Grab bag from Pillowfort & Dreamwidth

[osteophage]

CT is opposed to Wikia/Fandom.com on principle and says that you should be too

Fulminosa remarked on comment culture (or the lack of it) on AO3

lirazel discussed a decrease in conversation and an increase in monetizing fanworks; see more discussion here

vriddy compiled some throwback links from 2014-2015, discussing fandom use of technology and different web platforms

Comments

[writerkit]

I don't even think of myself as that old-school and I dislike the monetizing of fanworks. I'm much more interested in conversation-- the epic fic I am currently writing and will someday, eventually complete enough of that I feel like I can post it is a direct reaction to a specific fandom-specific genre and trends therein. I'm writing it at all as a way of having conversation about a trend that annoys me, not in a parodic way, but in a "what if we did this concept but in a different way." And that feeds back into the lack of comment culture, I think-- once it starts being about money there's an extent to which it stops being about socializing. (I leave long, detailed comments on fic I really like, and sometimes get long, detailed responses, and then you wind up with an exchange I had recently where the author and I were batting meta back and forth at each other several comments deep and it was great fun and it's just like "This. This is why I'm here.")

And you can't have that as much if it's monetizing because there's a higher expectation of behavior laid on authors and therefore a lot more distance enforced. (I wonder how much the increase in fandom purity culture is driving this behavior? Once upon a time the fact that it *was* fic meant you weren't held to the same standards as the stuff people were making money on.)

And I say all that as someone who is hoping that maybe a fic audience will follow me back to my original work-- but it's not the main reason I'm writing fic.

[osteophage]

I'd say purity culture in fandom contexts is pretty rare, outside of the audience for stuff like, say, Fireproof, I guess. Plenty of "moral majority"-style invocations of normalcy vs. deviancy, though, if that's what you're getting at. Can you say more about what you meant about "the fact that it was fic"?

[grayestofghosts]

I feel like you need to look in the right places for more fan-engagement like commenting etc but I have a feeling the monetization of fan stuff is more driven by the fact that digital micro-transactions are cheap enough to be worth it now and most IP owners have realized that it’s not in their best interest to go after people like Anne Rice. I think it’s more likely that desire to pay for fan stuff was artificially suppressed and forced to be a barter system online than that the desire to pay is new. Paying for zines and fan club merch and artist alley merch and the like has always been popular.

Edit: I also wonder how much of the commenting thing is an illusion because we DO have so many engagement metrics? On the old sites they felt really small and close knit because it was almost impossible to see how many people were lurking. I have only one competed fic on Ao3 and the 35 comments only feels small compared to the 280 kudos, 48 bookmarks, and 3858 hits, even though if 35 comments isn’t objectively the highest number of comments I’ve ever gotten on anything, it’s close to it.

[writerkit]

I disagree... really strenuously... with that link, but since this isn't a terminology post I will leave it at that. But also, no, normality vs. deviance is not quite what I'm getting at-- because there's not *just* a harassment culture for people who write stuff that squicks the majority of people; there's also a harassment culture of people who ship the "wrong" thing or who made one remark that maybe didn't live up to the current round of ever-changing Correct Terminology. Once upon a time there was an understanding of "the people who write fic are just ordinary people who exist online and should not be hounded for making one comment I disagree with" and there was an added understanding of "people who are monetizing can be fairly held to a higher standard of Doing Better."

Now, currently the standards of Doing Better are much more about "who can we go after for clout" than actually doing better, but I am wondering if this is driving the monetization thing or vice versa-- if a bunch of people said "If I am going to be held to the behavioral standards of someone making money, I should actually make money" or if people said "They are making money therefore it's now fair to hold them to these impossible behavioral standards."

[osteophage]

huh. "Artificially suppressed" -- this is the first I've encountered that perspective. I don't really know enough about that time to disagree, either.

The metrics illusion does make sense to me though, for sure. I think the hit count is a significant factor there. Makes lurking more... visible.

[grayestofghosts]

Yeah, I think both of these are due to the fact that the modern internet has really been designed for greater market capture, and therefore keeps obsessive track of engagement, thus the constant stream of hits, likes, kudos, impressions... it makes people who were not evident in the ecosystem before very visible and not in a good way if your goal is community rather than, "who are these people and how do I get them to give me money?"

I think I realized this when I tried out Wattpad and was baffled as to why the app did not have a posting function (at the time, I'm unsure what they've done now) when everyone was using only the app, and I was told that it was because there were a significant number of users who were readers only! As someone who did most of my consumption of both original fic and fanfic online in communities of writers, it was a culture shock, but ultimately it does make sense. Most people who read books in the real world don't really say much about them, or when they do, it's to people they know personally. The only people paying much attention to the copies sold numbers are those who made the book themselves. It's hard to convince real-life normal readers to leave comments and reviews, and it's really hard to understand how meaningful they are if you're not also a writer. Going from, say, a kink meme where everyone is intentionally anonymous and tracking is nonexistent to a setting where engagement is obsessively tracked can make your head spin, even if the style of engagement of the two is actually very similar.