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

[ane]

Mostly I just yearn for the days when stories were posted to email groups. It would make it easier to have stories on my iTouch if they were in my email.

[ratcreature]

Hee. Though you wouldn't have had an iTouch back when stories were posted to lists. Sometimes one can't win. That is similar to me thinking (especially upon editing Fanlore) that many of the older zines look kind of cool, except that I could not have afforded to buy many of them had I been in fandom then, especially with not being in the US...

[kass]

I sometimes feel nostalgia for my early days in fandom but mostly I am happy now -- I like dw/lj culture (at least, the corner of it where I spend my time.) I like being able to get more insight into the lives of my fannish friends, and being able to talk both about our fandoms and about our lives without feeling like we're going "off-topic" as in the old list days.

And while I love the one oldschool con I've attended many times (Escapade) I also adore the newer cons which have become part of my life (Vividcon and Muskrat Jamboree)... and things like the OTW and the Archive of Our Own make me incredibly happy, and they are new and shiny and were not part of my original fannish experience.

[ratcreature]

I sometimes miss the convenience of huge, centralized mailing lists, before having a ML became easy and so by necessity there were just a couple at most per fandom.

This was a trickier question than I'd initially thought...

[elke_tanzer]

At first, I said yes, sometimes I feel nostalgia for how fandom was, in times when I experienced it firsthand (which was early 1990s 'til now mostly, fwiw), because it was fun and really wonderful at the time (and of course fandom at that time also sucked in various ways). And I sometimes find myself curious about the three decades of fandom right before the ones I experienced, because people talk about the different types of wonderful that fandom was for them then which is different nowadays (and of course fandom at those times also sucked in various ways).

But when I went to click the boxes, I had an overwhelming feeling that I really, really love fandom right now, because for the most part, we've collectively learned how to use new technologies to continue the sorts of wonderful that fandom had before, and also to add new kinds of wonderful that were not previously possible (and of course fandom at this time also sucks in various ways).

So I guess I can't be nostalgic for things I still have, if that makes sense.

I feel nostalgic for specific time periods when there were more fan-creations being created for specific fandoms which hit a peak of activity, and while many of those creations are still available, there's not the volume of new stuff being churned out every day/week/month in that fandom now. But there are other new fandoms with high productivity, and I'm such an omnivore that there's never a shortage of stories to read and vids to watch and art to ogle.

I feel nostalgic for specific conventions, because the specific mix of people who came together to talk about specific things at that moment in time was unique and amazing and in-person discussions and parties and shared-squee is amazing and wonderful and why can't I have that sort of experience every month without travel expenses, waaah. But online equivalents of that do happen all the time, and I do have some geographically close fanfriends that I can squee with and feast with, so that helps.

:-)

Thanks for the reminder to count my fannish blessings, because really, I'm feeling very blessed to be a part of fandom as it is right now.

<3

[shadowvalkyrie]

I occasionally feel nostalgic for the pre-internet days when my (former) best friend and I were all the fandom I knew. But that's more a personal than a fannish nostalgia. *g*

To be honest, I love internet fandom as I've gotten to know it (I've been online with my own computer only since 2006, before that I never dared to look for fannish stuff on my dad's PC). There are so many stories, and so many awesome writers. If fandom was still zines and cons, I don't think I'd ever have had the chance to participate!

Re: This was a trickier question than I'd initially thought...

[ratcreature]

Yeah, it is tricky. Looking at all the zine being entered in Fanlore I keep thinking I sometimes that I would have liked being in zine fandom, not even because some of the zines content, but because I really like to collect physical objects. Except I would have likely never gotten to those zines, not to mention the cost that would have been involved for getting the same amount of fanfic and conversation I now get via my internet connection at a moderat cost (which I can use for non-fandom things too). I mean, I know I could collect zines now still either new ones or old zines (and I actually do have a number of zines for comic fandoms I'm involved in), but they seems such a frivolous expense in the present (more so than even other fandom costs I mean), because it is so much easier and more convenient to get electronically.

Re: This was a trickier question than I'd initially thought...

[elke_tanzer]

I adore zines, but I have Too Much Stuff. I rediscover this fact every time I move, and every time I dust my apartment. :-P

Also, it's not possible to do a full-text search on a bookshelf full of zines, to figure out which story I'm looking for is in which one of them!

:-D

[ratcreature]

Getting into fandom via a borrowed computer is tough. My first forays into fandom were via the computer that my older sister used at the university (nobody had private internet then), and there I used the first search thing (that was before there was a web, it was called "gopher" and gave you lists of material on ftp servers, it was the predecessor to the WWW, that must have been 1992 or thereabout) and also browsed comic newsgroups. But I couldn't use the university computer for long, and I could only print out a moderate amount to read later and had to do so discreetly (I still have a file folder with comic fandom stuff from then).

Then when Compuserve first offered private internet in Germany my brother got that, but that was expensive, and I could not go there often to use his anyway. I tried subscribing to a Due South list I had found with his email, but that flooded his mailbox (that must have been 1994 or 1995?), so he was pissed off, so then I decided to wait for my own internet connection for further fandom forrays, which wasn't until 1997. The cost for that once I found fandom was somewhat ruinous though, what without flatrates.

I've also been in offline comic fandom earlier, ever since I was a kid and found my local comic store. My parents were very fandom friendly, so they paid the expenses for me to go to out of town comic conventions as a teenager, and wrote me notes for teachers so I could skip school and arrive there Thursdays and stay the whole weekend... Also my older sister was a Trek fan (all the novels, merchandise, and I once found drawerfic on her computer) and also collected comics, and my brother was a huge D&D geek...so I've never really been outside of fandom.

[rheanna]

I suppose sometimes I feel a little nostalgic for fandom circa 1999-2001, but that's more to do with where I was fannishly at that time: I got online in about 1998, so that was a period when I was discovering online fandom, and I wrote a lot during those few years. That said, I'm certainly not nostalgic for my life circa 1999-2001, because I hated my job and was miserable (which was partly why I was writing so much fic, as mental escape route).

You know, on the whole, I don't think I am too nostalgic for fandom's past. The internet, for me, has meant participation in fandom in a way I simply would never have done back in the days of cons and zines, because the internet has made fandom so much more accessible. And I think there are some really good things going on right now, with developments like AO3 and DW. If the last decade has been about fandom figuring out how to adapt online networks and applications for its own purposes (eg, using LJ, delicious, etc) then the next decade looks like it's going to be about fandom actually getting organised and created its own bespoke networks and applications, and that's quite exciting.

Edited to add -- actually, the one thing I DO miss is watching things completely unspoiled. It would be impossible for me to go utterly unspoiled these days without turning off my computer for a month. I remember when I first got into the X Files, one of the great pleasures of watching it every week was genuinely having no idea what each episode would bring. But, on the other hand, equally I had no one to squee with about new episodes either, back then. And the X Files was this terrific, cult thing that started quietly and then got huge purely on the basis of its quality and word of mouth. These days, on LJ, when a new show debuts, you've got all these people dissecting it from the first minute of the pilot, trying to determine whether it's going to be the Next Big Thing or not. Which I'm not saying is a bad or undesirable thing, but sometimes I miss the slower fandom lifecycle of 15 years ago.

[sholio]

I'm nostalgic for past eras of fandom but I don't want to go back because I don't want to lose what I have now, if that makes any sense. For one thing, I think my past experiences were influenced hugely by what I was fanning on and who I was at the time. I had fantastic experiences with mailing list fandom in the mid-90s, but now that I'm used to being exposed to the wider and more diverse LJ/DW culture, I don't think I'd want to lose that because I've met so many new people and learned so many new things. (I'm still on a couple MLs, but it's a supplement to LJ rather than a replacement.) If fandom swings back to MLs for whatever reason, it would be a different experience, not the one they had before. I miss the experiences I had, the people I used to know, but I don't think it's possible to recapture that. I don't think the medium was the experience; I think it was more a matter of where I was in my life at that point, and the people that I knew.

Since I got into a pre-Internet fandom (Wiseguy) last year and started collecting zines, it's been making me nostalgic for something I never experienced -- fandom pre-Internet. But this is tempered by reality, because I couldn't have gone to cons, and my ability to participate in zine subculture would've been heavily influenced by my lack of money and access. (Obviously, I guess ... since I was totally oblivious to the fact that it even existed despite having been solo-fanning for a number of years before the Internet!) I really do love sending and receiving mail, and I really enjoyed having pen pals before getting email, but it is so much easier to maintain social networks in an era of instant communications. If I wanted my social life to be mail-based, I could shut down my computer and start writing letters ... but obviously I'm not doing that. :D

[ratcreature]

Yeah, realist approaches often squash nostalgia. It's certainly much easier to read fanfic online than to find it in zines.

One of the things I like best about fandom now is how much easier it is for me to get the un-dubbed original sources. First there is that DVDs always have the original language, and of course with broadband these days there's downloads. I still remember what an effort it was to trade for VCR tape copies of The Sentinel, and to get my hands on Due South episodes and so on. The quality was crap and it cost a lot of time and money, and not all fandoms had people willing to make copies for cost. And with not being in an English language country I did not have interesting recordings I could offer to copy in equal trade in return either. Of course now you got all the entertainment corporations whining about "piracy", even though I did the same thing pre-filesharing, it just took many weeks or months to get my hands the tv I wanted to watch.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, I wouldn't trade present day fandom against past one either. Not least because of how hard it was for me to get undubbed tv sources even in the 1990s because there were no multi-language DVD releases and no broadband, and the original version never air here and dubbed ones only ages later. Tape trading was a pain.

I do feel a bit wistful about having missed the zine era, because I do like collecting objects. I mean, one of my pleasures in comics besides reading them has always been the collection aspect, and online versions just don't give that jolt. But considering how expensive that would have been, I'm happy that fanfic is easier to read online.

I am, and yet I'm not

[angel_negra]

I find what I'm most nostalgic for is what fandom used to be for me. Back when anything seemed IC so long as the names and proper descriptions were attached. When I didn't mind epithets instead of names for 99% of the fic. Back when I could read POVs that switched randomly every few sentences. Back when Mary Sues were awesome, original characters to read and write.

There was so much more fic I could read and enjoy back then.

I mean, I like where I'm at now. I see things in canon narratives that just blew over my head back then. I've grown considerably as a writer, and as a reader, when I do find what I consider good fic, it's that much more treasured because of all the badfic - bad to me - that I had to slog through to find it.

And I like how fandom as a whole has grown. That so many people are multi-fannish and with the addition of journaling services, you can get to know people. (I've made far more friends online thanks to the journals.) And they are also platforms for sharing fandoms. And then you factor in the ease of screencaps nowadays. And the places online to gain access to shows that wouldn't normally air in your country. And vidders! I remember a vidder once mentioning how you'd have to make a fanvid with at least two VCRs and starting and stopping and just how far we've come now with computer programs and webcams. And podcasts, and even podfic!

I miss the old days sometimes, but not as much as I love it in the here and now.

[melusinahp]

I miss fandom of three years ago. HP fandom has changed radically since then.

[msilverstar]

My fandom (LOTR RPS) peaked maybe a year after I got into it, notably at oscars 2004, and I'm deeply glad that I was there, but damn I miss it.

[quinfirefrorefiddle]

I miss the days when the fandoms were small enough that you could know everyone. They were like neighborhoods, and everybody was in each other's business, and helped each other write, and if there were arguments then it was even money people would actually make the effort to make up afterward.

Now fandom is more like Los Angeles than a small town. The meta's almost always cross-fandom, and groups don't have the history invested in each other like they used to. So when there's wank, they all bitch and leave, and no one bothers to try to heal the rift.

It makes me sad.

Here via metafandom

[blnchflr]

Considering how fast time moves on the internet, I think you can most definitely feel nostalgia for something even just a couple years back :o) !

[aris_tgd]

I miss some specific things that are now gone, but I don't so much miss the fandom, y'know? Like, there was a specific message board for Babylon 5 which was so full of fannish energy it was unreal. There was group storywriting which was almost like RPing, it was so immediate. I miss that.

Of course, the quality sucked and it was totally full of Mary Sues, OMG. But that's internet adolescence for you.

[lilacsigil]

Oh, no, I love journals and comms SO MUCH! This is my sixteenth year in fandom, and I think it just keeps getting better (except for those damn kids! *shakes fist*) Seriously, though, the wank is bigger but less personal - in that there's always somewhere else to go - and I love seeing all the new fandoms come to life.

[sporangia]

I entered fandom with Star Trek, I was already an SF fan, and was reading fanzines in the late sixties which is how I found out about Spockanalia which became the first Star Trek zine I collected.

I loved fanzine fandom. But for me fandom was mostly centered around the Star Trek and SF clubs I was a member of. I have been in either a Star Trek club or an SF club since 1970. The current club I belong to is a gourmet Star Trek group, and we have dinner together every Friday night. Five of us in the current club have been reading fanfiction since the seventies (me the sixties), but only three of us have been active readers in every decade.

I love fandom it all its manifestations, but the seventies were a very special time. What do I miss?.... The all night K/S discussions.... the 8 hour phone conversations with people you have never met...... driving to New York Conventions, in Pinto with 6 people.....sleeping in a hotel room with 12 people....Having strangers sleeping in your hotel bathroom bathtub, so they can read the fanzine stash you hauled along....Learning filk songs...meeting other fans.....Seeing Star Trek Reborn....seeing Star Wars for the first time, and meeting the woman with her baggie of what I thought was confetti, and it turned out to be her ticket stubs from all the times she's seen Star Wars (after 32 years still mind boggling).....Meeting the actors for the first time....Entering a costume contest.....publishing art and stories in fanzines....But most of all I remember the laughter, lots and lots and lots of laughter.

I was in an astonishing club, with astonishing people, in the seventies we thought of ourselves as a typical college SF club, we always felt we were on the periphery of fandom, not like the big clubs in the midwest or the the big cities. I have long since changed that opinion I was in one of the best clubs in the country, at one of the best times to be in an SF club.

I have only recently come to Lj and DW, so I'm now enjoying a more expansive kind of fandom. It really isn't all that different from what was happening before but as Friendshipper stated there is much more diversity, and a less insular SF centered culture. I hope the internet can help forge the same kind of life long bonds that I have had, and I wonder what fandom will be like 40 years from now?

[roga]

Via metafandom. I divide my fandom experience into pre-LJ and post-LJ, which is late-90s to 2003 and post 2003 for me, and honestly? I loved pre-LJ fandom, but I'm not nostalgic for it. I love LJ.

I do miss certain aspects of forming friendships over email -- on LJ I rarely communicate with people in private -- but it doesn't reach levels of actual nostalgia.

Re: I am, and yet I'm not

[ratcreature]

Back when anything seemed IC so long as the names and proper descriptions were attached. When I didn't mind epithets instead of names for 99% of the fic. Back when I could read POVs that switched randomly every few sentences.
I remember my honeymoon phase phase with my first online fandom fondly too. :D

[ratcreature]

yeah, most fandoms change a lot when canon closes, because the pace gets different. Or do you mean something more? To me it did not seem as if HP changed more than other fandoms I've been in when they made that step.

[ratcreature]

I think missing activity or a point in your fandom is different from nostaligia in a more general sense for the shape of fandom.