This is a fun topic! Lots to potentially dig into 👀 I've noticed the same phenomenon, but notably, it had a very different flavor when I first encountered it. I started writing fics for a Star Wars sub-fandom, and for the first year, I got the weird sense that my fics were being actively ignored -- I was used to busting into new fandoms, and I knew the ropes, how you have to stay a while in some before people warm up to you, but in this fandom ... I can't put my finger on it, it just felt weirdly quiet and isolated. After a year of writing, I posted one fic anonymously, and to my surprise, I got a ton of great authors who I really loved commenting for the first time. It was a challenge fic, and when my name got revealed, some of them even commented, "OMG, I knew it was you!!" ...which was really weird, since none of them had ever read my fics before, as far as I know!
They invited me to the only Discord server in existence for that subfandom at the time, and when I searched my name, I was really shocked -- they'd all been reading my fics ever since my first one, and talking about how much they liked them, how refreshing they were, in-character, etc. Really nice stuff that would have been extremely encouraging to hear during that lonely first year. But none of them ever said that stuff to ME, or left kudos!! It didn't hurt me, but it was definitely baffling. So many conversations about my work, but no comments or kudos on AO3, until I finally joined the discord server myself. Then the dam broke, and I got comments/kudos from all of them, on every fic!
Is it just a club mentality -- i.e., "we enjoy non-members' work, but we only comment on members of our club!" I really don't think so. I'm leaning more toward, just ... for some reason, even though they were writers too, it didn't occur to them that I wasn't a member and couldn't see their comments -- that it might be nice to leave those comments on AO3. I don't know why or how that blind spot developed for so many people. It's hard to suss out.
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Date: 2023-03-12 09:43 pm (UTC)They invited me to the only Discord server in existence for that subfandom at the time, and when I searched my name, I was really shocked -- they'd all been reading my fics ever since my first one, and talking about how much they liked them, how refreshing they were, in-character, etc. Really nice stuff that would have been extremely encouraging to hear during that lonely first year. But none of them ever said that stuff to ME, or left kudos!! It didn't hurt me, but it was definitely baffling. So many conversations about my work, but no comments or kudos on AO3, until I finally joined the discord server myself. Then the dam broke, and I got comments/kudos from all of them, on every fic!
Is it just a club mentality -- i.e., "we enjoy non-members' work, but we only comment on members of our club!" I really don't think so. I'm leaning more toward, just ... for some reason, even though they were writers too, it didn't occur to them that I wasn't a member and couldn't see their comments -- that it might be nice to leave those comments on AO3. I don't know why or how that blind spot developed for so many people. It's hard to suss out.