HEY. OKAY. SO. I went off in the groupchat this morning a little and I think I want to say this in public to ALL of my fellow Fandom Elders. I have been a fangirl online for thirty years now, and YOU KNOW WHAT? I'm tired of my peers apologetically calling themselves ancient grandma fandom mummy hags!
It's not weird that we are here! There are SO MANY OF US! We're not outliers, we're not oddballs. We are occupying a space we CREATED and we are still fucking here, having fun with all our younger online friends, which is COOL AND GOOD and NOT EMBARRASSING ACTUALLY. It's fucking rad.
Look. We *built* online fandom, comrades! We built it with Angelfire and Geocities and the fucking telephone cables we unhooked from our phones to plug into our enormous, boxy desktop computers to suffer through glacial download speeds that today's children can't even fathom. I think we should all agree to stop apologizing for being here when this is our fucking house. An excellent sentiment (not mine):
To all of my beloved young friends - remember this when you get older. You don't need to grow out of fandom. Who the fuck cares if it's cringe? Childlike joy is something to CELEBRATE, NOT SOMETHING TO BURY AND HIDE!
Fandom costs no money! Fandom doesn't require gas mileage or plane tickets! Fandom promotes human connections! The world is cold and miserable and full of pain. Don't fucking give up simple things that fill your heart with joy just because you feel like you should now that you have arbitrarily grown 'too old' to enjoy them.
