thinky thoughts

[thehallway]

well, as thinky as i can be at this point in time. i'm sitting here watching and listening to the rain, again. ok, i get it. it's april. it's cold and it's raining. again. but it's my spring break, and i am sick and tired of cold and rain.

so i'm sitting here thinking of fandom, as opposed to being productive and shit. and i'm wondering if there's a tipping point for dying fandoms and if you could recognize that. i mean, can you recognize a fandom in its death throes and see the point beyond which it will never recover?

and is there such a point for you, individually? beyond which you simply cannot tolerate being part of a fandom?   

Comments

Will the last fan standing please turn out the lights?

[dechant]

My tipping point is different with every fandom, really. Losing my love for the source material will do it; watching the fandom devolve into wank and badfic also trips my "time to leave" alarms. Getting squicked by darn near everything that gets posted? Yeah, I'm gone.

And sometimes they fizzle. Big, small, we'll all move on to different things. That's when the communities turn into archives, and maybe someday they'll get rediscovered, but nobody's holding hir breath.

Re: Will the last fan standing please turn out the lights?

[thehallway]

yeah, i'll go with the badfic as a major red flag, too. there's always a ton of badfic, but in healthy fandoms there's always enough well-written fic by writers who respect and understand the source material. you can always find them. and when they leave, and there's only badfic, it's time to peace out. especially when that badfic is being celebrated.

wank is wank, and sometimes it's entertaining. but when it's all wank, all the time, that's just exhausting. getting squicked and going wtf? at everything means it's time to go.

it's sad i think to watch a fandom in its final death throes, especially if it's something you held near and dear. and not only a fandom, but the forums and communities that at one time were alive and well. watching a forum or comm devolve and die is painful, too.