With A Bit Of - Tumblr Posts
On the subject of blocking, I think entering a new fandom and blocking a huge section of it straight away is self care at this point. If I read any post along the lines of "if you like this fictional thing then you are..." I block immediately. If a friend knows the fandom, I follow their advice and block the people they suggest too after a quick scroll (I know a lot of people do this). Fandom isn't a community anymore. It's finding a small handful of people to enjoy the thing with and hiding from everyone else.
I read a post on Twitter that talked about how old school fan culture was dying, and how preemptively blocking/antis were killing fandom because it was forcing people to engage and communicate less. I was sad to realize I was part of the problem, but I've had so many bad experiences. I preemptively block based on a particular ship and two characters in A fandom, because of how horribly disgusting the fans are (to each other, to people who like something different, and the content they create is often squicky/poorly tagged). I realize this is almost "anti" behaviour (judging people's character for their fictional tastes), but it was endemic. I don't harass, I walk away silently and filter them out. So hopefully not as bad?
The final straw for me was the "antis in disguise". People who profess to love Dead Dove content (and also write it), but then are aggressive/vile to people who like/don't like different characters, forms of canon, etc, and have extensive trigger lists in their servers, while telling people the right way to fandom (which is to only like what they do). For me, the only "right way" is to let people love their thing and don't harass, while making content for your thing. I was in one for an IP where hunting, death and murder were a huge part of the narrative... and death is on the trigger list. Any and all mentions of it. Yes. Even "that's so funny, I'm deceased".
I'm sorry for the ramble. I have a lot of feelings about being guilted for blocking and setting up boundaries. Especially one person using their RSD to claim they were being bullied! Fandom is mad these days. Mad!
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I die laughing every time I see someone who thinks they’ve been around a long time but who is somehow still such a n00b that they could say blocking kills old fandom culture.
You know what kills oldschool fandom culture? TWITTER
It’s short form quips. Oldschool fandom was interminable tl;dr. It’s open and public. Oldschool fandom was invite-only with dense webs of social connections required to access it and a natural result of being in it. Some people took their old friendships to twitter with them, but if they want to know why things feel different now, it’s because they went to that piece of shit website. That’s not the fault of the rest of us.
Back in the day, m/m shippers often found a little group of their own people and hid from the haters. Those few tragic souls who liked whatsherface from the last season of Beauty and the Beast did the same. Anime fans weren’t always in the buddy cop fandoms and vice versa, except for FAKE. Fandom has never been just one community. That’s an illusion born of nostalgia and planting one’s head firmly in the sand.
You know what forces people to communicate and engage less? Platforms that make them feel unsafe. Randos being able to turn up in the comments to go “Well, actually!” without the poster having any ability to keep them out. And sure, antis are part of that, but we’ve always had haters of other sorts and always had to get rid of them in order to have a civil discussion.
Denying dickheads access to your time does not kill communication.
If someone on twitter actually meant what you’ve written about above, then they’re clueless. If they want oldschool fandom culture, they need look no further than their own pen. Post long-ass “thinky thoughts” (and use cringe-inducing terms like “thinky thoughts”) and oldschool culture will come to you… And maybe, while you’re at it, figure out if oldschool means LJ culture, forum culture, FFN culture, mailing list culture, Usenet culture, fanfic convention culture, AMV editor culture, 80s multifandom zine culture, 70s Star Trek zine culture…