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hmpf(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*
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Frell, just when I was about to go to bed. *g*
Date: 2003-11-11 07:02 pm (UTC)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*
Date: 2003-11-11 07:12 pm (UTC)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
Date: 2003-11-11 07:22 pm (UTC)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
Date: 2003-11-11 07:26 pm (UTC)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...
Date: 2003-11-12 03:59 am (UTC)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...
Date: 2003-11-12 05:48 am (UTC)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...