This is Not a Blog

trisscar368:

trisscar368:

Fandom is functionally an anarchy

There is no higher power, we don’t have secret masters in our main fandom spaces anymore.  There’s no regulation for content or of who gets to be a part of the social group.

There’s little need for fandom to financially support our own spaces (we’re not all on private servers and chatrooms), so there’s no equivalent to taxes – we voluntarily pay for things we want collectively, such as ao3 servers and zines

The only organization we have is strictly voluntary.  We divide ourselves according to what we want as individuals.

We adhere to rules we agree upon as a group, but it’s still voluntary.  Nobody can call the police if you don’t tag something, they can only exclude you from their corner of the collective and try to get others to do the same.

There are also some definite parallels to religious structures in that we have a sacred text, we argue about interpretations and whether the text is actually sacred and what “god” meant by it (and whether god matters), and we divide into what’s basically sects.  And the umbrella “group” (for lose definitions of the term) is collectively blamed for what other sects do.

But there is not and can never be a true 1:1 parallel to any organized structure or homogeneous group, because fandom is an elective anarchy.  And any discussion or argument about a particular fandom that relies on generalizations about the group being a certain way will eventually break down because fandom is individualistic and elective to an extent that no political identity, religious identity, or social convention-based identity ever can be.

As a consequence of the opt-in nature of fandom, some folks will be blissfully ignorant of the issues and drama of their sect off in a different corner of the internet, but will likely still be held accountable for knowing it if/when they are ever confronted with someone on “the other side”. 

It’s sort of like… you go to one church every Sunday because you like the people and you like the pastor. They preach love and acceptance of all people and pray for good things and encourage the congregation to volunteer at the homeless shelter. You then run into someone on Tuesday who demands to know why Christians are such assholes, why they hate so many people and why congregation X has money for a billboard to advertise their church but doesn’t use that money to help the poor and needy. 
“I don’t know,” you say, “I’m not part of that congregation.” 
“But you’re still a Christian and they’re Christians so why don’t you do something?” They demand.
“It doesn’t work that way,” you say. 
“And what about the Christians is X country doing terrible things….” and on and on the go. 
You cannot win. There is no winning. Nothing you do can impress upon this person that just because you’re part of the big umbrella group doesn’t mean you have knowledge or control over anyone else under that umbrella. 

We say “you’re responsible for creating your own fandom experience” and honestly, it’s true. YOU are the one who creates a fandom around yourself. You follow only the people you want to follow, engage on only the platforms you want to engage on, read only the fics you want to read, reblog only the content you want to reblog. Every fandom experience is truly unique. There are some things beyond our control (being blocked, getting anons, who interacts with us, ect.) but in someways it’s like a new community (or at least a new perspective of the existing community) is built every time a person “joins” a new fandom. 

And one more thing on the structure of fandom… you have to bring your own morals. Unlike a religion, this group isn’t going to encourage being a good person. (Granted, we should all be at that point where being kind is a given but…) There are no consequences for being rude or cruel and in some communities that’s encouraged, as long as you’re being rude and cruel to the right people. You can’t really excommunicate someone from fandom as it is now – they can always make a new identity and come right back. There is no punishment. There is no sin. But there’s also very limited reward. We don’t reward or encourage good behavior, polite disagreements, honest conversations, or simply just leaving people the hell alone. Which, yeah, no one gets a cookie for being a decent person, but when people are getting attention for being mean and attention is the social currency of fandom… we don’t exactly foster a positive environment. 

But is there even any way to foster a positive environment when there is no structure? Maybe on a micro level but I don’t see the larger culture changing when there’s no incentive to.