Fandom Lurking Culture

[impala_chick]

I've been thinking about that tumblr post by caelum-in-the-avatarverse called fandom can do a little gatekeeping as a treat. vriddy made a post about it here at meta_warehouse. For me, this discussion resonates because I'm trying to strike a balance between protecting my fic from AI data scrapers and nefarious people while also gaining views and kudos and comments from other fandom enjoyers who might like my fic. I love getting kudos even when they're from guest/anon accounts. Before, I just assumed people weren't logged in to AO3 because maybe they were embarassed/didn't want their username associated with the fics they liked, but the 'lurker' label is much more broad and there a lot of reasons someone might not have an account or be logged in that I hadn't considered before. Maybe they're just not logged in because it's allowed/easier.

One of the links in the original tumblr post led me to this 2021 post with an ask about whether fandom was getting dumber - and the discussion there was about how 'easy' it is to access fandom spaces now.

I thought nyxelestia's response was especially on point:

The guy who founded Pinboard and talked about exactly this in his 2013 presentation describing how and why he welcomed fanfic fandoms over to his site when Del.icio.us died. Literally, one of his takeaways/suggestions to tech companies trying to grow a community on their platform:

Don't Make It Too Easy

One counterintuitive thing about active communities is that they sometimes use clunky, outdated tools. This doesn't just apply fandom, you can find it in all kinds of places. I like to scuba dive, for example, but the main scuba site is a terribly crufty PHP message board.

Our first instinct as programmers is to want to make these tools better. But these terrible interfaces serve a protective function, where they keep the community insulated from drive-by visitors and require new contributors to endure a a period of apprenticeship and lurking.

If you ever wonder why comments on sites like The Guardian or the New York Times are total trash, one reason may be that they've gone to too much effort to make it easy to post to the site.

I so agree that fandom is way too mainstream - even AO3 itself - and that has created a lot of our problems now. But then what's the fix? Make AO3 harder to navigate? I love the tag search features, so I certainly don't want those to go away.

I said I was going to lock all my fics, but I realized I've been forgetting to lock my newer ones. I kind of wish the site defaulted to locking all fic.

Comments

[sunlit_skycat]

Hm, I hope it isn't too late to comment on this.

I'm a younger member of fandom, so I remember the tail end of web 2.0 and the rise of social media. I think it's a little more complicated than a binary easy to use the site vs not. Social media makes it easy to find content, but getting into a conversation with someone I don't know is hard. There are a lot of tumblr bloggers with takes I admire, who I have developed extremely parasocial relationships with by reading their account every single day, but that doesn't mean they know me. The tools of tumblr encourage me to riff off of those bloggers to my own audience, at best.

In comparison, forums felt a lot more community-oriented. I wasn't viewing other people's content, I was viewing their conversations. It felt a lot easier to start talking to people that way.

Ao3 isn't algorithm driven, but it is significantly easier to find content there than it is to find community. A lot of the fandom organization happens off of Ao3, and it's hard to know about it just by reading the fic. It took me years to find out about the fic exchange scene on places like Dreamwidth. Now a lot of community organizing happens in closed Discords, which are even more difficult to learn about. It's really hard to learn the community norms when one doesn't even know where the community gathers to talk in the first place.

[impala_chick]

Not too late! I really appreciate your insight here. I wonder what would make it easier to find the spaces where people are actually talking about fandom without making them super public? I know some people post links to their tumblr or twitter in the notes of their fics on AO3, but it is hard to actually have a conversation on tumblr.

[sunlit_skycat]

This is something I'm still struggling with. The comm blueheronteanook got started to house fic and meta for my fandom, though there is more meta on there nowadays. It acts as a static link repository of more polished stuff. Additionally, there is a Discord server where most of the chatter really happens. I've linked the Discord in the comm, so people who poke around it long enough should see it.

It would be nice to have some way to invite consistent commentors on Ao3 to talk more, but Ao3 doesn't have DMs that let me privately send a Discord link over. A lot of them have consistent usernames across multiple platforms, so I can find them on tumblr, but I'm worried that finding them on there to send an invite might come across as stalkerish. At this point, I'm considering putting an invite link in the last chapter of my fics, so that people invested enough to reach the end will see it. It's hard to say how anything will go without actually trying it, which is tough.

[impala_chick]

Oh that's great that your fandom is active on a DW comm! I do like the idea of DMs on AO3 - I know that doesn't really fit the purpose of an "archive" but it would be nice to be able to get in touch with readers. I don't think it's that weird to find people with the same username on their tumblr/other platform. I like when people I recognize connect with me over my fic.