If anyone asks, my nanny hacked my account and made this post

[lucymonster]

The other day I cheerfully wasted a whole day's allowance of downtime rereading The Ms Scribe Story, as I can't resist doing every now and then. As legendary fandom wanks go, it's probably my all-time favourite for the sheer amount of effort that went into the fuckery.

But despite its being a horrible story about horrible people, my main takeaway this time is a weird nostalgia for those days - I mean, the days when single-fandom archives, forums, and LJ were the main hubs of fannish activity. I coped well enough with the move to tumblr, but twitter is basically the perfect polar opposite of what I want from a fandom space (Speed! Impermanence! Overlap with the non-fannish world!); discord, doubly so. I don't think LJ was any more or less wanky than other platforms - it really just depends on who you hang out with, or I guess who you're unlucky enough to get noticed by. (I was a nobody, so most of the drama sailed right on by me.) But it was definitely better at fostering the kind of interactions I enjoy. I love it here on DW, but we're not exactly in the room where it happens.

Anyway, the upshot of this nostalgia binge is that I've wasted today's downtime tinkering with my icons, which I haven't touched in forever. I've found some I really like, and I'll whittle and adjust based on what I actually end up using. Today's is for great flaming wankstorms lol. Let's hope I don't need it.

Comments

[liriaen]

Oh god yes. I remember those days. I entered fandom in 2004 as a lurker, and 2006 actively. Man oh man, there was quite the potential for grief. But! It was also such a vibrant creativity, community, sense of belonging.

I never moved, other than to insanejournal after Strikethrough, and then to DW when the Russians bought LJ. So yes, i do really miss the centrality… but on the other hand, different platforms engender different forms of communication and exchange, and that’s a good thing.

But yeah… there’s always a sense of nostalgia for the old days.

[lucymonster]

One thing I do really appreciate about the newer platforms is that they’ve brought fanart so much more to the fore. I remember it being a much more niche thing in the LJ days, because you had to go off-site or figure out complicated image hosting…now it’s so built in to the fandom experience that I can hardly imagine doing without.

But yeah, the nostalgia is real.