Fourth wall, lack thereof, and LJ/IJ/DW vs Tumblr

[firefly124]

So, someone on my flist had just made a very thoughtful post about the effects of AO3 and Tumblr on fandom as a whole and LJ in particular (IJ and DW by association). It took me a minute to process that the "lack of fourth wall" the poster was describing was between us as fannish creators and the rest of the world. I'm not used to thinking of

Comments

[pir8fancier]

I think the divide between the older and younger fen is (partly) due to youth not realizing that shit can really bite you on the ass. Their reference point is limited. Case in point: my kids are mortified that I write fanfiction porn. In fact, my daughter had a friend in college who was a huge HP slash fan, and she was terrified that my pseud would come up in conversation. This said to me that they really aren't as cool as they think they are. That their reference points are limited to their cool set of friends. Cool mom? Not so much.

I'm getting a real sense that people are realizing the free-for-all on tumblr is not as "free" as they thought. Several people on my flist are returning to LJ because the fannish vitriol is out of control. There certainly has been a bunch of wank on LJ, but there are some self-correcting mechanisms, a community policing mechanism of sorts.

I don't have many insights here, just a sense that fandom has changed into something that I'm not sure I'm comfortable with.

[firefly124]

I'm not sure I have any real insights either. I think I've been lucky on Tumblr, probably due to only following blogs around specific interests, unfollowing blogs that seem wank-filled, and using TumblrSavior to filter out a lot of stuff I just don't want to see. What there really aren't over there are communities. There are networks, sort of, but they're not remotely like comms so far as I can see.