{"id":98215,"date":"2016-06-05T13:48:39","date_gmt":"2016-06-05T13:48:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/06\/05\/about-our-broken-fan-culture\/"},"modified":"2016-06-05T13:48:39","modified_gmt":"2016-06-05T13:48:39","slug":"about-our-broken-fan-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/06\/05\/about-our-broken-fan-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"About our\u00a0\u201cbroken\u201d fan culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

bookshop<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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(P.S. Devin Faraci tried to fight with me and subsequently blocked me on Twitter because I retweeted a bunch of things he\u2019s said over he years about fan culture, which are handily quoted in this Tumblr post! Please enjoy! \ud83d\ude00 )<\/p>\n

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So as we all know, movie critic Devin Faraci caused a minor internet brouhaha Tuesday with a controversial piece about online fandom. \u201cFandom is broken<\/a>\u201d \u2014 which piggybacks off a milder but similar article<\/a> published last week by the AV Club and argues that fan culture has entered an ugly phase \u2014 was largely met with solemn nods of agreement by everybody except, uh, anybody who\u2019s actually in fandom and actually knows what the fuck fan culture is about.<\/p>\n

The main target of the piece is fan entitlement, which Faraci believes is the result of fandom being \u201cpost-fanfic<\/a>.\u201d That is, he thinks the current state of fandom \u2014 which can be overwhelmingly polarized and activist \u2014 is a natural result of fans having so much personal autonomy over their own fanfiction and other fanworks (including fanart, fan film, fan meta, shipping, and fan theories). Consequently, they seek to have the same level of creator control over their canons, too. <\/p>\n

Before we go any further, let\u2019s be clear here. Some people should be told at all times that their diminishment of cultures they don\u2019t understand only makes them look small, petty, and ridiculous. Faraci is one of those people. He has demonstrated again and again that he has only a cursory understanding of what fanworks-based fan culture is, and utterly no interest in examining it to a closer degree.<\/p>\n

Faraci\u2019s consistent response to fanworks and remixing in general is to be cavalierly dismissive. Please enjoy this litany of Faraci being cavalierly and unilaterally dismissive of virtually every fannish practice, from shipping to fan films to fanfiction:<\/p>\n

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To anyone who\u2019s spent any amount of time immersed in fan culture, Faraci\u2019s attitude<\/a>about fandom is unilaterally tone-deaf, laughably inaccurate, and full of hubris. He is jawdroppingly secure in his opinions, and when you attempt to suggest that fanworks are far more complex than he\u2019s acknowledging \u2014 as I once did in a brief exchange<\/a> after one of his derisive tweets about fan theories \u2014 he typically dismisses you out of hand or ignores you altogether:<\/p>\n

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And then there\u2019s this gem:<\/p>\n

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When I retweeted all of these tweets just now, Faraci responded by a) calling me out to his 40,000 followers, most of whom are apparently male and who naturally began brigading and harassing me on Twitter; b) blocking me, and c) tweeting this:<\/p>\n

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So. Now that we\u2019ve established that Devin Faraci is a dismissive demeaning sexist shitbag and everything he says about being\u00a0\u201cconcerned\u201d about\u00a0\u201cfan entitlement\u201d is concern trolling because he HATES fanworks and fans who create stuff and overanalyze and generally actively engage with texts, let\u2019s move on, shall we?<\/p>\n

Keep reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

bookshop: (P.S. Devin Faraci tried to fight with me and subsequently blocked me on Twitter because I retweeted a bunch of things he\u2019s said over he years about fan culture, which are handily quoted in this Tumblr post! Please enjoy! \ud83d\ude00 ) So as we all know, movie critic Devin Faraci caused a minor internet … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “About our\u00a0\u201cbroken\u201d fan culture”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[146,43],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98215"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}