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

[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.