Maybe it’s because I’m neurodivergent, but something I don’t get is when people bring up that it used to be that nobody got comments, we use to post in formats where no one could comment, it used to be that people posted fic and you didn’t even know how many hits you got, etc. and seem to be proud of how much they don’t care about comments and hits.And I get it. It’s unhealthy to like comments or hits. But I don’t know if that means it’s inherently more healthy to not like them. I certainly don’t think it’s healthy to see people say, “I wish someone commented on my stuff” and go, “back in MY day we weren’t PARASOCIAL LOSERS who used fandom as SOCIAL MEDIA! We understood that fandom was about TRUE ART and TRUE ART doesn’t involve others!” because… it just feels like, to me, it shouldn’t bother people? If you’re really, truly happy with your fandom experience that didn’t involve talking to others, why would you then talk to others, even to tell them they’re wrong? If silence is golden, why would you ruin it?And before anyone goes “typical stupid Gen Z kid, wanting fandom to be social media”: I quit writing three years ago, I’m not parasocially attempting to use fandom to talk to people.
–
Is this something people in general say, or is it something that one True Art anon with serious emotional issues says?
There’s nothing parasocial about commenting on people’s fanfic. The only way that would be true is if you’re so influencer-poisoned that you think popular fic writers are internet celebrities totally separate from their audiences. In fact, fanfic writers and readers, popular and unpopular, are peers. The people who try to give themselves airs suck and are best avoided.
In oldschool spaces, we most certainly talked to people whose fic we liked so that we could make friends with them. Actual friends. Not some weird cult around a youtuber.
It’s also not at all unhealthy to like comments and hits: It’s unhealthy to obsess over them.
People who’ve been in fandom for decades will confirm that the ratio of hits or zine sales or whatever to good feedback was always terrible and so fixating on stats like that will just depress you. Trying to “fix” it is futile. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have an emotional reaction. An emotional reaction is inevitable. It’s just that realistic context will make the situation feel less personal.
–
Anon… true fandom olds bitch about modern social media bullshit because it represents a loss of community.
Actual community is the opposite of parasocial.
You need to hang out with better people if this weird shit is what you’re seeing.
And another thing! When we complain about people treating AO3 like social media, we are NOT complaining about them being social in fandom. We’re complaining about people treating archiveofourown.org as an ephemeral, realtime social space and not as a longterm archive of fanworks.
You can have meaningful conversations in the comments under a fic, but that’s about all the social interaction that the site supports.The “ug, they’re using AO3 like social media” comments you see are not about social interaction or community, they’re about the empty placeholder fics and calls for RP, the mistagging for clout, the attempts to game an algorithm that doesn’t exist, the concerns about “flooding the tag” with correctly tagged short fics or rarepairs, and the bizarro DNIs and “don’t try this at home!” “warnings”.
Yuuuup.
In fact, the way most AO3 users use the comments section is far less social than how we intended the site to be used.
The comments are designed to be like LJ’s for a reason!
Discussion ¬