006. January 29, 2019

[thisweekmod]

Am still playing a bit with the layout. Is everybody finding it readable enough? Easily perused? Etc.?

---

A selection of posts about fandom and money which have popped up lately:

• Original post by cesperanza (linked previously)): Money and Networks.
• Response by fairestcat (linked previously): On Fandom and the "culture of selling".
• More discussion: arduinna; goss; niqaeli; oursin.
• More historical context of fandom and money: Fanlore: Fandom and Profit.
• Know of more links? (Maybe your own?) Drop 'em in the comments.

The Daily Duranie posted It's a Lonely Burning Question: "The thing is, and I’m going to be brutally open about this – the “It” list of fans, you know the ones – they tend to be at most of the shows, they always seem to know where and when to be, and how to get places that normal, everyday fans don’t – aren’t really on our reader list."

Function podcast posted Fn 11: Social Media, 20 Years Ago: "Anil sits down with some of the pioneers of the social web — Bruce Ableson (founder of Open Diary), Lisa Phillips (former senior system administrator at LiveJournal), and Andrew Smales (founder of Diaryland) — for an oral history about social media 20 years ago." Includes a transcript.

kara_mckay posted about reblogging and DW culture: "When anyone can interact with any content anyone produces, issues of personal and public become murky. In the days of old, very few people would have thought it okay for someone to go out of their way to find another user's journal and then abuse them for their content. It's a little different when your journal isn't really a journal, and isn't really personal."

Peter Rubin for Wired posted Photo Gallery: Our Favorite Cosplay From NYC's Black Comic Book Festival: "And while the cosplay stretched across cultures—attendees came styled as Sailor Moon, Kayako Saeki from The Grudge, Coming to America's Prince Akeem, and all manner of superheros—Williams says that there was no mistaking how more inclusive storytelling has changed the feeling among fans."

thewickling (Pillowfort) posted Do BNFs still exist?: "Does the concept of BNFs still exist in fandom? What does it mean to be a BNF then? How has the concept shifted over the years?"

---

Flashback - July 24, 2004

This meta/fandom history post was written in the early days of LiveJournal. It covers a bunch of topics: the changes in fandom discussion, public vs. private, discussion and ownership, BNFs ("Quick: When did the BNF = bad!wrong!evol concept first evolve? Answer: At the same time as the ability to see how many Friends a person has."), moving from mailing lists to other fandom spaces and the changes inherent in that, and more. It's a very good look at early 2000s fandom, fandom on LiveJournal, and the changes that happened in fandom around that time.

sophia_helix posted three years, three months, and 1,188 entries later: "So here we are. What makes Livejournal so drastically different?

Well, for starters, there's that self-selection thing. No longer are we blocking that hated listmate, or scanning for messages from the people we really like -- we now have the capacity put all those people in one place."

[Linked with permission from Original Poster.]

---

thisweekmeta collects links of fandom meta and discussions from all over the web, and welcomes submissions from readers. If you know of an excellent fandom discussion post that we've missed, whether new or old, please feel free to leave a comment on this newest issue or email the editor.

The FAQ can be found here, and our editorial guidelines can be found here. Questions, concerns, and feedback are all welcomed.

Comments

[kore]

Wow, that podcast is really something. I had an OpenDiary! And yeah, I remember people posting VERY personal things there but typically under pseudonyms and not with their real names. LJ was much more social from the beginning, connecting you to networks of people, and a lot of people used their IRL names at the start -- a lot of them had come over from Usenet, where they also used their real names (and often, THEIR COLLEGE EMAIL ADDRESSES). I loved this part

One of the key differences we saw between LiveJournal and Open Diary was what Lisa described with LiveJournal where groups of people who knew each other would use it. Sort of like how Facebook is now was much more prevalent on air than Open Diary. Open Diary tended to be more people who are posting their personal things that they didn't wanna put somewhere else. And didn't necessarily invite their friends and family to come in [crosstalk 00:12:54].

AD: Back then your friends and family weren't necessarily online?

BA: They didn't have modems.