electronic orange juice

Privacy

surveillance state worries [also stated by the poll as: not wanting to be perceived]

social anxieties in an increasingly complex online culture

general state of the world [also stated by the poll as: burnout]

"antis" and other harassment campaigns against creators

creators posting complaints about comments (people worry about commenting wrong)

fandom is walled off from each other [also stated by the poll as: rise of discord popularity]

Discoverability

capitalism turning fandom into a passive "view and move on" commodity

rules from social media impacting fan culture (eg. don't comment on old posts)

tumblr porn ban and other reasons people left the site

COVID/surge in fandom due to quarantine and lockdowns

Community

fandom olds didn't teach the newcomers how to fandom

new entrants to fandom don't know the old ways

Between Privacy and Discovery: How Do We Build Community?

While grappling with this question, I looked over this post titled The Places Fandom Dwells: A Cautionary Tale. Here's a quote from the latter about what it was like being in fandom on LiveJournal in the 2000s:

At the time, LiveJournal was the primary blogging platform for fandom. Its friends list and threaded conversations enabled fans to easily find each other and have discussions. Its privacy settings allowed fans to share as much, or as little, as they chose with others. It was a place to publish and archive fan fic, art, and meta. These features give some idea why the deletions of so many fandom blogs were so devastating.

Notice how the post describes an online platform that gave the user a mix of tools to control privacy and discoverability. Now think about online spaces today. Can you sign up without using your legal name? Does that platform have privacy and moderation options to help you curate your personal or communal experiences? Is there any e-commerce of creative work on that platform and, if so, how does the platform support or restrict buying or selling those works?

In 2008, the Organization for Transformative Works established the open beta for Archive of Our Own, a space which made a point of defining itself primarily as an archive, not an online community. I personally moved most of my fanfiction over that I still cared to have be discovered by other fans and I locked or deleted all other works I had originally posted on LiveJournal and Dreamwidth that were still under my control. When I heard that generative AI bots were scraping fanfic for their learning models, I restricted my works further so only those with logins can still read them.

Tumblr has never been a useful tool for me for building communities the way that I did in the LiveJournal days. There are pros and cons to Tumblr's core system of reblogging, especially when an original post gets edited with an update but that's not the version that keeps circulating, which literally happened on the link I provided above. While I love that I can "keep" a copy of a post on my own personal Tumblr if someone deletes their copy or their account goes inactive or they turn off reblogs, I can't see every branch of a conversation if I didn't create the original post and if I can't see it, I definitely can't moderate it.

There's an interesting thing happening with Tumblr since they created the function to turn off reblogs. People will post screenshots and acknowledge in the text of their post that the person who posted it has turned off reblogs but "I just wanted to have it on my blog". This has had the further interesting development that people have begun posting screenshots of text that is not their own after removing the username from the image. This is fascinating because this is in an effort to respect the user's apparent preference not to be involved in the conversation but it obscures the author from the 'permanent' record which may or may not be important information over time.

I believe in the Right to be forgotten but I also care about maintaining records and archives as a matter of accountability and community moderation. So while I was fine with people taking screenshots to make use of existing tools of removing the original account from the conversation at their 'request' (reblogs turned off), I've found I'm actually bothered by what seems to be the 'polite' convention of anonymizing posts so that the re-poster can prove they aren't stealing someone else's ideas or words... but not offering attribution, seemingly at the author's request.

So what's the answer? I'm genuinely not sure! But I would rather copy and paste text with attribution than use a screenshot without alt text, especially an altered screenshot. I don't think people who turn off reblogs shouldn't use Tumblr; the platform gave them a privacy function and it's their right to use it, I can engage with or ignore such posts as I see fit. But online norms already support a culture of screenshots with or without attribution so I can't say that it's surprising that even if the author exits a conversation, their words can continue to circulate online, with or without documentation.

And now I'm going to bring this all back to this poll's starting premise: is (online) fandom "quieter" now than it used to be? This seems to be a question that's actually asking, "Why are online fandom communities less active than they used to be?" and here is my answer:

The digital place that is the internet continuously changes because of "real world" physical, social, and political forces.

The increasing complexity of offline and online life has lead to the greater diversity of human social groups, with some groups more or less successfully growing and maintaining active membership.

Even as people have greater freedom find and join communities, any place where humans congregate (digital or physical) needs rules and practices to address unacceptable behaviors.

Community is what we make it. If we make it on a digital platform that isn't aligned with with our values, we might suddenly find ourselves without a place to congregate. A lot of hay is made over the 'walled gardens' of Discord but I personally don't care that much because living through LiveJournal taught me that no digital place is eternal. There are only records and archives and the people who I've stayed in touch with as the digital landscape has changed underneath my feet.

When I locked my Ao3 works to registered users, I knew I was giving up discoverability in favor of privacy, so I've honestly been surprised to see as many kudos and even comments on old works as I still get. I respond to comments because I like thanking readers but I no longer expect the LiveJournal experience where we friend each other's accounts and I get a feed of fanworks mixed with personal blogs that gives me a chance to know the reader better and build a community with them. I miss that sometimes but mostly I'm just glad that Ao3 exists.

Even now as I try to take memorizingthedigitsofpi's invitation to feel free to add my thoughts in notes on their original post, I feel a sense of impropriety writing such a lengthy essay and connecting it to someone else's questions. I wonder if my words will be reblogged or screenshot or quoted without context but it's a passing anxiety. I have been putting words on the internet a long time after all. It's up to others whether they attribute them to me or if they want to talk to me about them.

People are currently taking community for granted. Don’t be selfish, look out for other fans, the person with a different take than you deserves to play in the sand box just as much as you.

Older fandom had the concept of "squick," which is "stuff I find gross/unappealing, but it's not actually harming anyone, I just don't want to read/see it." We really need to bring back that concept. If a fanfic or fanart has something that "squicks you out," you are always free to stop reading/interacting. It doesn't make the person who made it or people who enjoy it "evil" or "problematic" just because you feel squicked. It's simply not your taste, and that's fine.

Why is it problematic to say i hate men but not white people or straight people

(i'm a trans south east asian man btw)

I'd say on, like, a casual exasperated level, its not problematic to say "I hate [x]." It gets problematic when your venting about a group becomes your sole lens of viewing + interacting with that group.

Like, its entirely alright to be frustrated with behaviors common to cishet white men and express that in a vent by saying you hate them. But... its like how people make the correct point that they shouldn't be expected or obligated to give all their energy to coddling people with power over them, but translate that into "i never have to care about a member of this group at all" which directly conflicts with just. being in a community? Like women should not be expected to be caretakers for men, but people in a community need to take care of each other. When the only way you engage with a group of people is by expressing hatred and asserting how much you aren't obligated to care about them, its easier than people think to find yourself dehumanizing them.

Which does not mean "you are just as bad as a racist/misogynist" or "you are oppressing them"; you are An Individual whose biases are not necessarily backed up by powerful systemic powers. But, for one, its very easy for those biases to be used by systemic forces: with men, misandry is very easily used to justify all kinds of violence towards marginalized men & people perceived as men. You also have situations where people will say the Holocaust "wasn't as bad" as, say, US slavery, because it was "white on white violence," or saying the Armenian genocide also wasn't that big of a deal because "it was done to Christians and Christians are always killing people" (two real things I have seen been said). And, again: if you are going to care about community and restorative/transformative justice and all that, you need to be able to give a shit about all kinds of people who you live with. You need to be able to see them as whole beings you are capable of connecting with on some level. You don't personally need to date or befriend men, but you do need to be able to give a shit about men in your community.

Its fine to feel annoyance and anger and use "hatred" to express that. But the problem occurs when people take "its okay to be angry with your oppressors and not spend all your energy coddling them" and make that the end-all be-all of their relationship with people of whatever group; revolutions can't accomplish compassionate goals when they are run on hatred. Very hooksian concept but "love" (as in "a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust", not in a strictly emotional sense but as an action) is a skill that is as vital as understanding class dynamics and protest tactics. Maybe you don't need to love everyone, but try to have the capacity to love anyone; the ability to physically care for someone you don't emotionally like is, I think, a vital step towards truly challenging and bringing down the kyriarchy.

My core friend group is largely queers and questionings, yes. But hating straight people also means hating my family members. Hating *their* family members. Hating people who are genuinely kind to me and have never done anything to hurt me. I might be frustrated at times with Straight People (tm) as a social group, but to write off literally every heterosexual because I have some frustrations isn't good for anyone.

I'm a black person living and working in an area that's roughly only 10% black. There are days I don't see a single black person besides myself in the mirror. Hating all the white people around me would be a miserable experience. And for what? A white person made me, nursed me, parented me, and while I may have some disagreements about some of her behavior, she does love me. Hating white people would mean hating my mother. Would mean hating a significant portion of my day-to-day interactions. Hating many of my friends.

What a miserable and lonely experience, to hate everyone around you. No men, no straights, no whites. I wouldn't feel a single moment of happiness, just hate all day every day. That's not good for you. Besides the building community aspect, it's just not good for your mental health to live life so full of anger and hate 24/7.

There's a difference between venting about common problematic behaviours influenced by white supremacist patriarchy and dehumanizing a whole group of people because of your frustrations.

For instance there's a difference between genuinely venting about men mansplaining or committing sexual violence, and making sweeping generalizations like "men have no depth / men are simple-minded".

The first is calling out problematic behaviours, while the latter is dehumanizing a whole group of people and further alienating yourself from them.

If it would be unacceptable said about women, why should it be acceptable said about men?

Essentially to reiterate on what has already been said; there's a difference between "I hate men" (the abstract figure representing patriarchal violence) and "I hate men" (the living and breathing humans as capable of thought and feeling as you in your community)

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On a personal note as someone who used to say "I hate men/cis/straight people" just a few years ago I've since subconsciously done away with the concept because it ultimately does nothing but bring more negativity into my life like @doberbutts explained. Even saying it in the "abstract figure representing x oppressive violence" way.

by @obi-troll-kenobi

What also plays a role in this is that this behavior usually comes back around to harm even the people who are not part of the hated "oppressor group". Just look at the way TERFs claim women fighting back against them can't be women, or how often two POC disagree over something, often as trivial as fandom stuff, and one claims the other must be white. Or, personal example, how often I got harassed and claimed I am not just cishet but must be queerphobic, simply because I have some fandom opinions some people do not agree with (and also because I am bi and open about being attracted to men, which is not your palatable queer behavior, but that is another issue).

Every time you add more detail, you're running the risk of tripping over a bad assumption on your part about the listener's prior knowledge, or hitting the tipping point where they become overwhelmed with new information (and remember that you don't know which parts of what you're saying will be new information for them), or making a leap of logic that isn't as self-evident as you think it is, or any of a dozen other potential snags which, by definition, you will not see coming until it's too late to correct course.

Basically, every piece of information you add multiplies the odds of you getting blindsided by some vector of misunderstanding you didn't anticipate, even as it addresses the ones you did anticipate. The point of diminishing returns where continuing to elaborate increases the odds of unexpected miscommunication more than it decreases the odds of expected miscommunication is much nearer than you'd like.

The most effective act of communication is not the one which contains the most possible information, but the one which contains the smallest amount of information it possibly can while still getting its point across. It sucks, but it's the reality of the situation. People far more autistic than you have been trying for hundreds of years to invent a way of communicating which doesn't work this way, without success.

...so you're saying that the 200-word RPG thing counts as "developing important life skills"? (For people who aren't intending to make a living writing RPGs, that is.)

To pose an example, one common type of overexplaining is trying to anticipate what your listener might need clarification about, and to pre-emptively provide that clarification.

How can this go wrong?

Well, for starters, you might guess wrong about where clarification is needed, and now you're talking down to them for no reason. (This can, and often does, tie into bad assumptions on your part about the listener's prior knowledge; see above.)

Worse, you might correctly identify where clarification is needed, but guess wrong about the specific type of clarification your listener needs, which can go wrong in one of two ways. Either they allow that opportunity for dialogue to be closed off, and muddle on without the needed clarification; or they bite the bullet and ask anyway, and now you think they clearly weren't paying attention to what you're saying, because God, you already explained that, and you're too much in your own head to notice that the type of clarification you pre-emptively provided is not the type of clarification they actually need.

And of course, you may not react this way at all, but they may anticipate that you'll think they're not paying attention if they push back, and refrain from asking because they don't want to risk your disapproval.