Current mood:

thoughtfully baffled

Whatever happened to fandom?
So prillalar and iamrosalita and I were reminiscing in comments about the Good Old Days when there was but one e-mail list devoted to X-Files, and all three of us were on it. That was back in the days before eGroups and Onelist and Yahoo Groups, when knights in shining armor roamed the land and fought herds of dinosaurs.

It got me to thinking about what's happened to fandom. I should preface my remarks by saying that I am, at present, marginally involved in but one fandom, namely Harry Potter. By "marginally" I mean that I sometimes read HP fanfic, sometimes write it, and read the LJs of some folks who are fairly active in it. I am not on any HP-related mailing lists, nor do I belong to any HP-related LJ communities. But I do have behind me six years of involvement in Voyager, XF, Sentinel, TPM, and Velvet Goldmine fandom, and I can officially claim to remember the Good Old Days in those fandoms, I think. *g*

Somewhere in those six years, the thing that fandom is *about* has changed. When I got involved in slash fandom, it was all about the shiny: About beautiful, complicated men having beautiful, complicated relationships that involved getting nekkid and getting jiggy with it. And those relationships took place in the context of (in my case) television series whose weekly airings were an *event* in the lives of fans. When I checked my e-mail on Monday mornings, it was full of posts from people analysing Sunday night's X-Files episode--and not just analysing it in terms of how many smoldering looks, ambiguous kisses, or flirtatious lines Mulder exchanged with Krycek or Skinner, but in terms of what worked, what didn't, how it fit into the overall series arc, what was funny, what was scary. If people were disappointed with an ep, they could explain why in lengthy essays which marshalled examples from all the previous seasons.

And besides the essays, there was fic. Lots of fic. One of my fondest memories of fandom will always be the XAPen list, moderated by Cici Lean. *moment of silence for one who has disappeared from fandom entirely* XAPen was all fic, except for Fridays, which were devoted to feedback, and it welcomed all types of fiction: case files, MSRs, slash, epics, vignettes, what have you. The only rule was there were no rules. Post what you like.

Something has changed since then, and not for the good. It seems to me that, collectively, fandom is no longer interested in The Shiny Thing, the show, the film, the book, the actor who captures one's imagination. Fandom is interested in itself. Fandom is all about The Meta.

Individually, of course, people still get into new fandoms through their enthusiasm for the source material, or the fanfiction, or an actor. Individually, people are still writing, vidding, screencapping, or just watching episodes with as much gusto as ever. But *collectively*, in fora like Livejournal and Fandom Wank,, what people are talking about is The Meta.

I'm not entirely sure that I can define The Meta in a precise, scholarly sort of way. I'm certain that one aspect of The Meta is status within fandom: who's a BNF, who's not, whether being called a BNF is an insult, who's pretentious, who's snarky, who has minions and who doesn't. When I see people who post to LJ and *routinely* get upwards of fifty comments, most of which involve readers saying some clever variation of "Wordy McWord", I know that poster's got minions. Lotsa minions. More minions than I have beanie babies, and that's saying something.

The Meta is more than status issues, however. Let me try to illuminate my meaning with examples. Discussing whether the prejudice against Muggles and Muggle-born wizards in the Harry Potter books is analogous to race prejudice is not meta. Discussing why people like slash is meta. Discussing whether or not we are meant to believe that Krycek killed Bill Mulder is not meta. Discussing why people try to redeem evil or morally ambiguous characters in fanfiction is meta. Discussing whether Qui and Obi could really have had a sexual mentoring relationship is not meta. Discussing whether chanslash is morally wrong is meta. Writing Lotrips fic is not meta. Discussing whether Dom and Lijah are really gay is very, very meta.

See what I mean? Ninety percent, if not more, of the "kerfuffles" so gleefully examined on Fandom Wank are about The Meta--about issues that really have nothing to do with The Shiny Thing, whatever it may be. And I find, more and more, that if something really is A Shiny Thing for me, I don't go looking for online (or real-life) groups to share it with. I hug my treasure to myself and maybe post a little about in Livejournal, as I have with my recent re-viewing of Original Trek episodes (Trek is practically the Original Shiny Thing) for me. Or maybe I don't--maybe I just hug it to myself like an old stuffed bear and enjoy it in private.

Fandom is not a lot of fun any more, for me. Meta bores me, baffles me, makes me go look for shiny action-adventure where plot happens or shiny porn where love and schmoop happens. When did The Meta take over fandom, guys? What happened to The Shiny Thing we all used to love?