i don't even know why I'm awake

So a thought:

I threw a fit about strikethrough, boldthrough, et al, I have migrated like a drunk bird to better and worse platforms, I have mourned the loss of fannish history and I'm pissed at Tumblr because holy shit it's like no one remembers this shit never ever works out well.

But.



But: DW, LJ, AO3, Tumblr, every media site with fan content could vanish, and in roughly forty five minutes I would have bought a domain, threw up a working homepage, and started uploading my fic and that of my friends and probably create a really sketchy and shitty blog and start reconnecting with everyone else's shitty homemade blogs (God. Blogs). I mean assuming this isn't the last week of the month when I have no money, okay.

I'm not saying it would be good or aesthetic, but it would be functional enough to say "I am here; where are you?" And begin the reconnection process. Webrings, fuck my life; it could happen.

I know I can do that, because I've done it before; I did it in Geocities. I learned HTML and css by literally fucking up the coding until I worked out what tags did what and why because google didn't yet exist and you fucking try using altavista to search for anything even if there was anything out there. Up until well into AO3's existence, I still had a personal webpage. I still have a backup of my entire site, in fact; it's all organized exactly as it appeared online. Just in case.

Here's a sense of scale: When my son was one, I didn't have a blog and used usenet and geocities; when he was two, I transitioned to mailing lists and my own domain; when he was three, I was on diaryland (it was a...nevermind). When he was four, I was on LJ and began the great social media experiment: journalfen, insanejournal (sort of?), DW, Twitter, Tumblr, I don't even know what else because I got experimental with namesquatting, okay? My kid is twenty-one and I just made some of my friends go "fuck you're kidding." Dude, I know.

The point is: it's been years since I had to hand-code my own site, hand-code my blog, worry about mailing list and usenet character limits, and social media made fanlife about a billion times easier. That doesn't change the fact when I came into fandom, the first thing I learned is that if I want something, I have to do it myself.

That part hasn't changed; we're still doing it ourselves. We just don't think of it like that because we have so many more tools than fucking geocities and having to go buy--BUY AT A BOOKSTORE--a book on HTML which weirds me out just writing out.

Usenet, LJ, Tumblr, mailing lists, they weren't made for us; we veni vedi vici'ed that shit. Nice social media platform you got here, I'm inviting everyone I ever met to see what we can do with this. Threaded comments, forty-thousand word character limits, likes, reblogs, image hosting, nice, now I can post my epic Sheppard/Finn/Reylo as pornstars fic with GIFs and link to the youtube vid someone made for me about it please reblog and/or comment and kudos, thanks.

They're our tools to get what we want.

To put this another way: yeah, we eventually have to move--or want to, which sometimes is the same thing--but we always gain more than we lose every time. And if you don't believe me, go back and check out the early Mailing List Versus LJ debates and dire predictions of isolation and apocalypses (plural) when instead, we expanded exponentially and continue to expand.

We are never, ever, going to settle down, not really; that is not our way. Not because we can't; because we shouldn't. I wouldn't go back to usenet and having to fucking hand-code--HAND FUCKING CODE-- webpages if you paid me (well, if you paid me a lot, maybe); there's a good chance I'd start fires in random places if I ever have to deal with capricious fucking mods who run their mailing lists like feudal kingdoms; and God help you if I ever, in my life, have to email with my life history or some shit to get access to a locked archive that is the only goddamn one for my pairing. And if you don't remember some of LJ's freakish quirks, oh, I do and am happy not to relive that bullshit.

Fandom does not and never has adapted to what we were given; we weren't ever given a goddamn thing. We take what we like and make it work the way we want it to. Yeah, the transition period can be rough and very often sucks, but eventually, we're going to get to a place where we holoprogram our fic and try to work out how to comment on our experience in someone's holofic which will probably redefine TMI.

Comments

[thornsilver]

Oh, the fucking memories...

[reginagiraffe]

*loves you*

(And he is not fucking TWENTY-ONE.)

[laurajv]

right?

TWENTY ONE IS A LIE

[icarus]

Twenty-one? I suddenly feel so old....

[laurajv]

every time i start doing math on friends' children i end up doing the math on my own and then cussing a lot.

[icarus]

does not compute

[venetia_sassy]

Amen and fuck yeah.

(HE'S TWENTY-ONE?!)

[princessofgeeks]

Preach it!

[kiratael]

having to go buy--BUY AT A BOOKSTORE--a book on HTML which weirds me out just writing out.

*shudders* Thanks for the reminder that I used to loan out manga in exchange for those thick fuckers with the newsprint-quality pages and the covers made of pasteboard so I could make my own Gundam Wing site.

[archaeologist_d]

I'm still mourning fannish history. I hated the LJ exodus (although I completely understood). I hate that I have to start OVER again trying to find fans of the things that I love and they love and that we can squee over. I'm too old for this shit. And as I'm too old, I recognize that I can't always do what I want, either. Me setting up a webpage - the thought makes me cringe because although I'm fairly smart, my brain just can't handle it. So instead, I will limp from place to place and hope I find like-minded souls.

[toujours_nigel]

this post has the Immigrant Song soundtrack in my head ijs

[suzvoy]

I learned to code html just so I could post fic on my original tripod site.

I HAD TO HAND CODE EVERY SINGLE FUCKING LINE BREAK

[seperis]

Dude. Dude. Mandatory headers on ASC. I still use a version of that header; I tried to stop and couldn't write so gave up and paste it in now.

Not with the Approved Trek Fandom/Pairing Hierarchy (REMEMBER THAT? IT WAS BY RANK IT WAS GREAT.)

[suzvoy]

OMG I FORGOT ABOUT THE FANDOM/PAIRING HIERARCHY.

No lie, about three weeks ago? I randomly got feedback on a Voyager fic I wrote TWENTY YEARS AGO.

[ladyvyola]

I was just telling somebody about that a couple of weeks ago and how you had to make sure you put in the show code first! And how crossovers were their own special minefield.

[in_the_bottle]

OMG, yes, the same with my Geocities site and that's how I learned HTML as well. When Word started having option to export in html IT WAS A GODSEND!!

[suzvoy]

Ohh, yeah! That used to drive me mad, though, because the programming was so bad it'd jam the html full of tons of unnecessary coding and I'd have to go back in and edit it all out.

;) ;) ;)

[in_the_bottle]

Oh, I used to do that with the headers but the rest of it I just left them cos I honestly couldn't be bothered. If I'd gone back to edit it all out, I might just as well have hand coded it myself!

:P

[olanthanide]

I have never felt old and so young at the same time....

But this is a very uplifting post in an otherwise kind of awful week, so thank you. I needed that.

[seperis]

I know the feeling; I'm not as married to tumblr because it sucks for conversation, but for artists, I get what a shitty, shitty, shitty blow this is. And Tumblr was the first platform for a lot of people; it's got to feel like a massive ending--and it is--but it's also a transitional hiccup.

Fandom really doesn't go backward either; once we find something we like a lot, it becomes Thing We Have Always Had and Sacred Forever. So I'm not worried its the end of gifset culture; once we adopt a new format, we cling to that shit until the end of time, We Have Always Had Gifsets in Eurasia.

[whichy]

It keeps me young, following all the kids around the internets and having to learn new platforms. I was there for almost all of that (I skipped diaryland - mostly). And yeah, I mourn the best of those platforms, but I loved Tumblr, and I'll love something else in the future.

[cofax7]

Hah! Indeed. As I said oh, a decade ago: Fandom interprets order as a failure of imagination and subverts it. Fandom will always do fandom, and fans will figure out how to make it happen.

[dragonlady7]

ha-- thank you for writing this! I've been thinking something along these lines for a bit now. Like-- the platform is all we talk about but in the end it doesn't matter, we're a community one way or another and we'll make it work.
But you said it better.
(Also, I learned HTML from going "view source" and then copy-pasting the things I thought might be what I wanted, and I never got that good at it but I definitely remember the process.)

[out_there]

I remember Diaryland. How can your kid be 21? How is that POSSIBLE?

Also, I've had the thought a few times in the last few days: I do not miss the days of GeoCities. I mean, if I could figure out enough HTML to have a truly crappy site back in the day, with google around now, I could totally do it again but "Webrings, fuck my life" sums it up exactly.

And, yes, change is not always easy or pleasant, and we all worry, but it also tends to result in a better platform -- in easier access, more fen, more types of fannish output. It gets better -- and than improvement is better than everything staying just the same (even if that feels more comfortable).

[tozka]

♥

(TWENTY-ONE???? I think I've been following your fic since he was, like, 10. Holy crap.)

[harpers_child]

<3 <-DW doesn't have a like button so I'm leaving this instead.

[kass]

♥

[gwyn]

there's a good chance I'd start fires in random places if I ever have to deal with capricious fucking mods who run their mailing lists like feudal kingdoms; and God help you if I ever, in my life, have to email with my life history or some shit to get access to a locked archive that is the only goddamn one for my pairing.

Oh god, the Vietnam flashbacks have started. Incoming! ::runs away screaming::

[forestgreen]

I like this analysis, very uplifting. I’m having some thoughts, too, about how this reflects the fact that the fanish experience itself is very nomadic, not just for platforms but also for tastes and fandoms. There are so many fandoms I’ve loved with the passion of true love and then a new one comes along, and then that same intensity, that same sense of ‘OMG all is new and beautiful and the world is spring again’ comes with even more intensity. We lose friends when we change fandoms and make new ones, some we keep even when our interest fanish interests no longer align, others we rediscover again three fandom later and it’s just as great as it was before.

So, reading this made me think of that, of how most of us are constantly changing and finding new homes/families for our fanish interest. Maybe it’s the reason why we are able to adapt so quickly when technical platforms stop working for us. We are nomads, butterflies (or cockroaches if you will). We adapt. We change. We move on. We learn. We keep exploring, transforming. The canon. Ourselves. The platform that willingly or unwillingly hosts us. It’s in our DNA.

I cannot believe your son is 21. I remember reading your posts about him, when he was still in kindergarten or something, and looking back, I realize that I’ve been at this myself since 1998. Wow!

[arbitraryallegory]

This is a Good Take. The younger set feels so betrayed! This is a betrayal! Okay, and so?* Platforms have been deciding they don't want us anymore for decades, and we've managed to not just survive it, but to make the most epic, tastiest lemonade ever out of it.

*Which isn't to say that it doesn't suck. It sucks every single time, and I have great empathy for people whose actual livelihoods are being negatively impacted here. But there are other options--we're just going to have to work a little harder to find them.

[domarzione]

Dropping the Diaryland reference like the hipsters with the Bands You're Not Cool Enough to Know About....

(He's twenty-one?!?)

I'm fandom old, as you are, and I cannot get worked up about the possibility of another fanspace migration; it's inevitable even when it's not forced. As is the griping about it. And maybe it's just the Jew in me, but... you're right. We, fandom, will survive. We can be in exile, we can be persecuted by weird ToS or C&D orders, but we'll find each other and we'll survive. We have for a long time.

(And this time we have AO3 profiles to update in case people want to know where we are and how to talk to us.)

[goss]

O_O TWENTY ONE? *mind blown*

----

Heh. Hand coding my personal art website is a labour of love, and only because it is my own. (Won't catch me dead doing that for anybody else's child! :b ) I only know the bare basics of HTML, but I refuse to put my art in someone else's hands. I also keep an copy of the entire thing on my hard drive, just in case.

We are nomads. At the end of the day, the reality is that every platform will find a way to either make money off of creators or drive us away. :/

We take what we like and make it work the way we want it to

Exactly! The wonderful thing about Fandom is we love a challenge, and by nature we transform what we're given, we adapt it until it suits us best.

...Homemade blogs FTW! XD

[nafs]

Because of the majesty of the internets you don't know me (although the way LJ worked back in the day you maybe followed me back?) and yet this post is exactly the sort of thing that keeps me following you even if I no longer am following you on LJ for the Smallville fic. I decided it was time to say hi *waves*

In internet terms we are approximately the same sort of Old although you're much more motivated than me, I am pretty content to stick to twitter and AO3 and Dreamwidth and let everyone else sort shit out. My personal site is still up because I'm still with the same internet provider and I never bothered to deep six it. (I might have largely get off my lawn about tumblr, I am a textual person in the main and the amount of effort required to have an actual conversation about a thing on tumblr kept me from ever doing more than bookmarking a blog or two) That maciej from pinboard has perked up and gone "fandom needs a New Thing? let's talk" amuses the fuck out of me though so I'm half paying attention there.

(Really, Child is 21? How is that a thing? she says, as if I hadn't recently learned that a fandom baby for whom I attempted to knit baby clothes when her mum was pregnant is now out of the house and employed and everything)

[grammarwoman]

...Fuck yeah it's awesome to have you back and posting in these parts. :D

[alassenya]

I think that new fans see home as a specific platform and are devastated when it gets ripped away from them. Old and weary fans see fandom as a very large and disorganised caravan that might camp out on a platform for a few years, but we know we'll be forced to move on eventually. We keep our valuables in a portable container but we know and accept that the ephemera will be lost as we move on.

[treefrogie84]

my roommate and i were tossing around worst case alternatives and ya know, DW is a damn sight better than 4chan. But i have to buy a domain name and geocities this shit? I will. (I will go back to freaking photocopies of physical 'zines before i go to 4chan.)

[seperis]

Oh God this. I will happily go to Pornhub before I go near the Neo-Nazi Homeland.

Pornhub's "Come to Pornhub! We want you! You'll get money for your art!" advertising to Tumblr artists is killing me and making me go 'dawww' in such an inappropriate way. I am so charmed and it's kind of freaking me out.

[treefrogie84]

i mean, they blocked tumblr at work like a year ago, so i'm already used to not being able to go to my main social media at work. so if that's where fandom ends up, that's where fandom ends up and i'll follow. but i feel like i'm probably too grey-demi-ace-wibbly wobbly for that to work for me for long.

[madamelibrarian]

I remember that. The days of when you wanted to read fics, you had find then bookmark ALL your favorite archives and author's individual websites. Then remember where you left off on a long WIP.

I've heard it said that Tumblr is like the Wild West of fandom. Well, if it's the Wild West, then what we went through 20 years ago must have been the Dark Ages and one step up away from etching fics into stone tablets.

[xenakis]

Even trying to integrate the tiny amount of HTML I needed to start posting here again I was like “wait, how do I italicize things again?” How soon we forget...

[wolfling]

I have so missed reading your posts. <3

And speaking as another fandom oldie, it's true. Fandom has moved and grown from usernet to email to lists, to lj to tumblr and whatever steps I might've missed inbetween. It won't die here. We are Fandom, there ain't no killing us.

[brancher]

Listen, I'm just glad we're all still here -- there are folks in these replies I first met in 1996 -- but I swear to god it's all been downhill since Usenet

[lovetincture]

Amen! When I first got into fandom it was... God, 17 years ago? I don't think fandom was even on LJ yet (or at least my fandom at the time wasn't). We used a janky old message board and ff.net.

On a selfish note, I am almost, almost glad for the migration away from Tumblr because I never liked the user interface. It always felt messy and confusing to me. I am sorry that so many people are losing a lot of art, writing, and connections they put a lot of time into.

I'm new here and trying to make new friends on DW. Mind if I add you?

thank you

[myurbandream]

This is actually very encouraging! I'm not quite as long in fandom as you, I've been on LJ for a decade and Tumblr for 5 years, but my big fear with the Tumblr purge has been losing the fandom community I've found there in the past years. With everyone else spouting doom and gloom, it's reassuring to realize that we can survive this and come out intact on the other side. Thanks for that.

(You don't know me but hi! I read Down to Agincourt.)

[dont_panic42]

I would like this, if I could, but since I can't I'm leaving a comment. :)
(insert paragraph about how social media that requires actual interaction might not be the worst thing in the world)



(twenty-one?!)

[ineptshieldmaid]

They're our tools to get what we want.

To put this another way: yeah, we eventually have to move--or want to, which sometimes is the same thing--but we always gain more than we lose every time. And if you don't believe me, go back and check out the early Mailing List Versus LJ debates and dire predictions of isolation and apocalypses (plural) when instead, we expanded exponentially and continue to expand.

Yeah, this. I am intruiged, and worried, from a political perspective, about the Tumblr'pocalypse, but I'm not all that worried about fandom itself. We go on. We do lose individual friendships along the way, and some of them I mourn, but... like. I barely speak to my friends from undergrad anymore, either.

[sffan]

Thank you, I really needed this. And in honour of fandom history, I am using my very first icon from my LJ account.

[heresluck]

TESTIFY.

[ariadne83]

I really want to give this post a standing fucking ovation