December Daily: fannish history

minutia_r - top five pieces of fandom history

I don't think I can rate these, but I can natter.

There are a lot of people who've been in fandom longer than I have, but I've been in fandom since before Twitter, before Tumblr, before Dreamwidth, before LiveJournal. Before TikTok, before YouTube. Before AO3.

When I first started out in fandom, I would go on a search engine (I remember using Yahoo and Netscape) to find a story with a search that went something like +slash +"paris/kim" -chakotay, and then at the bottom of the story you might find a link to the author's personal page (maybe on Myspace or Geocities) or to the mailing lists that the author used. Then you'd sign up for the mailing list, and stories would arrive via email. Or you might find a recs page (the one I valued most was torch's) to help you find new stories, because it was very easy to slurp up all the findable content in one pairing and be forced to look for another one where you didn't know the names yet.

If you liked a story, you might be moved to email the author and say so, and sometimes the author would email you back and you'd become friends. Eventually someone explained to me how to use IRC chat, because it's easier to beta that way than via email. Even in work chats I still sometimes try to type /laughs.

When I started reading and writing due South, someone (possibly sigridthehaughty?) made me a videotape of some of the most significant episodes and sent it to me in the mail so I could watch it on my TV/VCR. (There were people vidding then. I can't even imagine how.)

For many years, my profile in every journal said, "I'm on dial-up, so I'm not watching vids or eps."

(As I write this, I'm reminded of my grandfather-in-law, who was a teamster back when that meant he managed a team of horses.)

I loved the journaling era. I mean, you notice I'm still here! I'm not really anywhere else! Still clinging to a version of the internet that's interactive without being algorithm-driven for maximum profit.



Upcoming prompts below the cut.


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