Religion, on the other hand, is pushing it.
Hmm. I learned something from my last post that I wasn’t expecting to learn, which is of course more fun that way.
It seems that most of the people I know would put themselves somewhere between “Way of Life” and “A Nice Hobby” on the fandom scale, so apparently we do need another node for the 21st century.
Or do we? I think perhaps I should have stressed more that FIAWOL does not necessarily mean “shallow, pasty, anti-social nerd with nothing to look forward to in life but the next Stargate: Atlantis episode.” I answered FIAWOL for myself because fandom touches almost every part of my life, even when I’m not specifically geeking out. Just to name two examples, I got my first job in Hampton Roads because of miniatures gaming; and my significant others have all been fans, and we’ve had some good times because of it.
When you’ve got a closet of costumes, a vast library of genre media, at least three devices on which you play video games, have extensive convention staff (or even chair!) experience, and can put Chris Pike and Jon Archer in either chronological or created order… you might just be a Way-Of-Lifer. (I’m not referring to anyone specifically. If you thought I was referring to you… then that perhaps should tell you something.)
But really, you know, that’s okay. As long as the bills get paid, the bosses stay satisfied, friends and S.O.s get the attention they deserve, and we get out into the sunlight on occasion, FIAWOL is an entertaining way to spend the days.
EDIT: jdunson suggests that the “F” in each refers to an outdated type of fandom prevalent in the 60s and 80s, and that the fan culture most of us currently inhabit is a different beast completely. (I paraphrase heavily.) Interesting concept, and I believe I can see his point. Thoughts?
Tags: conventions, costuming, fandom, philosophy, videogames, work
Well… no. That list just means you’re a fan. It doesn’t mean you’re heavily committed to *fandom*. I’d admit to “fannish activities are a way of life”, if you include gaming and e-gaming which traditionally have been considered a bit marginal; but “fandom” is a meta-social / meta-cultural collective entity that I consider more of a sometimes-necessary evil to get certain sorts of fannish activities done.
It’s also becoming increasingly obsolete; “fandom” in the traditional sense is mired in 1960s to 1980s culture, with strong heritage dating back to so-called golden age fandom; and seems to be failing to really modernize.
Well, perhaos I’m just using the wrong definitions, then 🙂
I’m curious as to some of your terms:
1) Why “mired” and in what way?
2) Why specifically 60s and 80s culture?
3) How is it “failing to modernize”?
Terms are difficult. There is a loosely defined cluster of groups of people that are keeping the heritage of the sort of fandom that draws its roots from the culture that resulted in Worldcon 1 in 1939, and has evolved in erratic spurts since then. Some keywords: Worldcon, WSFS, Hugo award, NASFiC. Boscon, NESFA. APAs. Fanzines. Semi-Prozines (Locus especially). Costumer’s Guild and Costumecon. SMOF. Fans are Slans! Trekkie vs. Trekker. The advent of comparatively inexpensive xerography, replacing ditto, and followed by the initial explosion of personal computers and desktop publishing, led to a huge upsurge in fannish paper publication. BBSs run by fans, for fans, and the initial spread of email to the nerdier subgroups led to unprecedented first-gen electronic cultural connectivity; somewhat later the rise of Usenet broadened things still further. Generally inexpensive fuel prices, cheap cars and the interstate system, and airline deregulation allowed far more fans to travel to conventions outside their local area. Iconic films like 2001 and Star Wars, and TV shows like Star Trek, served as unifying beacons and popularizers. Home movie equipment became more practical, and fan-produced efforts like Hardware Wars became instant classics. The rise and then explosion of roleplaying games gave fans something else to do as a group and at cons.
All this was great stuff, and allowed fandom to surge forward and become more cross-connected. It seems to me that a lot of these factors were coming together in the mid-1960s through late-1980s or so, and reinforced each other. Conventions of all sizes sprung up like mushrooms after the rain. There was an ‘old school’ that was somewhat dismissive of the less literary and more media-centric trend, but they were increasingly marginalized, although some areas (NESFA-influenced North-East in particular) that remained a literary focus longer.
Why hasn’t the expansion continued? In absolute terms, there are more people writing fan fiction, more people who have strong feelings about a SF or fantasy TV show’s continuity, probably more people playing D20, more people who have engaged in an electronic argument about genre fictional characters, more people who have dressed up as wizards… why aren’t there proportionally more people heavily involved in fandom culture? Because in this day and age, you don’t *have* to be “in fandom” to do any of that, it’s become pretty darn mainstream.
Psst… did you get your cd’s?
I’d think that the key here is that at some point before, say, the 90s, being a SF/F fan felt like being in a minority, and people felt like they were part of a subculture, and even a really specific subculture where you can know everyone involved and write them letters.
Sometime around the time I was entering/in college (maybe before that, maybe the Star Wars generation or what have you) the transition to a dominant culture began and being a fan just became a word, an adjective. Gen X grew up, looked around, and realized everyone played Atari, not just some tiny elite group of nerds.
Nowadays (I am totally talking out my ass here and could be way off AND I’d be shocked if someone hadn’t done a Sociology master’s on this) you can to create your own tiny elite group of nerds out of the great big pool of nerds that are pretty much everywhere. As opposed to feeling like the few nerds you found and bonded with were your only team and family.
Why hasn’t the expansion continued? In absolute terms, there are more people writing fan fiction, more people who have strong feelings about a SF or fantasy TV show’s continuity, probably more people playing D20, more people who have engaged in an electronic argument about genre fictional characters, more people who have dressed up as wizards… why aren’t there proportionally more people heavily involved in fandom culture? Because in this day and age, you don’t *have* to be “in fandom” to do any of that, it’s become pretty darn mainstream. I’d wager that the vast majority of people who were dressed in “funny outfits” waiting in line at their local Wal-Mart for the last Harry Potter book wouldn’t consider themselves part of the “SF&F fandom community”; and a significant fraction of them probably wouldn’t even know what you were talking about. When you ask someone what the last gaming purchase they made was, odds are it was a new graphics card for their PC, not a new set of oddly-shaped dice. The vast majority of people spending days and weeks perfecting their anime character costumes have never even heard of the International Costumers Guild or their rules. The vast majority of people writing fan fiction have never submitted to a fanzine, and many probably don’t even know what one is. The vast majority of people doing fan art have never exhibited it in a convention Art Show, and many don’t even really understand the concept of a “limited print” (or in some cases, “original”). Most kids picking up an expansion pack of Yu Gi Oh cards in the K-Mart checkout lane next to the bubble gum don’t think of themselves as part of some “gamer culture”, they’re just ordinary kids. Fans *aren’t* Slans anymore, and the outside pressure and disapproval of general society was one of the things providing some of the internal cohesion.
Fandom generally embraced the first few generations of electronic communication, but has been slower to pick up more recent developments. How many of the people running SF & F clubs and conventions still think in terms of fans meeting other fans at bookstores or movie theaters, as opposed to being crosslinked on Facebook because you were streaming the same show? How many still think in terms of a club being defined by attendance regular physical meetings, as opposed to a web of people connected by instant messaging and texting? How rapidly is the attendance at a classic SF & F convention greying, and even more so the staff?
Yes, thank you!
Furthermore, you don’t even need to engage in ‘fannish’ activities (going to cons, etc) to get your fan-fix. You want some obscure anime or SF show? You can probably torrent it or get it from an import shop online. There’s not much need to go to a store in person, much less a con, to get the goods you want, as has been discussed in the past. It’s not helping cons or fandom as it exists, even if it’s not a bad thing.
Of course, I know plenty of folks who go to Anime cons to get cheap DVDs, as opposed to paying the horrid import prices and waiting around for a while, or just to browse the options (the ‘Ooo, $10 DVDs!’ effect).
That leads into the popularity of Niche cons, too. Furry Cons, Anime Cons, Gaming Cons, all are serving the specific wants of certain aspects of ‘fandom,’ which means you can get the fix you really want by going to the con for it, as opposed to trying to get it in at a general SFF con. We’ve discussed all of this at VTSFFC meetings, as well.
There are still things an SF con can offer, even to folks who are primarily in to a fandom niche. For one, they can get you into other aspects of ‘fandom’ they’d not have thought about before (‘Gee, that looks neat…’). Additionally, I believe SF cons can offer education and networking opportunities for budding creative-types, with things like ‘learn how this person who does things really well does this thing’ and ‘here, listen to a well-published author and an editor discuss the getting-published process.’ That’s certainly how I was representing TCon to the Budget Board, and it’s something really neat I think it can offer to the community that you don’t see so much around here.