Transformative vs Consumptive Fandom

[bloodwrites]

fogsrollingin directed me to this conversation on reddit which is a (generalised) definition of curative vs transformative fandom.

This subject has been an interest of mine for many years, and is informative and relevant on its own, but it reminds me of the changes that have come about in the last half-decade or so in fandom.

It has become evident that the influx of fandom goers resulting from the mainstreaming of fandom is changing the dynamic once again. Curative fandom seems much the same, cis-dude heavy and off over there somewhere.

But residing in the same spaces as transformative fandom there is also consumptive¹ fandom. Vast swathes of fans who consume fic and art voraciously but don't produce anything. And while the majority are no doubt innocuous and appreciative of the fanworks transformative fandom creates, there is a loud contingent who are entitled and offensive in their demands.

They demand fic updates, they tell creators that the fic would be better if it was a different ship, they harass other fans for shipping the wrong ship...

Yep, it seems the majority of antishippers are consumptive fans, who never produce anything but are toxic in their insistence that all of fandom produces and consumes fanworks in the right way and if they don't they'll be sorry.

Like curative fandom skewing cis-male, consumptive fandom has its own demographic, and it skews overwhelmingly young. This explains a lot in regards to the entitlement and insistence that everyone else should do fandom in a way that they deem right and correct and moral (kids and teens overwhelmingly seem to view the world with them at the center).

But as transformative fandom tends to be more grown-up and logical, it's difficult for us to share the same spaces as the consumptive kids. In the past, antishipper harassment had a chilling effect, forcing out and shutting up transformative voices, curbing creativity and slowing the production of new works (personal experience - previously prolific, my output slowed to a crawl circa 2016 onwards, and I avoided consumptive-heavy spaces for years).

But it's difficult to imagine how transformative and consumptive fans can exist entirely separate from each other like transformative and curative do, because the consumptive fans are consuming our works. They followed us from tumblr to twitter and to AO3 and are likely following artists from twitter back to tumblr as I write this.

Of course Dreamwidth exists in a separate (and oh so calming) bubble. My experience is that it's almost entirely transformative, and I'm not opposed to sharing space purely with those who, generally speaking, share my values.

Fandom spaces on Mastodon, too, are much the same. Though there's entire instances populated by yet another group, which I've started referring to as neo-proshippers, but that's another post entirely and I think I've already gone on too long 😁

1. Please don't take any of this as me looking down upon the many many fans who lurk or just read or just reblog. I've known many of these fans over the years and they're fantastic, they make the best rec lists and leave the best comments and generally are a part of transformative fandom. The 'consumptive' fans, as I've dubbed them, are a whole 'nother thing entirely, and they're new (last 5-10 years), and they come like locusts, devouring fandoms en masse before moving onto the next.

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Comments

[lookitmychicken]

Oh. Well, that's less good.

I've been wondering if it might actually become an issue that we define blorbo.social as 'pro-shipping'. It's not a term I've been much aware of before the last year or so. I've always been in the parts of fandom where shipping was the assumed default, and the idea of anyone being anti-shipping was ... weird.

I don't want that toxic association, obviously.

[bloodwrites]

A lot of fans have shifted from defining themselves as 'proship' to defining themselves in older terms like 'ship and let ship' or the three laws of fandom (ship and let ship, don't like don't read, kink tomato) and this would work equally well for servers I think.

Though the rules of the server should make it clear that certain content and behaviour isn't acceptable. Which is helpful only if people read the rules 😂

Now that my brain is less mushy I'm feeling that the biggest problem with anti-vs-proship discourse now is the strict binary both sides (both sides being the antis of today and these neo-proshippers) are enforcing. For example: If a server doesn't want lolisho on their timelines then obviously it's an anti server and needs to be called out 🙄

They don't know how antishipping started and they don't see how the oldies (I can't believe the oldies here are anyone in fandom prior to 2016 😂) see it - antis harassed people, that's the definition we hold and oppose. But for these kids all it is is a bloody battle between the puritan and the problematic.