Who's fandom is it anyway?
A decade ago I joined a fandom community dedicated to a Norwegian Comedy act.
I feel this fact is necessary for me to state, as being in that fandom cemented certain thoughts for me in terms of community, how it grows what the dynamics are. How do outsiders looking in see it?
I should go back a little further. In 2004 I joined LiveJournal. I wasn't active in fandom and I lurked. I also pointed and laughed when fandom drama happened.
I often feel it's a habit for a lot of us post 90s Netizens to reduce disputes to drama. Fandom in LiveJournal was a very queer space. It could at times be a chaotic space filled with bitter opposition and at times some very manipulative behaviour. Some of it we didn't find out until years later (MSSCRIBE and Bad Penny).
Then 6Apart got sold and we moved on. We found other things to do.
Back in 2013 I needed a cheer up and a very strange Fox video popped up on the 3rd of September. I ended up interacting with a fandom.
I wrote meta, said my opinion loudly. Some people loved me for it, some hated me for it. I also didn't have a lot of patience for the Facebook side of the fandom as I'd been following The Hour Fandom on Tumblr. I preferred Tumblr and the folks on it.
Spin forward in time to Bergen in May 2014. Some of us were in person there. Why? To watch the Norwegian Comedy band of course.
Then a couple of friends who had worked together on a parody video had a massive blowup.
I'd already done some unofficial moderation stuff behind the scenes for months before this. DMs to check in on folks, when some folks disparaged the way that some fans expressed how much they fancied their faves. I pointed out that not every one has English for their first Language. Folks read what I wrote, realised what they'd done.
People apologised, and later I got an anonymous message thanking me for it. Because they did feel embarrassed at being called out by the native English Speaker.
So when the situation happened, I did my best to separate the two briefly and hoped it would calm down after the immediate issue. There was a lot of anger in the room, and I went in there nearly missing the cut of time for food, while I tried to get the angry person out of there. To help the other person feel safe.
I'll be honest, I did wonder if I'd get punched. But I kept my voice calm. Got the person to calm down. We left the building.
As I said, I hoped everything was sorted, and everything would calm down when we all got back home.
It did not. It erupted online.
I checked in with both parties. In the meantime I found out other stuff.
The folks in the fandom picked sides and there was a lot of bitterness. To the point I had a DM from someone asking me what had happened.
Who was in the right? Who was totally evil? They didn't know what to think.
I had no good answer. I hadn't been there for the build up to that fight. I hadn't been there in the particular folks personal lives. I'd witnessed the incident. I saw the aftermath.
But in the end I told the person, is that there are facts. How those facts are remembered and interpreted does not mean truth.
I could only give some facts, and I couldn't state what the truth was. As the truth was very different things to different people. People had to make up their own minds and they did. I also didn't think it would be fair or good to say what I did know.
The community was burning. People were hurt, and heck this was Tumblr. We had no mod tools.
After a while I left the fandom. It got bigger, it felt harsher. The community changed.
Plus I'd accidentally deleted my Tumblr blog. I didn't find I mourned it. I recreated it, but didn't spend much time on there anymore.
But it was interesting how my view of communities and how those dynamics happen changed. Because I'd made friends. Been subject to rumours about “the inner-circle”.
Even though there wasn't one. Just a group of friends who spoke everyday.
I'm not and never have I been a community moderator on an online platform. Other than the community management stuff I do for my small project. I'm used to safeguarding physical communities from my fencing days. But the human dynamics are the same.
I don't think community dynamics change in a professional community either. In the Fediverse in particular, community is very similar to fandom communities. But that's human nature.
We're all driven by connection and ambition. We're driven by the idea that there's this influential group that I'm not a part of. They are unduly influencing the community space. But it's often not that.
Although if it is, be careful. The person you think is the mastermind of the “drama”, may not be the person behind it.
All we have are facts and how we interpret these facts. Truth is subjective.