No additional warnings for this scene.
Title: The Fandom Social Contract
Author: kimboo
Rating: PG13/teen and up
Warnings/Spoilers: Triggers for wank, flouncing and fandom splits. And, footnotes!
Word count: 10k~ (i.e. obscenely self-indulgent)
Disclaimers: You should in no way assume the author knows what she’s doing.
Summary: What is the nature of the presumed social contract fans share? What is the affect of fandom personality, size and pan-fandom influence on that presumed social contract in regards to wank/splits/flounces? In this essay I take a lens to these issues by reflecting on the behavior of fans in several different online, fanfic-centric fandoms (LoM, HF, SPN, SGA, dS) in the face of adversity and stress, and how their history, size, and pan-fandom influence affects those community reactions and whether the presumed social contract plays any roll in longevity or robustness.
Author’s notes:
Written for the month_of_meta! Or I should say, posted for it, as I started writing this about two years ago. o.O
This is not an academic paper, although I suppose it could be for someone. Instead, this is a long ramble with an anthropological sheen that brings up a lot of topics I *wish* were academic papers; I can’t claim anything definitive by my observations, and I realize that due to my small sample size of fandoms “analyzed” (I use the term loosely) I am likely missing important data that would alter my conclusions. Along those lines, I make no pretense to objectivity, particularly when so much of this is taken from my own interactions with fandom as a fanfic author. I did not conduct any surveys or interviews of other fans in the fandoms I discuss, other than at a very casual level, so the majority of statements here have the implied prefix of “IMHO” and/or “based on what I personally have observed” and are therefore biased accordingly.
Likewise it is worth noting that due to the above limitations (mostly, my limitations), this essay focuses on the online fandom culture built up and around fanfiction (primarily).
Personally I don’t view this as a definitive statement on anything, much less the whole of all fandom, but rather a starting point for further discussion/study about my particular little backwater. I welcome concrit and fact corrections! Please do!
But gosh darn it, this is interesting meta and people like me! ;)
Introduction:
About two years ago, I read and commented on an interesting post over at strangeandcharm’s LJ concerning the issue of writers pulling/deleting their work [note: ironically this is a deleted and purged journal, so the link doesn’t go anywhere anymore, but I am including it for veracity] from the Internet and then demanding that their stories be withdrawn from "circulation" within fandom. It was generally agreed in comments that while most fans would likely honor such a request, it is, on the whole, unrealistic for any writer to expect for their work to completely disappear. It's a fascinating subject that comes up cyclically, as the forces of reader entitlement and author entitlement combine with the unstable element that is fandom and explodes.
The usual flash point for it is the flouncing of a writer due to some kind of wank (all or at least most fandom related terms used in this essay are linked to the Fanlore glossary entry for that term), leading the author to delete dw/LJ accounts and purge fic from archives in an attempt to make it all disappear from the Web(1). This is different from an author simply leaving a fandom out of disinterest or for professional reasons; in those situations, the author generally tends to leave their stories available online in some form or another, or puts a blessing on fans sharing the stories via email. But in this case the author wants to withdraw all evidence that she ever existed, and/or punish the fandom, by attempting to delete her work (I refer to this as a “flounce-and-yank” for lack of anything better). The result is a tension within the fandom where fans of the stories still want to read them and share them, but either feel conflicted about doing so since it would be in obvious opposition with the author’s wishes, or makes them defensive about others doing so out of a sense of respect for the author’s wishes. How that affects the community itself all hangs on the presumed social contract that exists in that particular fandom.
My own comments to that post were based in part on musings which grew out of my early attempts to participate in the humongous SPN fandom back in 2009 after acting mostly in much smaller fandoms, particularly in relation to how a sense of community is developed/maintained or not (e.g. fandom wank/splits). Those comments form the bones on which the rest of this essay hangs. With that in mind, remember that these observations are based on my own personal experiences which certainly do not represent anyone elses', much less fandom as a whole. (That won't stop me from generalizing, though! You have been warned!)
Finally, the meta!
I think that fandom is overall a nice place full of people who just want to share their excitement and creativity about a show/movie/book. However, fandom isn't codified like a marriage or a corporation or any other kind of social and/or legal contract. There are unwritten rules but they are unwritten for a reason: there is no place to write them. Nor is there is any pan-fandom etiquette guide, which would be impossible to develop as many individual fandoms have their own set of socially acceptable behavior and list of infractions. This can get particularly thorny when certain subjects are prone to wank and therefore are not freely discussed, leading newbies to the fandom into treacherous waters without even knowing it(2).
A writer can ask that her work not be distributed, but am I, as a reader and a fan, obligated to follow her request? Not in any legal way. Will fandom as a whole be seriously damaged (i.e. will the social contract be compromised) by my not adhering to such a request? Certainly not. Most of us would, generally, try to respect the writer's preferences, I think, but the writer has no grounds to expect such consideration (appreciate it, yes; expect it, no), nor to complain about the fact that their request is disregarded (other than the general right everyone has to bitch about the unfairness of life). Yet there remains the idea that a social contract of some sort exists between a writer and her audience, even if the social contract is often ignored. It is important to note that ignoring something is not the same thing as denying it exists.
Before jumping to examples of how different fandoms interpret (for lack of a better term) the social contract, it is worthwhile to define it. Even fanlore.org is missing an explanation of this, and while talking about it at FandomWank will get people high-fiving each other, there is nothing to hang our tin hats on.
The core of the social contract is trust. It is not a bill of sale or a guarantee or any other kind of contractual obligation. People talk wide and far about what makes fandom culture unique as a whole, but a key element of it always comes back down to a trust issue. Fans believe and agree upon a few core points based on that, which I believe are the heart of the presumed social contract:
That is essentially the bare bones of the fandom social contract, from what I’ve been able to parse. Let’s break it down to fit familiar issues into each of those five elements:
1. People will not lie or misrepresent: Fans will not say they have kissed Misha Collins with tongue when, in fact, they’ve never met the man; fanfic authors will not plagiarize.
More than just making up experiences, “not lying” is about authenticity of (again, for lack of a better term) product. Whether that product is a recap of a convention, a fanfic, an autographed photograph, art, or an experience the important aspect is that the person presenting that product is automatically given trust about its authenticity. It’s when this trust is broken that all hell breaks loose.
This also applies to anonymity; while having pseudonyms is considered standard practice in online fandom, the corollary is that the pseud is “really you.” Putting aside fascinating theoretical discussions of authenticity, the point here is that everyone knows that a pseud is a pseud, with the assumption that the person hiding their RL information has a valid reason for doing so. Therefore interaction with them, even behind the protective cover of a pseud, is considered authentic and “real.”
Misrepresentation comes into play, on the other hand, when people take on sock puppets in order to wage war on other fans or use an entirely false persona (they represent themselves as a sixteen year old high school girl when they are really a middle age divorced single mother...or what have you. The permutations are endless). Anyone caught out doing either will have a hard, if not impossible, time establishing themselves as trustworthy in the future. Certainly, fanfic authors who have been caught plagiarizing are drummed out their fandoms forever (in the few cases I’ve witnessed) and even when they try to jump to other fandoms their past will haunt them. Fandom has a long memory when it comes to being burned.
Generally, a fan who is revealed as a liar or a plagiarist is not the cause for a fandom split, and is simply drummed out. Sometimes, though, the fallout of such a drama can polarize a fandom to the point of making it susceptible to breaking.
2. People will respect each other: No matter how marginal the fandom interest, ship or kink a fan may have, fellow fans will not belittle them or make fun of them or otherwise denigrate them as a person.
Possibly both the most strictly enforced and the most disregarded element of the fandom social contract. Wank would not exist if it weren’t for masses of people either over-stringently enforcing or alternatively flocking wholesale to break this rule. However, as will be discussed later, some fandoms hold this standard very high, and feel threatened as a group when this rule is broken.
Most important to note is that this is where the issue of a flounce-and-yank gets thorny. Respecting the author entails following their request/demand not to copy or share the fic in question; yet, what respect is the author showing for their readers by pulling popular stories in the first place? (Remember, this is specifically in regards to flounce-and-yanks or other situations where authors demand that their work not be shared.) There are two sides to this coin, and by the simple standard of “people will respect each other” both sides have valid arguments. This will be discussed later in more detail.
3. People will protect each other from “outsiders”: Fans will not “out” other fans at their jobs or to their families; academics and researchers who strive to study fandom will be treated with suspicion, out of the fear of misrepresentation or outing.
“Back in the day” (I get to say that, I’m old enough) becoming part of a fandom was either incredibly easy (Star Wars...just see the movie, and you’re in) or incredibly difficult (K/S -- you had to know someone and they had to vouch for you before your name would be put on a zine mailing list). On the whole the online fanfic-based fandoms of today inherited most of its social expectations from the latter group. Even fandoms known for het and gen fic (X-Files, for instance) were not easy to find unless you knew where to look.
That is hardly the case today, but the mentality persists. In regards to “outing” there is a good reason for it: some fans could find themselves fired from jobs or put into very difficult positions with their families if their fandom (especially the more erotic components of fanfiction) were to be revealed. Fandom is rife with stories of people who lost or came close to losing their jobs because an unbalanced fans on the warpath decided to “take them down.” It has the feel of urban myth, but it has actually happened to enough people to be a genuine concern.
In regards to academics and researchers, it seems the knee-jerk reaction is defansive (again, based on history, for a good reason) but less so than previously due to the emergence of the aca-fan and the serious study of fandom culture.
When this particular rule is broken, especially in regards to “outing,” it is very unlikely to cause a fandom split but it could contribute to trouble waters already stirred up by other issues, such as power plays or shipping wars, leading to wank.
4. People will participate genuinely: Fans are there because they want to participate.
The most ephemeral of the social contract rules, this nonetheless plays a role when wank hits, and people start throwing around the accusation that someone else is “not a real fan.” What that means depends on the wank going on, whether suggesting that person is an undercover agent for some other dubious group (researcher, for instance) or that they lack significant qualifications to allow their opinion to count in the discussion (such as, they have never posted fanfic themselves, or never commented, or never helped run a challenge, etc.).
The expectation is that people are in a fandom because they love the source material, not because they are on a search for greatness for themselves. Some fandoms end up torn apart when the latter proves to be true and a BNF in that fandom seeks to control every aspect of the fandom and serve as a gatekeeper to it, usually under the guise of “protecting its authenticity.” So, while this is by far the hardest rule to truly define, that very fact also makes the violation of it the most dangerous threat to a fandom’s continued existence.
5. Everyone agrees this is for fun and not profit: This is about having fun and, often, violating copyright laws.
Ironically, fanfic has a history of charging for stories, something that a lot of modern fans either don’t know or have conveniently forgotten. Zines, that grand old lady of independent publishing, was the first home for fanfiction for years and continues (to a much reduced degree) today. Printing and mailing a zine is not cheap, even now, and back in the 1980s I remember forking over $40 for a K/S zine, which was about the equivalent of half a year’s allowance for me (I was 15, okay?). Anything less than $15 was a steal. However, the point was simply to pay for costs, not make a profit, and that mentality holds true across platforms and eras. If a BNF hits hard times and asks for help to keep her private archive online, fans would not hesitate to donate to pay for server space (some authors even have PayPal accounts in order to accept donations at their websites in order to help cover costs); however, there there would be a totally different reaction if the BNF decided to put up a pay-wall so that she could reap a profit from her fanfic.
There is some tolerance for low-level profiteering when fan-artists create a tee shirt or do art commissions for money, for example, but anyone who purposely sets out to make a significant personal profit will find themselves ostracized fairly quickly (although I would curious about international attitudes regarding this, as I’m speaking from a copyright paranoia that is particularly U.S.-centric). Relating back to the whole notion of the community being self-protective, that extends to the idea of strangers coming in and taking advantage of fan interests for personal gain.
This was clearly demonstrated by the nearly universal outrage in fandom that accompanied the 2007 launch of the for-profit archive FanLib. The fact that “outsiders” were trying to develop a service that would profit from fanfiction (a profit that would only be seen by the owners of FanLib) created such an outcry that it eventually led to the formation of the Organization for Transformative Works’ (OTW) and its volunteer-run fanfic archive project, Archive of Our Own (AO3). Even if the owners of FanLib had been fans themselves, chances are likely that the project still would have been mercilessly criticized (FanLib shut down in 2008).
Likewise, the understanding that fanfiction in particular (but also other art such as manips and vids) are on shaky legal grounds in regards to copyright means that people get involved despite the personal risks, not for fame or fortune. There are very few writers who have turned around and started charging for their fanfiction stories online, but there are a few, and they are generally looked at askance by the majority of fans. It is also acknowledged that they are skating on very thin legal ice, something most fans tend to steer clear of for fear of being charged guilty by association.
Those are the five basic precepts that I’ve developed as constituting the framework of fandom’s presumed social contract. There are certainly aspects I have not considered, but for the purposes of this essay, they are the five precepts to keep in mind moving forward.
As I've pondered the issue of "presumed social contract" in reference to the phenomenon of fandom community and splits, I've naturally and quite unprofessionally looked at the fandoms I'm most involved with. What I consider my two "core" fandoms, Hot Fuzz (HF) and Life on Mars-UK (LoM), are considered incredibly small; my secondary fandoms are The Professionals (“The Pros” - also very small, and ancient in fandom terms), Due South (dS), Supernatural (SPN), and Stargate Atlantis (SGA). The last three are considered to be large and influential to varying degrees, but that is not necessarily the case. I will be discussing the numbers later, but for now hold in mind that a particular fandom’s influence on pan-fandom culture is not always tied to how large it is.
In the matter of a presumed social contract, and the interaction upon which such a presumed social contract is based, I came late into the sprawling hugeness of SPN out of my small fandoms, which was a bit of a culture shock for me. I think of the small fandoms I know well as a group of people sharing a house, where we all have fun sometimes, share meals, argue over whose turn it is to do the dishes, and occasionally fight but always make up for the sake of the household. By default, we are a tight-knit bunch because if we aren't, we fear that the fandom could very well die.
OTOH, SPN is more like a whole damn CITY (with subdivisions: J2, Sam/Dean, Dean/Castiel, Gen, etc.) that doesn't even have a common downtown (the SPN Newsletter is not a downtown, it is essentially the local newspaper headlines). It felt a lot more impersonal to me, and so I had very little invested in any kind of social contract with other SPN fans on the whole; not that I had nefarious plans, I simply didn't feel very connected, which really bothered me at the time. Most comms I found were/are either very, very impersonal or set up specifically to be incredibly narrow in focus ('ship comms, etc.). Not being critical of anyone or any comm, I mean that the sheer numbers of fans in SPN leads to exactly those kinds of solutions, which really bends and stretches the unofficial and unenforcable social contract. People coming to SPN from, say, Doctor Who (DW) would probably not even twitch at the culture SPN has set up for itself, but for me, it was eye-opening(3).
In small fandoms, if the social contract is perceived as broken, it could seriously compromise the fandom itself; in SPN, people just hike off and build a new subdivision. The implications are far reaching, both in regards to how members of the community interact with each other and the effects of wankage/split/flouncing on the fandom as a whole, leading to very a different sense of obligation to the group. That is, while size may not have anything to do with a fandom’s influence in fandom culture as a whole, size has everything to do with internal conflicts.
When I started this essay nearly two years ago, I did a quick run down of numbers of various fandoms I’m familiar with. This highly unscientific birds-eye view was mostly restricted to LJ comms, simply because these fandoms primarily exist there. An early reader of this essay commented on how that’s hardly definitive, and I agree. So when I went back this spring to re-check the numbers, I also branched out and looked at the volume of fic at Fanfiction.net and ArchiveofOurOwn.org for each fandom. What has been left out completely are other forums, for numerous reasons(4). However AFAIK only LoM and SPN really have active off-LJ forum communities, so I feel this is not necessarily a critical fault in looking at this data set. I did not include archives for much the same reason as I did not include the off-LJ forums.
If you just want the raw numbers, here is my spreadsheet. Keep in mind that these numbers can change daily, and in no way suggests that the membership is the same even if the size has remained constant.
Based on their most centralized comms, Due South (ds_noticeboard) and LoM (lifein1973) have both been very consistent in size through the years. In 2009 their numbers were 920 and 1500 respectively; in 2012 (February), dS showed some uptick with 1000 members while LoM had a small jump to 1600. LoM is very centralized, while dS has inherited a somewhat scattered community (5), but even the over-blown estimate that ds_noticeboard only represents half the fandom doesn't push dS too far past "small fandom" status.
The SGA_noticeboard, has maintained approximately the same number of watchers as the LoM comm: 1,600 in 2009, 1500 in 2012. Supernatural blows them all away, in regards to size. Comparatively, the "main", or perhaps better described as "centralized" Dr. Who LJ comm (and I admit here I’m not a DW fan, and therefore am looking at this about as objectively and ignorantly as possible), doctorwho, has 5700~ watchers, which along with the show's ongoing status, long history, and influence on fandom in general makes it one of the premier large-scale fandoms in existence(6).
On the other hand, the Pros comm I'm most active in (for values of “active” that mean “lurking”), teaandswissroll, just topped 100 members in 2009 and in February, 2012 stood at 185. The Hot Fuzz comm sandfordpolice stands proud with 670 watchers/members (although that is a substantial drop from 2009, when it had 800). They aren’t even “small”, they are microscopic.
If we take the common rule of thumb(7) that only 10% of the members of a comm are active in it as (colelctively) writers and commentators and organizers, then that puts LoM and dS and SGA in the very optimistic position of having 150~ people participating at any given time, while SPN has 640+ (a number supported by the SPN-J2 Big Bang challenge of 2010, which had about 650~ writers sign up to participate).
However, my experiences in both HF and LoM suggest that 10% is wildly optimistic; I'd go with half that, on a good day, with a wind at our backs. The old (unfortunately now vanished) HF archive listed a whopping 19 authors out of 282 members (about 7%) back in 2009; sandfordpolice comm memories lists 124 authors (as of this writing) out of 670~ members (18%). While those numbers support the 10% estimate in a wobbly way, the fact is, those are not all currently active members. Certainly in sandfordpolice, as the movie release date drifts further and further back into the past, a good number of people who were active in the first year of the fandom have stopped contributing or left completely. Between actual posters and commentators, I would say we have a 5% participation point, which would be about 40 people. Still sounds like a lot, to be honest, but I think it is better to err on the side of optimism and inclusivity. Applying that same logic to LoM would give us about 75 active members; again, seems optimistic (the most individual comments I've ever seen on any post is in the 30~ range) but with monthly/seasonal fluxes, possible.
In SPN, then, the number of active members should fall somewhere in the 320~ range. However it is important to differentiate between “open-cannon” fandoms and “closed canon” fandoms; LoM, HF, SGA and dS all fall in the later category, having been released or aired their final episode years ago, so there is nothing new to bring fans to the fandoms other than the fandoms themselves. SPN, on the other hand, is still airing with new episodes, and while it’s popularity has probably peaked, it is a long ways from fandom decline. Therefore it is reasonable to expect SPN to have a higher percentage of active fans. As I stated above, roughly 650~ people signed up for the SPN big bang in 2010, suggesting the number of active fans is at least 10%. This is still pure speculation, but for the purpose of this discussion I am leaving the active percentage for a current, open-canon popular fandom at 10%, giving SPN an active fanbase of 640~. This might even be low, given the popularity of the fandom right now, but since everything in this essay is speculative (oh so speculative), it is a handy number to move forward with. Did I mention, speculative?
The implications regarding wankage/fandom splits are pretty clear, if not quite so obvious at first. Given the numbers and information above, it is worthwhile to contrast LoM and dS as fandoms of relative size but otherwise completely different group behavior and mentalities.
The main differences between LoM and Due South are not numbers, as I have established, but: 1) history and 2) self perception. Due South has a huge repository of fanfiction spanning almost 15 years of consistent activity, with a fair percentage of those stories considered fandom classics written by very, very BNFs. It is almost natural for the fandom to be perceived (and view itself) as both very large and very influential. On the other hand, LoM fandom is about five years old, and while it is home to some of the most outstanding writing in fanfic (not that I'm prejudiced about my flist, no, not at all!), most of it has been written by non-BNFs(8) and the "view from the mountain" in fandom as a whole is that LoM fandom is small -- a perception that members of the fandom share because four years ago, it was tiny.
LoM fans assume a split would be a fatal catastrophe as they perceive the fandom as small and fragile; dS fans are justly terrified of a split, yet have survived such a culling before and in general are more worried about the loss of a cohesive community than the survival of the fandom they perceive as large and robust. Neither perception is accurate in total. I'm not sure what the critical mass is for a fandom community, but sandfordpolice is close to it. Losing a couple of major participants or having some (totally random) wank-fest split the fandom would likely result in it dying out almost completely. LoM and dS (and SGA) would probably survive a genuine splitting of the fandom, but it would then put each faction in the precarious position sandfordpolice is in now. In their ability to stay active after a major wankage-war or fandom split, dS and LoM are in exactly the same boat, no matter how differently they approach the matter of unity, or how likely they view chances of survival after such an event. The matter is crucial enough that fans in both fandoms go out of their way to avoid conflict.
Due South, which is considered to be and has historically considered itself a medium-to-large fandom, simply isn't. When issues such as the infamous Ray Wars flare up, there is nowhere for dissenters from the main trunk of the fandom to branch off too. Continuing the metaphor, the fandom is bigger than a household but is nowhere near city-status, behaving more like a small town; decamping from the village means setting up an isolated farm in the country by yourself. There are a number of dS "ghost comms" out there that are inactive simply because there are not enough people in the fandom to keep them going, either as fandom-split comms or as supplements to the main dS comms. Despite that, however, the real fear is not so much a split (truly, the motto of dS fandom could be “we’ve survived worse, and with better manners”) as the loss of a cohesive culture.
Due South fandom gets amused grief for being too polite in its wankage, and for glossing over serious divides with platitudes of fan-unity, but the fact is that such measures are critical for the fandom to maintain a cohesive sense of “dS culture.” It is quite reasonable to speculate that the splinter ghost comms failed due to the fact that many dS fans declined to participate in them for fear of being seen as rude and divisive. As a result, rule #2 (“people will respect each other”) has taken on a nearly mythic importance in the fandom. After the genuine crisis of the First Ray Wars in the 90s, which miraculously did not destroy the fandom as a whole, fans have managed to keep the fandom together by relying almost entirely on rule #2, and successfully so on the whole, which is nothing short of amazing.
In comparison, LoM survived the turbulent waters of episode 2.08, the show’s finale which caused a bit of an uproar amongst a minority of the fandom who hate it, and that has pretty much been the extent of inter-fan discord on the whole (outside of minor personality conflicts). It was possible that the fallout over 2.08 could have split the fandom, and some fans were genuinely worried about it, but like the dS fandom, LoM is just too small to easily survive-and-thrive after a split; but unlike dS fandom, LoM knows it. It tends to rely on mutual tolerance and no small amount of hand waving to maintain unity, with a "pressure valve" of a separate, small comm where 2.08 Deniers can vent (jumping_off). Ship wars, canon wars, etc. are otherwise absent not because the seeds aren't there, but because they are weeded out or marginalized for the sake of the community as a whole; the focus remains on commonalities, to the point where one of the mods of lifein1973 is also a founding member of jumping_off, and few in the fandom think twice about it. This is not to suggest that everything is always smooth waters, as there are personality conflicts and group dissensions as in any community, but simply to point out that such upsets are often submerged or choked out. Nor am I stating that this is always for the best, either; simply, this is how LoM rolls, so to speak.
To recap: dS unity is considered crucial not for the survival of the fandom, which is assumed based on past experiences, but for the survival of the personality of the fandom (cohesive, happy, friendly) which fans are heavily invested in emotionally; LoM, which is actually a larger fandom at this point, considers unity critical to its very existence.
SPN, on the other hand, would not even blink in the face of fandom split. If even a third of the fandom decides to flounce off, there are still about 425~ active fans left in the main trunk to keep it going, and roughly 220~ active fan in the split (well over twice the assumed equivalent of the LoM active membership) to make it independently successful (again to stress: all numbers are, obviously, approximate and speculative). SPN is a fandom notorious for both its wank and its tin-hatters, but the SPNNewsletter still reports on all major "subdivisions" of the fandom, suggesting that while there may have been flouncing and ship-wars in the past, they resulted mostly in a bunch of new comms and not a genuine fandom split.
There is the question of whether a fandom as large as SPN can actually split. It certainly can, and for proof of that I kindly remind everyone of the ST wars of the mid-80s, which lasted for a while and seriously divided the fandom between TOS fans and TNG fans. It may be hard to believe now and yes, the rift was healed, but it did happen. Had TNG been a less successful show, it could have divided the fandom permanently. More recently, the once-thriving and popular fandom population of the Pirates of the Caribbean (PotC), which grew out of the first movie, was wrenched apart by shipping wars (oh, the irony of language!) when the second and third movies were released. While I have no numbers to compare the two PotC eras(9), it stands as an example of a once vibrant and large fandom nearly obliterated by wank, and that proved impossible to “save” via a split. People just left.
Which leads back to the issue of a presumed social contract (which does not factually exist) based on a perceived intimacy (that may or may not exist). As stated above, smaller fandoms tend to operate as united households, with a common goal and strong self-defense mechanisms in place. Multiple long-term relationships between fans develop due a kind of enforced proximity -- if there isn't anywhere else to go, you learn to get along. This shaped my own experience in HF and LoM, where thoughtful comments in response to fic and involved meta discussion were incredibly common, and in fact expected. Even crack!fic tends to generate a lot of comments, even if only from those carrying on the joke as active participation.
In a fandom such as SPN, that kind of inter-reliance isn't necessary. Writers will get readers, no matter what their fandom politics or 'ships, and readers feel very little obligation to engage directly with writers outside of simple encouragements to keep writing more. As I described to a friend, in SPN there is a lot of talking and a lot of listening but very little dialog. SPN is a show ripe for very long, interesting meta discussions, but what discussions I've found tend to happen in personal journals between fans who are already interconnected (from other fandoms, or by a particular ship preference), not in communities. There is a lot of posting AT people, and precious little interaction WITH. (More on this in a moment; also, this may give some clue as to why SPN was such an early adapter fandom to tumblr, which is less a community environment than a shared bulletin board.)
More than major wankage leading to splinter comms, then, I think this is the reason there are SO MANY communities in SPN (not to mention just the LJ list alone; and, the list linked to there is out of date by at least a year; some of those comms are dead, and many more have been born). People are desperate for the richer, more social interaction that a smaller community provides; with 6440+ watchers and upwards (assumed) 640~ active participants, there is only a morass of humanity fans to get lost in. The problem is, these communities tend to be very limited in function and purpose; an avid SPN fan who is mainly a Dean/Castiel shipper but also writes/reads Sam/Gabriel and Sam/Jo, for instance, would end up both monitoring and posting to eight comms: a general SPN squee/news comm, a general SPN-fic comm, a Dean/Castiel comm, a Castiel comm, a minor pairings comm, a Gabriel comm, a women-of-SPN comm, and a het-fic comm. And that is not counting if they enjoy vids (a vid comm), general meta (a meta comm), and research comms (of which there are several). This kind of fracturing makes it nearly impossible for that fan to build a holistic fandom community experience. The natural solutions are to 1) start a new comm for you and your friends, and/or 2) create a network of personal journals to share directly with other fans your work/thoughts/experiences and don't bother with comms much at all. As a result of the second solution, there builds up an elaborate (and perhaps unintentional for some, but it is something I am acutely aware of doing myself) courtship of like-minded people discovered via their writings or comments.
A good example of this is the SPN meta comm spn_heavymeta, which has only 894 members, and postings consist mainly of links to meta entries on individual users’ personal journals. Even so, the average number of comments on those meta posts (taken from a small sample for the month of January, 2012) is thirteen (10), which includes the responses of the post writers’ to comments made. Why this is important is less for the raw numbers, although they are strikingly small for such a robust fandom, than for the lack of cohesion. The comm is not a meeting center but rather a repository; people do not actively communicate “publicly” about meta issues there, instead saving the dialog for personal journals (where the posts are universally set to “public” and are therefore available, but nonetheless, publicly available on an individual’s private space). This presents a barrier, even if unintended, to developing a community mindset. As well, new members (or shy members) might feel self-conscious about commenting on a post at a personal journal if they don’t already know that person, where they would feel more comfortable doing so in the public arena. Compare this situation to LoM, where meta is discussed at the community level on the central comm. Size plays a part in this, of course (SPN, as I have mentioned, doesn’t have “downtown” for people to gather at and even if it did, it would be so noisy as to be overwhelming...as anyone who ever visited ONTD_spnparty in it’s heyday can vouch), but nonetheless, it is a telling reveal to the personality of the fandom. This isn’t to suggest that spn_heavymeta is doing anything wrong, but simply to illustrate how two very different fandoms have very different structures and values for “conformity.” Indeed, in the past, LoM comm members have requested that people post meta discussion directly to the community as opposed to linking back to their own journal, so that it stands as a part of the comm’s history (this could be apocryphal, as I am stating from memory since I have not been able to relocate that particular request...it was some time ago).
After all this, the question boils down to: what role does the social contract play, then, in regards to fandom longevity or splits/decline? Either way, what is the value of the presumed social contract? If it is to serve as a function of community cohesiveness, borne out of a need for fandom(s) to self-protect, then even a minor breaking of the unwritten rules should result in some kind of fandom fracture, if not outright split. However, this rarely happens, with fans either overlooking infractions “for the good of the order” (small fandoms, generally) or ignoring infractions because they can be marginalized (larger fandoms, or fandoms such as SGA which have the perception of being a large fandom...although how much longer SGA, as a whole, will be able to maintain that belief is debatable). Genuine splits are usually catastrophic and in fact are based more on personality wars (loosely hung on issues such as shipping wars), power plays and infighting than on a perceived “rule breaking.”
In her post on fandom longevity (focusing on X-Files, the reboot of BSG, West Wing and SG-1, and very interesting both in and of itself and for the comments generated), Zinke states that the reason a fandom lives, dies, shrinks or grows is essentially a crap shoot (to paraphrase). She uses as an example how both X-Files and BSG had, on the whole, very unpopular/controversial ends and how the different fandoms reacted to that. What this mostly demonstrates is the difficulty of comparing fandoms: X-Files is going on 20 years old, BSG barely five; X-Files had an uneven story arc, with replacement of a main lead character in the final era of the series, while BSG had a tight story arc and consistent cast; X-Files went on to have a couple of movies made starring the original leads and could conceivably have more movies made in the future, while BSG is basically closed canon forever (outside of prequels such as Caprica). It is as hard to valuate X-Files fandom size (currently and historically) as it is to measure dS, simply because of how long it has been around and therefore the many varied locations of fan communities on and off LJ. However it is easy to say that it has been profoundly influential on fandom as a whole simply from the fact that it has been one of the more visible fandoms from the start. BSG is easier to gauge for fandom size, both on and off LJ, but has anyone been tracking the numbers from the start? Which would be the only truly helpful information. I’m also fairly disinclined to view it as an influential fandom myself, no matter the size or demographics. Fans talk about the impact of X-Files and X-Files fandom, whether they ever participated or not, which is not something I see happening now or in the future in regards to BSG. The show itself was groundbreaking, but the fandom that followed was not. (I could be looking in the wrong places, of course.)
In regards to the specific communities being discussed here, there is the historical role of slash-based fandom, of course, which existed in an "underground" status for nearly two decades. The communities that grew out of K/S and the following slash 'ships were closed and secretive by necessity, and while the protection such closed-ranks offered was false (everyone knew slash existed, most people knew where/how to find it, and academics were tentatively starting to study the fanfiction/fanworks phenomenon as early as the 1980s, with the ground breaking book Textual Poachers published in 1992) it was an important part of slash fan identity: Us v. Them. It was the birthplace of rule #3 (“People will protect each other”).
That mentality still rules for much of fandom, even as mainstreaming has started chipping away at it, and for many fans (whether they read slash fiction or not) the pervasive feeling of fandom is tribal. That can be taken to extremes by some individuals, of course, but on the whole it strikes me as a fairly benign type of cliquishness based more on mutual protection than, say, selfish insecurity. Insecurity is there both at the individual and group level, in the form of fear of social ostracism and condemnation, but it is not the driving force behind any one fandom’s cohesiveness that I’m aware of.
The sharing of fic that has been removed from the Internet due to a flounce-and-yank is a good flash point for fandom instability, in that it is a situation that seems to arise in the aftermath of a major wank-fest, at a time when the fandom in question has already come out of its crisis. Whether it split or not, people feel very strongly about the issue of sharing the work of an author who has pulled her work from fandom, and whether those feelings are pro or con in regards to fans sharing the yanked stories, the fact is that the debate is primarily fueled by individual interpretations of rule #2 (“people will respect each other’). However a flounce-and-yank and its aftermath almost never results in an actual split that I am aware of (examples of such a case would be welcome!).
To reiterate what I clarified in the introduction: this is a different circumstance from those writers who leave fandom or pull fic for personal reasons (such as becoming a published author, or deciding that their activities put their “day job” in too much risk, etc.), as often in those situations the authors give their blessing for fans to share their work by email. In rare cases, even a spectacular flounce will not end with fic being pulled from the internet, even if the author completely deletes every other trace of her identity 11). Also,the issue of author entitlement vs. reader entitlement is often trotted out in regards to flounce-and-yanks, but is immaterial to this discussion because it is separate from the matter of the fandom social contract.(12)
While I don’t know of any specific cases (I welcome anyone who can provide me with one or two), my assumption is that an SPN fans flounce-and-yank from the fandom would encounter very little consideration of her wishes outside of her small coterie of like-minded SPN fans. Further, I would postulate that other SPN fans would not feel it is a breech of the “SPN social contract” to share the flounced author’s writings via email or other venues. Smaller fandoms would at least try to put up a front; and indeed, they have. To steer clear of wank, I won’t mention names, but I do know of two authors in the dS fandom who pulled their fic after particularly nasty wank/flounces, and while the generally-agreed upon word is that the fic is unavailable, it is possible to get copies via email. It is very hypocritical, yet given the need for dS to maintain a cohesive identity as being a polite, respectful fandom, it is completely necessary. (Please note, I’m not saying this to criticize any individuals but rather to point out that surface appearances are not necessarily what is true, for a variety of reasons.)
I’ve already demonstrated that the various rules of the presumed social contract are perceived and (more importantly) valued differently in different fandoms, and the permutations to that are nearly endless. AO3 lists 8577 fandoms as of late February, 2012, and that number is constantly growing. On fanfiction.net, there are over 58k stories based on SPN alone. Whatever else fandom might be, quaint and parochial it is not. My conclusion is that size does play a critical role in enforcing the presumed social contract and dictates the survivability of the fandom post-split, but that the presumed social contract has very little bearing on whether a fandom split happens in the first place, regardless of the fandom’s size. The value of the social contract stems from its use to redress wrongs, heal wounds (via the agreement that a wrong has been committed, allowing fans to bond together over that fact) and, on the dark side, worsen already existing fractures (born out of shipping wars or power politics).
It is important to acknowledge that this is a profound time for fandom, with the rise of the Organization of Transformative Works (love it or hate it, doesn’t matter; it will be the “face of fandom” for both a majority of fans and for outsiders) and the AO3. There is also the rise of dreamwidth.org (dw), the journal platform that isn’t much of a challenge to LJ in the big picture as of right now but is seen as a refuge for many fans disenchanted with LJ’s anti-fandom management decisions. Many comms now exist on both platforms, and a small number have completely jumped the LJ ship for dw. Tumblr has appeared over the last two years as an important fandom platform as well, sometimes in addition to LJ/dw and sometimes as the sole location for an emergent fandom. These developments have fractured fandoms a bit, although not critically, but certainly the fear that a fandom split might happen due to migration to dw or tumblr is very real and contentious(13). As well, there is fear that AO3 will devastate fandom cohesiveness by making it too easy for people to read fic outside of comms and without commenting. The “kudos” feature of AO3, akin to the Facebook “like” button, allows readers to show that they enjoyed a story but relieves them of any responsibility of interacting with the author. Fans used to tight-knit, communicative fandoms find that completely alienating. Yet, the convenience of AO3 is undeniable and its use will continue to grow and possibly horn in on fandom interaction outside of dedicated communities.
On the other hand, fandom has weathered greater storms, and in fact has been in an almost continual state of migration from the 1990s on. Communities such as X-Files started as zines then moved to USEnet and email listservs in the mid-1990s, progressed to yahoogroups and are now well represented (or, at least, exist) on dw/LJ. The slash fans of ST started with underground zines in the early 1980s, and are now safely ensconced on dw/LJ, fanfiction.net, and AO3. Even the grand dame of British fandom, the Pros, now has a “dailyPros” tumblr account. Online archives come and go, Geocities dissolves, and fanzines get their own archives at university libraries.
Throughout all of these changes, the idea of the presumed social contract has continued with, apparently, very little modifications in concept. Wank is eternal, most fans would agree, and happens in much the same way summer squalls appear, with little warning or reason. But however harsh or destructive the wank, it has done little to bruise the concept of the social contract between fans. Because, in the end, the fandom contract does not exist in order for fandom to survive, but rather, so that it can thrive.
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FOOTNOTES:
(1) This essay does not address the technical issues of making anything “disappear” from the web, which is a whole separate issue. Suffice to say, it is actually a very difficult thing to do. While a website can be taken down and journals purged and blocks put on pages at the Wayback Machine, there is no guarantee that someone somewhere did not download the stories or archive them. There are (furtive) comms devoted to “reposting” fic that was taken down, and it is a long standing tradition for fans to email stories to each other (sometimes secretly, sometimes openly) that have disappeared from other sites. This is something that most experienced online users know, which makes the act of flouncing-and-yanking look particularly adolescent to most fans. The only circumstances under which pulling fic is respected in general is when the author states a compelling reason (such as signing a publishing contract or facing RL privacy issues) and gives permission for fans to share, with the tacit understanding that it is essentially a blessing for fans to do what they were going to do anyway.
(2) The Ray Wars in due South are a good example, as they have never really ended even if the nature of the conflict has changed substantially, and despite claims of dS fans that there is nothing to dispute. The fandom prefers to project a cohesive community identity, for reasons I explore further in this essay. However, it is a very tricky peace that people new to the fandom are at risk of disrupting. Disclaimer: I should know, as I was a focus point in one of the more recent Ray Wars flare ups in the fandom back in 2009.
(3) I have been involved with mega-fandoms, specifically Star Wars and Star Trek, but that was back in the 1980s and the world was very different then. While I am both a “mature” woman (read: cougar) and an “old hand” at fandom, I did not come back to fandom until 2007, long after the Internet had changed all the rules but before resources such as Fanlore appeared, making my learning curve long and sometimes painful in regards to “digital fandom.”
(4) LoM, for instance, has a web forum (TheRailwayArms) which has a large, active membership, however the problem with including it is two fold. First, there is a huge overlap in membership between TRA and the LJ comm Lifein1973; secondly, TRA is a bucket for the whole Life on Mars franchise, including the sequel series Ashes to Ashes and both the American and Spanish remakes. To parse out the TRA members who are both not members of Lifein1973 and who are only fans of the original UK series would be nearly impossible.
(5) As discussed in footnote #4, LoM consists mostly of the Lifein1973 community and the TRA forum; other comms are essentially sub-communities consisting of members who also belong to Lifein1973. dS, on the other hand, is older (the series ran from 1994 to 1999) and the fandom has existed based in multiple venues: zines, USEnet, Yahoo groups, archives (some defunct and even deleted, I believe) and LiveJournal. It is absolutely impossible to recreate the membership numbers of the fandom in its heyday, and not too much easier to figure in these smaller venues now that the fandom has for all intents and purposes married itself to LiveJournal. If there is an active off-LJ web forum for dS, I have never come across it. I believe there may be Yahoo groups still active, however.
(6) I am not familiar enough with the Harry Potter (HP), Star Wars (SW) or Star Trek (ST) fandoms to know how to incorporate their numbers here, but I would assume they are at least comparable to DW. Also, DW, ST, SW and HP are much more mainstream and have a higher percentage of "traditional male fans", the definition of which is arguable but, as with porn, we all know it when we see it. The fandoms I'm more familiar with, including SPN, are in large part dominated by and championed by a mostly female demographic which exists primarily on LiveJournal, as far as I can tell. Therefore, comparing Doctor Who numbers to Supernatural or SGA is perhaps a convenient measure, but likely misleading, a problem I am not prepared to address and will leave for the experts to parse. There is the added issue that both DW and ST have a variety of “sub-fandoms” based on different Doctors on one hand and different franchises (including, now, the popular ST reboot) on the other.
(7) Where this “common rule of thumb” came from, I do not know. But if you ask around, everyone parrots it, so whether it is true or accurate, it is common currency in discussions about community involvement. Personally I think it is dead wrong.
(8) I hesitate to use the word "unknown" because I am privileged to know many of them very well, but my reference here is to pan-fandom recognition and influence; for instance, Speranza is widely known and respected and has her own fan following across at least five major fandoms. I cannot think of a single LoM writer who can touch her pan-fandom status.
(9) This reference to what happened in the PotC fandom comes out of personal correspondence with members of the fandom, who are loath to even record this history on Fanlore for fear of re-starting the wank. It is worth noting that what seems to be the primary fic comm, Pirategasm, has only about 1100 members, making it smaller than LoM and only marginally larger then dS [update: comm was last updated in 2015, it can be considered defunct]. The secondary fic comm, PotC_fic, has only 528 members [update: comm was last updated in 2015, it can be considered defunct], making it smaller than the HF comm, and lists a number of PotC comms that have been deleted/purged; the general discussion comm, arrrrr, consists of nearly an identical number (539). Given the magnitude of the popularity for the movies, this is an abysmally small fandom, and while fandom decline can account for some drift off, the numbers are still critically small given that the franchise has been popular for nearly ten years. [Numbers current as of late Feb., 2012]
(10) There were only twelve separate posts at spn_heavymeta in January, 2012. Every single one of them consisted of links that led to personal journals, and there was wide variance between responses there; some posters got zero comments, while a couple got over 30. Keep in mind that this is the raw number of comments made, which includes responses by the authors to comments made by others. So, theoretically, one could divide that average by half, giving a general response rate of 6.5 unique comments per post.
(11) A very well known example of an author flouncing in a truly spectacular flame out while leaving her fic online is SardonicSmiley of the SGA fandom. Her stories, still incredibly popular three years after her flounce, are maintained on a private website that does not contain any way to contact the author. It is, essentially, an anonymous lock-box of fic. Given the acrimonious feelings SardonicSmiley obviously had for the fandom when she flounced, it is remarkably generous of her to keep the fic available. [update: the site has since been taken down.] It is also highly unusual, if not a singular instance of this happening (if other authors have flounced dramatically as a result of a wank-fest but left their work online, I’d love to be informed of it!)
(12) The reason entitlement issues do not factor into any aspect of the fandom social contract is because it is not about trust -- the core of the presumed social contract, and from which all other rules stem -- but about “legalities” of property, to use the term loosely. The argument of entitlement, for both authors and readers, is about what they have a right to do or have access to. Quite frankly it’s a very unsuitable argument to debate in fandom, for the pure and simple reason that fan-created works are always derivative, and therefore are trespassing on the entitlement (rights) of the original creators in what is often flagrant violation of copyright laws. This defacto exempts both authors and readers from any argument based on “rights” to the works in question, and instead turns the discussion back to the presumed social contract. It still rears up however, on occasion. Some authors genuinely feel they own their stories and no one has a right to do anything with them they have not approved of; the fact that such logic flies in the face of the whole premise of fanfic seems lost on them. There have been some spectacular wanks in regards to this, a recent and excellent example being the whole trauma of Clan Mitchell in SG1 fandom. It needs to be noted here that the one factor of “fanfic ownership” that is respected is in regards to reposting/republishing/archiving a fic without the author’s permission...although, that too has become more of a fly in the ointment of the social contract with the proliferation of avenues for readers to “save” fic without the author’s consent or even knowledge.
(13) The recent decision by Lifein1973 mods to “back up” the LJ comm to dw was generally supported by the majority of the fandom, but there was a sincere concern that allowing the dw comm to be “live” would fracture the fandom irreparably. This resulted in the dw comm being closed and moderated, giving it (and all dw-focused LoM fans) a “second class citizen” status within the fandom but allowing the illusion of cohesion to exist.
No really, that’s it.
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Narrative mode: third-limited