random poll

[ratcreature]

As another decade ends (I can't believe it's going to be 2010 in just a few days. yikes!) you see all the usual retrospectives etc.; also I've been editing fanlore (and you should too, the wiki needs more people /end shameless plug). This led me to wonder: if you've been in fandom a long(-ish) time, do you ever feel nostalgia for fandom how it used to be? ("Fandom" in this case intentionally vague as I just mean whatever form of fandom you were involved in the era you are nostalgic for.) And if so, for which time period? So I thought I'd do a poll.

The first is a question of whether you feel nostalgia, and in the second you can check tickyboxes to indicate for which time period you are feeling nostalgia. That I have split into two options for each period for an indication whether you actually were in fandom in that time period and feel nostalgia due to firsthand experience, or feel nostaligia because you have read or heard about that time and wish you had been in fandom then, because it just sounds more awesome to you than fandom now. I did give up to the early 2000s as options to feel nostalgia for, though I am a bit dubious whether you can call it "nostalgia" proper if it's less than ten years ago.

Poll #1929 fandom nostalgia poll

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 158

View Respondents

Do you feel nostaligia for fandom as it used to be?

View Answers

Yes.
32 (20.8%)

No.
29 (18.8%)

Sometimes.
85 (55.2%)

I have not been in fandom long enough to feel nostalgia.
8 (5.2%)

For which time period do you feel fandom nostalgia?

View Answers

pre-1950s fandom, which I knew firsthand
0 (0.0%)

pre-1950s fandom, because it sounds awesome
8 (6.3%)

fandom in the 1950s, which I knew firsthand
0 (0.0%)

fandom in the 1950s, because it sounds awesome
4 (3.2%)

fandom in the early 1960s, which I knew firsthand
1 (0.8%)

fandom in the early 1960s, because it sounds awesome
2 (1.6%)

fandom in the late 1960s, which I knew firsthand
2 (1.6%)

fandom in the late 1960s, because it sounds awesome
2 (1.6%)

fandom in the early 1970s, which I knew firsthand
3 (2.4%)

fandom in the early 1970s, because it sounds awesome
2 (1.6%)

fandom in the late 1970s, which I knew firsthand
3 (2.4%)

fandom in the late 1970s, because it sounds awesome
6 (4.8%)

fandom in the early 1980s, which I knew firsthand
7 (5.6%)

fandom in the early 1980s, because it sounds awesome
6 (4.8%)

fandom in the late 1980s, which I knew firsthand
11 (8.7%)

fandom in the late 1980s, because it sounds awesome
5 (4.0%)

fandom in the early 1990s, which I knew firsthand
22 (17.5%)

fandom in the early 1990s, because it sounds awesome
9 (7.1%)

fandom in the late 1990s, which I knew firsthand
62 (49.2%)

fandom in the late 1990s, because it sounds awesome
12 (9.5%)

fandom in the early 2000s, which I knew firsthand
73 (57.9%)

fandom in the early 2000s, because it sounds awesome
8 (6.3%)

Comments

[klangley56]

I don't turn on my computer every day, so your poll was closed before I got a chance to answer it.

I'll simply add that nostalgia is as inevitable in fandom as it is in other facets of life. I'm absolutely nostalgic for pre-Internet fandom, and I'm still at my happier when I'm wallowing around in my zine library of four decades than when I'm clicking around on-line. While technology has added some ease and some functionality to fandom, it's also added greatly to the stress, as one tries to keep up in one's chosen fandoms(s). (And it's not just a fannish thing--I can make the same statement about "real life," as I've seen the same results from the increased technology in my job.)

I guess my thoughts about fandom then and now are pretty well summed up in this essay I posted on-line several years ago:
http://www.trickster.org/symposium/symp123.html

[ratcreature]

Er, the poll is not actually closed. I don't ever close polls (I don't even bother with that for polls that make no sense outside of a certain time, much less with general polls), so unless I clicked something wrong accidentally (which I just checked and I did not), the poll should work for you.

[klangley56]

Hmmm.

Well, I don't know what the problem would be, either. All I get on the page are the results of the poll--not the poll itself, with ticky boxes.

Is there some other link I should be looking for?

:-)

[klangley56]

Even stranger--when I sent that reply just now and it posted, it took me back to a page with actual ticky boxes.

Truly, the Internet is weird sometimes.

[ratcreature]

Huh. Maybe you weren't logged in before, but your computer logged you in when you replied? Well, I'm glad it resolved itself somehow.

[ratcreature]

That is really odd, because the only reason it might do that with an open poll ought to be if you have answered it, or are not logged in. This is the link directly to the poll in enter mode:
http://www.dreamwidth.org/poll/?id=1929&mode=enter

If that does not allow you to vote while you are logged in (this displays even if someone already has voted and the vote can be changed), I am at loss.

[ames]

I miss the days before fandom moved en masse to LiveJournal. I miss fic writers keeping up their own webpages, however crappy they may have looked. I miss being able to FIND things - I can never find anything on LJ. I miss the days when alt.tv.x-files.creative was amazing, when fans made gorgeous fansites that included fic, images, screencaps, making friends through e-mail and not through comment wars. I especially miss giving feedback through e-mail, instead of commenting on LJs, where it becomes all about how many comments you got, and who replies to them and who doesn't. So - the mid to late 90s, man. Those were good days. Sigh.

I guess fandom seems less personal to me now. It's all communities and one-step-removed, and it's just not as much fun for me.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, I'm not too fond of LJ as fic repository either, but I think archives are on a comeback now that the archive softwares are good enough to allow editing and control by the author, commenting and community features by the readers etc, so the initial advantages of using journals compared to simple old upload only archives aren't there anymore.

I never had much contact via email in the 1990s. I mean, I'm kind of nostalgic for the mailing list mode of discussion, but I like feedback better as it is now. I wrote email feedback sometimes, but not as often as I comment. And I like that I now sometimes hear back from authors, I almost never did via email, not even when I wrote a longer feedback. And commenting in journals is much less pressure, because you can just give a quick reply without it feeling silly. Those I would have never send via email, but I know most authors still appreciate hearing back, and I know that I like even short comment on my art.

[ames]

clarification - It's hand-done author pages I miss, not archives. Big fic depositories don't interest me; it was the way each writer put her stamp on the internet that I liked. There was usually more than just fic. Meta discussions, a page of screencaps, links to sites they loved, essays on their favorite characters, that type of thing. Archives don't tend to have that, especially the biggies like ff.net and what the AO3 is hoping to be. And it was so exciting to go through my bookmarks and see who'd updated, or redesigned their site.

Archives are visually static, and by definition, limited. Yawn.

[ratcreature]

I'm completely opposite in this regard. I always liked reading on archives better. I loved that XF had Gossamer whereas The Sentinel on the gen side had an archive that linked to author pages if they existed so you had to deal with all the individual pages. I still remember with horror the backgrounds of repeated screen caps that made reading impossible, and I didn't have a handy "zap colors" boomarklet back then getting rid of all design. And the hardcoded fonts ::shudder::. I once came across a fic that in a completely bizarre move had actually pictures of written text rather than written text for its stories. It was an accessibility nightmare, and my eyes aren't even that bad. I am so glad those days are gone. True, blogs, journals and archives are somewhat cookie-cutter in design, but I like the sameness that makes browsing them easy.

[madripoor-rose.livejournal.com]

Yes.

Fandom in the early nineties. Mailing list based fandom, my first fandom experiences.

[ratcreature]

I too miss mostly centralized mailing list fandom (back before they splintered on egroups&co) sometimes. I only got internet in the mid-1990s (1994? or 95? iirc), but it seemed much easier to scan for fanfic, and all discussion just landed in your inbox. It was easier somehow to be really immersed in a fandom, if it had just a small number of centralized lists. I don't miss the balkanization once setting up MLs became easy.

[madripoor-rose.livejournal.com]

I miss the in depth conversations. I've joined a few comms for shows, but only one of them really gets any traffic at all, and of course it's the one I like but haven't gotten 'fannish' about.