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Man I'm still never entirely sure what I think about ffa (![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fail_fandomanon) I've been thinking about it recently after a friend of mine had to leave because the incredibly nasty things people say there about a group she's in were bringing her down. I wish there was somewhere I could go for active fannish conversations that was less likely to randomly dissolve into intense ableism/transphobia/whatever and that didn't assume anyone there was, by definition, "anti-sj". (I mean I am against "sjw"s by the definition of "bully or abuser who uses social justice terminology". Because I'm against all bullies and abusers! But there are plenty of people there who are against any serious attempt at social change, and/or whose definition of sjw includes me and many of my friends)
It took me a long time to learn to recognise the difference between trolls who don't represent the average views at all and more mainstream opinions. It's not fair to hold up the worst of the group as representative of the whole, and there's a pretty wide range of opinions even once you exclude the outliers. But (a)Knowing someone's a troll doesn't always remove the sting of what they've said and (b)The mainstream opinions can still be pretty awful. And that's just on abstract topics, once they start talking about individual fans it can get nasty, hypocritical and just WRONG (the reactions to my own meta haven't been too meansprited, but they tended to miss the point or focus on trivialities. Which admitedly can in part be blamed on my own lack of clarity)
Urg, I'm tired, I'm not expressing this very well. Guess I'm not up to much beyond reading ffa and feeling weird about it :/
fail_fandomanon) I've been thinking about it recently after a friend of mine had to leave because the incredibly nasty things people say there about a group she's in were bringing her down. I wish there was somewhere I could go for active fannish conversations that was less likely to randomly dissolve into intense ableism/transphobia/whatever and that didn't assume anyone there was, by definition, "anti-sj". (I mean I am against "sjw"s by the definition of "bully or abuser who uses social justice terminology". Because I'm against all bullies and abusers! But there are plenty of people there who are against any serious attempt at social change, and/or whose definition of sjw includes me and many of my friends)It took me a long time to learn to recognise the difference between trolls who don't represent the average views at all and more mainstream opinions. It's not fair to hold up the worst of the group as representative of the whole, and there's a pretty wide range of opinions even once you exclude the outliers. But (a)Knowing someone's a troll doesn't always remove the sting of what they've said and (b)The mainstream opinions can still be pretty awful. And that's just on abstract topics, once they start talking about individual fans it can get nasty, hypocritical and just WRONG (the reactions to my own meta haven't been too meansprited, but they tended to miss the point or focus on trivialities. Which admitedly can in part be blamed on my own lack of clarity)
Urg, I'm tired, I'm not expressing this very well. Guess I'm not up to much beyond reading ffa and feeling weird about it :/
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In my neck of the wood discussion seems to have moved more to tumblr, which I can see the advantages of while still tending to prefer dreamwidth myself.
People definitely still reply when I post discussion topics, if not always as much as they used to. But what I like from ffa is the passive act of reading. I very rarely comment myself, in fact I'm usually a post or two behind. So places like metafandom and fandom_wank (which I also have very mixed feelings about!) are what used to fulfill a similar function for me. And to be honest ffa does a better job in most ways. Just not all :(
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Fandom. Something for everyone….
Yeah, I'm glad so much of my fandom is on DW. If everything I'm interested in moved to Tumblr, I would have to grit my teeth and get one, and I so don't want to. This must be how the list/private archive people felt when LJ came along about 15 years ago….
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Haha yeah. And some of them still determinedly hang out on their mailing lists, the way we do here :)