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I think about this kind of thing a lot, anon, and I think my generation (Gen X/xillennial) kind of did folks dirty a bit.

In our defense, we didn't know we were.

I'm an educator by profession, as well as on this hobby blog, and so I spend a lot of time thinking about how people learn things. A lot of learning is social, and a lot of it happens when parents teach their children.

When I was growing up, pre-internet, my parents taught me how to talk to other adults in our community, how to play with other children, how to order food in a restaurant, how to call a business and ask a question. They literally walked me through how to do all of that stuff and more because those were daily skills in the world at that time.

We've spent the last 20+ years talking about how kids today are "digital natives" - but have we spent enough time teaching kids how to keep a conversation going when you're not in the same room as the other person? How to leave a comment on a post by a person you don't know? How to show your appreciation to a content creator? What a content creator even is and how that differs from a fan creator?

I know there are a lot of jokes out there about different things that would kill a Victorian child, but I think what would actually be difficult for them would be the lack of rules and instructions that kids today receive from the adults in their lives.

I don't have kids myself, so maybe this is all just bullshit and I'm talking directly out of my ass. But a LOT of the time when I notice someone doing something 'wrong' it's because no one ever told them how to do it right.

I kind of suspect that might be part of what's happening in fandom these days. Combine the above with the fact that fandom got inundated with new members in 2020 during quarantine and lock downs, and it's not surprising to me that a large percentage of the people in fandom today don't approach things the way that we used to before.

i don't fault them for it. When fandom was smaller and the internet was new, we used to take the time to bring people in. But now, it feels like 'everyone knows XYZ' so why does it need to be taught? And with how fast things move, it's more rare for newcomers to lurk for a while before they dive into everything.

This is a very long answer to a problem that probably just needed a listening ear, but I hope what you take away from this is an understanding that you're not the only one who feels the difference. I see this same experience shared in the notes on my posts all the time.

There is no easy fix for the situation and it certainly won't be fast to change, but maybe if we mentor a bit more when we have the spoons to, we can shift the culture a bit? One fan at a time?

If you managed to get all the way to the end of this, do yourself a favour and leave a comment on a fic or reblog a post with some chatty tags. DM somemeone or tag them or send them an ask just to let them know you see them and you think they're cool.

And my oldest child has entered online fandom.

Thankfully, my child and I don’t share fandoms (we both prefer it that way), but we did sit down to discuss how to maintain privacy and safety while also being friendly in online interactions. I taught my child about fandom red flags and green flags, from my experiences, and my child has since asked for my advice in terms of my child’s own fandom experiences and how to handle issues and concerns.

All that being said, I was surprised and confused when my child informed me that my child had not been leaving kudos or comments on AO3. Keep in mind, this child would read longfics for days, tell me how great the author’s writing captured the characters, etc.

“Why didn’t you kudos or comment if the fic was so good?” I asked.

While my child explained lack of ability to comment due to fic restrictions (my child has expressed not yet feeling ready to have an AO3 account even though my child is old enough and my husband and I would be fine with it), my child said kudos didn’t matter: “Who cares about one kudos?”

“The author cares. And, if the author for some reason doesn’t care, I know you care about doing the right thing. I think expressing appreciation for other people’s fanwork is the right thing to do. What do you think?”

My child went back and kudosed all stories read to that point.

when i was a tween who first found fandom in the late 90s/early 2000s, people didn't explicitly teach me how to interact with fandom. i lurked for a solid year before i signed up for my own account on the forum i'd found. (i can still remember how the adrenaline coursed through me as i signed up for my own account--i felt tingy and more than a little ill!)

by that time, i had a very good sense of social norms there. i still made a few mistakes, and the more established members smacked me down in a matter-of-fact but not unkind way. but i'd learned by watching. hell, by the time i started actively participating, i knew all the inside jokes!

as op mentioned, i don't think that people lurk anymore, and my theory is that the rise of social media/web 2.0 created a different approach to web communities.

today, every site is presumed to be for every person. the entire point of the really big social media sites is that everyone is on them. (this is one of the things i hate about them btw because it results in context collapse. i do not want to talk to my third-grade teacher, my favorite cousin, complete strangers, and my fandom friends in the same voice, but that's another issue).

whereas in web 1.0, the internet was riddled with niche sites/communities. you had to go out and find your place (and sometimes it took a while!). once you found it, you were invested in becoming a part of that specific community, so you did the research (lurking) to find out how people interacted, what all the unspoken norms were. by the time you picked your handle and made your account, you just knew stuff.

i'm sure this was not true of everyone, but it was true of far more people at the time. people looked before they leapt.

there are many, many reasons that i think that fandom has suffered from the web 2.0 environment. the fact that creators/writers/actors and fans are all on the same sites using the same tags for general publicity and for fannish nonsense is a huge problem. the way that sites are so big that people feel that their contributions (as with kudos above) don't matter is a direct result of the way social media undermines community and makes everything a performance of whatever your late-capitalist brand is. the fast pace of those sites makes people think that interacting with older posts is a bad idea. the lack of filters of the kind that we had on livejournal where you could determine who saw what or even just the way that forums often made you join before you could see content created walls within which communities could grow (think frost and walls making good neighbors).

i know we can't go back to the assumptions that operated before social media. we have to explore other options. i love when people make psas here telling people about fandom norms and history! i think it's the best thing! and maybe at this point that is the only way to handle it.

tumblr and ao3 are very weird sites in that they straddle the web 1.0 and web 2.0 kinds of internet.

from web 1.0 they get the lack of algorithms, the way you have to make choices about what you see, chronological arrangements, and (on ao3) lack of ads, etc. tumblr has a slightly slower pace than most social media; ao3 has a much slower one.

from web 2.0, though, you get scale, centralization (which is both ao3's greatest strength and greatest weakness), and the fact that it takes little effort to locate these sites--anyone, no matter their level of investment in fandom, can just stumble on them.

so you end up having a lot of people who are not actually fannishly inclined (aren't invested in a gift economy, don't really understand that fandom is supposed to be fun, don't really get the creative urge etc.) interacting with people who are fannishly inclined, and it causes some really problems. especially with younger people whose experience of the internet is as a venue to signify and perform certain kinds of morality/coolness/trendiness that are at odds with what fandom has always been about. basically: you have a bunch of normies clashing with a bunch of nerds. (obviously the normie/nerd divide is a spectrum and not a binary, so i'm overstating, but still.)

when you have people who are coming to fandom from different angles--some people who are coming to it as a provider of content just like all other media in their lives, especially elsewhere online; some people who are coming to it as a participatory hobby wherein we build community around shared affection for [thing]--there's going to be lots of clashes and weirdness.

i kind of think that fans need to go back to create set-apart spaces for fandom to happen. note that i am NOT talking about gatekeeping. everyone who treats others with respect would be welcome. but just having fenced-off areas that are explicitly for certain kinds of fandom interactions. where we can basically have our party away from the normies, but other nerds who are younger or just getting in touch with their nerdiness can find us.

That being said, @queenofattolia has a lot of great points about "forums and social networks" and "nerds and normies". At first I disagreed with the last, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. I'd say it's about fans and casual enjoyers.

When I was a middle shcooler, there were maybe four kids watching anime in my class. For two it was just something they liked to do in their free time, but for me and the other guy it was HUGE. We identified as "otaku" and for us it wasn't simply interesting, but instead everything surrounding anime and manga was big and important enough to shape our personalitites. Heck, the only reason I became an artist is because my classmate shared a link to the site, which had "how to draw anime eyes" type of drawing tutorials.

Since then I've seen anime go from 'subculture thing' to 'mainstream thing'. A looooot of middle schoolers watch anime now, many read manga, which you can now buy in a book store or even borrow from a library! (non-existent options in my prime otaku years)

But I wonder how many of these kids indentify as otakus. How many treat this interest as a something... Something more, something vital.

The difference between fans and casual enjoyers is summed above really good, I just want to add that True FansTM realize the existence of a community. They realize there are people behind "content" and that these people need support to keeep going, because every fan themselves is the same - they need to be seen as a person, not 'content creator' or 'poster' or whatever. We're all pillars upon pillars, if some of us don't get supported, it all starts crumbling down.

The difference is maybe not even about the passion for original source, but between the original needs (informational vs social), the level of involvement and the understanding and acceptance of personal responsibility. There is an ecosystem and some people interact with it without realizing what they come in touch with. Some people, like @curator-on-ao3 's child will probably get there with time, but this is a case of a young fan having a mentor, I'm a millenial, and I have a feeling that a lot of millenials can feast on content/information without understanding - how do I put it - the social proces behind "content creating". And I don't think some of them are all that interested to learn about it. After all, they are here for some leisure time, not for commitments.

Finally, I would like to add that for me some of the coziest, feels-like-home fandom experience on tumblr happened within:

a) a small fandom (uses to be bigger, but I joined past the "golden age")

b) small subfandoms inside big fandoms (dedicated to certain characters and plot arcs)

One thing in common is all of these had "the gang" - same bunch of people, who shared their art and thoughts as well as they were looking out for others' art and thoughts, And yeah, a lot of interactions happened back and forth.

I feel terrible for anon and personally I feel the same (sometimes new hyperfixation striked, sometimes my fandom spaces declined over time - all in all, I don't feel like I have a place atm). Actually it's feeling rather quiet in my current big and active fandoms. There is a lot of "content", but there's very little interaction.

if you see a fic with hundreds of kudos and comments, it's still a very good thing to leave your own kudos and comments. it's easy to say ah, this fic has enough comments so i'll be quiet or i'm not obligated to leave one, but every comment is valuable to the author. even if they don't reply to comments, i promise you that as an author, it is always so wonderful and exciting and empowering to read a comment someone left whether it's a full in depth rant about the full fic or a simple ❤️. leave a comment on a fic no matter the age of the fic, amount of comments, kudos, bookmarks, etc, because it really does help the author. your favourite fics and authors wouldn't be writing without fandom support.

You want to study abroad? Show us proof that there is a quadrillion dollars in your bank account. Oh, an average monthly salary in your country is $400 and you plan to work when you arrive? You can't do that, silly, a student visa only allows you to work 2 hours every third Wednesday, and if we find out that you're working a second more we will deport you.

You want to work abroad? Better be a programmer, then of course you are welcome. Doctor, scientist, white-collar or, god forbid, blue-collar worker? You can fuck right off, your visa application goes straght into trash.

You will have to prove that you can afford a guest, have some income and also usually take responsibility for possible deportation cost.

But if you really are inviting a friend over, they will give you a formal document you can send to your friend. Then the friend applies for a visa while attaching the Very Official document with it. They will get the Schengen visa and most probably will get it expedited too.

-using "gang" like some people use "chat"

-channeling a spirit of Ultimate Whimsy, buying completely into the magic of what's around me

-being best friends with Sue Perkins

-almost never swearing except for one or two well timed "well I don't know what the fuck everyone else is drawing, do I?!"

-making bad puns at all opportunities

Even though I don’t know anything about their relationships or personal lives (fiction in real person fiction) I do feel confident that there are/have been queer F1 drivers, both based on statistics and a bang-on gaydar.

And when I think about that in an honest way, outside the confines of fanfiction and edits, I get quite upset. Because they are stuck.

Being a queer man in a big sport is one thing, with all the homophobia in fans and even higher ups (see the comments on Lando’s posts and the Williams scandal). It’s another when half the places you work in don’t even allow queerness. When one of the countries you work in deems it a crime punishable by death (Saudi Arabia).

I can’t even imagine the mental toll that would take. F1 as an institution is holding their own stars hostage from themselves by allowing this. They cultivate an emotionally violent environment for the sake of cold, hard cash. Unfortunately, it’s just another instance of insurmountable corporate greed that has proven itself time and time again to be a virtually immovable object.