Social Meta

In light of the recent conflict in the Supernatural fandom, I have a few questions. For sake of discussion, I'd like to use the idea of popular fan instead of BNF, since popularity and community accolades seem to be at the root of this issue. Popularity in this case simply means known by and visible to a significant number of other fans. This could be for negative, positive, or neutral reasons.

How would being a more popular person improve your fandom experience?

How important is popularity to your fannish experience?

Do you think fandom is a better experience for popular fans? Why or why not?

How do you define popularity?

There are so many categories in terms of how fans rank themselves and each other on a scale of status. Big name fans, middle name fans, no name fans, etc. Where do you draw the lines that make up these categories? Are these categories necessary?

Once you become a popular person in fandom, can you go back to being unknown? Would you want to?

Hi, everyone! I hope you all had a safe and happy holiday season.

I’ve been thinking about the relationship between fan fiction and advertising. If you choose to write fan fiction and to share it with fandom, one of the first things you learn is how to attract readers. You decide where to promote your story, and what parts of it to highlight that make it attractive to potential readers.

But advertising is not always an innate talent. Some writers excel at self-promotion, while others struggle with it. Writers all have different methods of advertising their stories to readers, to varying levels of success.

1) As a writer, how much of a role does advertising play in attracting and retaining your target audience?

2) As a reader, how much of a role does the story’s advertising (summary, pairing, warnings, etc) play in your decision to read it?

3) How important is truth in advertising for fan fiction? If you feel that a story was incorrectly advertised, how would you react to it? To future stories by the same writer?

4) If you were to offer advice to a brand new writer about how to best advertise a story, what would you suggest?

I've seen a few posts lately that have me thinking about writing as it relates to storytelling and characterization. There's so much involved in telling a story, and fleshing out a character. Even if that character belongs to someone else. Especially when that character belongs to someone else. People write stories that move them, things that are stuck in their heads and itching to take form and exist outside of the imagination. That's the motivation to write, whether a story is original to the writer or based in a universe written by someone else.

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One of the ideas that I see frequently in fandom is ownership. Fans of a source material will often treat it as something where they have at least partial ownership. That's present in almost every aspect of fandom, be it a favorite source, a preferred character, a favored pairing, and so on. In many cases, fandom exists as a loosely connected set of territories, divided by interpretations, preferences, ideology, and ownership.

I'm interested in what happens to extend this idea of ownership and territorialism to other people, particularly those involved in the source material (actors, producers, writers) or in fannish work (writers, vidders, artists.)

Fans sometimes feel a sense of ownership over works created in their fandom, and this can extend to the person who creates them. That this person belongs to the fandom, and by extension to the fans in that fandom. This can be somewhat beneficial in supporting a community atmosphere, and it can also be a negative thing. I've seen it go both ways, and a variety of ways between the two.

I'm fascinated by this, and by the social politics underneath it.

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There's something I have noticed, someone who makes and reads fannish posts. For purposes of discussion, a post may contain anything, be it a meta essay, pictures, a story, icons, fannish chatter, etc. I've noticed that after a specific period of time, commented reactions to that post are likely to trail off and stop altogether. Future readers may find that content just as interesting, but are less likely to react in a comment.

This has me curious.

Do you feel that there a specific period of time in which it is considered acceptable to respond to a post?

What is that timeframe?

When a post has aged beyond that timeframe, how likely are you to post a response to it?

Is it problematic to respond to a post outside of that timeframe? What makes it problematic?

How much of the above is dependent on your own fannish experiences, and how much depends on the behavior of fans around you?

Is it useful to have a timeframe like this?

Do people set their own specific periods of time in this scenario, or is this more a group decision?

I had an interesting conversation with pyrae a day ago, and I wanted to continue it here. We were theorizing that a character's perceived or actual gender identity plays a large part in how well-liked and/or accepted that character will be within the context of fandom. This is particularly true for slash-minded fen, as characters with a fluid/inclusive gender identity tend to be easier to pair (romantically and/or sexually) with other characters of the same biological sex.

Some examples of this would be Dick Grayson (DC), Lex Luthor (Smallville), Simon Tam (Firefly/Serenity), Faith Lehane (Buffy/Angel), Draco Malfoy (Harry Potter), Anthony J. Crowley and Aziraphale (Good Omens), and Captain Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace (Battlestar Galactica.)

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My thanks to devilution for the editing work. I'm particularly grateful for your assistance with terminology.

There have been some interesting posts recently that ask questions about what you as a fan assume about other fans. Things like the visual images that you mentally assign to other fans, and the kinds of race and/or sexuality and/or gender assumptions you make about other fans. These are all fascinating and important topics, because in many cases these and other assumptions will decide how one fan treats another. Consciously or unconsciously, assumptions about people in fandom create 'others' or 'allies.'

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I found a fascinating study that was published in the American Journal of Sociology and can be read on their website.

The Emperor's Dilemma: A Computational Model of Self-Enforcing Norms by Damon Centola, Robb Willer, and Michael Macy of Cornell University.

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This is an interesting look at the popular enforcement of unpopular norms. It has far-reaching implications, both in and out of the fannish experience.

What are your thoughts on this? Have you seen examples of these behaviors in fandom? Do you feel that this is applicable to your experiences in fandom?

What happens when the proverbial emperor is revealed? Can you think of situations where this has happened in fandom? What was the outcome? What about outside of fandom?

One of the interesting things about fandom is that it is a community of shared fantasy that can and often does impact reality. Very often, your fannish experiences have an impact on your opinions. I'm very interested in this, especially as it relates to fannish opinions on sexuality and social issues versus real-life opinions on same. One does not necessarily equal the other.

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Hello to all of you new members! Your interest in this community and the purpose behind it is very encouraging. Thank you for joining/watching this community, and welcome.

Please take a moment to tell me what social issues or topics are important to you. What things would you like to discuss? What questions and/or observations do you have about fandom, and how people function within fandom? Comments on this post are screened, so you may be as forthcoming as you like.

These comments will form the basis for my community discussions over the next few weeks. In the meantime, if you have anything on-topic that you would like to post, please feel free to do so.