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“Beggars in the economy of attention” and my love/hate relationship with LJ
(Déjà vu: I may have posted a very similar entry about half a year ago. Then again, I may only have intended to. Not sure. If I did, I may even have used the same title. I'm having a distinct feeling of déjà vu here. If I did, how unoriginal of me! I promise you this is better, though. *g*)
When I was in Germany, about 10 days ago, I talked to another fan (waves to Imke!) about LJ and forums for a bit. I compared LJ to a kind of medieval court: come, read my important thoughts, worship me! Of course, that is a blatant oversimplification, and a caricature as well. Still, she understood what I meant and agreed completely. We also agreed that forums, boards and mailing lists of the traditional kind offered much fuller opportunities of participation to 'the common fan'.
I found that interesting, because the people who seem to agree with this view seem all to be fen of the outer to medium circles. The people whose fic is not read at all or read rarely, whose websites, if existent, are hardly known, whose LJs, if they have them, are rarely visited. In short, the beggars and lower classes in the economy of attention that is called fandom. It is understandable that they (we) would be more sensitive to the inequalities of our allegedly egalitarian community.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm not bitching about fandom. I love fandom. Even as a beggar in its economy, I am happy and proud to be a part of it, for a multitude of reasons. One of them is that even as a beggar I have lots of chances of participation in it, and even chances of, let's say, rising through the ranks.
Now, that makes me sound as if all I'm looking for in fandom is a kind of status, something which I, perhaps, do not have in Real Life. Actually, I'm not. I may sometimes feel a little bit 'unread' ;-) but on the whole, I'm quite happy with my place in fandom. Having found some good friends in it is much more important to me than any kind of status could be – and in the end, I suppose, seeing oneself reflected in a friendship, i.e. seeing oneself as beeing seen as *worthy* of that friendship, does a lot more for a positive self-image than being held in high esteem by a large group of people who hardly know you.
However, as someone who's been an outsider most of my life, I can't help but observe and think about things like in-groups, group dynamics, high and low status in groups and how it comes to be created, etc. And, like most human beings, I can't help but notice the reactions and non-reactions of others to me, as measuring ourselves that way is coded into our psyche at an early age (there may be exceptions to this rule, but I've yet to find the person who is totally independent of other people's opinions).
In fandom, you can't really speak of in-groups, as there's no overt exclusion of anybody except people who grossly violate the ethics of fandom (e.g. by plagiarising). On the contrary, fandom is overtly and emphatically inclusive, in fact, its inclusiveness is one of the central parts of its self-representation. (That openness and inclusiveness is probably one of the reasons why so many people who have a history of being an outsider gravitate towards fandom.)
Despite that idea (or ideology?) of inclusion, though, there can be no doubt that fandom is socially layered like any other group of people.
I had a discussion about the social workings of fandom with a Big Name Fan from Farscape fandom earlier this year, and she objected to quite a few of my views as well as to the terms I used. One of these was 'status', and I'm using it with reservations here, because it is indeed not quite what I'm trying to convey. However, I do not know what other term I might use, and 'status' gets close enough to serve me as a shorthand for now.
What do I mean by 'status' here? Well, I think everybody who has been active in fandom for a while becomes aware that just as in Real Life, not everybody 'is the same' in terms of influence. There are fen to whom a great deal of attention is paid, and there are those who pass largely unnoticed on the boards, LJs, archive sites etc. While everyone has, theoretically and in practice, the same right to make postings, write and publish stories, and build websites, not everyone's contributions are valued equally.
That is only natural. A great number of people tends to generate a great amount of material, and the people who consume said material have to establish some criteria by which they choose which fics they read, which postings they reply to, and which websites they visit. And certainly the way by which fandom determines which of the products of its culture are more worthy of attention than others, and which producers of said products hence are awarded a higher status, is tendentially very fair. There is rarely anyone valued highly in fandom who is not worthy of being valued so.
However: after a fandom has lived and grown for a few years, a particular 'class' tends to develop - not by anyone's, least of all their own, volition, but simply because it is a natural consequence of the way fandom distributes attention. The more an author, fic, website, LJ gets recommended, the more people know of it. The more people know of it, the more recommend it, etc. A classic positive feedback loop.
This 'intellectual élite' (though no one in fandom would willingly call it an élite, probably, as that is against the view of fandom as an egalitarian alternative community) comes pretty close to Plato's ideal of philosophers ruling the state. Of course, fandom is not 'ruled' in any way – fandom is by definition 'unrulable', it is practiced anarchy; it cannot really be compared to a state of any description. However, the people who end up being the most influential, said 'intellectual élite', are usually those fen who on a regular basis display the most acute intelligence coupled with a high sensitivity to fannish concerns.
In practice, LJ (and other blogging sites and personal blogs) are where that 'élite' becomes most visible. A direct relation can be observed between the number of people reading (and replying to) your entries, their respective 'status', and your own, in fandom. Not every 'high status fan' is blogging, but most are, and I would actually argue that blogging has increased the trend for the creation of 'élites' in fandom, due to the court-like quality of blogs that I described above. And that quality is something that I really dislike about blogging, and LJ. (And yet I have an LJ myself... hmmm...)
Whew. Okay, I think I'll take off my thinking cap now. Actually, I'd like to discuss this further with other fen who have done some thinking on this, but since few of those read my blog, I'll probably just be talking to myself again here. Not that I *really* mind. Actually, I don't need an audience to ramble endlessly about things like this. That's why I'm studying Cultural Anthropology. *g*
When I was in Germany, about 10 days ago, I talked to another fan (waves to Imke!) about LJ and forums for a bit. I compared LJ to a kind of medieval court: come, read my important thoughts, worship me! Of course, that is a blatant oversimplification, and a caricature as well. Still, she understood what I meant and agreed completely. We also agreed that forums, boards and mailing lists of the traditional kind offered much fuller opportunities of participation to 'the common fan'.
I found that interesting, because the people who seem to agree with this view seem all to be fen of the outer to medium circles. The people whose fic is not read at all or read rarely, whose websites, if existent, are hardly known, whose LJs, if they have them, are rarely visited. In short, the beggars and lower classes in the economy of attention that is called fandom. It is understandable that they (we) would be more sensitive to the inequalities of our allegedly egalitarian community.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm not bitching about fandom. I love fandom. Even as a beggar in its economy, I am happy and proud to be a part of it, for a multitude of reasons. One of them is that even as a beggar I have lots of chances of participation in it, and even chances of, let's say, rising through the ranks.
Now, that makes me sound as if all I'm looking for in fandom is a kind of status, something which I, perhaps, do not have in Real Life. Actually, I'm not. I may sometimes feel a little bit 'unread' ;-) but on the whole, I'm quite happy with my place in fandom. Having found some good friends in it is much more important to me than any kind of status could be – and in the end, I suppose, seeing oneself reflected in a friendship, i.e. seeing oneself as beeing seen as *worthy* of that friendship, does a lot more for a positive self-image than being held in high esteem by a large group of people who hardly know you.
However, as someone who's been an outsider most of my life, I can't help but observe and think about things like in-groups, group dynamics, high and low status in groups and how it comes to be created, etc. And, like most human beings, I can't help but notice the reactions and non-reactions of others to me, as measuring ourselves that way is coded into our psyche at an early age (there may be exceptions to this rule, but I've yet to find the person who is totally independent of other people's opinions).
In fandom, you can't really speak of in-groups, as there's no overt exclusion of anybody except people who grossly violate the ethics of fandom (e.g. by plagiarising). On the contrary, fandom is overtly and emphatically inclusive, in fact, its inclusiveness is one of the central parts of its self-representation. (That openness and inclusiveness is probably one of the reasons why so many people who have a history of being an outsider gravitate towards fandom.)
Despite that idea (or ideology?) of inclusion, though, there can be no doubt that fandom is socially layered like any other group of people.
I had a discussion about the social workings of fandom with a Big Name Fan from Farscape fandom earlier this year, and she objected to quite a few of my views as well as to the terms I used. One of these was 'status', and I'm using it with reservations here, because it is indeed not quite what I'm trying to convey. However, I do not know what other term I might use, and 'status' gets close enough to serve me as a shorthand for now.
What do I mean by 'status' here? Well, I think everybody who has been active in fandom for a while becomes aware that just as in Real Life, not everybody 'is the same' in terms of influence. There are fen to whom a great deal of attention is paid, and there are those who pass largely unnoticed on the boards, LJs, archive sites etc. While everyone has, theoretically and in practice, the same right to make postings, write and publish stories, and build websites, not everyone's contributions are valued equally.
That is only natural. A great number of people tends to generate a great amount of material, and the people who consume said material have to establish some criteria by which they choose which fics they read, which postings they reply to, and which websites they visit. And certainly the way by which fandom determines which of the products of its culture are more worthy of attention than others, and which producers of said products hence are awarded a higher status, is tendentially very fair. There is rarely anyone valued highly in fandom who is not worthy of being valued so.
However: after a fandom has lived and grown for a few years, a particular 'class' tends to develop - not by anyone's, least of all their own, volition, but simply because it is a natural consequence of the way fandom distributes attention. The more an author, fic, website, LJ gets recommended, the more people know of it. The more people know of it, the more recommend it, etc. A classic positive feedback loop.
This 'intellectual élite' (though no one in fandom would willingly call it an élite, probably, as that is against the view of fandom as an egalitarian alternative community) comes pretty close to Plato's ideal of philosophers ruling the state. Of course, fandom is not 'ruled' in any way – fandom is by definition 'unrulable', it is practiced anarchy; it cannot really be compared to a state of any description. However, the people who end up being the most influential, said 'intellectual élite', are usually those fen who on a regular basis display the most acute intelligence coupled with a high sensitivity to fannish concerns.
In practice, LJ (and other blogging sites and personal blogs) are where that 'élite' becomes most visible. A direct relation can be observed between the number of people reading (and replying to) your entries, their respective 'status', and your own, in fandom. Not every 'high status fan' is blogging, but most are, and I would actually argue that blogging has increased the trend for the creation of 'élites' in fandom, due to the court-like quality of blogs that I described above. And that quality is something that I really dislike about blogging, and LJ. (And yet I have an LJ myself... hmmm...)
Whew. Okay, I think I'll take off my thinking cap now. Actually, I'd like to discuss this further with other fen who have done some thinking on this, but since few of those read my blog, I'll probably just be talking to myself again here. Not that I *really* mind. Actually, I don't need an audience to ramble endlessly about things like this. That's why I'm studying Cultural Anthropology. *g*
no subject
hehehehe...well, I can hardly catch up with reading your latest writings.
Yet, I haven't had any deeper thoughts about this and confine myself to reading. *g*
(As soon as I finished my exams, I shut down my brains and I don't want it to start thinking again. Hmmm...didn't I start studying philosophy?! Shut up, brain, shut up and rest a bit longer.)
Brains need rest, too, once in a while.
no subject
Maybe it's my own experience with LJ, but I actually find LJ more equalizing than other forums. As a lurker on a ML, you are simply excluded from any form of personal interaction. Most discussions are on topic and most private conversation occurs offlist. On LJ-land, however, the fannish and the private often blend. You can lurk on someone's LJ and find out a lot of things...people become more real and more approachable and much less scary than a BNF with a fancy website who writes on a ML.
Similarly, you point out that "not everyone's contributions are valued equally." Could that simply be that not everyone's contributions *are* equal? Again, I find LJ more equalizing, b/c you can trace someone's intellectual or artistic process much more easily. In other words, if I find someone's post on a ML interesting, I have that post. If I find someone's comment in a LJ discussion interesting, I can look at their journal, read through their memories, get an idea of that person, a much better and rounder picture.
If anything, I think, LJ equalizes in ways that ML's or other forums never could. For me personally, it allowed me to leave my little corner of lurkerdom and actually meet people.
Actually, I'd like to discuss this further with other fen who have done some thinking on this, but since few of those read my blog, I'll probably just be talking to myself again here. See, and now with metablog, other people can go and read your wentry...and then go and check out all the other cool things you've said and thought! (which I will do now :-)
no subject
What I've noticed on the LJs of the BNFs (and others too) is that even though everyone's free to leave comments, that's not really an equalising factor in practice. Some comments get more attention than others, usually (admittedly not exlcusively, so you're sometimes right) the ones by friends (friends friends, not just friendslist friends) of the BNF. (Evidence for attention being responses to that note, and threads developing). This favouritism (not in a bad sense) in a potentially very equal setting actually perpetuates and strengthens the hierarchy. People may stop lurking by making a contribution to discussion, but if that contribution's not picked up on and discussed then it's a somewhat insignificant move from lurkerdom in the general context, if not to the lurker themselves.
no subject
no subject
It may be in part quality (i.e., when I see a brilliant comment I want to see who that person is, and I've friended quite a few people that way) or it is simply familiarity...while i don't know you (i.e., I don't think we've ever directly interacted), I've seen your name around...have seen your comments in other people's journals, have seen people reference your posts, etc. And the opposite might be true as well, right? That means for one, of course, that we have intersecting flists but, more importantly, that we both comment a lot. So, while quantity doesn't necessarily do it, it might be a participating factor. If nothing else, it gets your name out there and while that might simply create an annoying buzz to some people *g*, others might get curious.
Bottom line, though, is that yes, it is about friendships (why shouldn't it be...I like to talk to people like myself, that have common interests, to people that are interesting to me) but it is also about performance...and that can occur any number of ways...and commenting and interacting with people is part of that.
Agreed.
One of the most galling things to me, in the beginnings of my life in fandom, was not being able to contribute due to outer factors, like lack of money (an online minute cost me 3 cent then, flat rates did not exist yet), lack of a computer (for my first half year or so in fandom, I depended on my parents' computer, which I could use for about 3 hours a week), and lack of time (that is still a major factor for me, whereas the former to aren't, anymore). Given those factors, I'm sure you can imagine I never really contributed much to my first fandom! The annoying thing is of course that people online don't know if you're not contributing because you can't think of anything worthwhile to say, are shy, or due to aforementioned outside factors.
The most galling thing for me, however, is simply lack of intellectual capacity. To judge myself lacking *that* is hard to bear for me, becaus I have always seen my value as a person as largely determined by how bright I am. I think that is really at the bottom of my 'status' issue. It's really a kind of 'But I want to be a genius, too, Mom!' thing. I'm not sure if that is an issue for anybody but myself, but if it is, I think it may be the most difficult issue here, since it is not possible to overcome it. You can't be brighter than you are.
Is there any doubt that fandom is a valuable case study?
I agree about the friends thing. It's not surprising or wrong or anything - in fact, it's just the normal way humans behave, and if I were a BNF with dozens of replies to each of my postings, hell, I'd decide in exactly the same way which replies I'd reply to and which not. Who wouldn't?
But you're right in that it *does* strengthen the 'hierarchy' (thought it's not really stable enough to be called a hierarchy, I think) - because the people who aren't BNF see who gets the most replies to their replies etc., and - because that is *also* typical of the way we humans behave - translate it into a sign of those people's higher status.
Sorry for the delay in replying...
>Maybe it's my own experience with LJ, but I actually find LJ more equalizing than other forums. As a lurker on a ML, you are simply excluded from any form of personal interaction.
Hmm. Are you? I'd say it depends on the mailing list. Of course, off topic stuff is not allowed on most, but even that depends. I've known lists that were almost completely off topic. In fact, I've known one that turned into an ongoing flirt between two of its members. They're now married, I think. ;-)
But I wasn't really speaking about mailing lists. My own experience with them is limited, as I've always been more of a forum person, and I've found it not particularly difficult to join discussions in a well-maintained, friendly discussion forum or on a board. They usually start on topic and then devolve into private chatter, which makes it easy for a newbie to join, because you can start by posting something on topic, and then get to know the other contributors better in the sub threads. (Well, I started to go online when there were still forums with sub threads. Forums look differently today, of course.)
What I really like about forums is the way that everybody can start a thread there, and as long as the topic is interesting, it's unlikely to be ignored. Also, you can control your level of involvement just as you can on LJ - with the important difference that even as a newbie, you can post a full thread there, whereas on LJ you first have to post replies in other people's threads before someone decides you're worthy and gives you a code. I entered fandom via forums, and I don't really think I would have entered it if LJ had been the dominant form of interaction then ('then' being five to six years ago). In LJ, I always feel like I'm trespassing on someone's premises, whereas a forum is public ground.
>Most discussions are on topic and most private conversation occurs offlist. On LJ-land, however, the fannish and the private often blend.
In my experience they do that on the best, most long-lived forums/boards, as well. In fact, it's almost a prerequisite for a board surviving a few years, because it creates a feeling of community. The best forums are like that - like a big, friendly living room with a big, friendly, noisy family inside. Kansas would be such a forum for Farscape, Holyground for Highlander...
>You can lurk on someone's LJ and find out a lot of things...people become more real and more approachable and much less scary than a BNF with a fancy website who writes on a ML.
Well, but you only see one person (and people's reactions to that person), whereas on/in/at (prepositions are not my friends) a forum (and on a ML, too, I guess) you get to interact with lots of people, and you can - as a newbie - post just like everybody else.
One of my main problems with LJ is the fact that it isn't easily accessible to newbies. Sure, we all get annoyed by newbies who don't know fannish etiquette etc. yet from time to time, and in fact I left one forum I had been a regular at due to a too large influx of clueless newbies once, but ultimately, fandom needs newbies. German SF fandom is a good example of what happens if you don't have newbies - I'm one of the youngest people there, and I'm 27. Most of the active fen there seem to be in their thirties to fifties.
Re: Sorry for the delay in replying...
I never had the patience for forums/boards and, as I said, ml's were just not convenient to me--I either felt overwhelmed by mails I didn't care about or waded my way through the horrid yahoo interface. But I totally understand that to someone who was comfortable on boards/lists, this is different...and not necessarily in a good way.
I was serious about the impact for me of the personal on lj. I never wrote to anyone and didn't really feel like I could or should even feedback (who'd care what I had to say :-). It wasn't until I moved to fandoms on lj that the writers became real to me and I finally felt comfortable writing to them.
Second point: I friended you, b/c it sounded like you had interesting things to say, plus due to recent drama explained in my lj I had to flock the entire journal (and am very sad about it, b/c I thereby do not allow people to see who I am any more :-)
Thirdly (you didn't think I'd stop with two, did you :-): hal and I had a recent discussion on lj vs ml's that you might find interesting: here and here
Lastly, I just checked out your web site and was mightily impressed with your use of Adorno in school :-) [Adorno is my god but that's the Adorno of Negative Dialectics not the critic of the culture industry...] Are you studying media stuff now or was that purely your hobby talking?
Frell, just when I was about to go to bed. *g*
Heh. Good luck. I'm looking for a job, too. No luck, so far.
>I was serious about the impact for me of the personal on lj. I never wrote to anyone and didn't really feel like I could or should even feedback (who'd care what I had to say :-). It wasn't until I moved to fandoms on lj that the writers became real to me and I finally felt comfortable writing to them.
Well, I got my dose of 'personal' on forums. And on websites, too, sometimes. E.g. I think my website says quite a bit about me, and so do many people's sites.
>Second point: I friended you, b/c it sounded like you had interesting things to say, plus due to recent drama explained in my lj I had to flock the entire journal (and am very sad about it, b/c I thereby do not allow people to see who I am any more :-)
Thanks. Friended back. Am honoured. (Always am when strangers friend me.)
>Thirdly (you didn't think I'd stop with two, did you :-): hal
Hal? 'I'm sorry, I cannot do that, Dave'-HAL? ;-)
>and I had a recent discussion on lj vs ml's that you might find interesting: here and here
Will check it out in the next days. (Very busy week.)
>Lastly, I just checked out your web site and was mightily impressed with your use of Adorno in school :-) [Adorno is my god but that's the Adorno of Negative Dialectics not the critic of the culture industry...] Are you studying media stuff now or was that purely your hobby talking?
LOL, don't be too impressed, I'm sure I mangled him terribly. To answer your questions, I'm studying archaeology but this is my lunch hour , err, sorry. Too much Monty Python between ages 14 and 18, I guess. ;-) Well, my major is archaeology, and my minors are American studies and cultural anthropology. You get exposed to a fair amount of cultural theory of all stripes in both of these disciplines. (It doesn't hurt to know some of this stuff in archaeology, either.) As for Adorno, I don't really know a lot about him. What I know is mostly his criticism of the 'culture industry', and with that I don't really agree very much...
Re: Frell, just when I was about to go to bed. *g*
with you on too much monty python...though i'm a few years older...
you sound like you're studying for Magister yet your place says England...*puzzled* [I have a weak spot for archeologists :-) One of my best friends growing up would go dig every chance he got...his goals in life were to have a child, plant a tree, build a house and find a Roman trash dump *g*]
I just realized, I need a theory icon...Also, if you're actually looking for interesting things I said...I'm anal and have anything even remotely interesting I've ever said in my memories :-)
Pimping theory
Spare time? I spend all of that on LJ! ;-) (J/K)
>He's my personal answer to the mod/pomo debate of habermas/lyotard... (and the fact that he's the previous generation is just an added ironic bonus)
LOL, yeah, I have an uncle who keeps 'pimping' him to me, too. But at the moment I'm more than busy with McLuhan and Bourdieu. Plus lots of postprocessual(?) archaeological theory. (Yes, we have theory, too.)
Of course, at the moment I don't even know enough about *any* of these to talk about them properly. I should spend more time reading, probably. *g*
>with you on too much monty python...though i'm a few years older...
Well... most of my friens (in Real Life) are, so that's fine. I think the average age in my circle of friends is around 30. Besides, I'm not prejudiced... age doens't matter as much in fandom as it does elsewhere in life (if it does at all, that is). E.g. I'm about to visit my 18-year-old beta reader, and I'm sure I'll get along with her just fine. She's into the same things that I'm into - Scape, writing, reading etc. - so what does it matter if she's almost a decade younger than me? Besides, she writes a lot better than I. *g*
>you sound like you're studying for Magister yet your place says England...*puzzled*
Erasmus exchange student. You know about the Magister... are you German?
> [I have a weak spot for archeologists :-) One of my best friends growing up would go dig every chance he got...his goals in life were to have a child, plant a tree, build a house and find a Roman trash dump *g*]
I'm not a Roman/classical archaeologist. I'm more into things like the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. :-)
>I just realized, I need a theory icon...
*g*
>Also, if you're actually looking for interesting things I said...I'm anal and have anything even remotely interesting I've ever said in my memories :-)
Would you believe I only just now *discovered* the memory feature? I think I need to make use of that, too...
Re: Pimping theory
So, the Roman thing comes kind of naturally (yes, I know Trier is older, but we celebrated our 2000 year anniversary earlier *bg*)
Of course, these days, I'm getting all excited that my now hometown just turned 300 :-)
Listen to your uncle...one of my parents' best friends actually took some of Adorno's classes in Frankfurt...cool :-)
My problem with Adorno...
I'll still give him a try sometime, because I really want to know what I'm talking about instead of just guessing, but that is my excuse for not exactly hurrying about reading Adorno.
BTW... you seem to know about this stuff... (stupid question alert:) I like theory. I really do. I'm quite fascinated by many ideas. However, reading it is almost invariably incredibly difficult for me. I usually don't have problems with reading, not even with reading complicated stuff (I'm reading, and enjoying, Gene Wolfe's 'Book of the New Sun' at the moment, which has been called the 'Ulysses' of fantasy and SF, just to give an example). I also do not, usually, have much trouble understanding abstract thought. However, most theoretical writings are just... I don't know. Let's take McLuhan as an example. I'm reading 'Understanding Media' at the moment, and I do get most of the general ideas - but when he gives examples, presumably to make his point *clearer*, it actually becomes *less* clear to me. Most of his examples I just. Don't. Get. I have similar, though different (ha) problems with Bourdieu. I'm fascinated by his ideas, as far as I understand them, but reading him is like swimming in syrup. There doesn't seem to be a single sentence in 'Die feinen Unterschiede' ('Distinction' in English, I think) that isn't half a page long! I mean, I understand Gene Wolfe, for frell's sake, so I really don't have a problem with 'difficult' language, but...
So, the stupid question I was about to ask was this: is this normal, or should I just go back to being a jeweller? ;-)
Hehe. I know the answer, of course. I also know that most students probably have even less of a clue than I. But I have this old-fashioned idea that if you study something, you should *understand* it, and so I sometimes doubt myself.
Re: My problem with Adorno...
And then there are the aphoristic dudes...I mean, I hated Nietzsche and Adorno of Minima Moralis isn't doing it for me either, but here we get into an almost literary sphere. Ecriture feminine (Cixous, Irigaray) same thing... The 'true' postmodernists (Baudrillard, for example) are even worse.
I gotta admit, I have a cultural studies bias and don't really know whether they're just bad writers who cover their insufficient theoretical grounding in dense prose or whether it's actually inherently needed...
But yes, we all struggle...it wouldn't be fun if you didn't *bg*
Try the first chapter of Dialectic of Enlightenment...clear and precise prose, fascinating thesis (esp. when realizing they wrote this in 44)...Negative Dialectic is late Adorno and sufficiently confusing to potentially put you off...go with his initial critique of modernity as containing its own seed of anti-enlightened destruction...
reply, ctd.
Of course not all contributions are equal. And true greatness usually gets recognised. However, there are cases of good contributions, even outstanding contributions (and I'm not talking about my own here, they are certainly not outstanding) not receiving much attention because they come from people who are not in the spotlight of attention. But hey, yeah, let's talk about my own contributions for a moment; after all, I am most familiar with them. Let's take this journal. I've had it for over a year, but I've never had as many replies to any entry as to this. And why did I get this many replies? Because my thoughts suddenly became so much more brilliant? No - because I've been linked to by and .
And the bigger a fandom gets, the more that happens, because all the people reading the fic, watching the vids, visiting the websites etc. need to make some kind of selection, and the easiest way is always to follow other people's recs, which in effect means that those people who have already been recced get recced again while many others, perhaps, are never read.
All I'm saying is, it happens. And it's not surprising that some people get frustrated by it sometimes, myself included. Also, it is all too easy to conclude from the fact that you don't get feedback that you're simply *not interesting enough*. And that can be painful.
>Again, I find LJ more equalizing, b/c you can trace someone's intellectual or artistic process much more easily. In other words, if I find someone's post on a ML interesting, I have that post. If I find someone's comment in a LJ discussion interesting, I can look at their journal, read through their memories, get an idea of that person, a much better and rounder picture.
Oh, LJ has some great advantages, uncontested. It's certainly a good way of getting a 'rounder picture' of someone, as you say. But it also focuses even more attention than traditional fannish modes of interaction on certain central people, because, naturally, their journal is *all about them* (as this is all about me), and you can only reply (unless you have an LJ yourself). Same's true for all other kinds of blog, which is why I have watched the trend for fandom to switch to blogs almost entirely with some trepidation.
>If anything, I think, LJ equalizes in ways that ML's or other forums never could. For me personally, it allowed me to leave my little corner of lurkerdom and actually meet people.
I think you may just never have found the right forum. It's true, a good forum is difficult to find. There are few of them, but if you find one, it's usually very easy to get into it. I was incredibly shy, six years ago, yet I managed to get into fandom via forums.
Okay, the maimed sentence about being linked to...
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I think you're right that mailing lists offer a very different kind of experience than lj does, and are an excellent way to build one's fannish "status." In my experience, lj became fun once I already had a bunch of fannish friends and acquaintances (made via mailing lists, both fiction and discussion-focused, and also via meeting folks at the occasional con). Livejournal is a neat way to keep tabs on a lot of fannish folks at once, but it's a very different beastie than mailing lists are...
However, the people who end up being the most influential, said 'intellectual élite', are usually those fen who on a regular basis display the most acute intelligence coupled with a high sensitivity to fannish concerns.
I like that notion, and I hope you're right. And I suspect some of the elite would be okay with being considered elite -- after all, there's nothing inherently wrong with being good at what you do and/or respected for being good! *g*
Frell, I may need to join that community.
And yes, I should be in bed now. It's four a.m.
Re: Frell, I may need to join that community.
Well, I've joined it. Let's see what happens.
Re: Well, I've joined it. Let's see what happens.
Wow.
Frell, I keep forgetting to use my nifty new icons. LOL (repost)
Yeah, it probably helps if you bring people to the party. ;-) Not many of my friends are on LJ.
Just noticed that I'm swearing a lot here! Sorry!
Looking at my spelling...
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I actually felt more "left out" on mailing lists (I never was really active on any boards), because I didn't really know how I could get to know the other fans on a more personal level, beyond the topic. That has become much easier on LJ. Also I've become increasingly multi-fandom over the years, and I like that about LJ as well, that I have the power to "customize" my fandom-related reading. Sure, the "high-profile" discussions don't happen in my LJ, but I can still participate in those, just like on lists (which aren't "my" space either).
Mailing lists
I agree on the subject of mailing lists. They often are very strictly on topic, so as not to clutter people's mailboxes too much. What I'm really comparing LJ to most, I think, is forums/boards. A well-run, not too large forum is still, to me, the ideal fannish posting environment. Unfortunately there never were many of those, and they seem to become more and more rare. Still, a good forum is a much more 'equalising' environment, because everybody can post there (whereas on LJ you have to be invited to become a member. Well, or pay money, that is.) and because in most cases topic rules aren't too strict, so that you can comfortably mix the on topic and personal stuff.
Re: Mailing lists
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I've never been a particularly well-known fan - I'm too multifandom to fit into a hole, and not brilliant enough to be read for just being me. But I've found that quite a few people who aren't all that interested in my fics are still interested in my blogging. They might not even share fandoms with me, and still keep me friends listed. The first few people told their friends, who told their friends, and now I get more comments on a good blog post as I do on a good fic.
So for me, it has been an equalizer. (Even if my fics still aren't all that noticed.) But yeah, it'll only work for the "lower middle class". Not for the beggars, no.
Well, people only started to friend me after this entry, really.
Re: Well, people only started to friend me after this entry, really.
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(Anonymous) 2003-11-07 05:28 pm (UTC)(link)As a reader I felt priviliged to be in a mailing list group which had a number of the fandom's top writers. After they opened live journals discussion switched to lj and this list, which had been, for the most part, an exciting and open, was decimated as more and more writers, betas, etc followed them.
When I broached this topic, ie accessibility to the author comparing lj to mailing lists, a few people commented that from their particular perspectives they feel that they have a more intimate relationship with the lj authors because they read their day- to- day writings. They feel that they can email them on more mundane topics rather than just giving feedback to fiction. I can't though, I don't want to offend anyone, but the personal lives of fans, writers and others are of much less interest to me than fannish discussion.
P
Agree about private lives.
Yes. That's one part of the reason why I have my objections to LJ. Of course, it's happened before. Fandom is never static, and if it's not LJ/blogs, then its people moving away from one forum to a new one, or from one fandom to another one. But I think the migration of exactly the people you mention here, that is, the 'best minds' - or at least those that are both smart *and* well-known/prolific (there will of course always be smart people who just lurk) is quite unprecedented.
>When I broached this topic, ie accessibility to the author comparing lj to mailing lists, a few people commented that from their particular perspectives they feel that they have a more intimate relationship with the lj authors because they read their day- to- day writings. They feel that they can email them on more mundane topics rather than just giving feedback to fiction. I can't though, I don't want to offend anyone, but the personal lives of fans, writers and others are of much less interest to me than fannish discussion.
I agree. I do read personal writings on LJ, but I feel like I already have to have *some* kind of bond of... friendship (beyond the LJ friending, that is) or at least sympathy beyond the common fannish bond to be fully entitled (*and* interested). Hence, I am not all that surprised that until last week, no one apart from the five to ten people on my friends list ever found their way to my journal, because I assumed it was the same for other people. Why should anybody want to read about my dislike of lettuce? ;-)
A few people have friended me recently, due to this discussion, I suppose. However, since they friended me, I feel entitled to read their entries now, and of course I want to get to know them now.
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It really hits me that I just had a very long phone conversation with a friend (also fan) exactly about this (in between more personal stuff).
Personally, I was quite against LJs - I felt the lists were suffering, people was leaving and discussion was languishing. Then I decided to try it myself, so at least I could speak with some knowledge. I started by reading a few LJs, looking for interests and communities, and finally someone offered me a code.
When I started, I basically knew like three people with LJ. I surfed on befriending the LJs I liked and now a few people have started befriending me as well. Posting fiction will help :)
I don't think that any fannish interaction is egalitarian - people will be louder, braver, controversial, more prolific than others. I do think that LJs induce more activity - you can be a lurker, yes, but it's not the same. I see a lot more feedback (of any variety) posted on LJs than on email lists.
Profound discussions are still happening on email, for me, but LJs provide me with lots more pics and icons (and I am a vey visual person, so that is a big incentive for me) and quite a lot of fiction. I feel more connected to fandom in general - I have always been a not-big, not-small fan, but someone in between.
I am tired and have to sleep now, but found your entry very interesting - which means that I will browse through the rest of your journal and probably friend you ~g~
Thanks!
Feel free to friend me... but be warned,
Not that I would mind being friended, hell no! (Although the first time someone I didn't know personally friended me, I was kinda freaked out (My reaction was a bit like this: 'How the frell did that person even *find* my LJ!?!') *g* Freaked out, but ultimately flattered.
Okay, *need* to get back to Neolithic Ireland now. Will reply to more stuff here in the next few days, if I can find the time. (An iffy thing, at the moment.)
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This is something many of us here seem to agree on.
>When I started, I basically knew like three people with LJ. I surfed on befriending the LJs I liked and now a few people have started befriending me as well.
I was never quite able to do that. I only friended people I knew from outside LJ, and now people who have friended me.
>Posting fiction will help :)
But only if more than five people read your LJ. ;-)
>I don't think that any fannish interaction is egalitarian
Of course not. But the fannish *ideology* is, which is why we're debating this whole sorry status issue in more or less regular intervals, trying to reconcile ideology and reality.
- people will be louder, braver, controversial, more prolific than others. I do think that LJs induce more activity - you can be a lurker, yes, but it's not the same. I see a lot more feedback (of any variety) posted on LJs than on email lists.
>Profound discussions are still happening on email, for me, but LJs provide me with lots more pics and icons (and I am a vey visual person, so that is a big incentive for me)
*g* Yeah, I started making icons myself this week. No idea why. (I'm *not* a very visual person.)
>and quite a lot of fiction. I feel more connected to fandom in general - I have always been a not-big, not-small fan, but someone in between.
I think I feel more connected to a few people thanks to LJ, but fandom in general is still happening in some larger, more open forums for me. Farscape fandom, e.g., is happening on Kansas, on Frell Me Dead, even on the small but extremely friendly and funny Unofficial UK FS board, and the equally small but friendly German 'farscaped' mailing list. And many, many people there aren't even on LJ. I would hate to miss out on that part of fandom.
*waves to all the unexpected visitors and is endlessly flattered*
meritocracy
Fandom isn't a democracy, it's a meritocracy which people abide in entirely of their own volition and with no pressures other than their own personal lists of pros and cons. It's a vote-with-you-feet situation. Anyone can move- emmigrate to a diferent list, found their own country. If they choose not to, well, they must have decided that the situation they're in is better than one they could create by themselves. Nothing's stopping them except themselves and- meritocracy. Maybe they know that they can't compete on the same level.
But that's exactly the point, isn't it?
As I've said elsewhere, my 'status' in fandom could be worse; there are areas in fandom where I would even be considered one of the BNF myself (small areas, but still). However, what's really at issue here is not 'do people like me/respect me', but rather 'how bright am I'. There may be people, maybe even many people, who are not intellectually ambitious, but I am. I compare myself (e.g. to other people here on LJ) and constantly find myself lacking. And that rankles me.
(Do I hear you mutter 'therapy?' *g*)
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(Anonymous) 2003-11-15 09:35 am (UTC)(link)I'm not even sure if I can add anything valuable, but I feel like sharing my random thoughts on the subject:
I used to be fairly active on message boards for a while, and I do post every once in a while on a mailing list (although less during the last 2 years or so, because I have no Internet access at home.), but I am basically a lurker.
What, as a lurker, appeals to me about LJ -in comparison to mailing lists- is that most of it is open to anyone to read, without having to sign in, register or declare your presence in anyway.
That has its advantages, especially when you're just interested in reading a fic or ten in a fandom, without having the intention (or feeling able) to contribute anything.
Yet, the discussions going on on LJ tempt to join in. (It's also even less real-time then mailing list discussion, so having only a restricted Internet access doesn't seem as much of a problem.) But leqving comments as a non-LJ-person seems often like a breach of etiquette, because all the other contributors seem so familiar with each other.
So I find myself thinking sometimes 'Hm, I'd like to have a LJ as well, to post my random thoughts (and rare fic snippets) and join into interesting discussions...' But eventually, I always refrain from it, realizing that nobody would read it, anyway.
But well, I (being a media studies student) also belong to the people that consider fandom as a valuable academic case study, so I keep telling myself that if I don't manage to be an especially active part of fandom, I can at least study it, and use various media-theories to explain it. (Or more often, think things like: 'If this [random academic] had any idea about media-fandom he would have a completely other opinion about Internet communities.') ^_^
(BTW, I always thought that compared to others, McLuhan is pretty easy to understand, or maybe interpret. Then again, I read quite a few texts explaining his theories/their background. But well, they helped me, when whole books explaining Lacan's work didn't enlighten me in the least concerning his theories.)
i.c.k.