February 2012 marked my 30th anniversary as a member of fandom. I was 11 when I first attended the Sunday of Boskone 19 (![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beckyfeld and lcmlc had attended for the whole weekend, and I got a taste of the convention when Abba-with-no-LJ and I headed over to the Park Plaza on Sunday to fetch them). After that first taste, I was hooked. I attended the full weekend of Boskone 20 and from there I haven't looked back.
When I started in SF fandom, it was mostly centered around book fandom. Science fiction written-wordfans have an interesting relationship with their source material. We feel a proprietary relationship with not only the book itself but with the creator of the book. And at conventions in the early 1980s (which for me was Boskone), we had access to many of our favorite writers, either because they were guests at the convention or because they were fans themselves and attending the convention by paying out of their own pockets for the cost of hotel rooms and food (some conventions comp memberships for people who participate in programming; I do not know if Boskone did so in the 1980s). This easy access to our favorite writers led to, for instance, my meeting Joan D. Vinge in the hot tub at a Boskone. We stop writers randomly in the hallway and ask them about their current writing projects or about things in the books we've read that we want to understand better. And we expect this level of interaction.
With the growth of the Internet when I was in college, I became active in USENET groups that discussed TV shows I enjoyed. There was something wonderful in the ability to join with other fans of shows that might be unknown to people in one's everyday circle of interactions and discuss things that would make your nearest and dearest go "Huh?" Internet fandom on USENET had etiquette rules about interactions with the show creators (in many cases, they boiled down to "Don't do it unless you can be respectful. Don't make us look like a bunch of idiots"). The September that Never Ended (1993, when AOL got USENET access) came and went and USENET groups eventually moved to mailing lists and then to the Web, but fandom stayed fandom. We still wanted to discuss every detail of everything we saw or read.
Over the years, through many TV fandoms, I have seen how fandoms with an "open canon" (shows are still being broadcast, as opposed to shows with a "closed canon", those shows now off the air and thus not adding new shows to the "canon") react to new episodes. In my many fandoms over the years, most had members who were online moments after the end credits rolled, with people discussing the shows while they were fresh in our minds. These discussions (and, usually, debates) would rage until the next episode ran and often even thereafter, folding in what we learned in new episodes to flesh out our interaction with the show. I remember on alt.tv.er we had rules about spoilery discussions about just-broadcast episodes: They were forbidden completely until the episode had run on the West Coast of the US. After that, they had to be marked as "Spoiler" for a week. After that, spoilery details were fair game. This led to discussions by those of us on the East Coast that for a couple of hours looked like this:
Person A: Can you believe [spoiler] did that?
Person B: I *know*! When [spoiler] [spoilery verb-ed] [spoiler]? Amazing!
And so forth.
Anyway, so I've become used to online discussions happening as or right after the show has aired. But one show I am watching, for which there is an online presence, does not seem to have this "discuss-immediately-after" culture, which I find interesting. I wonder if it's that the fans want to think more thinky thoughts about the show and therefore are holding back on posting or if I'm just not hooked into the sources of more immediate conversation. So I will either have to be patient or look around more.
beckyfeld and lcmlc had attended for the whole weekend, and I got a taste of the convention when Abba-with-no-LJ and I headed over to the Park Plaza on Sunday to fetch them). After that first taste, I was hooked. I attended the full weekend of Boskone 20 and from there I haven't looked back. When I started in SF fandom, it was mostly centered around book fandom. Science fiction written-wordfans have an interesting relationship with their source material. We feel a proprietary relationship with not only the book itself but with the creator of the book. And at conventions in the early 1980s (which for me was Boskone), we had access to many of our favorite writers, either because they were guests at the convention or because they were fans themselves and attending the convention by paying out of their own pockets for the cost of hotel rooms and food (some conventions comp memberships for people who participate in programming; I do not know if Boskone did so in the 1980s). This easy access to our favorite writers led to, for instance, my meeting Joan D. Vinge in the hot tub at a Boskone. We stop writers randomly in the hallway and ask them about their current writing projects or about things in the books we've read that we want to understand better. And we expect this level of interaction.
With the growth of the Internet when I was in college, I became active in USENET groups that discussed TV shows I enjoyed. There was something wonderful in the ability to join with other fans of shows that might be unknown to people in one's everyday circle of interactions and discuss things that would make your nearest and dearest go "Huh?" Internet fandom on USENET had etiquette rules about interactions with the show creators (in many cases, they boiled down to "Don't do it unless you can be respectful. Don't make us look like a bunch of idiots"). The September that Never Ended (1993, when AOL got USENET access) came and went and USENET groups eventually moved to mailing lists and then to the Web, but fandom stayed fandom. We still wanted to discuss every detail of everything we saw or read.
Over the years, through many TV fandoms, I have seen how fandoms with an "open canon" (shows are still being broadcast, as opposed to shows with a "closed canon", those shows now off the air and thus not adding new shows to the "canon") react to new episodes. In my many fandoms over the years, most had members who were online moments after the end credits rolled, with people discussing the shows while they were fresh in our minds. These discussions (and, usually, debates) would rage until the next episode ran and often even thereafter, folding in what we learned in new episodes to flesh out our interaction with the show. I remember on alt.tv.er we had rules about spoilery discussions about just-broadcast episodes: They were forbidden completely until the episode had run on the West Coast of the US. After that, they had to be marked as "Spoiler" for a week. After that, spoilery details were fair game. This led to discussions by those of us on the East Coast that for a couple of hours looked like this:
Person A: Can you believe [spoiler] did that?
Person B: I *know*! When [spoiler] [spoilery verb-ed] [spoiler]? Amazing!
And so forth.
Anyway, so I've become used to online discussions happening as or right after the show has aired. But one show I am watching, for which there is an online presence, does not seem to have this "discuss-immediately-after" culture, which I find interesting. I wonder if it's that the fans want to think more thinky thoughts about the show and therefore are holding back on posting or if I'm just not hooked into the sources of more immediate conversation. So I will either have to be patient or look around more.
