An Open Letter to Fandom

[puppetmaker]

Dear Fandom,

Please oh Please could you just step away from the keyboard, take a deep breath, and count to 10? I swear everywhere I turn there is another form of fandom having a meltdown like a two year old on a very hot day.

I know you are upset about _____________ but do you need to slag everyone who had anything to do with it or expressed their opinion that is contrary to your own? Whatever happen to the “we are inclusive not exclusive” chant I use to hear all the time in my youth? Whatever happened to the idea that we were better than that since many of us (not all) were excluded from things when we were young for being __________? This especially goes to the “old guard” which seems bent on excluding people who are just discovering _____________.

I know this goes in cycles but right now we have seemed to have taken a downturn onto a path that isn’t very pleasant. Newer fandom, believe it or not the fans that have been doing this for a while do have a few tricks up their sleeve which are quite useful and re-inventing the wheel for the umteenth time is not going to yield anything new. Older fandom (as in longer a fan not age), the new fans have good ideas and need not be dismissed out of hand because they haven't been a fan of _________ since __________ walked the Earth.

There is a happy medium to be found in all this and I am seriously hoping that y’all find it sooner rather than later. Just remember that it is just a ______________ and I think you might feel a little better.

Sincerely,

An older fan in some cases and a new fan in others.

PS: I am grateful for the reasonable fans out there trying to get everyone to calm down and take that breath.

Comments

[wookiemonster.livejournal.com]

Honestly, this would be even cooler if used as a Mad-Lib... I did that in my mind and it was quite amusing... :)

[narniadear.livejournal.com]

Hm. Let me guess which fandom you're ranting about...

Harry Potter

Harry Potter

Oh, and Harry Potter?

(Sorry. They're just the most INSANE fans that I've ever come across. :))

[narniadear.livejournal.com]

But, oh...on a closer read (with the older/younger fan thing) I will guess:

Star Wars

Star Trek

and....Star Wars.

Am I close?

[porcelain72.livejournal.com]

Are you talking about Torchwood? I hope you are, because, man, people are on my f-list are going apeshit about it. I really hate to minimize it with "It's just a TV show, get a grip on yourself," but...yeah.

[walkertxkitty.livejournal.com]

Fandoms are like that, unfortunately. In the particular one in which I am involved, a lot of the older ones have been driven into seclusion by the drama and the younger ones like perpetuating the drama.

Personally, I like finding common ground. Sometimes we mature ones --- and it isn't always determined by age or length of time involved in the fandom --- just have to agree to disagree.

It's unfortunate that more people can't approach a subject that way.

I amuse myself!

[wherdafux-d-cat.livejournal.com]

I now find myself filking Cake's 'Rock and Roll Lifestyle' as 'ComiCon Lifestyle,' particularly the line about proving you were there, that you heard of them first.

Re: I amuse myself!

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

That could work. And would probably be appreciated by Cake, too.

Re: I amuse myself!

[wherdafux-d-cat.livejournal.com]

Now to talk Cake into performing it at the next major con........

Re: I amuse myself!

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

Like my dream of getting Bob Dylan to sing "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Bob."

Re: I amuse myself!

[wherdafux-d-cat.livejournal.com]

Niiiiiiiice

[hergrace.livejournal.com]

LOL! I'm not sure what brought this on, but it's well said and appropos of everything.

P.S. With a few more blanks it really *would* be an excellent MAD-LIB.

Not just fandom

[(Anonymous)]

It isn't just fandom, I've experienced it in any special interest group I've been involved with. Take antique carousels. People interested in antique carousels in the 70's and 80's split into two factions- Preservationists (those who believed the carousels should be kept whole and in use by the public) and Collectors (those who thought the individual figures were best cared for by individuals by taking them off the carousels and selling them to the highest bidder). Your status in the groups was determined by what figures were in your collection, and they became fabulously expensive, ponzi scheme style. Many carousel fans were rude and dismissive to young people, even insisting on having the carousels closed to children when their organizations visited and sneering angrily when children were still allowed to ride during their royal visitations. Money talks, so carousels were broken up at a furious pace to flood the market with figures. Of course there were far more expensive figures than there were buyers, so the market for carousel animals crashed. The younger generation who has grown up without antique carousels because so many were broken up largely couldn't care less about them. There is a new generation of new carousels, both fiberglass and wooden, with nifty things likes bugs and gorillas and snakes to ride. So as the increasingly elderly collectors die off, there is no market for their once fabulously expensive carousel figures. There are so few carousel fans that the two groups had to merge to even have a functional organization. And the kids are happily riding the new generation of carousels with all their strange animals, cheerfully oblivious of the mass destruction of antique carousels that led to the new breed of carousel that replaced the antiques.

Re: Not just fandom

[theresamather.livejournal.com]

Oops, wasn't logged in...that was me posting.