On the ethiquette of fansnark
Aug. 2nd, 2005 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wombat1138(Is that a real word? Probably not, but it's a dandy portmanteau.)
Well, that previous topic certainly went over like a Humvee attempting donuts. Alas. Still, it's tangentially connected to another meander I've been nursing for a while, or at least enough to provide an excuse for gratuitous segue.
Due to generous infusions of Miss Manners since childhood, I subscribe somewhat to the etiquette-based approach to ethics, or perhaps the ethics-based approach to etiquette. (Neither of these explains the four different types of place-setting spoons in my flatware set, but hush.) Either way, the sustained energetic contempt for Other Fans that's traditional in some quarters just gives me a crawly phobic sensation for which I can't find a good parallel, other than most people's reactions when I reminisce about my occasional childhood raids on gypsy-moth nests, in which I'd poke a hole through the tough silk roof of their tent and down through several layers, and then reach in and wiggle my fingers around the warm, squirming mass of damp fuzzy caterpillars. It's not that I don't delight in brief spluttering fits of snarkage, but marathons of snark just feel WRONG to me. As per usual practice, I've managed to sort out several rationalizations which may or may not be accurate, as opposed to handy cover stories for whatever visceral trigger is tucked away like a child's hand in caterpillars.
In most cases, Those Other Fans gain happiness from That Other Fandom without hurting anyone, except possibly themselves if one postulates the sacrifice of virgin brain cells on a pentacled altar of low standards. As such, what's the point of belittling their joy? Happiness can be as rare and ephemeral as endangered mayflies, so it seems criminally reckless to throw stones at them, even disregarding the surrounding glass walls of Our Own Fandom. This isn't quite the same as considering fanbliss as a zero-sum game, which seems to be the underlying paradigm of many snarkathoners who think that the best way to exalt Their Own Fandom above all others is to sledgehammer all Those Other Fandoms down past the Moho, although it may be dangerously close.
But also-- and this is where devout adherents of any religion may wish to discreetly turn their heads and cough-- I think it's very, very wrong to hurt real people for the sake of imaginary ones. Thanks to my agnostic streak, I can't say with any certainty whether a monotheistic God exists, nor an assortment of animistic kami or deified mortals (like my distant auntie), nor a planetary Gaia entity; certainly many people do consider at least one of the above to be real entities with as much personal affection or reverence as a close family member. But that doesn't apply to most fandoms; even when some of them draw on historical events/figures, those have generally been interpreted rather loosely by the fandom's source canon.
I suspect I had at least one other reason lined up, but it has temporarily fallen out the other side of my own brain cell, and I need to hit the road for an appointment. More later, perhaps.
Later, more: I must've fallen too far into the virtuous-sounding justifications to hang onto the coldly pragmatic one-- fansnark is a waste of time and energy.
Perhaps I'd better do some 'splainin of the sort of fansnark I'm considering, whose target isn't so much any one specific fanwork or fanperson (though some of them may be singled out from time to time as symptoms of the disease) but rather That Other Fandom (or Subfandom) in its general entirety. It often seems like a version of sibling rivalry, in that the most virulent examples I've seen have raged between (sub)fandoms whose source materials might appear closely similar to the uninitiated eye: ST vs SW; different favorite characters or pairings thereof within the same source material; competing definitions of canon; and so on. On the other hand, in its most advanced form, rabid fansnark can take the form of bashing every single Other Fandom named in the same breath as Our Fandom, for surely none other can be worthy of such mention, much less comparison.
(True tale of horror: when I was still reading SW fanfic lo these many years ago, one particular writer had come to notice as fairly talented and apparently sensible. And then I saw her long, passionate defense of how Anakin's lushly romantic courtship of Amidala in AOTC near to made her swoon upon her popcorn, as further evidence of how clearly superior the SW prequels were to the grubby ick hackwork Peter Jackson had made of LOTR. Now, I realize that PJ's LOTR has its detractors for various reasons, but what kind of bad drugs do you have to take to think AOTC was better?!? But alas, I snark.)
Righty then. So anyway, what the heck is the point of generic fansnark like that? Is a partisan of Fandom X going to abandon it because someone from Fandom Y does a drive-by dissertation of the extent of X's suckitude? Even if given a coolly reasoned point-by-point list of how Y, in particular, is artistically superior to X, chances are that the Xfan likes X for the exact same reasons that the Yfan hates it. This certainly seems true of ailuro[philes/phobes], frex, in a way that resembles the personal conjugation of adjectives[*]: self-contained/unloving, graceful/slinking, independent/disobedient; etc. Thus, My Fandom has grand dramatic sweep through a cunningly interlinked plot such as befits a true space-opera; Your Fandom is a melodramatic soap with utter disregard for the classical unities and Occam's Razor in general. My Favorite Character is a talented innocent; Your Favorite Character is an ignorant brat.
[*: I don't think "conjugation" is the right word to describe what verbs do when applied to different grammatical persons. Oh well. And then there are the thrice-cursed verblike adjectives in Japanese which actually do conjugate by tense and aspect. Dang them. Dang them a lot. Well, at least three times. Indeed, may they be danged to unduly-prolonged heck.]
I think I have wandered off my point again, such as it was. To summarize without much hope of having made my case or even simulated it, generic fansnark of Other Fandoms doesn't tend to make me feel better about My Fandom. It doesn't change the minds of Those Other Fans. When done correctly, it might possibly promote some form of insight about The Nature Of Fandom Itself, but more often it just seems to turn into a group wankfest (which sometimes leads to a closer sense of bonding among the participants, but ew, them bonds are sticky and lead to upholstery stains).
Much later: no, I am not unaware of the irony of my metasnarking about fansnark. I just kept forgetting to mention it :b
Well, that previous topic certainly went over like a Humvee attempting donuts. Alas. Still, it's tangentially connected to another meander I've been nursing for a while, or at least enough to provide an excuse for gratuitous segue.
Due to generous infusions of Miss Manners since childhood, I subscribe somewhat to the etiquette-based approach to ethics, or perhaps the ethics-based approach to etiquette. (Neither of these explains the four different types of place-setting spoons in my flatware set, but hush.) Either way, the sustained energetic contempt for Other Fans that's traditional in some quarters just gives me a crawly phobic sensation for which I can't find a good parallel, other than most people's reactions when I reminisce about my occasional childhood raids on gypsy-moth nests, in which I'd poke a hole through the tough silk roof of their tent and down through several layers, and then reach in and wiggle my fingers around the warm, squirming mass of damp fuzzy caterpillars. It's not that I don't delight in brief spluttering fits of snarkage, but marathons of snark just feel WRONG to me. As per usual practice, I've managed to sort out several rationalizations which may or may not be accurate, as opposed to handy cover stories for whatever visceral trigger is tucked away like a child's hand in caterpillars.
In most cases, Those Other Fans gain happiness from That Other Fandom without hurting anyone, except possibly themselves if one postulates the sacrifice of virgin brain cells on a pentacled altar of low standards. As such, what's the point of belittling their joy? Happiness can be as rare and ephemeral as endangered mayflies, so it seems criminally reckless to throw stones at them, even disregarding the surrounding glass walls of Our Own Fandom. This isn't quite the same as considering fanbliss as a zero-sum game, which seems to be the underlying paradigm of many snarkathoners who think that the best way to exalt Their Own Fandom above all others is to sledgehammer all Those Other Fandoms down past the Moho, although it may be dangerously close.
But also-- and this is where devout adherents of any religion may wish to discreetly turn their heads and cough-- I think it's very, very wrong to hurt real people for the sake of imaginary ones. Thanks to my agnostic streak, I can't say with any certainty whether a monotheistic God exists, nor an assortment of animistic kami or deified mortals (like my distant auntie), nor a planetary Gaia entity; certainly many people do consider at least one of the above to be real entities with as much personal affection or reverence as a close family member. But that doesn't apply to most fandoms; even when some of them draw on historical events/figures, those have generally been interpreted rather loosely by the fandom's source canon.
I suspect I had at least one other reason lined up, but it has temporarily fallen out the other side of my own brain cell, and I need to hit the road for an appointment. More later, perhaps.
Later, more: I must've fallen too far into the virtuous-sounding justifications to hang onto the coldly pragmatic one-- fansnark is a waste of time and energy.
Perhaps I'd better do some 'splainin of the sort of fansnark I'm considering, whose target isn't so much any one specific fanwork or fanperson (though some of them may be singled out from time to time as symptoms of the disease) but rather That Other Fandom (or Subfandom) in its general entirety. It often seems like a version of sibling rivalry, in that the most virulent examples I've seen have raged between (sub)fandoms whose source materials might appear closely similar to the uninitiated eye: ST vs SW; different favorite characters or pairings thereof within the same source material; competing definitions of canon; and so on. On the other hand, in its most advanced form, rabid fansnark can take the form of bashing every single Other Fandom named in the same breath as Our Fandom, for surely none other can be worthy of such mention, much less comparison.
(True tale of horror: when I was still reading SW fanfic lo these many years ago, one particular writer had come to notice as fairly talented and apparently sensible. And then I saw her long, passionate defense of how Anakin's lushly romantic courtship of Amidala in AOTC near to made her swoon upon her popcorn, as further evidence of how clearly superior the SW prequels were to the grubby ick hackwork Peter Jackson had made of LOTR. Now, I realize that PJ's LOTR has its detractors for various reasons, but what kind of bad drugs do you have to take to think AOTC was better?!? But alas, I snark.)
Righty then. So anyway, what the heck is the point of generic fansnark like that? Is a partisan of Fandom X going to abandon it because someone from Fandom Y does a drive-by dissertation of the extent of X's suckitude? Even if given a coolly reasoned point-by-point list of how Y, in particular, is artistically superior to X, chances are that the Xfan likes X for the exact same reasons that the Yfan hates it. This certainly seems true of ailuro[philes/phobes], frex, in a way that resembles the personal conjugation of adjectives[*]: self-contained/unloving, graceful/slinking, independent/disobedient; etc. Thus, My Fandom has grand dramatic sweep through a cunningly interlinked plot such as befits a true space-opera; Your Fandom is a melodramatic soap with utter disregard for the classical unities and Occam's Razor in general. My Favorite Character is a talented innocent; Your Favorite Character is an ignorant brat.
[*: I don't think "conjugation" is the right word to describe what verbs do when applied to different grammatical persons. Oh well. And then there are the thrice-cursed verblike adjectives in Japanese which actually do conjugate by tense and aspect. Dang them. Dang them a lot. Well, at least three times. Indeed, may they be danged to unduly-prolonged heck.]
I think I have wandered off my point again, such as it was. To summarize without much hope of having made my case or even simulated it, generic fansnark of Other Fandoms doesn't tend to make me feel better about My Fandom. It doesn't change the minds of Those Other Fans. When done correctly, it might possibly promote some form of insight about The Nature Of Fandom Itself, but more often it just seems to turn into a group wankfest (which sometimes leads to a closer sense of bonding among the participants, but ew, them bonds are sticky and lead to upholstery stains).
Much later: no, I am not unaware of the irony of my metasnarking about fansnark. I just kept forgetting to mention it :b