Get Fandom Off Social Media

Social media is bad for fandom. This is something you likely already know, because despite their names, social media are horrible for any social activity. Algorithms promote ragebait over any other social interactions. Accounts can get terminated at the whims of the staff. Most social media are built for small-form text posts rather than images or long-form text posts. In recent years, there's been a rise in posts along the lines of "we need to bring back mailing lists" "we need to bring back fansites" "we need to bring back forums" and so on and so forth.

Well, great news!

You 🫵 can do your part to help fandom move away from social media!

The technology for mailing lists or fansites or whatnot still exist! Most of these are accessible even to those who don't have five PhD in computer science.

Sharing fanstuff you've made

If you make fannish content, you're gonna want to make a fansite. Aka, your own website where you can post whatever you want.

How to make a fansite

There are many, many, many templates out there for people who aren't familiar with coding. Some are made to be copy/pasted without a second thought, others are a bit more thorough in explaining how it works and how to customize it. Here are a few examples, but if none of these vibe with you, feel free to google up "website template" to find more!

44×50 templates for writing archives, character wikis, and galleries

Zonelet's blogging template

Kalechips's templates for minimalist websites

If you're willing to code some stuff yourself (or if you used a template above and realized you needed to add a few things) I recommend W3school as a resource for html and css tricks. Whatever it is you're trying to add to your website, someone out there has surely figured out how to do it. It's only a matter of finding them.

Publishing your fansite

Neocities and Nekoweb are the two names for indie site hosting, though you can surely find more elsewhere.

What to put on your fansite

Anything you want! Here is a non exhaustive list of fannish things that would fit perfectly on a fansite:

Meta analysis

Watching/reading guides

Liveblogs

Headcanons

AU ideas

Character shrines

Ship manifesto

Fanart galleries

Fanfiction rec lists

Fantheories

Fanfiction (yes, ao3 ISN'T the only place you can post fics to!)

I also highly recommend MarineHaddock's zines, Let's make a fansite (and populate it) and Webshrines for People Poisoned By Microblogging if you're running out of ideas as to what to post.

Finding other fans

Fanlistings

Fanlistings are, as the name implies, lists of fans of a given thing, from shows to characters to ships. The Fanlisting Network lists an absurd amount of them, so you can start here to look them up.

People who sign up to fanlistings often list off their socials, website, or emails. So you can check if anyone is posting about your fandom, or email them directly if you want to strike a friendship with them. And likewise if you sign up to a fanlist. Maybe someone will message you through a fanlist!

Webrings

Webrings are lists of personal websites around a specific theme. There are webrings for various minorities, webrings for people who code a certain way, and of course, webrings for fandoms.

This one is very much oriented towards fansites, but hey, if you want to see more sites about your fandom that's the place to be. And if you do make a fansite, adding yourself to a webring is a good way to improve your site's discoverability.

Finding webrings relevant to your interests is usually a matter of googling up "(thing) webring," but for now here is the Smooth Sailing webring which covers enough topics that you're bound to find something of your interest here.

Openbook

Openbook is a search engine which exclusively searches for small websites (such as the sites you'd find on neocities.) Using it to look up a fandom of your choice is a quick way to find webrings, fansites, and the likes.

Building community

Forums

Forumotion is an easy way to create forums, and myBB is a software that requires a bit more tinkering but allows much more freedom in setting up your forum.

Mailing Lists

Listserv is widely considered the best software to enable mailing lists, though there are certainly many more.

Discord and alternatives

A lot of fandom discussions have moved to discord in recent years. A group chat is a fairly okay option for those who want the interactivity of a forum while keeping things more private. You can make a fandom discord or seek to join one to meet fellow fans. Disboard is a pretty extensive list of public discord servers on a variety of topics, fandom included.

For those who dislike discords, there are a bunch of alternatives. There is no consensus yet as to which is The Best Alternative Everyone Will Move To, so alas you're on your own in deciding which one you want to pick to try out fandom endeavors.

This reddit thread is a non exhaustive list of discord alternatives, with extensive explanations as to all their pros and cons.

Conclusion

Fandom does not have to remain on social media. The tools to get out of social media still exist, and they are more accessible than you think. We can bring back mailing lists. We can bring back fansites. We can bring back forums. It's only a matter of getting enough people to move out of social media for fandom matters.