🔥 fandom

I find myself missing the days where fandom was a private experience more and more, by which I mean to say: I miss the concept of "friends only" journals and blogs. I miss when the pace of the Internet and therefore also fandom was slower. I miss when memes stayed relevant for months if not years. I miss when a new person entered fandom and everyone and their grandmother would outdo themselves trying to befriend them. I miss the community feeling of fandoms where you were almost proud to be a "contributing member" whether that was as a writer, a reader, an artist, an extremely cool contributor with other crafts, or a supportive friend.

I absolutely hate huge Discord servers where things are so busy and nothing stays on topic for long, and someone is always spamming @ everyone and there are so many people you can't form a bond with any of them. I hate how posting anything in fandom now is posting it publicly; it's no longer some fun write-up you did for your friends but something you have to also check over to make sure it's suitable for the entire fandom to read.

I hate how fandoms in general have moved away from giving creatives feedback on their art, especially authors. There are more people reading fanfiction than ever before but almost no one comments, not even to just say thanks, not even in some larger fandoms. This goes right back to missing the community feeling of fandom. I understand wanting easy rebloggable content, and I very much get having almost nothing in the proverbial tank at the end of the day to say witty things, but if you read something and you enjoyed it: say so.

I think people have forgotten that fandom, and sharing creative works with fandom, is a social experience, and this gets truer and truer the older you are and the better your craft gets. You don't get good, solid writers in fandom by ignoring them. They cannot thank you for your kudos. They certainly cannot thank you for your silence. If we were all after money we would strive to write professionally. If we we wrote merely for ourselves we would let our stories rot on our hard drives. Writers in fandom are looking to share and socialize with an audience. That has been the backbone of fandom and all creation in fandom for as long as fandom has been around.

And it feels very much like that is slipping away into anonymous obscurity where nobody wants to take the time to make a connection—however fleeting.

And then people wonder why their favorite authors stop writing. They legitimately do not understand! They express sadness. But when you go look at the stories they're sad about losing, they never took the time to even give the author one word of encouragement, and no writer writes forever for free.

Fandom has always been a delicate balancing act of those who make gifts and those who take them. The thing about taking a gift, though, is that you say thank you for it, and in fandom spaces giving thanks functions as a link. It's what keeps things balanced. It's what spurs further creation and further thanks. On and on, back and forth.

In recent years, with the Internet moving so fast and fandom along with it, we've lost those slow and meaningful connections.

Take heed:

You cannot marvel in the halls of creation for all eternity without giving something back. Eventually the walls and shelves will be bare and there will be nothing new to behold.