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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.
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.
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(And he is not fucking TWENTY-ONE.)
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(HE'S TWENTY-ONE?!)
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*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.
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TWENTY ONE IS A LIE
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I HAD TO HAND CODE EVERY SINGLE FUCKING LINE BREAK
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But this is a very uplifting post in an otherwise kind of awful week, so thank you. I needed that.
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does not compute
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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.)
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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).
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(TWENTY-ONE???? I think I've been following your fic since he was, like, 10. Holy crap.)
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Not with the Approved Trek Fandom/Pairing Hierarchy (REMEMBER THAT? IT WAS BY RANK IT WAS GREAT.)
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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.
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Oh god, the Vietnam flashbacks have started. Incoming! ::runs away screaming::
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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!
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No lie, about three weeks ago? I randomly got feedback on a Voyager fic I wrote TWENTY YEARS AGO.
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;) ;) ;)
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:P
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*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.
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(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.)
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----
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
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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)
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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.
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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.
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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
(You don't know me but hi! I read Down to Agincourt.)
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(insert paragraph about how social media that requires actual interaction might not be the worst thing in the world)
(twenty-one?!)
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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.
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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.
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