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jlhI was reading a Village Voice music blog piece about Kanye West and Matt Lauer on the Today Show (and seriously, if you think that Kanye has more to apologize for in saying, in response to the non-response to Hurricane Katrina, that "George Bush doesn't care about black people" than George Bush does in his actual non-response, never mind assorted other things like TWO WARS, then you're an idiot, end of story) and as an aside the writer quoted Zadie Smith: "Matt Lauer doesn't listen to people when they talk."
Intrigued, I followed the link to "Generation Why," a superb piece by Smith in the New York Review of Books on The Social Network and the Jaron Lanier book You Are Not a Gadget (which I'm buying like, tomorrow) that's less review of either and more an extended rumination by a Gen X'er on What Gen Y Hath Wrought, and what that means, and all of that. And in it she said:
It should be noted here, for those of you not aware, that I am fiercely Gen X, but of late I've noticed the Gen Ys that I know online are slowly becoming less enthralled by the internet culture they've spawned, which is vaguely interesting in the way that watching younger people figure out stuff that you also figured out when you were their age is, like watching a kid figure out how to tell time or tie their shoes. Not condescending, just a true thing.
I've mostly stopped posting the kinds of long, rambling essays on things in pop culture that I used to write all the time. My thoughts on TV are digest-sized these days, because when they aren't they're ignored, and entries with no comments tend to train the blogger to not blog about that. But I'm thinking about the blah blah blah over people moving to tumblr or twitter and you know, unless you're in very specific areas of fandom--really, only the metafandom crowd, and even then very deeply in the middle of it--writing anything longer than a couple of paragraphs isn't particularly encouraged, so why write something longer than 140 characters in the first place? Or why write anything at all--why not just talk in the macro'd-together picspam currency of fandom tumblrs? I'm not saying this to imply that writing 140 characters or making tumblr macros is a bad thing, or isn't as good as writing an essay about how much you love some character, but that I'm not sure we should be shocked, shocked! that people are moving over there.
(Such as they are moving. I'm on twitter, I'm on tumblr, under clio-jlh, though I'm not all that fannish in either place. I don't think being on one platform means you've given up the others, except for people who have, and the people who have, half their posts were "sorry I don't post much but I get intimidated by so much writing" anyway.)
A while ago, when I was having one of my periodic freakouts about being a bad fangirl, I laid out for a friend what being a good fangirl looks like:
I think this is generally true. I think that very few people are going to read this. I've been told often that when I write long, write out my thoughts, I am intimidating and no one wants to comment. Which you know, is just another version of being seven and being told that smart girls aren't any fun, as far as I'm concerned, and I'm not sure when fandom, which is inherently nerdy, became a place where NO THINKING IS ALLOWED, PLEASE. Or at least if you are thinking, hide it under pink silliness, in the appropriate Raising Ophelia fashion.
There's always a tension in fandom between it being a largely female space and whether there's actually any feminism going on around here. I'm thinking not much, and really it's only a safe female space such that there isn't, in every single entry I make, some man telling me that I should get the fuck off the internet because women don't belong, and you know, that's a really low bar to clear. (That many, many spaces don't clear, by the way.) Lately I've been blocked writing fic by a crippling self-consciousness, a knowledge that I am that middle-aged cat-owning spinster writing lewd romance stories on the internet, and trying to figure out if I look as pathetic as fanboys make it sound. There isn't a whole lot I can actually do about being a middle-aged cat-owning spinster writing lewd romance stories on the internet, though I might need some other way of thinking about it.
This isn't to say, by the way, that I'm going to be writing thoughts here all the time. I'm not; there's no margin in it, no future, no reward. Mostly I save up my thoughts for dinners with or long emails to Meg, and that often gets it out of me. But in the end, my relationship with the English language, and with my own thoughts, predate my relationship with fandom or the computer or livejournal. So the masochistic tl;dr continues.
Intrigued, I followed the link to "Generation Why," a superb piece by Smith in the New York Review of Books on The Social Network and the Jaron Lanier book You Are Not a Gadget (which I'm buying like, tomorrow) that's less review of either and more an extended rumination by a Gen X'er on What Gen Y Hath Wrought, and what that means, and all of that. And in it she said:
Perhaps the reason why there has not been more resistance to social networking among older people is because 1.0 people do not use Web 2.0 software in the way 2.0 people do. An analogous situation can be found in the way the two generations use cell phones. For me, text messaging is simply a new medium for an old form of communication: I write to my friends in heavily punctuated, fully expressive, standard English sentences—and they write back to me in the same way. Text-speak is unknown between us. Our relationship with the English language predates our relationships with our phones.
It should be noted here, for those of you not aware, that I am fiercely Gen X, but of late I've noticed the Gen Ys that I know online are slowly becoming less enthralled by the internet culture they've spawned, which is vaguely interesting in the way that watching younger people figure out stuff that you also figured out when you were their age is, like watching a kid figure out how to tell time or tie their shoes. Not condescending, just a true thing.
I've mostly stopped posting the kinds of long, rambling essays on things in pop culture that I used to write all the time. My thoughts on TV are digest-sized these days, because when they aren't they're ignored, and entries with no comments tend to train the blogger to not blog about that. But I'm thinking about the blah blah blah over people moving to tumblr or twitter and you know, unless you're in very specific areas of fandom--really, only the metafandom crowd, and even then very deeply in the middle of it--writing anything longer than a couple of paragraphs isn't particularly encouraged, so why write something longer than 140 characters in the first place? Or why write anything at all--why not just talk in the macro'd-together picspam currency of fandom tumblrs? I'm not saying this to imply that writing 140 characters or making tumblr macros is a bad thing, or isn't as good as writing an essay about how much you love some character, but that I'm not sure we should be shocked, shocked! that people are moving over there.
(Such as they are moving. I'm on twitter, I'm on tumblr, under clio-jlh, though I'm not all that fannish in either place. I don't think being on one platform means you've given up the others, except for people who have, and the people who have, half their posts were "sorry I don't post much but I get intimidated by so much writing" anyway.)
A while ago, when I was having one of my periodic freakouts about being a bad fangirl, I laid out for a friend what being a good fangirl looks like:
Being squeeful generally; making picspams in which you are openly, overtly, and graphically lustful about the subject (male or female); writing a steady output of primarily one-shot first-time angsty porn fic; being overtly shippy in your recaps of the canon, whatever that may be; and finally never being srs bsns about anything ever, which means not being thoughtful, not having any particular depth, not writing entries longer than two or three short paragraphs because omg tl;dr, but rather being as close to the ONTD/capslock aesthetic/attitude as possible because it's just fandom and we're all just here for the porn.
I think this is generally true. I think that very few people are going to read this. I've been told often that when I write long, write out my thoughts, I am intimidating and no one wants to comment. Which you know, is just another version of being seven and being told that smart girls aren't any fun, as far as I'm concerned, and I'm not sure when fandom, which is inherently nerdy, became a place where NO THINKING IS ALLOWED, PLEASE. Or at least if you are thinking, hide it under pink silliness, in the appropriate Raising Ophelia fashion.
There's always a tension in fandom between it being a largely female space and whether there's actually any feminism going on around here. I'm thinking not much, and really it's only a safe female space such that there isn't, in every single entry I make, some man telling me that I should get the fuck off the internet because women don't belong, and you know, that's a really low bar to clear. (That many, many spaces don't clear, by the way.) Lately I've been blocked writing fic by a crippling self-consciousness, a knowledge that I am that middle-aged cat-owning spinster writing lewd romance stories on the internet, and trying to figure out if I look as pathetic as fanboys make it sound. There isn't a whole lot I can actually do about being a middle-aged cat-owning spinster writing lewd romance stories on the internet, though I might need some other way of thinking about it.
This isn't to say, by the way, that I'm going to be writing thoughts here all the time. I'm not; there's no margin in it, no future, no reward. Mostly I save up my thoughts for dinners with or long emails to Meg, and that often gets it out of me. But in the end, my relationship with the English language, and with my own thoughts, predate my relationship with fandom or the computer or livejournal. So the masochistic tl;dr continues.
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Date: 2010-11-11 08:58 pm (UTC)I also text in full sentences. With semicolons, sometimes.
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Date: 2010-11-12 04:43 am (UTC)After a lot of wank in a previous fandom that got really personal, I made the decision to take my personal life off this LJ. (Not that it's on another one; it's just mostly not on the internet.) So I'm here for fandom but also chat about media, though obviously I also engage with other people when they talk about their own personal lives. Probably when I get more distance from that toxic fandom, and when my personal life is a little more under my control, I will again.
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Date: 2010-11-12 12:55 am (UTC)If I had been able to get off my arse and actually bother torrenting Glee - for some reason E4 isn't showing it yet - I'd probably have responded to that. (Because I did bother torrenting Popular and though I haven't watched all of it yet, I'm enjoying it more than I ever did Glee. Though I'm fully expecting Season 2 of Popular to be much, much worse.)
According to Wikipedia, at least, I'm a member of Generation Y. I was born in 1986. Yet I don't really feel like one. I text in proper sentences, I shun Facebook - except when I can use the chat feature to have involved conversations with people halfway across the world, or halfway across the city - and my father is more in tune with current pop culture than I am. (I mean, right now I'm listening to swing music, and not just because it's helping with my NaNoWriMo project.) Maybe I was just born old, but I can't fathom being able to compress everything you want to say into 140 characters. Or some pictures. And while I have a sneaking envy of the "I Like This!" feature, because I don't always have something to say, I'd hate to have that be the only option. I hope I'm not getting Tumblr wrong, but I'm under the impression that you can't comment. Why would you want a blog people can't comment on?
Is it a consolation that I, for one, don't find you setting out your thoughts intimidating? I really enjoyed reading this post, and I've found things to say about it. I'm wondering why there might be some variation of tall poppy syndrome in fandom, too. Is it a problem with my generation? A lot of people seem curiously resistant to changing their minds, as if changing your mind is a sign of weakness. Or they're just thinking "Fandom is Happy Fun Time!", which is all very well unless you've just spotted a stonking great arrow and no-one else has. And why shouldn't someone be able to point that arrow out without having a bunch of people telling them they're harshing people's squee?
(I feel a bit out of step with fandom: I've never been able to put on slash googles, or read porn without wincing and getting supremely bored. I seem to be unusual amongst women in that any form of verbalisation about sex is a total turn-off. I actually prefer being srs bsns about fandom.)
PS - am I one of the Gen Y-ers who spawned this internet culture, given that I've never been interested in the social networking stuff beyond Livejoural? You might not be able to tell me whether I'll like Season 2 Glee, but surely you can tell me this!
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Date: 2010-11-12 07:58 pm (UTC)Popular doesn't take its turn for the WHAT? until season 3 iirc, but the final season is a giant cake wreck.
The one aspect of Tumblr that I find really freeing is the lack of comments because then I don't feel self-conscious when no one has commented! I don't even feel self-conscious when no one hit "like" because tumblr is a lot more spammy than LJ and the way you find out about likes/reblogs is very different than finding out about comments. I feel a little more like I can post whatever I want on tumblr without that constant feeling of unspoken public censure. I look at a post without comments on my LJ and I feel embarrassed, I think because of the very performative LJ culture that was in place when I got here.
I think the problem with the whole harshing squee thing is yes, in part what people are here for, but also in part some people hearing "oh, there are a few problems" equaling "this is a bad show and you should feel bad for liking it." Which, to be fair, is exactly what some people do mean when it comes to stuff like Glee and Supernatural. I think there are many ways in which all the social justice stuff being intermixed with fandom is good, but this is a way in which it isn't, because SJ tends to not be about gray areas or opinions.
Obviously I write buckets of porn, but I did before I was ever in fandom.
The Gen Y people I'm talking about are actually on tumblr; I'm thinking of a few people I personally know and then also Sadie from Tigerbeatdown in particular, post the Emily Gould reactions, etc etc etc. It's pretty internecine NY online media/former Gawker people scene stuff.
Thanks for the reply!!
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Date: 2010-11-13 01:38 am (UTC)Sorry. I got distracted. I would have thought Dreamwidth would be the place for the meta-inclined, the thinking person's LiveJournal: it's why I moved here anyway. The thing is, I feel a bit embarrassed if I don't comment on someone's entries for some time because... well, we granted mutual access to each other and that suggests we find each other interesting, and I've got it stuck in my head that "I didn't leave you a comment = I find you boring", even though that's not the case. Maybe I didn't have anything to say, or anything to say that suited the tone of the post; maybe I can't comment because I don't know much about the contents of the post; maybe I missed the post; maybe I started a comment and agonised over it so long I slept on it, woke up, saw the half-comment and thought "Aargh!" (It's happened.) But the end result to you is the same - no comment!
Of course, I wouldn't agonise over a comment that just has to say, in essence, "I like this", but those sorts of comments are also much less interesting and I like to be interesting, or at least try to be interesting.
Would that be another aspect of the performative culture in place?
Didn't Popular have only two seasons? I've only read summaries of Season 2 episodes, where it seemed like Ryan Murphy tried to get serious, and we know how ham-fisted the guy is when he wants to inject seriousness into the proceedings. I think I'll just try to enjoy Season 1.
I can't say I've seen too much of the srs bsns crowd coming into the squee venues and hijacking it. Closest I've seen is someone posting a a link to news article on problems with Glee in the big gleeclub comm on LJ and some people agreed. The squee crowd... to their credit, some of them were all "Well, it's not perfect, but I like it and I'm going to keep watching". Others were somewhat less, um, phlegmatic. More often I've seen the Invasion of the Anons into a personal journal. Someone points out something ridiculous about pop culture, the anons come and trot out arguments like "You're just jealous" or "It's only fiction, I feel sorry for such bitter hate-filled people like you who can't enjoy that". I think I might have been reading too many of my LJ memories tagged "Mind Food" recently.
Maybe the two camps should just try and stay apart... but aren't they doing that already?
All I know about porn is that I don't want to read about it or see it... I don't think it should be censored, of course, it's simply that it has no effect on me beyond making me cringe. Sometimes I feel like a Martian. (Actually, that's another reason why I don't comment so much - my comment on a lot of, say, fanfic porn would be "I do not understand other people's visceral reactions to portions of this narrative. Having said this, I quite liked the parts where they were not engaged in sexual intercourse." And who wants to get that?)
I can't really comment on the last - like I say, I'm so over this social networking craze that I never really tried it in the first place. (Actually, I can draw a parallel between seeing people look up porn on the computer and seeing them look up Facebook: in both cases I'm thinking "Why are you doing that when you can just go and... meet people?") If I were only twenty years older, I wouldn't be out of step!
(Hope I don't feel too embarrassed by this comment so I can comment again!)
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Date: 2010-11-15 04:18 pm (UTC)I think that DW is more thinky, and I feel like I get involved in more long serious conversations here than on LJ, but that means cultivating a different crowd and I am you know, making strides! Making strides!
Wow, Popular did only have two seasons--I'd remembered it as so much longer than that, wonder why. Anyway, yeah, it goes off the rails pretty quickly. In a fun way, but yeah.
I think a lot of the performativeness is "look how interesting my life really is" which some people can pull off and some people just can't. I can't, at least not without feeling very self conscious, and I don't really like talking about my daily life online mostly because I used to, but I was friends with a lot of people who were more performative, and that led to jealousy and craziness, so I just don't anymore. Also I used to be more open, and after some betrayals and hurts I'm much more closed off in what about my life I want to reveal to lots of people.
Glee, just, I don't know. I find that if you add up all the things that people are complaining about in Glee, you don't get to a place where any of it is good. And I think one of the problems we have right now is that yes, there is a way to talk about cultural issues in cultural products, but it doesn't sit very well with the often strident and binary way that some folks want to talk about social justice issues online--they want to quickly get to the "this is bad and you should feel bad" place, and they're very judgmental. Even the things that people were saying after the pilot had premiered, about why they weren't going to watch the show, were incredibly judgmental of anyone who might want to watch.
This is why I avoid racebending, however much it started in a good place. A lot of people trying to be right, rather than trying to have a conversation.
Don't worry about it! My favorite genre of fiction is romance, in books and in film, and always has been. Sometimes I feel a little self conscious about that because it's so gendered, you know, it makes me into such a GIRL, and so much of fandom is about never, never, never behaving like a girl. (And it doesn't help that action kind of bores me. If there's a lot of character development and humor I'll watch, but endless fight scenes and omg war scenes? No thank you.)
If you were twenty years older you'd just be contacting your old college friends and high school friends on FB, who moved across the country a long time ago. That's mostly what happens.
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Date: 2010-11-12 07:11 am (UTC)I do see the kind of "good fangirl" typing that you're talking about over in Sherlock fandom to a certain extent, at least in terms of drooling over the actors and super-shippiness, but again, the rest of that stuff, less so. There seem to be a lot of kyriarchy-aware folks who are hep to talk about the problems there, too, although the fandom is much more concentrated (and probably larger) than is than Buffy, so I don't think the proportion of folks is as high although the numbers seem similar.
Anyway, this is all to say: I really like this post! And YOU ARE NOT ALONE in wanting to write meta or long posts or fic that isn't first-timey, nor are you alone in wanting to talk about srs bsns shit. I LOVE MY FANDOMS LIKE CRAZY and they have race/class/gender/etc problems coming out their ears, like most Western media. (Buffy pretty much rocks when it comes to gender in most ways, though, I have to say.) I also love my fandoms for talking about this and lampshading it. LEGIT AND WONDERFUL WAYS TO FANGIRL.
*HUGS*
Edit #1: ALSO I just realized you are a year older than me, and I thought you were substantially older. Oh, the perils of being a grownup on the internet. That does make the migration to tumblr/twitter more unsettling, doesn't it? I find myself remembering the migration from Yahoo!Groups to LJ and wondering if it was equally unsettling for folks who'd been around listservs longer. It's definitely a different dynamic. But tumblr & twitter are no replacement for journaling/blogging.
Edit #2: I've recently relocated to NYC, and if you ever need to blow off some steam and have Serious Fannish Thoughts with someone over coffee/tea, the offer is open. :)
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Date: 2010-11-12 08:06 pm (UTC)That "good fangirl" is the basis of all of the Slash Pairings of the Nanosecond. Right now that means Arthur/Eames and Sherlock/John, so I'm not surprised you're seeing them. They are large in number and their squee tends to move fandom because if you please them the rewards are very, very high.
HP fandom was similarly a lot of srs bsns, at least part of which, I think, was because it was a book fandom. I'm not surprised by Buffy, either, because it's just not going to get the super hard core slashers, because they won't watch a show with a female lead and so much of shipping is about narrative prizes. If your narrative prize is a woman, then there will be slash, but you won't get those Big Time Slashers.
Yikes, do I come across as very old on my journal? I only say that because generally I'm told I come across as sort of young. Anyway, yes, I am in NYC, and my email is clio DOT jlh AT gmail if you want to drop me a line! I love coffee and also brunch, as I'm in an area without a lot of brunch places and so am happy to journey forth for brunching.
Thanks!
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Date: 2010-11-12 11:12 pm (UTC)Ahhhhh. I am a het/femslash fangirl of yore, so... I'm not really familiar with slash fannish culture. I will happily read it when it crosses my path, but with the exception of Holmes/Watson (ergo, John/Sherlock) and their undying eternal flame of love, I have no m/m OTPs. I won't even watch TV/film without a female lead 95% of the time (the other 5% being Holmesian). I think this might explain the different fannish/feminist atmospheres we're seeing.
I think I just assumed that you were older from reading your talk about feminist burnout, which is not something I see from a lot of people our age. Even though it is completely legit, and why I won't participate in most feminist forums online. DO NOT WANT.
And I will totally drop you an email! :D
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Date: 2010-11-14 12:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-15 04:22 pm (UTC)Though posting this and talking to people has helped me to realize what a number my brief period in online feminism did on my brain. I mean, wandering into a space where you don't expect to feel welcome and being battered is one thing; wandering into a space where you do and being judged, quite another. I think I was surprised at how much of that online feminism is driven by quite judgmental and self-interested upper middle class well educated white single urban girls in their mid-twenties. And among their many unexamined prejudices is one against the expressed sexuality of older women. You wouldn't think, but there it is--they get all freaked out by TwiMoms or those Cougars for Cook or whatever, and suddenly sound like 4chan. Middle aged women, disowned or hated by everyone on the internet.