Blaugust #5: I've Outgrown Fandom. Not Being Fannish.
If you know me, you know my story; I’ve talked quite a bit about how I grew up on Tumblr and social media and the Internet In General since single-digit ages, and how I got sucked into internet discourse as a teen. I’ve talked a lot about the person it made me as a child and then a younger adult, and how I am deeply dissatisfied with the person I was when I was in those circles. I have talked and talked and Talked! about how “shipping discourse” affected me, but I don’t know if I’ve discussed it much on this blog. I find it difficult to discuss a lot of the time, because I still have so much shame surrounding my actions and beliefs during that period of my life. But I do think it is important context.
I grew up in fandom- literally. My very first media obsession was the show Psych when I was 6, and I was my own little Psych fandom as a kid. I drew the characters all the time, fell for Juliet as a baby gay, and spent my allowance on any merchandise I could find, but I didn’t find fandom as a community until I was about ten years old and a kid in my class got me to join their Doctor Who obsession. I started watching and I kept watching until I had seen the entire series (up to Eleven’s seasons at that point) and then I watched most of Classic Who and switched to buying Big Finish dramas with my allowance. I was using Tumblr even before I found fandom as a community, but it was my Doctor Who special interest that kickstarted my Decade of Hell and introduced me to “real fandom.”
I quickly became integrated. I have always been ostracized socially due to autism, and any friendships I ever had as a kid either didn’t last long or were born from the other kid pitying me. When I wasn’t being ignored, I was bullied, so I had little interest in peers who were around me physically; I just didn’t trust them. Most of my socialization came from the now-defunct youth magazine forums of New Moon Girls, and I followed my NMG friends to Tumblr when I stopped using NMG. For someone like me—-who socialized better online, where you can backspace and edit and delete—who never felt like it had any interest in the people around them because no one wanted to talk about the Eighth Doctor IRL—who had no peers real life who treated it with respect—Tumblr was a haven. It also ended up ruining me.
I know, I know. That sounds dramatic! But sometimes I do think about the person I would be today if I had joined Tumblr just a little bit later. If I hadn’t been exposed to the suicide baiting and the constant harassment and the callout posts for drawing the wrong anime characters kissing or identifying too much with a fictional character who is a different disability than you, or other arbitrary things like that. I think I would definitely be a much happier person; I’d have less anxiety and I’d have—-yes, I admit this—-less of a kneejerk angry reaction towards others when I am irritated. That's something I'm working on.
So here's the thing—this post was going to be about the things I have learned since becoming an admin of a 500+ user fandom community last year. And I do really, really want to write about that, but in the middle of writing this backstory I found myself wanting to talk more about how much I hate Tumblr instead.
Well, I don't hate Tumblr. I found my partner on there who has transformed my life into something so amazing, and I would be lost if I had never met them through our shared little fandoms. I found most of my friends through there and I cherish them deeply. I do not enjoy using terms like hate for things that have brought me endless comfort and happiness, but at the same time… I don't know. I'm not the same person I was when I joined, or even the same person I was six, five, four months ago.
I think I've outgrown it.
I haven't outgrown being fannish. I am actually extremely passionate about being fannish, because I just can't turn that part of my brain off; I've tried. But what I have outgrown is the way people do fandom. Genuine anti-harassment spaces are dying out. People who demonize others over their favorite fictional characters/ships are even slowly infesting Dreamwidth now—I see more and more of them in the addme communities. I get discomfort with more taboo topics, and I will never shame anyone for being triggered by them, but I draw the line at making concrete moral judgements about another human being just because they, like, ship Sam and Dean or whatever. And when it's not people being pro-harassment, it's people using anti-harassment as a label to hide their bigotry and hatred. I can't seem to find anywhere that draws the "don't harass others over their ships, but Also we shouldn't ignore racism and misogyny under the guise of 'don't like don't read'" line that I feel is logical.
The thing is: Tumblr increasingly feels more and more juvenile, redundant, and meaningless as I get older. Most people in my main fandom do not like me at best, specifically because of my favorite ships and the kind of relationships/topics/themes in fiction I am naturally drawn to. I just don't have time to sort through ship discourse when really all I want is to see posts about my favorite character and their traumas and characterization. Or people being passionate about their favorite things. Or, like, literally anything else besides "I keep seeing this one ship on AO3 and it's so gross, mine is so much better".
I don't get to see posts about my current favorite character though, because he, like almost all Black characters in fandom, gets ignored (at best) by the fanbase despite being the main character (unless of course he can be shipped with a white dude). That brings me into another main gripe I have with fandom—it is fucking bigoted.
Fandom is racist. Fandom hates Black people and women and if you're Black and a woman!?!?!?! Well you must be the devil (according to most). I saw it in the Star Trek AOS fandom with Uhura, DO NOT GET ME STARTED ON MICHAEL BURNHAM. The Pluribus fandom demonizes its characters of color at large. And then in the Academy fandom's dislike/dismissal of Caleb Mir and the Shadowhunters fandom's dismissal of Luke Garroway… Do not fucking get me started on Doctor fucking Who…. on and on and on. Fics where Black characters are kept as slaves are not uncommon. And it's not just that—it's any character of color being ignored for Background White Dude Tree #3. It's characters of color being portrayed as criminals or evil even if it does not work with their canon characterization at all and criticized in ways their white counterparts aren't. It's…
Other bloggers--those who are people of color—have said it with better articulation than I can give at 2AM. So I'll quote this article from Teen Vogue's Stitch:
"However, the second you remind people that you’re also a person of color and that matters to you as much as your queerness does, it becomes a problem for far too many people in queer fandom spaces. Maybe you express unease when queer white Drag Race fans hype up a drag queen that’s done blackface, or pointing out that Billy (so many people’s Stranger Things blorbo) was a racist, or talk out the problems with how some folks write NSFW content with characters of color, or even just write fiction or meta about a character who shares and celebrates your and their ethnic identity. The reaction is often cruel, condescending, or violent. We have to care about one thing at a time and it’s usually not our identity as POC unless it’ll be used to silence some other person of color in fandom.
For Cait, currently locked on Twitter as a result of harassment from people angry about him talking about racism in his main fandom, queer fandom spaces have always been hostile to fans of color. “While I acknowledge they’ve been a place of exploration for myself too, I feel as a POC I’m not granted the freedom and peace to exist in ways white queers get to, and that I must abide to a completely different set of rules,” he shares via DM. Queer fans of color are told to “curate your space” to minimize seeing or experiencing racism, but how can we do that when we’re punished for setting boundaries (like blocking people or locking our accounts) in an attempt to protect ourselves from racists in our own fandoms?"
"Another respondent spoke about their experience in the fandom of the Star Wars sequel films on Tumblr, particularly around the erasure of the character of Finn, played by John Boyega. Despite Finn being introduced with great fanfare as a central character in the first film, The Force Awakens (2015), there was a marked difference in the popularity between him and the white characters, and this extended to the creation of fanworks. For further context, John Boyega has also spoken about the consistent harassment he received from large parts of the fanbase throughout his association with the film franchise. This was also reflected in media fandom spaces, extending to targeting of those fans who pointed out the implications of his sidelining from the narrative. The respondent notes pushing back on Finn’s erasure was met with immediate labeling, followed by backlash.
And there’s the whole anti thing, which is, so it was supposed to mean that would put us as the aggressors who were trying to take them down. It was just ridiculous.…I’ve been told that I was responsible for everybody who didn’t like this character. And I’m like, that’s ridiculous. So, I’m the queen, queen of the antis? So that means that they all answer to me?…I’m just writing essays. I’m not leading anybody.
In this case as well, the respondent pointed to their much longer history in Star Wars fandom (since the 1970s), which did not prevent them from being framed as an outsider. They also underlined a further point of the process, in which the term anti is also seen to identify an organized movement whose explicit aim is the policing of fan pleasure. This echoes the claim also made in the Vox article, which shows that it is a belief that has gained some traction in online fandom discourse, despite there being little evidence backing it up. Therefore, when the label is applied to fans who point out recurring racist patterns in fandom spaces, it allows fandom to ignore the systemic nature of those issues, instead deflecting those discussions into the realm of individual taste."
How, then, can I remain in spaces where this kind of bigotry runs rampant? Of course, no space is free of bigotry. But I can certainly surround myself with less bigotry, and with people who I trust to call me on my shit if I ever mess up. It's the mixture of this bigotry and the prominence of harassment on the social media spaces I currently frequent that draws me to this conclusion—
It might be time for me to move on. Nah, I think it is time.
I'm not leaving Tumblr for good, because most of my friends are on there and I want to keep up with them. But I need to titrate down. I need to crumple it all up to maximum one hour of "mainstream/corporate social media" per day. I need to smooth things out. I'm no longer the person I was when I needed Tumblr to survive. I finally cured the medical condition causing most of my suicidality and depression (PMDD), and now I feel like I can exist on my own, without posting on Tumblr 24/7, without scrolling through any For You Pages endlessly just to piss myself off.
I can be fannish in places where people understand me, and agree with my opinions on bigotry—spaces like the ones I have developed, mostly, but still. I can do fandom with my partner who gets me. I can do fandom with my personal Discord server. I can do fandom in places that don't piss me off. I can do fandom in a way that is healthier for me. I didn't discover the term "fannish" (Of or relating to a fan; characteristic of fandom.) until recently, and I like that term a lot—it refers more to the individual than a general community, and I just don't feel like fandom is much of a community. I'm fannish, but I wouldn't necessarily say I'm in fandom anymore. Fandom doesn't want me.
One of my biggest problems is that I have way too much free time. I'm housebound. I leave the house for 2x weekly Spravato treatments, other medical appointments, and that's about it. I'm starting college this month, so I'll have that to fill up my time eventually. I have a billion project ideas too—I want to learn more Python and make Sunset a version of the autoao3app, I want to make my Dreamwidth clone fucking usable, I want to start up a few original universes and an erotica career within them, I want to make a TTRPG—but I admittedly spend most of my time in practice just Thinking About Starfleet Academy, and that's why I spend so much time on Tumblr and other adjacent spaces. So I'm going to make a real plan for going forward.
Places I'll do fandom:
-Pillowfort.social. The best Tumblr replacement I've ever seen and I've been meaning to get more active on here for ages. If you want to follow me, my username is Toothpaste; I need to actually use it. I'm planning on putting most of my Starfleet Academy brainrot on here and…
-Blorbo.social, because I like the "twitter" vibe of the UI and setup without it being Twitter like uh at all. I like being able to toss short shitposts into the void. I just asked for an account; if it gets approved my username will be Holiday. If my account doesn't get approved I'll just make an account for fandom stuff on my personal Fediverse instance.
-Dreamwidth, for longer posts. I love Dreamwidth and its fandom community (...for the most part) and I think being more active on here is going to be a top priority.
-My personal website. I deployed the software behind AO3, OTW-Archive, to host my personal website, where new pages are individual "works", because it's an incredibly easy setup for me and I work best on personal sites when they are, uh, easy to work with. Plus, OTW-Archive is how I got into tech and self hosting. (I also want to focus more on developing new features for it, but that is less of a priority.)
The internet has so many cool things and people to discover outside of Tumblr and Xwitter and Instagram. It's time for me to actually diversify, man. I have accounts on these spaces, but I want to make them the main places I hang out on the web. I don't know what the point of this post is besides that I'm just sort of tired, and most of the things that upset me these days are self-inflicted—I can always choose not to look at the Starfleet Academy Tumblr tag, or, y'know, not use Tumblr at all, and then I won't get upset when I keep seeing the aforementioned ""I keep seeing this one ship on AO3 and it's so gross, mine is so much better".