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daria234: Jan. 20. How social/political engagement in fandom has changed over time.
That’s a tough one! I think engagement has broadened and diversified as fandom has broadened and diversified even in the time I personally have been active. For example, fannish fundraising for causes, done multifandom or for HP or Twilight, has a family relationship to the blood donation I did at a Buffy convention—it’s a matter of degree and variety. As copyright issues have become more salient to more people, I think there’s been more thorough thinking-through of the intellectual property issues than the historic “if we keep it on the down low we can continue to do it,” and it’s been more evident online that media fans need to make common cause with other groups to preserve our freedoms more generally. But there also are tons of people in fandom who don’t know and don’t care about the legalities and are just enjoying what they enjoy and inventing/reinventing fandom for themselves, and that’s partly a function of our size—talking about what fandom is like sort of like talking about “what are kids these days like?”
I think the people doing the structural work of fandom are heroes, and that includes running websites/moderating forums/maintaining servers; one benefit of talking publicly about the validity of fandom is that they can claim those skills as legitimate ones, legitimately acquired. On the advocacy side, my aim is to be a positive force, and try to make sure that fans aren’t ignored or dismissed as worthless in legal/policy conversations, because in this case being ignored means being subjected to the risk of being suppressed, threatened, or monetized without our consent. (Fans commercializing themselves is another whole big topic I don’t have a complete handle on; zines were one form of making money from fandom before the internet, and even then there were regular outbreaks of trouble when the money didn’t go where the fans thought it should or the goods weren’t delivered on time. So again our issues aren’t new, but they’ve taken new shapes.)
daria234: Jan. 20. How social/political engagement in fandom has changed over time. That’s a tough one! I think engagement has broadened and diversified as fandom has broadened and diversified even in the time I personally have been active. For example, fannish fundraising for causes, done multifandom or for HP or Twilight, has a family relationship to the blood donation I did at a Buffy convention—it’s a matter of degree and variety. As copyright issues have become more salient to more people, I think there’s been more thorough thinking-through of the intellectual property issues than the historic “if we keep it on the down low we can continue to do it,” and it’s been more evident online that media fans need to make common cause with other groups to preserve our freedoms more generally. But there also are tons of people in fandom who don’t know and don’t care about the legalities and are just enjoying what they enjoy and inventing/reinventing fandom for themselves, and that’s partly a function of our size—talking about what fandom is like sort of like talking about “what are kids these days like?”
I think the people doing the structural work of fandom are heroes, and that includes running websites/moderating forums/maintaining servers; one benefit of talking publicly about the validity of fandom is that they can claim those skills as legitimate ones, legitimately acquired. On the advocacy side, my aim is to be a positive force, and try to make sure that fans aren’t ignored or dismissed as worthless in legal/policy conversations, because in this case being ignored means being subjected to the risk of being suppressed, threatened, or monetized without our consent. (Fans commercializing themselves is another whole big topic I don’t have a complete handle on; zines were one form of making money from fandom before the internet, and even then there were regular outbreaks of trouble when the money didn’t go where the fans thought it should or the goods weren’t delivered on time. So again our issues aren’t new, but they’ve taken new shapes.)
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