My Archaeology: Dawn of Networking

[morgandawn]

 From tumblr

concerningwolves:

I feel like fandom generations are both very specific and easily conflated. Like,, you either live through so many they blur together into one hellish mess or you join in on one generation and remain blissfully unaware of the previous ones

 Trekkster Gods 

• No internet
• fledgeling fandom 
• women run everything 
• seriously where the fuck did we go wrong 
• fandom wouldn’t exist as we know it without these women
• conventions, badges, quite a lot of taboo but also lots of fun
• closely-knit communities
• mostly discussions in magazines 
• hogging the phone so you can chat with your friends 
• (while trying to pretend the rest of your family doesn’t exist)
• basement meetings 
• fanart what??

Dawn of Networking 

• tin-bucket sites and forums 
• the badly assembled DIY IKEA kits of the internet
• these were strange places 
• i’m too young to know firsthand but I’ve heard the stories
• they were like,, inhabited by eldrich beings
•  who would sell souls in exchange for fanfics
• early RPs
• nobody was quite sure what they were doing
• but!! You could connect with more fans quickly!!! 
• made obsessing less lonely
• yay

“I was there Gandalf”

• Live Journal 
• small internet communities  
• the name “Ann Rice” strikes fear into your heart 
• also hatred, lots of hatred 
• adding every warning and rating under the sun, hiding behind NSFW filters even if it isn’t necessary, praying you don’t get reported or deleted
• you get reported
• your friends get reported 
• nobody is safe
• fuck.

Citrus Cheesecake 

• DeviantArt and ff.net 
• bright shiny eyes
• children everywhere 
• “more of a lime than a lemon >//< but also kind of just a lemon with fluff?” 
• where did all the adults go? Where were they hiding??
• pls don’t flame
• A/N *dances away from your flames because idgaf*
• omggg such a nosebleed!!!! XD lol
• characters and authors having conversations in the author’s notes

Archive of Our Saviours

• ooo we found the adults
• mass migration by younger fans to Tumblr, Ao3 etc 
• looking at fandom’s earlier stages like “I have no memory of this place”
• ratings that had nothing to do with fruit 
• (thank gods)
• fandom grows up 
• we are all grateful 
• we have proper websites to call home
• wanderers can finally settle down
• many fans are Tired

We’re here again, Gandalf

• your elbows are explicit 
• cats are explicit
• there are legends of a paradise of pillows 
• but none of us wants to leave hell 
• blue blue blue 
• a well-respected petblr is flagged as explicit 
• will we be here in January? 
• who will survive? 
• those with sense watch the chaos from Ao3, sipping mocktails
• but we’re not really scared
• nothing can kill fandom 
• not even god. 

Comments

[havocthecat]

We were not eldritch!

Uh. Were we?

I was only vaguely Trekkster era. If only I had been able to get to any cons earlier. Or Mom hadn't been such a screaming introvert. Honestly, for some of us, socializing with only your relatives is NOT ENOUGH.

Definitely was there at the Dawn of Networking age. Oh, Usenet.

[amedia]

If only I had been able to get to any cons earlier.

Hee! I'm with you! I could only go to local cons, and only if I could get a friend or family member to drive me. I remember once, I desperately wanted to go to a con that none of my friends were going to, and my dad made me sit down with the bus-route maps and figure out exactly how to get myself there. Then he drove me. ;-)

Definitely was there at the Dawn of Networking age. Oh, Usenet.

Eldritch indeed!!! ♥ Somehow I missed out on Usenet; I was more into listservs.

[havocthecat]

I was on both! Oh, they were great! Though someone put a bunch of old listserv archives online and all I can think of is, "Why, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? Let them die, we were so wanky and no one wants any records of that, not really."

Your dad sounds...kind of like a delight. He reminds me of my dad. :)

[stranger]

I started in the *seriously* Trekkster era, and actually came out of SF fan groups into much more welcoming mediafandom. There were mimeo zines and round-robin letters and APAs, all inherited and repurposed from SF (male-dominated) fandom, but mediafans adopted offset printing pretty fast, as fast as they could afford to, and with it the need for a friendly copy/print shop.

There was also a period when computers were *available* to some at least, but were clumsy and unreliable to the point that I stuck with a plain typewriter for a few years, because it couldn't crash and wipe out 3000 words all at once. But some fans did have the awful computers with six-inch monitors when that was the only way to connect with fandom, because there was nothing else like fandom. Or computers. That invisible connection was as magical as telepathy.

Yep, the future has arrived. Now what?

[amedia]

OMG, I was such a baby fan (teenaged) tiptoeing among the Trekkster goddesses back in the day. I quickly figured out that I preferred media sci-fi cons to general sci-fi cons, and fannish cons rather than professional ones. Fannish media conventions were so much fun when they were the primary source of fanfic--all those tables laden with shiny new fanzines!!! And we were all so young and stayed up until three in the morning watching blurry tapes converted from PAL to NTSC and then copied three or four times.

the badly assembled DIY IKEA kits of the internet

What a great expression!!!

I remember when a friend of mine gave me a TNG story to read that she had FTP-downloaded from somewhere and printed out on greenbar paper. It was such a novelty, I didn't quite realize that it was also the dawn of a new age. And I remember a few years later, when I had gotten online myself--someone emailed me a W3 story to read and I was irked because it took so long to download that it cost me money! (It put me over my allowance of time for the month, and after that, you paid by the minute.) But I was also enthralled because SOMEONE EMAILED ME A STORY! I was still submitting stories to zines by physically sending a diskette in the mail, and even that felt futuristic at the time.

nothing can kill fandom
not even god.

I have this vision of heaven as being very much like a fan convention. The kind that fills an entire hotel, so you can wander from room to room and if the door is open you can pop your head in and have an amazing conversation with a total stranger. I miss those days so much.

[havocthecat]

Oh man. FTP downloads!

I lol, but I did that. Also alt.tv.startrek-creative.

[fjbryan]

I was there, Gandalf. Oh, yeah, baby. Something in there needs to mention JournalFen mocking, I think.

[tabaqui]

Heee! This is very cool. I agree! And - I was there, Gandalf. :D

[gchick]

I started to BUTBUTBUT the Dawn of Networking into multiple sub-periods where usenet/mailing lists and single-purpose archives you had to find about by promising secrecy and possibly your firstborn and hand-rolled websites with terrrrrrrible tiny type and bad background images were all distinct things, and then I realized that was just proving the point and how the fuck did I get this old.

[amedia]

single-purpose archives you had to find about by promising secrecy and possibly your firstborn

OMG yes!!! I remember a panel at one convention where we all sat around and worried out loud about what would happen if underage kids managed to register for a slash list. Could the listowner be arrested? Could everyone who had made an R- or X-rated post go to jail? What about teenagers who were of age in their home country but not in the listowner's country? Aargh, we took it all SO SERIOUSLY.

[writerlibrarian]

Dawn of networking I was. Listserv. I still get the Highlander big list check email out of the blue. That was my first step into fandom. Yahoo groups, Xena and Herk forums. Onelist. mIRC on dialup. Good memories but would not go back