Snowflake Challenge: Oh My Bob. Becky, Look at Her Post.

[author_by_night]

 Day 3: In your own space, talk about a fandom opinion you hold that has changed over time.
 
First, for transparency's sake, I actually struggled with this question as I've held a lot of misconceptions over the years. I've been in fandom since 2000, after all.  I'm also not entirely sure what I've covered before.

But I think one, which was touched on in sarajayechan 's post, is the strict standards a lot of the internet held people to. Fanfic writing in particular - as their entry points out, it was considered fine to criticize or even openly mock a fic because "you posted it, it's fair game now". Which I don't think was fair. But it was also acceptable to make fun of how people typed on forums and on LJ comms. The kinds of things people said.  

I even corrected people on forums I belonged to, and when I say I didn't see anything wrong with it, I really mean it. I thought I was saving them, the way  terse forum mod sonce "saved" me. Except what were mods saving me from? What was I saving those people from? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

It was also common to make fun of individual fandomers, whether their fics or just who they were in fandom. Often the comments were way too personal, especially when it came to fic writers. Even when it came to people who deserved personal criticism, sometimes comments still went way too far.

It's interesting. This isn't really fandom, but stick with me here. I was thinking about the site STFU Parents, which made fun of the way parents (usually moms) talked about their kids on social media. I remember feeling like the blog was very harsh, and I recently gave it a re-read. While there were certainly awful posts that deserved to get sporked, a lot of them were just... people daring to talk about their kids instead of whatever was "cool" to like on the internet at the time. Sometimes they'd USE ALL CAPS or word something a little awkwardly. Okay? It happens. And no, I didn't care about people's kids either, I was online to geek out about stuff, but I also realized Facebook wasn't where geekery was happening. (I'm not saying that people necessarily thought that, either, I'm just. Saying.)

Even the reaction to Rebecca Black's "Friday" is arguably part of this idea that the internet had to be protected from... something. You're Wrong About (I think) had a whole episode about that, where they pointed out that those kinds of videos were outliers on YouTube back then. I get why Rebecca Black stood out like a sore thumb, but let's maybe not make fun of thirteen year old girls? That bothered me too. (And can I just say, Party in the USA, released around that same time, wasn't a whole lot better? Miley Cyrus just sings like, well, Miley Cyrus, whereas Rebecca Black just sang like a teenage girl. Because she was a teenage girl. Maybe Glee made us forget how most teenagers sing.)

So yeah. The internet is a lot worse in many ways, unfortunately. But I'm glad I can read YouTube comments now without losing my faith in humanity, I'm glad people aren't flamed on Ao3 as frequently as they were on fanfiction.net. (At least in my experience.)

Comments

[author_by_night]

It's funny you mention MSTK3k, because around that time I remember someone pointing out that the MSTK3K people "clearly LOVE the films they cover" (in contrast to what they were seeing online, I guess, I don't remember the context).