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Because I am too tired to write my own meta.
"I know these traditions and practices aren't set in stone, that they slide and they evolve--look at RPS, for instance. And some are controversial, like public discussion/crit--some have seen it going on since forever and some have never seen it before; some think it's healthy and some think it's hurtful. I look at this thing, though, the taking of and playing with another fan's creation without contact or permission, and I think I see a new thing, I think I see something that isn't thought of as done and that hasn't been through the gazillion rounds of discussion that RPS and critical discussion have, and I wonder. The 'We Don't Do That!' folks may be right--maybe we don't. The 'We Can If We Want To!' folks may also be right; this may be a thing wot's time has come." --![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
carolyn_claire, here
"I dunno--this manners thing, I think it's become passe, in fandom, and it's all about the creative urge, now. No, really. I always thought that RPF was bad manners, but what do I know? It's all the rage, these days. Remixing someone else's story without asking first--I wouldn't have done it, thinking that it's not done, but maybe people do, and it is, and I've just missed the trolly." --carolyn_claire, ibid.
"I realized that since lj and the fandom explosion, I think there might have always been two parallel fandoms happening at once—there are the people who expect fandom to be a community and enjoy the community aspect of it and participate according to our self-governing rules, and there are the people who never have felt or believed in this community-mindedness and who participate with either an anarchist sort of mentality of attacking the machine or who use rampant misbehavior in fandom as release valve for the fact that social strictures in their off-line life leave them feeling alienated or commodified or ineffectual (this is totally discounting the people who are just ignorant morons)." --ethrosdemon, here
"I agree that not all mentoring is good. In fact, I don't think we'd be having underage, incest, or RPS as normal parts of fandom now if the old guard had stood firm. Things evolve.
But even a feral fan once part of a community constructs rules...at which point ferality changes to domesticity??? :-)" --cathexys, ibid.
"Just in the last three months or so [this post is itself a couple months old--ed.], I've noticed that it's become much more common to follow community posts with a sentence something along the lines of, 'If this isn't appropriate, please feel free to delete.' [. . .] I think it's clear that there's a nod to certain power structures taking place here. Perhaps the anarchist dream of the internet is over and a 'civilized' mindset is becoming ingrained in the web's denizens. What are the implications of this?" --chronofile, here
"The relevant issue as it applies to the internet is not the right to be something, but the right to publish something. Hegemonic institutions retain their power largely by controlling the ability of individuals to speak out; yet the revolution of the internet is its empowering everyone to publish what they will. My concern is that people are granting too much power to those who control the means of publication on the internet." --chronofile, ibid.
"I was trying more to set up a dichotomy between the 'anarchist dream' -- a term I admit to using somewhat off-handedly, but is grounded in the cyberpunk movement -- and the sort of embedded power that obliges people to tip their hats to the moderators with every post. It's that obligation that I find worthy of note." --chronofile, ibid.
"[O]ne could very easily argue that the people aren't really in control of the social conventions on LJ or, if one argues that they are (the old 'vote with your feet' argument that they can always create their own comm), if the way in which they are is similar to the way in which the U.S. government functions, than this type of 'control by the people' can't be what would be desired by the anarchist, because any usage of 'anarchist' that didn't include 'opposition of the government' would, I'd argue, be idiosyncratic." -- me, ibid.
"I know these traditions and practices aren't set in stone, that they slide and they evolve--look at RPS, for instance. And some are controversial, like public discussion/crit--some have seen it going on since forever and some have never seen it before; some think it's healthy and some think it's hurtful. I look at this thing, though, the taking of and playing with another fan's creation without contact or permission, and I think I see a new thing, I think I see something that isn't thought of as done and that hasn't been through the gazillion rounds of discussion that RPS and critical discussion have, and I wonder. The 'We Don't Do That!' folks may be right--maybe we don't. The 'We Can If We Want To!' folks may also be right; this may be a thing wot's time has come." --
carolyn_claire, here"I dunno--this manners thing, I think it's become passe, in fandom, and it's all about the creative urge, now. No, really. I always thought that RPF was bad manners, but what do I know? It's all the rage, these days. Remixing someone else's story without asking first--I wouldn't have done it, thinking that it's not done, but maybe people do, and it is, and I've just missed the trolly." --
carolyn_claire, ibid."I realized that since lj and the fandom explosion, I think there might have always been two parallel fandoms happening at once—there are the people who expect fandom to be a community and enjoy the community aspect of it and participate according to our self-governing rules, and there are the people who never have felt or believed in this community-mindedness and who participate with either an anarchist sort of mentality of attacking the machine or who use rampant misbehavior in fandom as release valve for the fact that social strictures in their off-line life leave them feeling alienated or commodified or ineffectual (this is totally discounting the people who are just ignorant morons)." --
ethrosdemon, here"I agree that not all mentoring is good. In fact, I don't think we'd be having underage, incest, or RPS as normal parts of fandom now if the old guard had stood firm. Things evolve.
But even a feral fan once part of a community constructs rules...at which point ferality changes to domesticity??? :-)" --
cathexys, ibid."Just in the last three months or so [this post is itself a couple months old--ed.], I've noticed that it's become much more common to follow community posts with a sentence something along the lines of, 'If this isn't appropriate, please feel free to delete.' [. . .] I think it's clear that there's a nod to certain power structures taking place here. Perhaps the anarchist dream of the internet is over and a 'civilized' mindset is becoming ingrained in the web's denizens. What are the implications of this?" --
chronofile, here"The relevant issue as it applies to the internet is not the right to be something, but the right to publish something. Hegemonic institutions retain their power largely by controlling the ability of individuals to speak out; yet the revolution of the internet is its empowering everyone to publish what they will. My concern is that people are granting too much power to those who control the means of publication on the internet." --
chronofile, ibid."I was trying more to set up a dichotomy between the 'anarchist dream' -- a term I admit to using somewhat off-handedly, but is grounded in the cyberpunk movement -- and the sort of embedded power that obliges people to tip their hats to the moderators with every post. It's that obligation that I find worthy of note." --
chronofile, ibid."[O]ne could very easily argue that the people aren't really in control of the social conventions on LJ or, if one argues that they are (the old 'vote with your feet' argument that they can always create their own comm), if the way in which they are is similar to the way in which the U.S. government functions, than this type of 'control by the people' can't be what would be desired by the anarchist, because any usage of 'anarchist' that didn't include 'opposition of the government' would, I'd argue, be idiosyncratic." -- me, ibid.