Well, WELL, well

[neadods]

Remember when I asked "does this make me famous or does this make me fandomwank?

The answer turns out to be fandomwank.

I hope the folks mining my LJ for wankability enjoyed the boring stuff about my cold and my cats.

Comments

[havocthecat]

I hate to break this to you, Nea, but I was kind of doing a mental Countdown To Fandom_Wank as soon as you posted about RPF in your journal. :)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Silly me, I thought if it was going to get wanked, it would be back when I was being swarmed. But no, we had to wait for RPS, the sequel.

[havocthecat]

Naturally! The wank always comes when you least expect it...

[lizbetann]

Dude! And I got my very own little sub-thread.

*feels the wank*

[neadods.livejournal.com]

My personal favorite is the argument about "how stupid, as if posting against RPS will make everyone who writes it suddenly change their mind."

As opposed to wanking an antiRPSer and expecting me to have an RPS epiphany?

[nycdeb.livejournal.com]

I got mentioned too - about the hate mail I got!

[lizbetann]

Ah, my brief, fading brush o' glory....

FandomWank: We Think These Things Are Stupid So We Laugh. If You Have A Different Opinion, We Laugh. 'Cause Different Opinions Are Just Not Cool.

[shayheyred.livejournal.com]

You know, though we were arguing different sides of this, I am appalled you got that mail. And I have a really bad feeling I know the person who sent it. Care to email me off-journal? Because if it's who I think it is, it really won't matter to me who she agreed with. I have no patience for that stuff.

[nycdeb.livejournal.com]

it was from a newly minted email address - I imagine made up JUST for this purpose so I doubt it would be identifiable.

In any case - it was a stupid note and clearly the person who sent it hadn't two brain cells to rub togeher. Let's all let it go :-)

[lizbetann]

Another thing... I'm having serious brain whiplash because everyone there seems to be focused on "Well, if ginmar is on one side, ALL THINKING PEOPLE are on the other." Whereas the people I've hung around with tend to respect Ginmar nigh onto pedastal status (no offense intended, ginmar).

The frell?

[lagilman]

Gin, bless her, posts stridently (and I mean that in a good way, before anyone jumps on me). That makes some folk just want to be contrary.

I just sat in on a panel about fanfic this past weekend, and started things off with the lovely "It's illegal. Stop arguing legal points. let's move on to morality." And still people wanted to argue the gray points of legality. How many times can I say "the courts have already spoken, and it's been ruled illegal by several different standards" before you realize I'm not just wanking you?

Don't answer that. It's too depressing.

[lizbetann]

Gin, bless her, posts stridently

...and what's wrong with that? (I know you're going to say, "Nothing." *g*)

That makes some folk just want to be contrary.

Which I totally get, having, you know, done that in the past. But it seems like they've made a booster club (or a fandom ;) out of it, which boggles me.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

How many times can I say "the courts have already spoken, and it's been ruled illegal by several different standards" before you realize I'm not just wanking you?

What do you know, you're only a professional in the business. Surely after enough people discuss it and then fandom wank has shown their supercilious superiority by discussing them, you will be broken and crawling to beg the forgiveness of the offended fandom, and you will realize that the only way, the only good and moral thing is to admit that there is no right or wrong, there is only whatever the fandom wants to do and That's Okay By You.

Or maybe we'll both be tilting at windmills next con. Whaddaya think, should I suggest a RPF/RPS panel at Shore Leave just for the fun of the kaboom?

[havocthecat]

Duuude. Only if you videotape it. You could probably make a nice profit off selling copies.

[wiliqueen.livejournal.com]

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the whole thing where the "if they wanted privacy" analogy means you're saying that RPS is the same as rape. Especially with the part where you said immediately thereafter that it's NOT. *boggle*

I dunno about anybody else, but I immediately saw it as taking issue with the logic formula itself, i.e. "Harmful action X is okay because Victim Y 'invited' it through Action Z." If people want to argue that the truth or falsity of this logic is different for different values of X and Y, fine. But at no time did you say that all values of X are the same.

[zinelady.livejournal.com]

Okay, I know I'm new to LJ, but I'd never heard of wanking someone, other than jerking them off, which is usually a pleasant experience ...but apparently, it gives some 'people' the right or duty or whatever reason they need to mock other people's opinions. Personally, I don't find them funny or witty. They kinda do what they call a wank, 'self-aggrandizing posturing' but they do it at the expense of others. Just pitiful. I wouldn't give them the time of day, Nea.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

It's not like I'm crying in my soup tonight; I knew the community was out there and what it did. Just as I know they'll find another shiney toy in a day or two.

The only thing that has really upset me is the trash email that menikoff got. Since I'm already on the griddle for saying some things are plain wrong, I'm going to add that that was not only wrong but cowardly.

[nycdeb.livejournal.com]

puh-leeze! don't give it another thought. the way it was written and the way they went about it certainly did make a case for taking them seriously.

It was an annoyance but nothing more.

[fandance.livejournal.com]

I'm new to LJ too, and while I don't know what LJ wanking is, I'm fairly familiar with the concept in 3D land. Isn't a pleasurable but at times pathetic or lonely experience? As in wanking all over Miss April in Playboy?

[zinelady.livejournal.com]

I'm new to LJ too, and while I don't know what LJ wanking is, I'm fairly familiar with the concept in 3D land. Isn't a pleasurable but at times pathetic or lonely experience? As in wanking all over Miss April in Playboy?

Or in the case of some fans, Jim and Blair doing the horizontal tango or Kirk and Spock getting down and dirty on shoreleave. *grins*

But seriously, I don't consider masturbation a pathetic act. People have sex drives and no matter what the 'church' tries to tell us, masturbation is not a sin. It's just a way to fulfill our needs when another partner isn't available, willing or able. We're not going to go blind or grow hair on our palms. It doesn't cause STDs or babies. To me, that's a big plus.

[fandance.livejournal.com]

I agree, it's not a sin, and it does fulfill a human sexual need, and it doesn't lead to blindness. There is lots to commend it. Rather, I'm commenting on how *sometimes* when done alone, with no other human contact to share it, it can be lonely. I think that's another aspect of the human condition.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Except in this case they're not wanking in that sense so much as dramatizing. It's all about the drama. Wonder if "Fandom drama" was taken as a community title?

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

"Fanwank" as a term has a long and respectable history. :)

[wiliqueen.livejournal.com]

Also, I think it came out of the common Brit usage, which tends to imply masturbation to excess and/or to the exclusion of other activities.

[twistedchick]

Well, if you're freaky and sad then I'm over the edge insane. But that's been said before, and for less reason.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

There's a reason it's called "fandomWANK". That's because most of the people who post on it are, frankly, wankers. Entitlement whores. Bullies, who believe that anything you can get away with doing is JUST FINE, and no one else has any right to hold a different opinion. Under other circumstances, such as Iraq, this is called "arguing that might makes right" -- but they'll never get it, because of course when THEY'RE doing it, well, That's Different.

[lizbetann]

because of course when THEY'RE doing it, well, That's Different.

Bing bing bing. What I don't get (from reading the thread) is that they have any concept that what some (not all) of the people in Nea's thread were saying, "We think this is a pretty nasty invasion of people's privacy and rights, and unless you give a decent arguement (not, "Well, because she showed up in public wearing a tight skirt she gave her consent to whatever happened to her."), we're really not going to change our minds." Which apparently got twisted around to... um, because we don't agree with the great amorphous "Them", we totally SUX.

[elasg.livejournal.com]

There's a reason it's called "fandomWANK". That's because most of the people who post on it are, frankly, wankers. Entitlement whores. Bullies, who believe that anything you can get away with doing is JUST FINE, and no one else has any right to hold a different opinion.

Ah, so you know them well?

LOL! Sorry, that was just such a perfect description of that crew that I couldn't resist.

[shawan-7.livejournal.com]

Eh, they're wastes of time. Go back to writing and having your own opinions. You make more sense (even if I don't agree half the time.)

off topic - book question

[sceptre1067.livejournal.com]

Since you mentioned the anthropological angel...

Have you've read Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture (Studies in Culture and Communication) by Henry Jenkins?

It's been a while so I can't provide much of a review, but you might find it interesting in relation to fanfic and slash.

Re: off topic - book question

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have. In fact, the zine that I and a couple friends worked on is one of the ones discussed in it, (shawan_7 will NEVER forgive him for getting her name wrong) and I was part of the Beauty and the Beast fandom when we were discussing his chapter on that before publication.

Fascinating book - and far more accurate to fandom than, say, Bacon Smith's Enterprising Women.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Over here from metafandom

Don't worry about it. FW is sometimes amusing, but a large number of the regular posters are headbangoing sexual libertarians who believe that if someone is getting in orgasm over anything it is, by definition, good and anybody who criticises them is an evil repressed conservative who wants to put women in burkas. All you need to know is that a few weeks ago there was actually an argument among the regular posters about whether it was wrong for a man to have sex with his teenage daughter if she claimed to be enjoying it.