RE: This is gonna be the thread where we talk about stuff
03-02-2013, 07:20 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-02-2013, 07:21 PM by Dragon Fogel.)
I've been reflecting on it, and I think I see what bothers me about fandoms more clearly now.
When you get down to it, what is a fandom? It's a group of people with a common interest in a work, who talk to each other about that work.
Nothing wrong with that in and of itself. People like something, they want to talk to other people who like it about that thing. That's normal.
The problem comes with trying to make that the basis of a community. Because then the message of "we like this thing, come talk to us about it" cares the exclusionary subtext of "if you don't like this thing, don't bother coming in".
Take Grand Battles, for instance; whether you want to call it a fandom or not, the fact is that every one of us is part of a larger, more diverse community of people with no interest in or even a dislike of battles. (Heck, most of us are even in multiple online communities, not to mention physical communities of real people.) We may have issues within the context of that smaller group, but we generally keep those issues from extending into our other communities.
And a fandom can certainly be an entry point into a community. But a fandom can't be an effective community without becoming less of a fandom. The issue isn't that people enjoy something and talk about it and work on projects related to it; it's that they get a skewed perspective on how important that is.
Edit: Wrote this before I saw Bob's post, looks like we covered some of the same ground.
When you get down to it, what is a fandom? It's a group of people with a common interest in a work, who talk to each other about that work.
Nothing wrong with that in and of itself. People like something, they want to talk to other people who like it about that thing. That's normal.
The problem comes with trying to make that the basis of a community. Because then the message of "we like this thing, come talk to us about it" cares the exclusionary subtext of "if you don't like this thing, don't bother coming in".
Take Grand Battles, for instance; whether you want to call it a fandom or not, the fact is that every one of us is part of a larger, more diverse community of people with no interest in or even a dislike of battles. (Heck, most of us are even in multiple online communities, not to mention physical communities of real people.) We may have issues within the context of that smaller group, but we generally keep those issues from extending into our other communities.
And a fandom can certainly be an entry point into a community. But a fandom can't be an effective community without becoming less of a fandom. The issue isn't that people enjoy something and talk about it and work on projects related to it; it's that they get a skewed perspective on how important that is.
Edit: Wrote this before I saw Bob's post, looks like we covered some of the same ground.