large, people who are talented writers and have been involved in fandom for a long time will have longer flists. So theoretically the BNFs will be talented. Though certainly not the only ones who are talented, because newer people or people who choose not to be as visible can certainly be as talented or more so. (And I'm being as cautious as possible because lord knows there are a lot of BNFs out there who are popular only because they are popular and are shitty writers).
But becoming a BNF is a big goal for many people, in that they want the validation of drawing in more and more readers because of the quality of their work. I know that while I don't have any desire to be a BNF for me it's still a nice feeling when someone friends me so they can read more of my stuff, and I crosspost my fics to communities basically so more people will end up reading it. I don't see anything wrong with this.
But there are a lot of people who aren't in it to become widely read, and so they don't market themselves to become so. And I don't see any reason why those people shouldn't be just as outraged about FanLib, for sure.
...I'm not sure I had a point, except: 0.0-b
(no subject)
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From:no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 09:11 pm (UTC)Yes, they have a rating system. Anyone can slap some stars on a post.
They don't have a way for authors to reply to feedback, to filter your viewing so you only see fics of a certain rating (which would, right now, be just those that the author rated at 5 stars), to show a rec list of favorites, to have fans select "fic of the week" in each fandom, to search by pairing, or many other features that fannish archives take for granted. There's not even a way (as far as I could find) to get a complete list of fandoms; you have to scroll through alphabetical listings one page at a time. They don't even sort like FF.net, for "books," "movies," "tv" and so on.
There doesn't seem to be any way to filter by multiple fandoms, either. (Not that other sites offer this, but if they wanted to be *special*, they could've considered features that other sites don't do.) And the 10-fics-per-view setting (to allow for all the pictures) is annoying when you're trying to find something.
There's plenty of people in fandom for the fic, and the social effects are irrelevant. And there are entire archives set up for them... but those archives are set up knowing how fans want to find, read and post fics.
FanLib fails on both fronts: it doesn't provide the social networking options (and that's aside from their horrible PR botches), and it's a lousy archive site. It's *hard* to find a specific fic you don't remember the exact details for. (Well, except that there are so few, you really could just slog through them all.)
no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 04:45 pm (UTC)Although I realize you wish to focus solely on communication styles and not gender, I have to add that it's impossible to analyze communication styles without acknowleding gender (yes, "masculine") assumptions (that in fact, as linguists have shown have little to do with biology and all with social perceptions) as it affects communication issues. What you talk about, incredibly well, in terms of FanLib's discourse (drawing heavily on business and marketing jargon), the assumption that they could come in and announce that they are here to revolutionize fanfiction and make it mainstream and offer it so much more is, I would argue, connected to gendered assumptionsd (aking to the guys who come in an tell women how to write better fan fiction!) It's perfectly valid to focus on the elements that you do and set aside the point that most of them are males; but as a feminist and someone trained in sociolinguistics, I'd say a lot of what you point out (and I agree with) does focus on the issue of masculine styles vs. feminine styles of communication (and women are perfectly able to learn and do masculine styles, men, feminine, etc.).
no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 06:26 pm (UTC)Now, the counter-lj rhetoric that seems to be developing through the forums may change that; it may turn Fanlib into a haven for the lj-dissatisfied. But given the stranglehold Fanlib is applying to content, I can't see that lasting too long either.
Thank goodness.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-27 04:33 am (UTC)Seems as if people who don't like LJ for whatever reason have lots of alternatives (one's own web site, yahoo lists, other listservs, a blog of some sort, etc.)--what I've seen a lot of since I came back into fandom in 2003 via LJ (having back active back in the ditto/stencil days and being out of fandom during the usenet and listserv days) are complaints about LJ ruining those nice centralized lists and archives....although I also know people who maintain contact in both areas.
I did see the "anti BNF rhetoric" over there--maybe the anti-LJ is connected to thatd as well.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 08:01 pm (UTC)After reading the responses from Chris Williams, I wanted to just add that FanLib isn't blazing any new territory when he claims that his site will bring writers "closer to the talent" (excuse while I compose myself. There. All better.), presumably by providing a bridge whereby fan writers can get a good look at the Inner Workings of Real Entertainment Production. They can peek through the window, as long as their grubby paws don't smear the glass; and they'll be expected to be grateful for the carefully controlled view. Ahem. But there's already precedent for this in Xena fandom. Xena fic writers developed relationships with the creators of the show and the actors, and at least two that I know of were invited to write an episode for the series (one accepted, one didn't). All this grew naturally out of the interactions between the show producers and writers and their willingness to engage with their audience. But FanLib has missed one of the most important points of all: this kind of engagement might be a cherished goal or fantasy for some fic writers, but it isn't for all of them. If it were, it's likely that individuals would have pursued it with greater energy, or it would be a recognized goal within the communities as a whole. Fandom isn't broken or lacking anything or terminally frustrated in its ambitions. Fandom is doing exactly what it wants, and getting out of it what it needs, already. Without FanLib.
Obviously, the Xena scenario isn't going to happen for every fandom. But it's certainly possible for it to occur without outside mediation: and for FanLib to think they can formalize, commodify, and regulate such organic developments is... what would the right word be? Foolish? Inadequately thought out? Because they're going to end up with a site full of teenagers who either don't know about existing fan communities, or find them daunting, or who are more impressed by the possibility of prizes!/a trip to Hollywood! than they are about adult concerns like copyright, lawsuits, the value of their own creativity, and so on. The last point, I think, being important. FanLib is, one again, the old latching onto the creativity of the young and offering them nothing in recompense except a "game" (as they themselves refer to FanLib in their own marketing-- the stuff we weren't supposed to see) to play.
LIke the song says: We suck young blood.
Apologies for length. And thanks to all who have kept me informed, entertained, and educated over the last week.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 09:45 pm (UTC)But you're right. Most of us don't want that. Most of us are getting exactly what we want from fanfic/fandom already.
(no subject)
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From:FanLib and the Extra Cookie
Date: 2007-05-26 08:12 pm (UTC)We all have our own little slice of fandom, gravitating towards others like us. We may not have much in common on the surface -- I may be a middle-aged cat owner, you may be a college student -- but we orbit around the same planet, whether it is sports slash or Sean Bean or meta. My fandom solar system contains fans who are also academics, by the way, because it is sprinkled heavily with LotR folks.
That anyone considers FanLib a haven from BNFs is hilarious and sad.
FanLib's structure guarantees Big Name Fans lording it over the little people, and already has a BNF,
Because the extra cookie is what FanLib is all about. Contests, contests, and more contests. Rating systems. Page views. Chris Williams promises "Star readers and writers!"
How anyone will manage to pry the extra cookie out of jdsampson's hands is hard to say. I mean, she works for them.
Which brings something else up. I think that "fleeing from the LJ BNFs" thing is coming entirely from jdsampson. Was someone mean to her at supernaturalfic? Did she not get the feedback she craved? Was she bitter because she never managed true Supernatural BNF status in Livejournal? She has had an LJ for two years, and participated in the comms here. She knew LJ had a huge community of fanfiction writers and readers FanLib could pluck. But she seems to have hidden us from FanLib. It's obvious Chris had no clue what was going on at first.
Yes! I shall advance the theory! FanLib vs. Livejournal is nothing more than a BNF hissy fit taken to enormous corporate proportions!
Come back to livejournal, jdsampson! I promise to love you!
Re: FanLib and the Extra Cookie
Date: 2007-05-26 11:35 pm (UTC)While there's no proof (that I have) that she used to run jdsampson.net, it's a fairly unique name. And while jdsampson.net no longer exists, google has cached some pages:
Dirty Words: apprently, she sells smut.
Custom Work: and custom-written
packs of liesblogs to order, to promote your corporate site.Variety Pack: 15,000+ words in 10 stories of hardcore pr0n text, to include on your website or in your newsletters or blogs.
If that's her writing style & skill, I'm not surprised she has antipathy for BNFs. Does anyone have links to her non-Fanlib-hosted fanfic?
Re: FanLib and the Extra Cookie
From:Re: FanLib and the Extra Cookie
Date: 2007-05-27 12:43 am (UTC)Re: FanLib and the Extra Cookie
From:Re: FanLib and the Extra Cookie
Date: 2007-05-27 04:38 am (UTC)And I love your theory--it makes total sense in the context of everything, and is, well, sort of sad, especially if she was trying to get status in fandom earlier. (When I went to look at her LJ, I was sort of, whut, sheesh, not many friends, not much evidence of activity esp. relating to fanfiction...).
Re: FanLib and the Extra Cookie
From:Re: FanLib and the Extra Cookie
From:Re: FanLib and the Extra Cookie
Date: 2007-05-29 12:52 am (UTC)So I'm not sure I'd assert that she's the only source of the "fleeing the LJ BNFs" issue. OTOH, I haven't been back over to those forums to see if there's a groundswell of agreement, since I don't like the place much and have better things to do with my time.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-27 04:15 am (UTC)Icarus
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Date: 2007-05-27 03:13 pm (UTC)The problem is: I write RPS. (And other fic, but RPS is included; currently it's featuring prominently.) RPS is a sensitive issue, from a legal standpoint as well as from a fandom standpoint. For various reasons, I don't flock most of my journal entries. I rely primarily on not very many people knowing I exist to protect my journal from prying eyes.
Like I said, this isn't a valid reason. It's my choice not to flock my RPS entries, and I'm aware of the risks. I also do think I'm making valuable points here, and would like to contribute to the discussion further. It's just that the idea of getting my lj name out into wider circulation makes me uncomfortable, and at the very least I would like warning so I could go back and flock some of the more egregious "OH HAI HOT FOOTBALLER BUTTSECKS" entries.
I suppose I should check
That aside, thank you for your complement. I have tried to analyze the situation to the best of my ability.
(no subject)
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From:reposted to correct html: insider/outsider part 1
Date: 2007-05-27 05:06 am (UTC)I came back to read through all the great comments and was re-reading your post and noticed this part:
But the mere fact that Williams refused to talk to anyone except Professor Jenkins is indicative that they have not changed mindsets – indeed, that they still are clueless about how fandom actually works. I have only the utmost respect for Professor Jenkins and the work he does with fandom, but the truth of the matter is he is not “one of us”. He is the benevolent anthropologist, an onlooker who may have established social ties with the community but not within the community. Williams stated that he was willing to talk to Jenkins and not to members of fandom because he “had dual citizenship in fandom and academia” – and that, right there, is why FanLib is failing. Williams fails to grasp that fandom is its own self-contained unit and does not appreciate intrusion from outside, and that “academia” is not a part of the community and therefore communication with an “academic” because he is an academic, even one as partial to fandom as Jenkins, is hardly going to gain you acceptance in fandom.
I wanted to point out this post where
I think Jenkins (sorry, I'm speaking out of academic style habit where we don't use the honorific just the last names--and I know that might sound disrespectful but since I'm here partly as an academic I'm going to stick with it!) was in fandom at one time, but that's a very different situation.
As an aca-fan (coined by Matt Hills, who is also a fan and a scholar), I juggle the different community/cultural issues daily. While there are many academics in fandom (as Stewardess noted above, LOTR may have more than the average percentage, but knowing my aca friends as I do, I *know* they are in Smallville, Supernatural, and SGA like whoa!), not all academics are aca-fan (those of us who do scholarship on fandom or fan fiction). (Matt Hills also acknowledges the scholarship fan-scholars do--those fans trained in academic methodologies who write scholarship for fans, not for an academic audience).
Re: reposted to correct html: insider/outsider part 1
Date: 2007-05-27 04:02 pm (UTC)I think that one issue coming out of this essay is that I may be using the term "academic" to describe a person in a different sense than the rest of fandom; if this is so I will go back and make sure I explain my terms more clearly.
The way I am using the term, Jenkins is the only "academic" around. This is not because is the only person working in academia, it is because he is the only person who is saying, "My name is Harry Jenkins, I am a professor at MIT, I do research on modern media, and you can reach me in this manner." No one else -- for very good reasons! -- is doing this. This does not mean that there aren't plenty of people in fandom who are working in academia in similar capacity to Jenkins, and it certainly doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of people in fandom who are doing the exact same kind of work that Jenkins is doing. But none of the people in fandom are saying, "this is my name, here are my credentials, and this is how you can reach me", and therefore to an outsider they are not recognized "academics".
I don't expect people in fandom to do this. Given the legal and social issues surrounding fanfic, especially the porn aspect of it, that would be stupid. Jenkins can because he is not (as was my original point and a point multiple other people have made) in fandom, he is the outsider looking in -- his ties are with the community, they are not within fandom. But this does have the drawback of having Jenkins be the only person whom outsiders can recognize as an "academic".
However, I'm getting the feeling from these comments that this is not necessarily the same definition of "academic" that the rest of fandom has. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but you and others seem to be using the term "academic" as "any fan who is in academia", or possibly "any fan who analyzes fandom in an academic manner". Or are these people what you are terming "aca-fan"? Is working in academia required? For example, I have a PhD, but it's in biochemistry and I work for a pharmaceutical company. I would in no way consider myself to be "in academia" or an "academic", but while the majority of my fandom discourse is OH HAI HOT FOOTBALLERS or occasionally LOL FINGON/MAEDHROS FTW I have been known to analyze the psychology of fandom in much the same way as I analyze the psychology of the footballer. Am I an "aca-fan" when I engage in such pursuits?
I would like my essay to be as clear as possible so I would appreciate clarification on how other people are using terms.
Re: reposted to correct html: insider/outsider part 1
From:Re: reposted to correct html: insider/outsider part 1
From:insider/outsider part 2 (darn too short LJ character limits)
Date: 2007-05-27 05:07 am (UTC)As an aca-fan, I was a fan *before* I became an academic (although I couldn't get involved in fandom until I got out of small town Idaho in the seventies). I babbled about Star Trek and science fiction to my English profs (my Shakespeare prof was wonderful about it--her son was a fan too). Decades later, in my doctoral program, I could write about feminist sf under the banner of "theory) (none of my profs had read the stuff, but since they practiced the theory that any text could be analyzed, they were fine with me doing it, if a bit bemused at times).
With the growth of new disciplines (media studies, fan studies, cultural studies, popular studies), more people who have been active in media and other fandoms for much of their life are in graduate school, writing new stuff--and it's fantastic.
None of this info is meant to contradict your post: the problems of CW engaging over at Jenkins' blog (which I think J. is well aware of) are multiple and (I agree with you) typical of FanLib's problems.
But as many have noted, the perhaps older than average LJ fan writers are not the people this Corporate Black hole wants to suck in--I wonder if the main draw of Jenkins' wasn't first, "oh wow, more publicity" and "look an academic is taking us seriously" (for potential investors). So, as with other things, he wasn't trying to seriously address fandom (and I cannot believe there was a whole team working hard on that inteview, as he implied, because, lots of marketing jargon and repetition of main points I'd seen before).
His assumption that "academic" and "fandom" are entirely separate is natural--but wrong (as so many of his assumptions about fandom!). Aca-fans are only a small part of any of the fandoms they're in, but we're here, as complicated as that may be for us. Some fan are not happy with academics messing in fandom (I sometimes joke tl;dr must have been coined about us, plus the "jargon" issue); we may be in the closet with regard to our fandom activity in our departments. I think this situation will be changing in many ways in future (especially with those of us who not only do fan studies in scholarship but incorporate new media into our teaching--and that's also a part part of what Jenkins' program is doing--did you see his announcement? His center got a $5 million grant--more than FanLIb's start up!)
product versus social network
Date: 2007-05-27 06:46 pm (UTC)A classical Marxist perspective on this (and here I mean Marxist ontology, not the political systems that tried to build themselves up based on some reading of Marx's corpus) is that the "product" is inherently non-isolable from social relationships. Why? Because a "product" is nothing more than a materialization of interpersonal relationships. There is NO SUCH THING as a non-social product. Likewise, there is NO SUCH THING as a purely social (i.e., non-embodied, non-materialized) relationship. There are only different forms of embodied sociality, some more intense, some less so; some alienating (in the sense of trying to cut the product out of its context and ignore or demean the ties and productive relationships it embodies), some less so. Capitalism is the advent of a form of alienation which assumes you are a radically private individual with *no* inherent tie to anyone else whose product suits your needs, and yours alone; only later on is an exchange established between other persons based on objects that are isolated from their productive, i.e., social, contexts.
FanLib assumes this model. We assume it, too, if we try to oppose social relationships to the product we produce, we just value the other end of the opposition. Personally, I prefer not to accept that opposition in the first place. I don't have to choose between sociality and the quality of the product (or its lack thereof); I only have to choose between alienating and distorting forms of interpersonal relationships, which the fanfic object (and the group discussions, and the LJs, and the site designs, and the arguments, the meet-ups, etc.) embodies, and relationships that are less alienating - that recognize to a more or less adequate degree that my 'product' would not exist but for a particular set of relationships I have with others, the full dimensions of which I am not always aware of. The joy of telling a good story and of realizing my relationship with other like-minded readers and fans is the discovery of what exactly it is that I'm involved in - a good story, yes, and a good story whose worth is understood in a certain set of contexts.
FanLib isn't ever going to grasp that, as angualupin says, because the business model they depend on cannot accommodate it.
/two cents
Dwimordene
Re: product versus social network
Date: 2007-05-29 05:53 pm (UTC)a "product" is nothing more than a materialization of interpersonal relationships. There is NO SUCH THING as a non-social product. Likewise, there is NO SUCH THING as a purely social (i.e., non-embodied, non-materialized) relationship. There are only different forms of embodied sociality, some more intense, some less so; some alienating (in the sense of trying to cut the product out of its context and ignore or demean the ties and productive relationships it embodies), some less so. Capitalism is the advent of a form of alienation which assumes you are a radically private individual with *no* inherent tie to anyone else whose product suits your needs, and yours alone; only later on is an exchange established between other persons based on objects that are isolated from their productive, i.e., social, contexts.
Brilliant. Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-27 11:05 pm (UTC)If I may go slightly OT here, I've read quite a few dialogues about fanfic and why people do it and I've always felt that this was something hardly anyone got - that for a lot of people, it's the community that's important. It certainly is for me. Sure, I like writing, I like feeling like I'm improving in writing (which is what defenders of fanfic often point out as reasons), I like having people read it - especially without having to brave the terrors of attempting publication, I like mindless praise on my writing (which is what detractors of it do). But what's really important to me and what made me both start posting online to begin with and then switch from original fic to fanfic was the community, the dialogue that results from fanfic. As you say, social networking simply for the sake of being social.
I like writing, but I love the discussion that results from it, the meta, the essays, the friends you make - I love being able to chat for hours with someone over the intricacies of characterisation in one's OTP, gossiping about the fics we've read that week or crazy reviews we've gotten, trying to weird one another out with crazy crossovers or playing top-this-squick... I love that if I write a fic, and someone else comments on it and I answer, at the end of the discussion it's possible that we'll both go home with new ideas or a new take on an old and familiar character or maybe even a new friend. The reason I write fanfic is not because of the writing, but because of the people.
And without them? I probably wouldn't. I'm not a person who is forced to write things down, as many writers say they are - I'm a person who is forced to make up stories, but I personally am perfectly fine with keeping them in my head. Writing things down is something I do for other people. In this case, for the community.
Not sure how many people feel this way, but it's definitely something I've never seen crop up in discussions about why people write fanfiction.