No, it isn't just your fandom...

[rj_anderson]

...people in every fandom, of every kind, everywhere, are insane.

Whenever you get a large group of people together to discuss a common interest, and people are passionately interested and emotionally invested in the thing being discussed, it is absolutely inevitable that irrational behaviour will go on, flamewars will erupt, trolls will emerge, and before long the entire fandom will be dismissed as a bunch of wacked-out morons who seriously need to Get a Life.

The key to surviving in any fandom is to find a group of people who, even if they don't necessarily agree, are at least mature enough to handle disagreement sensibly. This can be difficult if a large percentage of your fandom is hormonally crazed and/or ON CRACK, but with a little searching and effort, it can be done. Then you stick with the sane people and ignore all the other stuff.

See? Much better.

No, this rant was not inspired by HP fandom. Though you can apply it there too if you like.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

(continued from previous post...)


I don't think, by the way, that Gladwell's 150 figure applies directly to fandoms; I think it's more like 500 to 1000. With a corporation, either you're an employee or you're not, and if you're in, you're in all the way. It's similar with churches; there can be some part-time attenders on the fringes, but usually only a few (except at churches which are well beyond the 150 mark anyway). But in an online community, if you've got 500 members, maybe only 100 will be consistent, "full-time" participants, and so most of the discussions going on will be among people who know each other fairly well. But at some point beyond that (maybe 800?), you start getting more and more people who are active members but not really in touch with the original community's philosophy, and the leadership has to either crack down or allow for a philosophical dilution of the community (neither of which they'll generally find desirable).

But ultimately the same "tipping point" principle is true. When you're having a discussion among people who value their relationship with each other, the discussion will usually be civil and mature (and even the younger members will often learn maturity in that environment). But in a larger community, relationships are valued less (or, more to the point, discussions are conducted more between people who don't mutually value their relationship), and fandom sanity becomes more and more difficult to find.

(Apologies for dumping a two-comment essay on you here; but thanks for triggering some interesting ideas in my mind.)

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting theory and I think there's some validity to it, but I've seen fandoms (or at least, mailing lists/Usenet groups) of 500 members or fewer where all kinds of wacky and immature behaviour occurred on a regular basis, and in many cases it was because the posters knew each other that grudges went so deep and bitterness festered. Whereas my Laurie King mailing list has over 700 members now, people on the list are chatty but fairly independent, and we haven't had anything close to a serious dispute, let alone a flamewar, in literally years.

Maybe it depends on the type of fans who are drawn to certain fandoms. And maybe it also depends on the potential of the fandom in question for disputatiousness. Nobody in Russell fandom argues about shipping, for instance. There is only one ship and there's no question that it's canon. That cuts back on a lot of potential animosity right there...

[verlindahenning.livejournal.com]

Part of the joy of Usenet groups (at least the one that I spent the most time with) was the wacky stuff that went on. I was a regular over at atxf (alt.tv.x-files) since the end of 1998, and made friends for life from that group. We had a reputation for being snarky and cliquish--while there was a lot of snark going on, a lot of it was tongue-in-cheek. We did have a very low tolerance for stupidity--e.g., asking questions covered in our F.A.Q., which was posted regularly in our heyday.

The biggest thing that caused dissension in our group was another explosion of sorts--after the movie "Fight the Future" was released in the summer of 1998. People saw the movie that had not been long-term fans of the show, and the ship/no-ship wars really heated up after the movie came out. It seemed that the level of posting degenerated after the movie--we got more fangirl/fanboy type postings, which greatly annoyed some long-time posters. Then there were the polar opposites of these posters--the ones that treated with the gravitas of a United Nations Security Council meeting, having world-changing implications. Somewhere in between is a fine line--to enjoy a fandom, and not lose your sanity, you have to find the people in that fandom with some balance and perspective.