Post by medved on Feb 20, 2016 3:13:36 GMT
I've been thinking for a while about the various recurring conflicts in fandom, and the various attempts to address them that sometimes help and sometimes make things noticeably worse. Most of us are pretty decent to the people we already like, and we can often manage to be polite with 'different groups', but that's ultimately not good enough. Part of what I love about the HTP is that we put a lot of effort into maintaining our little group and being as kind as we can. This is of course my subjective experience, which is why it comes across as vague and generalized. Anyways. I strongly believe that fandom should be a welcoming place for as many people as possible. Here's the basic principles I'm working on:
Honesty - this is a touchy one, because personal dislike can drive a wedge between fans, and at its worst it can be interpreted as a deliberate attack. To be fair, there are people who use it that way! It's a shitty rhetorical shorthand that makes it hard to know where the line is between 'I have formed an opinion on this thing' and 'I am deliberately insulting everyone involved with this thing'. All of us have likes and dislikes, which will never fully line up, and that's just a fact of life. But seriously, what good does it do if we're all here to talk about a thing, but only in specific ways? People don't magically change their preferences, they end up vagueblogging (which fools no one, because we can still see you) and trying to manufacture excuses for why they're allowed to express their dislike. It's non-canon, it's oppressive, it's offensive, it's 'something that means I can express my dislike of it without being called a horrible meanypants'. The other side of this is that not every venue is appropriate for expressing your dislike. I feel like MOST venues are inappropriate, actually, being common spaces or author's personal pages. We should curate civil disagreement and try to maintain a format or venue that is suitable for that. We're all here in our free time to share things that we made for each other; going directly to a creator to scold them for making things you dislike is unimaginably selfish and rude. Shine was talking awhile back about backchannels and their relative privacy, which I think is probably the solution - you can discuss your quibbles and dislikes without needing to make it the creator's problem, because realistically, it isn't their problem. Our feelings on a work are not necessarily facts about it. One of the other things I love about the HTP is that one's dislikes are as valid as their likes; we need to know what a prompter DOESN'T want to see, as well as what they do. Sharing that information, respectfully and openly, makes everyone's fandom experience better. So: honesty, important, needs to be handled appropriately for each situation because misinterpretations and outright nastiness are still a thing that happens.
Courtesy - sort of ties in to the honesty part; differences of opinion can be a hard thing to navigate. None of us were born as enlightened and considerate people, we had to fucking learn it the hard way, and we're all still learning it. The driver's ed metaphor as it relates to social justice is a good one; I'm not sure how to source it so I'll try to paraphrase. New drivers fuck up - they do careless things, unwise things, try and see what they can get away with, they bump into trees and run red lights and can be pretty irritating to anyone else on the road. And honestly, a lot of the experienced drivers are going to have fuckups as well, even though they've been at it longer, even though they should know better. So there's a whole range of possibilities between 'do nothing' and 'viciously berate the other driver', some of which are definitely going to produce better results in the long run. Part of learning how to do things is being taught by people who've already got it down. I am sort of losing track of my metaphor here, but what I'm getting at is that we should assume that others are acting in good faith whenever possible, and try to do the same ourselves.
Reciprocity - could be phrased as 'generosity', but I think that misses a key element. Fandom is built on exchange, full stop - exchange of ideas, friendship, fanworks, you name it. it's not always a one-to-one ratio, and we can't necessarily provide the exact same thing in return, but the point is responding and giving something back. This is hard because social anxiety is a thing, different groups have different interaction styles which may not translate well, and for me personally, I find honesty to be a huge stumbling block. How honest am I allowed to be, in any given situation? There are creators who will have terrible tragic meltdowns from neutral or even questioning feedback. So it's a trial and error sort of thing, and there are lots of days where I don't have the energy to sound out the situation before starting a conversation, and simple keysmashing feedback feels like a copout when I want to say more. In all fairness, there are probably lots of people who are better at this than me
There've been some recent posts trying to promote comments on fanworks, and I hope that encourages people. So: leaving courteous comments, and accepting comments in good faith as often as possible. Conversations are some of the simplest and most rewarding things to come out of fandom, and it's something I'd like to actively work on and get better at.
This is about as far as I've gotten, and I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on it/thoughts in general.
Honesty - this is a touchy one, because personal dislike can drive a wedge between fans, and at its worst it can be interpreted as a deliberate attack. To be fair, there are people who use it that way! It's a shitty rhetorical shorthand that makes it hard to know where the line is between 'I have formed an opinion on this thing' and 'I am deliberately insulting everyone involved with this thing'. All of us have likes and dislikes, which will never fully line up, and that's just a fact of life. But seriously, what good does it do if we're all here to talk about a thing, but only in specific ways? People don't magically change their preferences, they end up vagueblogging (which fools no one, because we can still see you) and trying to manufacture excuses for why they're allowed to express their dislike. It's non-canon, it's oppressive, it's offensive, it's 'something that means I can express my dislike of it without being called a horrible meanypants'. The other side of this is that not every venue is appropriate for expressing your dislike. I feel like MOST venues are inappropriate, actually, being common spaces or author's personal pages. We should curate civil disagreement and try to maintain a format or venue that is suitable for that. We're all here in our free time to share things that we made for each other; going directly to a creator to scold them for making things you dislike is unimaginably selfish and rude. Shine was talking awhile back about backchannels and their relative privacy, which I think is probably the solution - you can discuss your quibbles and dislikes without needing to make it the creator's problem, because realistically, it isn't their problem. Our feelings on a work are not necessarily facts about it. One of the other things I love about the HTP is that one's dislikes are as valid as their likes; we need to know what a prompter DOESN'T want to see, as well as what they do. Sharing that information, respectfully and openly, makes everyone's fandom experience better. So: honesty, important, needs to be handled appropriately for each situation because misinterpretations and outright nastiness are still a thing that happens.
Courtesy - sort of ties in to the honesty part; differences of opinion can be a hard thing to navigate. None of us were born as enlightened and considerate people, we had to fucking learn it the hard way, and we're all still learning it. The driver's ed metaphor as it relates to social justice is a good one; I'm not sure how to source it so I'll try to paraphrase. New drivers fuck up - they do careless things, unwise things, try and see what they can get away with, they bump into trees and run red lights and can be pretty irritating to anyone else on the road. And honestly, a lot of the experienced drivers are going to have fuckups as well, even though they've been at it longer, even though they should know better. So there's a whole range of possibilities between 'do nothing' and 'viciously berate the other driver', some of which are definitely going to produce better results in the long run. Part of learning how to do things is being taught by people who've already got it down. I am sort of losing track of my metaphor here, but what I'm getting at is that we should assume that others are acting in good faith whenever possible, and try to do the same ourselves.
Reciprocity - could be phrased as 'generosity', but I think that misses a key element. Fandom is built on exchange, full stop - exchange of ideas, friendship, fanworks, you name it. it's not always a one-to-one ratio, and we can't necessarily provide the exact same thing in return, but the point is responding and giving something back. This is hard because social anxiety is a thing, different groups have different interaction styles which may not translate well, and for me personally, I find honesty to be a huge stumbling block. How honest am I allowed to be, in any given situation? There are creators who will have terrible tragic meltdowns from neutral or even questioning feedback. So it's a trial and error sort of thing, and there are lots of days where I don't have the energy to sound out the situation before starting a conversation, and simple keysmashing feedback feels like a copout when I want to say more. In all fairness, there are probably lots of people who are better at this than me
There've been some recent posts trying to promote comments on fanworks, and I hope that encourages people. So: leaving courteous comments, and accepting comments in good faith as often as possible. Conversations are some of the simplest and most rewarding things to come out of fandom, and it's something I'd like to actively work on and get better at.This is about as far as I've gotten, and I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on it/thoughts in general.