Fandom usually jumps into technologies, uses them, and then acts surprised when we realize that we have no clue what we’re doing or how the use of the new technology has changed an aspect of our fandom culture. Right now a few authors are posting notices that you need permission to link to their fanworks in “public spaces”. Or that they’d prefer their readers comment on their fic where it was originally posted. Each author gets to unilaterally define what is public with the expectation that every reader will follow because that is part of the “social contract”. So for today Goodreads = public and is not a place to list or review fanfic. Tumblr is OK (for now) because it is not seen as a “public” space.*
It used to be easier to know what to expect of other fans but the moment we went online, the fannish social contract was voided due to sheer size and complexity of online interactions. Add the fact that new platforms and new ways of interacting keep springing up every 20 minutes and you have a hot conceptual mess filled with poorly understood expectations.
I know that when “we” went online in the 1990s few of us had any idea that fans would be publicly posting their porn fanfic** to open access websites (no. stop. think of the children!), displaying their explicit art where anyone could see (blush), and tweeting their love of RPS and knotting fic (OMGWTFBB!). By those standards, we have all breached the original fannish social contract of keeping fandom a “safe space” simply by interacting with one another in public and online. And I suspect that 20 years down the road, we will again struggle to recognize “fandom” as it continues to be reshaped by technology.
So I would rather see us practice mindfulness and awareness that the tools and platforms we use will change both us and our culture instead of snapping at one another because some of us have changed and are different and that we no longer know what to expect from one another.
Because to be honest, I have no clue any more. And I’d be wary of anyone who claims otherwise.
*Keep in mind that most fans don’t bother to turn off Google indexing on their tumblr blogs (or their LJ…or their DW..or their twitter or their AO3 works or….). And even if they do, every time someone else reblogs your content, if *their blog* is searchable by Google it will still be “public”.**A few of us did have in inkling but we all kept it quiet because we did not want to scare our friends with our crazy visions of a future filled with flying fans sporting jetpack keyboards and tinhats.
Gosh, yes, all of this.
I’ve been boggled every time the last few days I’ve seen posts going by about “how dare they post links to fics on a site the author doesn’t control! With reviews! And ratings!”
I entered fandom at a time when the main way to find fic was going to people’s recs pages. On geocities. Many of them had extensive reviews (that were actually reviews, not feedback for the author – all crit is not meant to be concrit – in fact at one point there was a widespread discussion about how you should only post your crit on sites other than where the fic is archived…) and even, yes, star ratings. Many of those sites are still ongoing, or have moved their recs to dw/lj.
I get being freaked out at the way Goodreads does not easily distinguish between fanfic and profic, and fanauthors and pro authors. And it’s always freaky when you find discussion of your work somewhere you weren’t expecting.
But linking to and reviewing fanworks on other sites has been going on as long as the internet existed. (Back in the Usenet days, it was relatively common to re-archive fic from newsgroups onto websites without separately contacting the authors. I’m still occasionally stumbling on my one fic I posted on Usenet on tiny little archives in the depths of oocities.)
The “How dare you link my content without my permission” freakout seems to be a periodic thing in fandom, though – the last time I remember it hitting was in, oh, 2010 or so, when link-amalgamation communities were still a huge thing on LJ.
Folks if you don’t want people linking to your stuff without notifying you first, you have to lock it down yourself, on a platform that allows for custom locking down. That’s what internet fandom is.
Fandom Does Not Use Technology. Technology Uses Fandom