My favorite thing is posts from Fandom Olds about the lost garden of Eden we’ve all been expelled from. I love reading about how there was this golden age 10-15 years ago where like…there was no wank or flames, no shipping wars or kink judginess, everybody who read your story left paragraph long comments, and LiveJournal was amazing compared to our tumblr dystopia.
It sounds amazing, it really does! I wish I could have been there for it. I mean, I’ve been in fandom for fifteen years now, but I never experienced *that.*
(There are trends that rise and fall, things that are more frustrating now, sure, but at the same time, some things are easier or more convenient. On the whole, I don’t feel like the general experience/feel has changed that much. *shrug*)
I saw some shit go down in the LOTR fandom in 2002-2004 that would melt everyone on Tumblr’s faces off.
“I’ll bet it wasn’t worse than *my* fandom right now.” Yes, your fandom too.
And at least on AO3, you can see a hit count. On LJ, your fic might have gotten 3 comments, so all you knew was that the number of people who read your fic was equal-to-or-greater-than 3. :-
I am a Fandom Old and I have literally never gone a year without seeing ship wars/wank/flames/etc. lol. And while I wasn’t in LotR or HP fandoms back then, their wank was legend and tales were told in all corners of the fandom world.
Whatevs. The MSRs vs Noromos fucking predate LiveJournal, so try a that shit elsewhere. DOES NO ONE REMEMBER THE RAY WARS?
Loki is the Philosopher King 