Fandom Olds
Aug. 13th, 2022 10:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
writerkitIt's interesting the different definitions of "Fandom Old" that you see floating around. Because it seems to depend a lot on the area of fandom. For convention fandom it's people who were there for APAs and saw Harlan Ellison misbehave in person. For fic fandom, though, it's anywhere from "remembers when Kirk/Spock was referred to as 'the premise'" to "remembers the citrus scale and the world before AO3" to "lived through Strikethrough."
Now, I'm not one by any of these definitions-- I had found fic by the time of strikethrough but I wasn't really involved in fandom as such; I was mainly a reader and wrote a couple of unutterably terrible id-fics that I summarily disappeared from the internet a few years later.
But I am old enough to remember the internet before The Algorithm ran everything, and therefore apparently old enough to be absolutely shocked by encountering someone very seriously arguing that algorithms on fic sites are a good thing because they mathematically figure out what you're interested in and are therefore perfectly one-size-fits-all, while rec lists are bad because not every rec list is for every person. Which is just "????" (Apparently the only thing that makes algorithms bad is capitalism, and if we didn't have capitalism algorithms would be perfect. Aside from the usual "we live in the society we have, not the one we want" issue, AI technology isn't actually there to the degree this person seems to think it is.)
Since I still visit fanfiction.net occasionally and I've been known to peek into whatever of the truly old archives remain-- Petulant Poetess and Sycophant Hex both still exist and I have a lengthy outline for a fic that's inspired by something originally posted in 2004-- I very puzzledly went "Wait, what fic site has an algorithm? When has ANY fic site had an algorithm? I know I don't use FF.net much but I would notice if it had got an algorithm!"
Apparently Wattpad has an algorithm. I have never visited Wattpad because my impression of it is that it is a commercialized mess and the few times I've tried to read fics I've been linked to there their interface has been horrible, but an algorithm? Really? (You are supposed to be able to sort your search results by date updated, date posted, likes, and sometimes number of comments or reviews. I would prefer it if more sites also had a "word count" option, but that's not standard. Minimum is the ones I listed.)
The tone of some of the complaints I've seen floating around about AO3 suggest that younger internet users are so used to the algorithm deciding everything that they can't find things on AO3 because they don't have the relevant search skills. Which explains a lot about the current social moment and is also terrifying-- most of the people I deal with at work who don't have basic search skills just straight-up dislike technology in general. Computers are hard and complicated and they don't want to use them. (That is less generational than you're probably assuming. I run into plenty of new adults who also think this.) This suggests a lot of the Extremely Online people don't have basic search skills, which is alarming. I mean, it explains why people keep insisting AO3's algorithm is terrible-- the idea that there isn't one is apparently so inconceivable that it's easier to think "it's terrible" than just accept that it doesn't exist-- but it says some alarming things about the current state of the internet.
(I mean, we all know most of the complaints about AO3 boil down to "They won't let me link to my Patreon," which... I am old school enough to be like "Get sued for copyright infringement on your own time; don't drag the archive down with you" about that. I assume Wattpad is relying on the safe harbor laws? Even FF.net officially doesn't allow it; they just mainly moderate by algorithm so you can get away with things like "P*tr**n".")
Now, I'm not one by any of these definitions-- I had found fic by the time of strikethrough but I wasn't really involved in fandom as such; I was mainly a reader and wrote a couple of unutterably terrible id-fics that I summarily disappeared from the internet a few years later.
But I am old enough to remember the internet before The Algorithm ran everything, and therefore apparently old enough to be absolutely shocked by encountering someone very seriously arguing that algorithms on fic sites are a good thing because they mathematically figure out what you're interested in and are therefore perfectly one-size-fits-all, while rec lists are bad because not every rec list is for every person. Which is just "????" (Apparently the only thing that makes algorithms bad is capitalism, and if we didn't have capitalism algorithms would be perfect. Aside from the usual "we live in the society we have, not the one we want" issue, AI technology isn't actually there to the degree this person seems to think it is.)
Since I still visit fanfiction.net occasionally and I've been known to peek into whatever of the truly old archives remain-- Petulant Poetess and Sycophant Hex both still exist and I have a lengthy outline for a fic that's inspired by something originally posted in 2004-- I very puzzledly went "Wait, what fic site has an algorithm? When has ANY fic site had an algorithm? I know I don't use FF.net much but I would notice if it had got an algorithm!"
Apparently Wattpad has an algorithm. I have never visited Wattpad because my impression of it is that it is a commercialized mess and the few times I've tried to read fics I've been linked to there their interface has been horrible, but an algorithm? Really? (You are supposed to be able to sort your search results by date updated, date posted, likes, and sometimes number of comments or reviews. I would prefer it if more sites also had a "word count" option, but that's not standard. Minimum is the ones I listed.)
The tone of some of the complaints I've seen floating around about AO3 suggest that younger internet users are so used to the algorithm deciding everything that they can't find things on AO3 because they don't have the relevant search skills. Which explains a lot about the current social moment and is also terrifying-- most of the people I deal with at work who don't have basic search skills just straight-up dislike technology in general. Computers are hard and complicated and they don't want to use them. (That is less generational than you're probably assuming. I run into plenty of new adults who also think this.) This suggests a lot of the Extremely Online people don't have basic search skills, which is alarming. I mean, it explains why people keep insisting AO3's algorithm is terrible-- the idea that there isn't one is apparently so inconceivable that it's easier to think "it's terrible" than just accept that it doesn't exist-- but it says some alarming things about the current state of the internet.
(I mean, we all know most of the complaints about AO3 boil down to "They won't let me link to my Patreon," which... I am old school enough to be like "Get sued for copyright infringement on your own time; don't drag the archive down with you" about that. I assume Wattpad is relying on the safe harbor laws? Even FF.net officially doesn't allow it; they just mainly moderate by algorithm so you can get away with things like "P*tr**n".")
