kennahijja | Fandom and the Mob: a Rant

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Fandom and the Mob: a Rant

As much as I'm often proud of fandom – its collective creativity, courage and subversiveness – there are a few things about it I dislike. There's extreme shipping, which fills me with scared amusement and confusion; there's writers deleting their stories for other but serious RL reasons, which pains me almost as much as the random destruction of historical artefacts. Those are minor wibbles. There is, however, one thing that above all else that just plain disgusts me – and that is the rabid mob mentality fandom can exhibit from time to time.

I'm talking of the attack dog mentality that stampedes braying after a leading opinion, hurling insults and mindless approval without pausing to spare an individual thought or a shred of consideration that the 'other side' might have feelings, or reasons, or might on some level be acting in good faith. Perhaps there's something liberating about feeling in the right and being edged on by a crowd of others feeling the same way; maybe that provides the sort of anonymity that allows one to behave like an utter arse which one wouldn't get away with in any other situation. I don't know. I only know that it's perfectly disgusting to watch.

I'm by no means saying that there can't be disagreement, or strong disagreement, or even sharp arguments worth falling out over. But if there are no arguments, not the flimsiest attempt of questioning one's own point of view rationally before starting to scream, and not the tiniest bit of respect for other people and opinions – nothing but a virtual mob, yelling – then it's truly fandom at its very lowest.

I'm only talking about mob mentality here, not about right or wrong. This rant has been brought on, of course, by recent events, but I've been in fandom for a few years now and have seen it happen again and again. Sometimes over an opinion I agreed with, sometimes over one I disagreed with. Truth be told, it sickens me even more if I happen to agree with the side the mob is on, because it makes me want to be able to change my mind, or yell the old "get off of my side, you're making me look bad (and feel sick!)." But then I've always believed that it's preferable to lose well than win badly.

It just makes no difference whether you (or I) think the cause is a bad one or the most worthy of all or anything in between: if in order to make your point, you have to incite, or pander to, or rely on the mob (or, if you happen to stir it up by accident and fail to try and slap it down again), you've already damaged even the very best of causes beyond salvaging. Yeah, it means you can be right and still be made of fail.

Most of the time, fandom is a great place to be, but at times like this, it sickens me. I honestly wish we could be better people, a better community than that, but sometimes, it seems we can't. And that's a bloody shame!

Won't make a habit of ranting for sure, but this has been festering inside me for a very long time.

ETA: Apologies if I'm owing any of you replies still, but I won't be getting around to it. It's time for War, not Wank.

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In any event, if you don't understand why a person of color doesn't appreciate being put in the same category as a "non-human sentient," I don't really know what to tell you. They are an established part of the Potterverse, sure. But putting them and people of color in one category, and white people in the other ... come on. :(

(Actually, after I posted I followed a few more links and came across the text at

flamewarrior's journal, together with more discussion that helped -- so no need to go Googling.)

Anyway, having taken a look at that discussion and thought about it a bit, yes I can see your point and why it's offensive, so my apologies there. Clearly my brain (and possibly the mods too) has been so warped by fantasy and scifi where 'alien races' are basically treated as humans with blue skin or funny ears, and the characters form relationships ad lib, that I'd overlooked the obvious fact that the characters aren't human even if the actors are!

I suppose the comm definition actually lumped together two usages of the word 'race' -- the real life one, and the speculative ('sentient nonhuman') one -- as if the synonym alone made it sensible to apply 'miscegenation' to either. Which is admittedly ridiculous. I'd guess the mods' definition mapped to 'sex with exotic people' -- which I hasten to add is still an idea one can take issue with, but not as bad as equating it to sex with animals?

Have you taken the time to look at the community? Did you see that the "miscegnation" tag covered Neville/Parvati and Luna/Dean and Percy/Anthony Goldstein (??!!), but also Crouch/house-elf and Aberforth/goat?

I didn't look at the postings, actually, as kinkfic isn't the sort of stuff I generally like. I do remember looking at the Neville/Parvati piece when it was linked from one of the daily comms before this kicked off, and thinking something along the lines of "wtf? Miscegenation is a kink that needs to be warned for? ... meh, Americans". Put me down in the fairly large category of people who thought, before this, that it was just a technical term that the Deep Southerners used because they objected to the concept, not that it was something they coined specifically in order to object to it -- and were therefore hesitant (I think reasonably so) to say it should be changed without getting more information on how people other than zvi reacted to it. I can only think of a couple of times I've actually encountered the word other than the above, once in a human/alien context, once in a Kid Creole song.

As for Aberforth/goat (it was Harry/goat, apparently, according to the discussion I saw?), that's clearly ludicrous and suggests that the poster didn't get it. I still think criticising the mods for equating it to bestiality generates unhelpful confusion, though, because they clearly didn't mean that -- at least not in the fantasy context. If you wanted to criticise them for letting the poster tag the piece that way, fair enough, although I gather that tag's now been removed from it.

I do criticize the mods and not only the poster, because they were the ones who said that "miscegnation" means sex between races or species. And they did not ask the poster of the goat fic (or the house-elf fic) to change their tags.

My problem is not so much with the word itself. It's with any kind of logic that equates goat-fucking with romantic Dean/Luna.

I doubt that logic was involved in the process at any stage ...

On the whole, I'm not prepared to assume that anyone involved in the comm actually made that equation -- simply because it's so extreme it's hard to believe an intelligent person could ever formulate it in those terms. I think I prefer to assume that it's a case of some people misunderstanding the concepts and others just not paying attention, unless there's a smoking gun somewhere.

Man. :( I don't know what to say. What I typed in my last comment to you was a direct quote from the community. miscegenation: sex or marriage between two people (or magical creatures) of different races. I don't know why you are dismissing that as a "misunderstanding."

Look, I understand wanting to think the best of people and give them the benefit of doubt. I do. But the thing is, in assuming that the mods didn't do something that they actually did, you are actually assuming the worst of every single person who complained.

Also, I think the first mod post is still up: the one where they insulted Witchqueen and claimed she was defaming them and said that they weren't going to change the prompt. So even if we want to go with the argument that they didn't understand the history of the word and they didn't realize what was so offensive in equating bestiality to interracial sex, the point is that they were made aware of this, and their first instinct was to get angry and go on the attack. That doesn't speak well for them, either.

I was demurring specifically in reply to your "it's with any kind of logic that equates goat-fucking with romantic Dean/Luna", not commenting on the general issue. I should have quoted the comment to make that clear, sorry. By 'misunderstanding' I meant that the Harry/goat fic (art?) writer misunderstood what the prompt meant, and by 'not paying attention' I meant that the mods overlooked it. By 'smoking gun' I basically meant a post by them in which they actually stated that they had no problem with the goat fic being tagged that way (the only posts I could find from mods denied that they'd approved that).

I just re-read the posts with the exchange of emails, and although yes,

witchqueen argued that they were making that equation, they've never admitted to doing so, indeed have objected to it. You could counter-argue that the equation is implied in what else they've defended, I guess, although as I've said, I don't really think it is.

On the whole, after the re-read, my original impression of that first exchange stands.

witchqueen started with a didactic first email, and when the mods stonewalled with a "it's not our policy to change things because we know a lot of our random prompts are dubious" form letter, followed it with a second one that declared that she was going to denounce them in public and write to all posters to warn them expect to come under fire, without ever actually quoting any source other than herself to them in either email as backup for her assertions. The mods then replied with an 'open letter' that made some reasonable points but also contained much doth-protest-too-much foolishness and stupid claims of libel and defamation. Neither party look especially reasonable or sensible in this sequence, but at least in more recent posts they've calmed down and addressed the actual issues with some context.

So basically you're saying that mods have no responsibility for what gets posted in their community? I mean, the smoking gun is right in front of you, but you keep finding ways to weasel out of it. Are you going to tell me now that the person who wrote Crouch/elf also misunderstood a prompt which said specifically sex with another race or species, and/or that the mods didn't catch that one, either?

they've never admitted to doing so, indeed have objected to it.

Dude. Come on. They're not admitting to something that they did, and that anyone can see that they did. You saw how the prompt was worded, and you saw the fics that came out of it, and you saw that the mods did not correct or censure any of these fics.

It seems that you are bending over backwards to give one group of people the benefit of the doubt and write off everyone else. So I don't see the purpose in continuing this conversation. If you want, I can still hunt down the tags and definition of "miscegnation" on the original Daily Deviant pages, but since you dismiss everything that doesn't measure up to your own spurious definition of proof, I don't see why I should bother.

*shrugs* I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt on this point, yes. (As I mentioned, I found the definition etc eventually, so that's OK.)

For the record: IMO mods certainly have a responsibility for their comm, but I find it credible that ones on high-volume comms (which I gather this one is) don't actually check out everything posted there unless someone comments. As far as I can tell from what they've posted, this seems to be their position. Their position on Crouch/elf would presumably be that it's like Harry/veela or whatever, not like Aberforth/goat, and thus something they considered OK to lump in with Dean/Luna. As we agreed(?) before, no it's not OK to do that, but it's a different sort of thing from goatfic.

You obviously don't find it credible, and hell, you might be right, but unfortunately we seem to have got sidetracked into discussing this particular aspect of the controversy (the goatfic) at tl;dr length. I'm not arguing that they didn't do some dumb shit in general, obviously.

ETA: I'd like to apologise for being stubborn and insensitive. I'll try not to do so again in the future.

That's very kind of you -- I appreciate it!

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Fandom and the Mob: a Rant

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