(I wrote a whole essay on this, and the Tumblr App ate it. So here I go again…)
Here’s the thing: a few years ago, fandom on Tumblr was just as interactive and inclusive as other fandom platforms. I mean, it was different than the old bulletin boards (bbs), LJ communities, and Yahoo groups, but we made it work. It was common for readers to reblog stories and comment on them. It was common for writers to reblog again with comments or to reply to comments in new posts. It was common to answer replies in new posts rather than privately or in the reply section (that very few users actually read through on posts that aren’t their own). When I moved into the Tumblr community, I had no problem finding my people and making friends and gushing together over all the Things™.
For deeply personal reasons, I had to take a step back from fandom life for a couple of years, and when I came returned, the landscape had changed dramatically. One of my fandoms had moved completely to Twitter. Most fandoms are on discord servers (and the interaction is still pretty thin there), and Tumblr has become a mausoleum where we just hang up pretty pictures for ourselves. Gone is the interaction. Gone, even, the epic, impassioned essays in the tags. Well, not gone entirely, but severely muted. I don’t quite know how the change happened; I wasn’t there.
I think social media as a whole has had a huge shift towards the impersonal, and it’s trickled down to fandom. I’ve been surprised by how many asks that @ao3commentoftheday has gotten recently where the sender worries about being too annoying and/or stalker-y by commenting on stories or reblogging or sending messages saying how much they enjoyed a particular fanwork. There are even asks from writers gnawing their lips over whether or not it’s appropriate to reply to comments from readers because “does that make me a stalker?? am i too annoying??”
I also believe—you can fight me on this all day and I won’t change my mind—that the Western culture of helicopter parenting has had a major effect on how “consumers” deal with “problematic” themes in fanworks. I started out in fandom as a young mother, and now half of my kids are adults; that’s my resume on this topic. I’ve witnessed a contingent of children grow up having all of their experiences curated by someone else. Any potential injury, no matter how small, must be avoided at all costs. So of course, now they’re old enough to engage in social media and, by extension, fandom (because fandom is so incredibly accessible these days), they truly believe that the onus is on the writers and artists to make sure their experiences are pleasant with nary a trigger. If we really cared about our readers, we would never produce anything potentially harmful ever. They should never have any kind of exposure to things that might hurt them, even seeing the story summaries with tags and warnings that show up while they’re searching through AO3.
Dehumanizing the content creators through the impersonalization of social media and the complete lack of personal accountability for our own experiences is destroying what was once an inclusive, fun, “anything goes” community in fandom. It’s a pity because it’s chasing away the old guard. I mean, if I wanted to write solely mainstream stories in an utter vacuum, and then have little to no interaction with my readers, I’d sell novels. I wrote fic, created fan art, and made fanvids as a way to immerse myself in the community, to make friends, to squee together. And now, what’s the point?
Maybe the wise answer isn’t to walk away, shaking our heads at the loss of the good ol’ days. Maybe the wise answer is to keep fighting, keep producing fanworks as the muse takes us—regardless of the few outspoken fans who don’t yet know how to take responsibility for their own experiences—and reach over that damn wall that got put up between creators and consumers in fandom. We have to show them what makes fandom special. Otherwise, it’s gone. And there’s going to be another startraveller out there, secretly loving things that most people in her real life would scrunch their nose at, and she’s going to feel acutely alone.
prguitarman
theartofmadeline
blakekathryn
tangentwithtanner
andulkaphoto
ellievsbear
janainaart
gummygunk
kianamaiart
dailybridgerton
