Fandom culture on Discord (or, at least the culture in the fandom servers I've been in) thoughts

[obstinatecondolement]

To preface this with the disclaimers that:

• No one is obligated to comment on my fanworks or leave a kudos on them no matter how much they liked it or how many times they have revisited them
• No one is obligated to comment on my fanworks or leave a kudos on them just because they mentioned to me somewhere other than AO3 that they really liked them
• No one is obligated to even tell me if they discussed and enthused vocally about my fanworks in Discord servers, or elsewhere, whether I'm in them or not

That being said,

I am, however, completely bewildered with the Tumblr-moving-into-Discord-era of transformative fandom and how its culture is evolving with regards talking about fanworks, both with the creator specifically and in general.

Often, people, who do not kudos or comment on things I post to AO3, who I know have accounts (and the works aren't archive locked anyway), will either privately DM me or @ me on Tumblr or in channels of Discord servers we're both in to say they really loved my newest fanwork. Often giving me really generous praise and thoughtful insights they had when they read/saw/listened to it when they do so! I talked to a friend about this and she said that she's had people draw fanart for her of fics that they didn't kudos or comment on. And that's like... obviously that's not sinister or something they are doing wrong that they should feel obliged to correct, in favour of some alternative that's more in line with what I personally prefer/find less surprising, but... it feels pretty self evident to me that it's nice for creators to have comments to look back on, all in one non-ephemeral place, which is also ideally on AO3/wherever they posted the work itself? And that Discord servers move quickly and the nice things you say there will be quickly be buried and hard to find again, which makes it unlikely for creators to be able to easily do that, unless they screenshot and archive every nice thing someone says to them about their work there, which few people would think to do in the moment, I think, except maybe in the context of a group vid-watching party or something. Also, kudos and comments bring the work further up the page when people sort by number of kudos or comments and that is helpful for the creator because it makes it more likely that more people will see it and say further nice things to them about it if they like it too.

I don't think this trend, as I have experienced it, is a "I do not want to be seen publicly liking this" thing, which, in fairness, I do think also happens a lot in this moral panic era of fandom we're in where people get call-out posts written about how they commented on or kudosed Reprehensible Fic that the call-out post author specifically sought out so they could read the comments and see who kudosed it with the intention of smearing them as a bigot and/or sexual predator on social media platforms that their AO3 profile was linked to.

Instead, I think that, when this has happened when I posted fanworks in the past, it's just because it does not occur to the people saying the nice things to me that the I would maybe also like to have the exact same nice things written in a comment on AO3. Or similar things! I'm really not saying that you can only comment on AO3 to say something to someone that they thing they made was good. Or that squeeing about it elsewhere Does Nothing to Boost Engagement™ and is therefore useless at best and Greedy Exploitation of My Fandom Labour™ at worst, as I have seen some people arguing.

Again, you can enjoy my stuff and never say a goddamn thing about it to me, or to anyone, and I will defend to the death your right to do so, no matter what your reasons are or how often you return to these works! You do not have to pay for your enjoyment of my work by Engaging Meaningfully with it in the way that I most prefer: I am not your grandparent passive aggressively asking if you forgot to send me a thank you note about the birthday present I sent you and do you need new stationery to send thank you notes? Should I send you that for your next present?

But... Idk, exactly. I guess, to me, it's kind of emblematic of this move to considering only new fanworks and fandoms of recently released/currently airing properties to matter? So if the nice things you say about them are ephemeral and hard to archive, who cares, because the creator will obviously only ever want to hear nice things about their newest work and anything else is a waste of time, and maybe even invasive and creepy à la fans of celebrities who stalk and/or harass them because they "love" them so much. Also, that fanworks and fannish interactions are disposable and trivial, and preserving them is not ever a priority or even a consideration.

Something I was surprised about when I started posting fanworks in multifandom comms on Dreamwidth was that people commented on them at all. Often when they don't even know the fandom! The culture here seems to be much more old school in that way than what I have become accustomed to post-LJ, which has been a nice thing to discover.

I do think that this bemusement I am having is not, like, something that I should fashion into a call to action or anything, in large part because I am extremely put off by the people who scold lurkers—or sometimes even people who don't comment effusively enough, or leave long enough comments, or who comment and then don't also kudos (the nerve! 🙄)—for "taking the gift of their work and giving them nothing back in return as thanks" because fuck that bullshit. That is not what is meant by the phrase "fandom is a gift economy" you ignorant, entitled dicks. Is commenting on AO3 a nice thing to do? Yes. But it's not obligatory and nor should it be. At least be honest about what you expect from people and start a fucking private Discord server where you link people to your Google Docs, in return for what you consider to be good feedback if you think you should be to be compensated for your fanworks—kick them off your private island if they fail to live up to your standards, for all I care! But do not put words in my mouth by saying this fucking shit on behalf of all creators who post things to AO3.

Really, I'm not sure what my point is here, exactly. I am having thoughts and feelings and these are what they are, I suppose? Or, I guess, if you find yourself wanting to reach out and say nice things to a fanwork creator anyway, it's potentially a nice gesture to do it on AO3/where they posted it, in addition to saying it on Discord or other ephemeral fandom platorms. Copying and pasting exactly what you said is absolutely fine by me, if you find it a struggle to re-phrase the same sentiment. I suspect it would be by other fanwork creators too, although, per what I said earlier, I can only speak confidentally for myself, because other fanwork creators' expectations and preferences vary considerably. You can add something like "C&P-ing from Discord for posterity" at the start of the comment if you feel shy about saying literally the exact same thing twice.

Comments

[bookscorpion]

Oh I feel that. I think for me, AO3 is the place where I can find and reread the comment the easiest and you can bet that I do that fairly regularly. I 100% screenshot Discord convos to have them to look at when I'm feeling down, but it feels different than having an Ao3 comment attached to the story.

[vriddy]

I have so many confused thoughts and feelings about the evolution of the culture around talking to authors and commenting, especially as it relates to Discord 😂 It's only happened a couple of times that people DM me their reactions, but I find it more difficult to handle in general especially if I don't know the person well, probably because I'm less familiar with the expected etiquette around all of this. I guess maybe, this is how people expect to make friends as well, more easily than in somewhat impersonal AO3 comments? And/or just using the platform they feel more at ease with? 🤔

I actually do screenshot that kind of things, I have a "folder of nice things" I like to look at when I'm feeling down :D But yeah, it's still different than having it all in one place in what feels like the "proper" place, together with the story and easy to re-read when I look at the story again. Things like that. Differing expectations.

[amado1]

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.

[peardita]

that's the joy of a journal, you don't have to have a point, you can just write out a collection of thoughts and feelings :3

i agree i would rather have comments collected all one place on ao3, then i can look at them from anywhere without aditional work on my part, whereas any way i try to archive comments from discord or tumblr, im gonna end up losing them.

its so strange to think about people who are "growing up" in fandom now as "discord native" which i personally think is terrible, because the entire thing is 100% ephemeral. i already thought tumblr was too ephemeral and it's much more lasting than discords are.

i don't care how old man yells at cloud it makes me, i honestly think the speed of the internet these days, not just social media but news sites and streaming platforms etc and how the algorithem has been specifically designed to squeeze as much of our attention as physically possible, which means needing to keep everything moving so fast, so you keep scrolling because otherwise you're going to miss things! i fucking wish fandoms lasted longer than a month or two before the next tumblr beloved season or movie dropped and everyone ran to binge that instead. there is obviously all the other more serious problems this money driven algorithm creates, like the speed of spreading missinformation/conspiracy theories/radicalization, but it all ultimately comes from the same root, from the way i understand things.


idk im gonna keep yelling about this forever ig. i keep telling amado i wanna make a knives out comm here on dw, a la the old fandom comms on lj. since we know there will be a knives out 3, and they wil probably keep going for as long as daniel is willing to do them, and there's probably the best chance these days of having a lasting community if it's a franchise. if i build it, they may not come, but otoh, if no one builds it, no one will come.