Who's this "we", fandom?

[alias_sqbr]

There is a lot of fandom meta which says "We in fandom [do or think X]" even though huge swathes of fandom don't do or think X at all. In my experience, when pressed the author will say that what they actually meant is that there is a trend of X, or that their part of fandom does X, or that they personally think X and it seems obvious that everyone else does too from their behaviour, etc.

Since I find this kind of meta incredibly annoying I've tried to avoid it myself. This has been surprisingly difficult.

If I'm just summarising opinions found in other people's meta then I can refer to it as "common in the parts of fanfic fandom I hang out in" etc and know I'm not overgeneralising. But if I want to make an original point about an epiphany I've had about The Way Fandom Works then it's much harder to be specific about the group to which this epiphany applies.

In fact, until I get confirmation from other fans, the ONLY person I can say for sure it applies to is myself. But "this is how fandom works for me" feels much less worthy and interesting than "this is how fandom works for everyone", even if I focus on those parts of my experience which seem fairly universal and include other people's POVs where I can. Are my autobiographical ramblings really worthy of a long essay and being crossposted to month_of_meta etc?(*) I usually ask my commenters if their experiences are similar, and they often agree (possibly with some caveats) but it still feels...weird.

Note that speculating on the motives of others or about large scale trends isn't without value, as long as it's labelled clearly as speculation and the author takes a moment to think about and mention possible counterexamples. Though I do think that anyone speculating about groups to which they do not belong needs to be very careful.

One reason I get so het up about this (beyond constantly falling through the cracks of other people's meta as a femslasher/cartoonist/video game fan etc) is my background in maths, where a single counterexample is enough to scrap an otherwise valid theory. I realise that my obsession with caveats makes my own meta long winded, and still cut out a bunch of "mostly"s and "I think"s for clarity. But while some fandom overgeneralisations are like "All primes are odd" (true modulo a caveat or two, arguably ok as a rule of thumb) others are like "All odd numbers are prime" (seems plausible based on a small local sample, actually VASTLY WRONG) The former rub me the wrong way but have merit, it's the latter I would like to see less of.

The post that finally got me to write this up was Meh, reading stuff about how “we” love Darcy which makes similar complaints (actual linked proof it isn't just me! :D)

I know other people find the kind of overgeneralising I'm talking about annoying. How do you avoid it yourself? Do you think it would be better for people to admit when they're talking about personal experience and make more of an effort at gathering evidence before generalising? How do we best make the jump from personal anecdata to broader trends without doing a massive fandom wide survey? (Not that there's anything wrong with fandom-wide surveys, but not everyone has the time or energy when they just want to write a bit of meta)

I feel like this MUST be a topic of discussion in, like, Rhetoric or Methods of Social Science or some other humanities subject. Especially since it feels to me like a lot of the problem is people trying to write Serious Sociological Essays without the academic rigour and sources an actual academic essay would require (not that Actual Academic Essays on fandom are immune from the problem, the few attempts I've made at reading TWC were very disappointing and made me wish I was up to writing Serious Sociological Essays myself. But since I'm not, you have this. THE END)

(*)As you can see I got over this angst to some extent ;) I didn't realise I was going to be right at the start of month_of_meta when I wrote this but I guess meta on how to meta makes for an appropriate starting topic!

EDIT: Since at least one person hurt their brain trying to figure it out: The non-odd prime number is two :) Some examples of non-prime odd numbers are 9, 15, 35 etc. SORRY FORT THE MATHS IT'S LIKE A SICKNESS WITH ME.

Comments

[littlebutfierce]

For me, a lot of the generalizing seems to stem from privilege -- people talking about "fandom" & not even realizing that hey, they mean Western TV fandoms (& Western fans of such -- often specifically US American), or hey, maybe people in (for example) anime & manga fandoms do things differently. Sometimes this seems to stem from complete unawareness, sometimes just... an unstated assumption that things are the same. (Also the thing about, even w/in the same fandoms that people assume stand in for All of Fandom, hey, maybe POCs/women/queer ppl/other people facing vectors of oppression even experience Thing X differently!)

Like, I remember whatever vid going around ages ago that so many people were saying, "OMGGGGG ultimate fannish vid everrrrrr" or whatever, & I looked at the list of sources, & thought, right, this will say nothing about my fannish experience or the fannish experience of many, many fans I know, so thanks for projecting yourself onto me.

I would vastly prefer that people own their experience as theirs & as being shaped by their intersecting identities. Yeah, it's less satisfying to make than grand pronouncements about Fandom As A Whole (Or Even Most of Fandom), but yeah, you avoid stepping all over other people in the process.

[alias_sqbr]

Oh absolutely. I stopped myself ranting about WHY these kinds of generalisations are bad because otherwise I'd have been here all day and never got to my actual point :) Also as a white Australian anime fan I worry about appropriating the anger of more marginalised non-US-based fans of non-Western media, I'm never sure where to draw the line between the sort of fannish annoyance I feel about being ignored as, say, a fan of Western RPGs and more serious issues of representation and race/culture.

That happens to me with vids too, and half the time when I look at the actual vid maker's comments they're pretty clear about trying to portray THEIR experience of fandom, it's just other fans who act like it represents All Of Us. (The other half of the time I get annoyed at everyone involved and go draw some yuri or something to make myself feel better)

[littlebutfierce]

Heh, yeah, fair enough! (Also, yes, the appropriation thing is tricky.)

To go back to your question about how to avoid this stuff: ... is it too snarky to say it would be nice if certain parts of fandom could check their privilege & realize that their framework for viewing the world is not universal?

I wonder if people might also hesitate to write "this is how fandom is for ME" posts b/c they're worried that it might be seen as not really relevant/interesting/too navel-gazey or obnoxious.

[sylvaine]

To jump in here, it might be a little snarky, yeah, but I really would like to see that. Because fandom is not actually this fucking monolith that certain people make it out to be.

(*And I'm sure I've been guilty of this kind of generalization, too, but I like to imagine I'm at least a little more aware of it. :P)

[torachan]

I like reading people's posts about how fandom (or whatever) is for them. If their experience is vastly different from mine, it can still be an interesting read as long as they're not trying to say This Is Fandom.

But almost any time I read a post generalising about fandom, it's always alienating and I just feel annoyed.

[fred_mouse]

You have pretty much said that which I wished to.

Although I will add - I get around not overgeneralising by never letting the meta get from brain to keyboard.

[alias_sqbr]

Oh, it would definitely be NICE...

I wonder if people might also hesitate to write "this is how fandom is for ME" posts b/c they're worried that it might be seen as not really relevant/interesting/too navel-gazey or obnoxious.

This definitely was (and to some extent, still is) a problem for me. And some "this is how fandom is for me" posts really are navel gazing and of little general interest, but written the right way they can be just as interesting and informative as posts claiming to speak for everyone.

[chordatesrock]

I would love to hear more about differences in fannish culture between Western TV fandoms and other kinds of fandoms.

[alias_sqbr]

There's a few meta pieces like that around, though they themselves can be prone to overgeneralisation. For example, most "this is how anime fandom works" posts I've seen have just made me scratch my head and reminded me that my little femslashy group of friends isn't representative.

[naraht]

There's some great meta about RPF fandoms over at writingthewall. Although, ironically enough, a lot of the things that people say about how "we" do RPF are utterly and completely alien to my own experience, so if you read the comments you'll usually find me there kicking and screaming.

("We aren't writing about the real person, we're writing about their public persona"? Nope...)

[alias_sqbr]

Maybe THAT is the one universal of fandom: any description of a subset of fandom larger than size one will leave at least one member of that subset feeling misrepresented.

(of course I'm sure there are counterexamples ;))

[stultiloquentia]

a lot of the things that people say about how "we" do RPF are utterly and completely alien to my own experience

I'm really interested in this. Could you point me to a discussion, or sum up your RPF MO?

[naraht]

I suspect I've ranted about this all over the place in a variety of different contexts, but this probably sums up one of the key points:

http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/396388.html

In short, I really don't see the difference between the RPF that I write and historical fiction. But when "RPF" is used in fannish terms it seems to be applied to a very particular subgenre of fiction about real people, with particular tropes and particular reference to "public personas."