TRUE! For me, I felt like I went from being completely isolated in my fandom (for a whole year!) to suddenly being a Big Name Fan who was too intimidating to talk to. The lack of community stayed the same, but the reason for it changed ... admittedly, though, once I had a reputation as a cool writer, people started responding to my comments on their fics, having whole conversations, just generally being more welcoming. It was easier to make friends with the same amount of effort.
I did know a lot of writers who tended to shut down any commenters who tried to have a conversation or make friends. Their reasoning was: "This person writes OOC fic" "This guy ships a cringey pairing" "This one never spellchecks her work" -- all boiling down to, "I WANT fandom friends, but they have to be extremely polished, with all the same kinks and ships as me, and they can't EVER write this character with long hair or this character with his canonical accent or this one smiling or this one as a bad cook--"
Just a really long unreasonable laundry list that excluded most of the fandom from possible friendship. And then they'd complain for days that they couldn't make friends.
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Date: 2023-03-13 03:30 pm (UTC)I did know a lot of writers who tended to shut down any commenters who tried to have a conversation or make friends. Their reasoning was: "This person writes OOC fic" "This guy ships a cringey pairing" "This one never spellchecks her work" -- all boiling down to, "I WANT fandom friends, but they have to be extremely polished, with all the same kinks and ships as me, and they can't EVER write this character with long hair or this character with his canonical accent or this one smiling or this one as a bad cook--"
Just a really long unreasonable laundry list that excluded most of the fandom from possible friendship. And then they'd complain for days that they couldn't make friends.