Get Your Own Lawn
Sep. 30th, 2019 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
galadriel1010Fandom has a problem. Drop into any fandom right now and you'll fill a bingo square of the same arguments - what should and shouldn't we consume, how should users under 18 interact with older users and each other, how should older users interact with younger ones, what is actually queer-baiting and what's just rainbow spectacles? And honestly, it's exhausting. I think most of us want to actually get down to actually enjoying fandom instead of just marking out, yet again, where our limits are, finding the people who will respect them and occupying our spaces ready for the next onslaught. And honestly, it didn't used to be like this!
When I was a fandom kitten, I was really, really annoying. I hung out on a Lord of the Rings forum where most of the users were old school fans of the books, and I was one of the influx of bright young things attracted by Orlando Bloom's luscious locks. There was even a forum called Legolas Lovers where the fangirls lived, writing fanfiction and geeking out in our awesome way. There were also more serious lore discussion threads and RPG threads, including an actual RPG academy for newbies to the format. Everything had a place and everything was in its place, and the old hands did an absolutely brilliant job of nudging the fandom babies back into line. You knew where you were. If you wanted to squee, you went to Legolas Lovers. If you wanted to write fanfiction and create fanart, there was a whole board for that. If you wanted to debate the nuances of geomorphology as designed by Morgoth, there was probably a thread for that.
After Lord of the Rings came Torchwood, and that was during the LiveJournal heyday. I do not want to know how many communities I was in. I was in most of the Jack/Ianto ones but none of the Jack/Gwen ones, took part in several of the big bangs and a couple of bingos, and was a regular contributor to the fic finder communities. If there was a kink meme, I wasn't on it. I was on FanficRants, and a relatively regular contributor to fandom_wank.
And then LiveJournal got bought, several times. It followed a lengthy period of instability, because Russian democracy campaigners used the site for their networks, so every time there was an election in Russia the site mysteriously went down. Pretty soon it was bought out by a Russian company, who applied the anti-LGBT legislation, and the site died. There was a mass migration away, to Tumblr and Discord and Twitter and who knows where else. ArchiveofOurOwn, an amazing site and a resource we can never let go of, isn't a community.
There are so many ways in which Tumblr and Twitter are absolutely terrible for fandom. There's no silos. There's no community bucket in which to put your fanfiction or art and go "Hi, this is me, I made this thing." You have to find people through hashtags and comments, and there's no easy way to exist in the same space as other people for long enough it becomes easy to strike up a conversation. You only meet people through other people, which isn't great when most of the time your fandom seems to be arguing. There's no easy way to post long content, either. Spoiler cut your screed, people!
And so here I am, making an impassioned plea for you to join me on DreamWidth. It's perfect for long content, perfect for having conversations in the comments, you can even make a contents page and customise your avatar to the occasion! It's a site designed for communities and for people. And no character limits.
When I was a fandom kitten, I was really, really annoying. I hung out on a Lord of the Rings forum where most of the users were old school fans of the books, and I was one of the influx of bright young things attracted by Orlando Bloom's luscious locks. There was even a forum called Legolas Lovers where the fangirls lived, writing fanfiction and geeking out in our awesome way. There were also more serious lore discussion threads and RPG threads, including an actual RPG academy for newbies to the format. Everything had a place and everything was in its place, and the old hands did an absolutely brilliant job of nudging the fandom babies back into line. You knew where you were. If you wanted to squee, you went to Legolas Lovers. If you wanted to write fanfiction and create fanart, there was a whole board for that. If you wanted to debate the nuances of geomorphology as designed by Morgoth, there was probably a thread for that.
After Lord of the Rings came Torchwood, and that was during the LiveJournal heyday. I do not want to know how many communities I was in. I was in most of the Jack/Ianto ones but none of the Jack/Gwen ones, took part in several of the big bangs and a couple of bingos, and was a regular contributor to the fic finder communities. If there was a kink meme, I wasn't on it. I was on FanficRants, and a relatively regular contributor to fandom_wank.
And then LiveJournal got bought, several times. It followed a lengthy period of instability, because Russian democracy campaigners used the site for their networks, so every time there was an election in Russia the site mysteriously went down. Pretty soon it was bought out by a Russian company, who applied the anti-LGBT legislation, and the site died. There was a mass migration away, to Tumblr and Discord and Twitter and who knows where else. ArchiveofOurOwn, an amazing site and a resource we can never let go of, isn't a community.
There are so many ways in which Tumblr and Twitter are absolutely terrible for fandom. There's no silos. There's no community bucket in which to put your fanfiction or art and go "Hi, this is me, I made this thing." You have to find people through hashtags and comments, and there's no easy way to exist in the same space as other people for long enough it becomes easy to strike up a conversation. You only meet people through other people, which isn't great when most of the time your fandom seems to be arguing. There's no easy way to post long content, either. Spoiler cut your screed, people!
And so here I am, making an impassioned plea for you to join me on DreamWidth. It's perfect for long content, perfect for having conversations in the comments, you can even make a contents page and customise your avatar to the occasion! It's a site designed for communities and for people. And no character limits.
