Fourth Post!

[hoisinsauce]

btw feel free to suggest/nominate post titles

Post about fandom! Or whatever! Whether it's a rave about some obscure series, or an essay dissecting every last reason why some internet-famous author should rethink their career, someone will probably read it at some point! We also just chat about life.

(start a comment thread by replying to this post)

Comments

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

I miss forums so much.

I wonder if part of the whole kids invading our spaces could be due to Discord replacing forums, and how it's easier to quickly cultivate a community while focusing on the parasocial aspects. This makes it harder for information to stick around in topics where people can find it. It makes it easier for people with social skills to hang out with other people who are interested in the social side of things, even when conversation strays from the topic at hand. From my experience, this seems to amplify the risk of creating an echo chamber, where only people from a specific background get along.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

I miss forums too, that's the part of internet culture that I'm most nostalgic for, but I don't really see a reasonable path for them making a comeback.

The rise of sites like reddit/twitter have given people a totally skewed idea of online personas, and how if you havea fight with someone you should dig back into their history to generate lists of why they suck, to convince others who have less time on their hands and will accept your summary without digging further. The genie's been let out of the bottle.

Basically the only way to avoid this in current forums is to be mind-stultifyingly boring. Even forums focused on technical hobbies can't avoid this clout-cultivating cycle unless they exclusively cater to newbies asking basic questions over and over again. /cynicism

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

sa

Thinking about it more ...all of the best forum cultures I knew involved small fandoms. There's a few small fandoms I still follow on tumblr, which is awful, but at least things are more open than locked-down discord servers.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

DA

Yes and no I guess. IDK, I wonder if Tumblr et al had a role as well. I've had one excellent small fandom and one small fandom that I come back to every now and then to check on. It was fine while I was there, and I met my ex via it, but AFAIK one person TIFed out and now I'm back and every person and new person is some flavour of genderspecial and it's every flavour of batshit.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

DA

I think using chat over forums also just encourages a faster cycle of discussion, which makes it easier for people to get more and more detached from reality. There's no time to touch grass, as the kids say. On a forum you might write a long thing, go "eh this is unwise" and delete. On chat, too late, it's up there and everyone's replying!

I think fan forums can make a comeback, but they'll prolly be limited to a smaller pool of people who feel the absence. In some ways I think it's easier than ever to host them. In the past I think you had to be way more knowledgeable about things like auth or sanitising data; now libraries amd standards handle it for you. At least, I remember forums I was on used to go down for hours when they needed an update or were having a skin change. Seems smoother these days.