my deep thoughts of the month

[schmerica]

Here is my question of the day for you all:

One of my favorite things about fandom (and I think a lot of people share this) is the sense of community that's evolved with it -- the fan to fan connections. But there's this thing that comes up in pretty much meta discussion we have, and that's the question of what we mean by community.

What do we mean by community? What does it take to be a member of that community? Is it a matter of self definition, so that what it takes to be part of the community is acknowledging and accepting yourself into it? Or is community framed by actions, a structure based on us all doing the same things together? You read fic, you write fic, you make art, you participate in fannish infastructure and interact with other fans, therefore you are a Fan; you make slash and see slash, therefore you're a slasher? Is it just a general sort of collegiality? Is there an ideological component -- some fixed ideas or thoughts that we expect members of the community to generally share or agree on, as a base?

What do you guys think?

Comments

[speshope.livejournal.com]

I think there's a difference in being part of the community vs. just being something by definition.

Augh. I don't know! I tried to think of an example, but I think people's personal definition of what makes you part of the community come in to play. Like... if you're gay, but you never go to gay bars or participate in Queer Events or Groups? Are you still part of the gay community? Some people would totally say yes. But I mean, can you be part of a community that you don't have anything to do with it except having the same defining features as the members?

I totally haven't helped, except by rephrasing your question and running around in circles, but I feel I spent enough time thinking about this that I may as well post the comment.

[marginalia.livejournal.com]

hrm. good question. like, i haven't been a member of any particular fandom since i faded out of lotrips, but i'm still fannish. i speak with the shared vocabulary.

(i've written in other fandoms, obviously, but never felt a part of anything like i did in lotrips.)

[annakovsky.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I am trying to think about this in terms of fan communities, and it's hard to exactly define. There are people who are huge fans, who spend time over on TWoP or whatever message boards, etc, talking about shows, but who I wouldn't consider part of FANDOM at all. I think fandom, for me, is people who have to do with the creating of extra-textual material about the show - either as creators or consumers. So vids and fanfic and whatnot.

The funny thing is the issue of who's on the margins of the community - because you could write tons of fic in an active fandom over on ff.net, but not have the same ideology and shared vocabulary as people who I consider part of fandom - even though those people maybe don't have an active fandom right now, and aren't even reading and writing much fic. Hmm.

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

Ohhhh, I so shouldn't answer this, but you've gone bang into my area of expertise; I teach a class on this.

The short version:

Obviously, like Humpty Dumpty, people can define words as they like, but commonly there's a difference between a community and a subculture. A community is defined by three things: blood (i.e. family ties), geography, and history; a subculture, otoh, is a group of people brought together by a common interest. Now in this way, fandom is technically a subculture--a group of people brought together by common interest in a tv show, or slash, or men bonking or what have you. But ah ha ha!--it's not so simply, because a subculture can become a community if--say--you hang out a long time in the same space and intermarry. Or if you do those things, you start to feel more like a community than a subculture.

So: two examples. When gays and lesbians started organizing, they frequently called themselves--and were described in the sociological literature--as a subculture, i.e. people with the common interest of getting rights for gays and lesbians. However, gays and lesbians began, quite consciously, to describe themselves as a community, taking ON that sense of "we are family and we have a history in this place here together." Similarly, fandom straddles these lines too: on the one hand, broadly speaking, it's a subculture, but if you're a) either political about "we are sisters here in this place (even if our geography is mostly virtual) with a long history" or b) you've made friends here and/or you're sleeping with someone/living with someone/bonded with someone with whom you no longer share a particular fandom or BSO--well, hey, you might be in a community.

But you might NOT--I want to be really clear here that I don't make value judgments about this, and nobody wise would: I often prefer subcultures because they don't have the BAGGAGE of communities, where--in a community, you don't have to LIKE anybody or have anything in COMMON with them--they're like family, you're stuck in this place with them. Subcultures OTOH are so exciting--it's where you have that "oh my god, there are others like me! there are others who share my interest!" moment. So subcultures are like my FAVORITE THING, and it's cool to be able to just drift from one to another without the obligations of family, history and geograohy, especially for women who are so often bound by those things.

Uh, that's more than you wanted to know, right?

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Uh, that's more than you wanted to know, right?

Dude, actually, NO, not at all! I find everything you just said fascinating.

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

For the record, I've been in school continuously since 1973. *g* So, I'm not realy a normal person.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Hee. I would never have thought of accusing you of being such!

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

Heh. I think that the popular connotation of 'community' is 'the nurturing family of likeminded people that I'm part of' and the connotation of 'subculture' is 'the group of weirdos that you're part of'!

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

May be, but having grown up in a number of communities, I've come to appreciate subcultures a LOT.

[sloganeer.livejournal.com]

you know, even though i'm hanging out on the fringes, even though i'll probably never participate the way i did in sv, i still think of myself as a part of fandom. as was said up there: i speak with the shared vocabulary. it's like the mob: once you're in, you can't ever leave.

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

it's like the mob: once you're in, you can't ever leave.

heh. Yes. I once made that very comparison. *g*

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

I think LJ has shifted the way people who use it fannishly form fannish communities. Once, you (generic) were on a newsgroup or a mailing list devoted to one show or one pairing, possibly you were on one list for discussion and one list for fic and while there would be overlap, there were also people who only did one or the other. And once someone left a list, or stopped posting, unless you'd established an offlist relationship with them, you never heard from them again, unless you discovered another intersection of fannish interests on another list or forum.

With LJ, you (still generic) often carry forward the people from other fandoms - yes some people get dropped and some get added - but there is more a sense to me of people moving in groups. I remember a couple years ago, suddenly there were a whole cluster of new names on my flist who had all been in popslash together and had moved into HP (Remus/Sirius and/or Harry/Ron section). Or the way large swathes of SV people glommed onto SGA.

So these days I, at least, identify less as a member of a specific fandom than I do as a member of Fandom-at-large, because I appear to have no common interests on the surface with someone who's gone nuts for SPN or what have you, except the fannish drive to talk about the things we love and maybe create things in response to them.

I also am hesitant to use the term community - I'd say neighborhood (though I almost never talk to, or even see, my neighbors in person) instead - I am part of my flist and, to some degree, my f-of-list, more than I'm part of any single fandom community like HP or SV or BtVS, though before LJ I would have said I was in SV fandom or in BtVS fandom and that might have mostly encompassed both my fannish interest and my fannish connections, that's no longer so.

And now I don't know that this has any relation to what you're asking. I think I need chocolate. Huh.

[fialka.livejournal.com]

I think LJ has shifted the way people who use it fannishly form fannish communities.

You've sort of hit the nail my master's thesis is hanging on right there. "Fandom", from what I can see, is becoming a praxis, a way of engaging with media product, rather than an allegiance to specific shows or communities. And much of that is due to LJ making us visible not only to each other, but to others who might not identify themselves as fans, but who pick up the lingo and begin to talk about the shows they watch in terms that are, to us, recongnisably fannish.

...anyway, that's my theory. *G*

Which brings me to: A community is defined by three things: blood (i.e. family ties), geography, and history

But...converted into cyberspatial concepts...family ties are the friends we make, the ones we fly the globe to see. Geography, then, would be the various fora that make up the fandom -- the boards and blogs and lists, and like any real-world community I may not have been down every street and visited every hangout...but I know what's there, and where I could go on a dark rainy night when I need a companionable place to just sit and have a drink. And history...well, anyone who's been around fandom for awhile, we've got the history and the war stories and sometimes the scars to remember it all by.

And it's 2am and my brain is fried from writing about these things, so I'll quietly crawl off to bed. But hello all, and thanks for making me feel not alone with my weird ideas -- which is what fandom is all about, anyway, innit?

*g*

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

"Fandom", from what I can see, is becoming a praxis, a way of engaging with media product, rather than an allegiance to specific shows or communities. And much of that is due to LJ making us visible not only to each other, but to others who might not identify themselves as fans, but who pick up the lingo and begin to talk about the shows they watch in terms that are, to us, recongnisably fannish.

*nod*

That makes a lot of sense to me, given how I interact with fandom and LJ.

But hello all, and thanks for making me feel not alone with my weird ideas -- which is what fandom is all about, anyway, innit?

hee! Yes, exactly.

[onelittlesleep.livejournal.com]

Hi, found this through a flist's flist list or something...somehow.

I have to admit to using the word "community" to describe inter-fandom relations in order to remind others fans that they are taking part in a microcosm of society, in a collection of individuals, and therefore must, in some way, adhere to a basic level of responsible and moral human communication. I often see people revert back to the stance that "my journal is my own, private space where I can do and say anything I want" when others find offense in their material or actions. When I see that, I'm often conflicted, because in a way, 'journal' does imply privacy and self-dominion, but the 'live' implies publicity and interrelation. So, yeah. People have to find a balance in fandom, and I often feel like it's a good thing to call what we have here a community, out of respect for our connection and desire to make connection.