003. January 25, 2019

[thisweekmod]

I seem to be averaging about 6-7 links per issue, plus the old school featured link. Hm. I WAS going to separate things out by topic, but if only one or two are on the same thing, it seems a little superfluous. Perhaps if I do a super-sized issue (10+) that would come in handy?

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New Stuff

alis (Mastodon) posted shipping as activism: "The growth of "shipping-as-activism" is a side-product of the mainstream popularization of liberal communist* rhetoric, discuss."

anneapocalypse posted A Ball of String: dreamwidth, tumblr, twitter, youtube, and a bag of chips.: "I have a lot of thoughts on this that I haven’t had time to hammer out into a post, but reading these posts, and most importantly the discussions in the comments, has been fascinating to me and I am learning a lot of things about dreamwidth culture, which, yes, already exists, and has existed this whole time, which I think is important for those of us just recently coming here to realize."

goldentruth813 posted a discussion about the meaning of BNF (Big Name Fan): "The term BNF really fell out of favor in the drarry squad around the decline of livejournal. I think this was a combination of the social norms of tumblr being different than livejourbal as a platform and a few other reasons which I have theories on but am not sure I really wanna share in depth right now."

More BNF info: Fanlore's Big Name Fan page.

icouldwritebooks posted Fandom exists because people bother to build it: "Then, one day, dumb fangirlish teenage me was making one of those “Purity Litmus Tests” (you know, the ones where the goal was to get a low score to show how “corrupted” you’d been by the thing?) for my geocities site, when I realized that all this fun I’d been having wouldn’t even exist if other fans weren’t out there creating stuff. I realized that when I created stuff, I was a part of that, and it was really cool."

muccamukk posted New Meta Newsletter, Signal Boosting, Linking, Dogpiling, and History: "On the other hand, there is a conflicting need: the need of people who are affected by something to express their opinion and their hurt, or to try to protect their space. I also think that is important part of fandom. And then there's just difference of opinion and people having actual discussions about them like goddamn adults. Which happens! And is also important."

sciatrix posted about whisperspace: the sorrow of my favorite absence: "But I haven't mentioned the thing I use the favorites for that makes me love them best of all: the ability to do the equivalent of smiling, nodding, and projecting thank you for saying that in a rough conversation, especially one where I'm concerned the other person thinks I'm angrier than I actually am."

teawoodski posted about fandom community: "Been thinking a lot lately about differing approaches to fandom engagement; now that my favorite show's back from hiatus and we've all got fresh content to roll around in, it's hard not to notice I have an entirely different use pattern from most of my closest fandom friends"

Flashback - March 22, 2006

Older meta can be a valuable way to see how fandom has changed (or stayed the same) over time. Today's flashback meta:

hesychasm posted in lieu of life: "I've been here long enough to know that my fannishness is cyclical, but that it will always be part of my life. I haven't delved as deep as some, but fandom has definitely gotten its hooks into me."

Comments

[stellar_dust]

OT re: the blurb about BNFs: can we please start calling it livegerbil from now on??

[quinfirefrorefiddle]

I always feel a duty to tell people when they've made me laugh loud enough to startle my cat, she doesn't startle easily. You did. 😎

[stellar_dust]

Is that her in your icon? She's beautiful! (I have a 17-year-old kitty with similar coloring.) Please give her a pat and apologize on my behalf for the startlement. <3

[quinfirefrorefiddle]

Yes, she is! She's about 9, my previous cats lived to be 12 (diabetes) and 16, so I am impressed at 17! She appreciates the apology and sends courteous diplomatic acknowledgement to your cat. (Which is about as close to friendly as she gets to anyone not me or my husband.)

[typerare]

thank you! saving this one for later.

[megpie71]

Enjoyed the Mastodon thread. Interesting stuff, especially where they're pointing to things like "no, don't tell me I should watch something because Representation; tell me I should watch it because Good Bits", and the comments about how the whole "performative shipping" side of things is very much coming out of a US-centric version of public morality and such.

As an Australian, I certainly notice the latter, and I find it interesting that most social media sites and formats are very much built to facilitate this very ... Calvinist Protestant way of interacting with the world, where there are Good Things and Bad Things, and there are Good People who are always Good and Bad People who are always Bad, and there is One True Truth, and so on. And yeah, I was brought up in a vaguely similar public landscape and a vaguely similar public discourse, but not exactly the same, because, as mentioned, Australia is a lot less religious (and a lot more secular) than the USA. So, there's some rather interesting differences, which really only become visibly apparent when you look at our conservative politicians attempting to hammer hard on the "religious belief" cultural button (because the playbook they've borrowed from the USA says this should work in a certain way) and getting frustrated because the majority of Australians just go "yair, right, whatever", rather than getting all outraged about $THING in the way the playbook said they would.

One of the more interesting things I find online is the way individual people in the USA tend to either embrace the role of the USA as cultural hegemon (insisting there should be no difference between the ways people behave no matter where they are in the world, because the USA has the One Right Way of doing things all worked out) or there's a sort of fascination with the range of alternatives which have come out (usually while still maintaining the way it's done in one's hometown is the One True Way). But the notion of "hey, we might be doing something wrong/silly/daft/outright harmful here" doesn't seem to really slot into US thinking at all - it's like there's some kind of real cognitive gap there, where the concept "I could be wrong" slots in for most cultures.

(Again, that's Calvinist Protestant Christianity, and I can recognise it from my mother's family, who are Christadelphians who are Never Wrong. Even when they're incorrect, they're Right, because they chose to be wrong, so therefore they're Right.)

[cupidsbow]

Thank you!!!!!

[ljwrites]

Yeah the term BNF as far as I can remember it has always had an influencer-like connotation with a side dish of Mean Girl. This was the case even pre-Tumblr, perhaps because I was even then living in the shadow of OG BNF Cassie Cla(i)re.

[dhampyresa]

embrace the role of the USA as cultural hegemon (insisting there should be no difference between the ways people behave no matter where they are in the world, because the USA has the One Right Way of doing things all worked out)
THE WORST. It's not limited to online, though. I live in Paris and so have had to interact with a fair amount of tourists, and yeah, the US tourists are often Like That (inb4 #notallUSians).

[falena]

Just a generic comment to say how much I am enjoying all the links. I am SO grateful for all the hard work you're putting into this, mod. I hope you will not burn out. I say, put as many or as few links as you like, arrange them thematically or not... Basically do everything you can to make the work easier for yourself. ❤️

[thisweekmod]

Thank you! <3