one last thing before i go to bed but i’ve never been so deep into a fandom and stayed so long in one and seen it change so much but i’m noticing a phenomenon where literal knowledge is dying out.
let me explain: being a phandom member circa 2014-2015 and even to an extent in 2016 was measured in the amount of knowledge you knew and could bring up at your fingertips. i think it was a byproduct of having to constantly defend yourself for shipping and having the pair so emotionally closed off in comparison to today that every piece of information was venerated and brought to the discussion board to create and alter our perception of their timeline/relationship/reality. some of it was given covertly on password protected blogs and basically taught by phandom elders to the newbies. it was a secret club only privy to the dedicated. i don’t how much of it lives on today to new kids, but i remember my own initiation early 2015 and spending literal months reading other blogs masterlists of theories and consuming every video/tweet/photo that corresponded, maybe not watching every old liveshow but sure as hell knowing the important bits – it was having to learn the phandom lore + all the aspects that held it up.
fanfic was based of it, fanart was based on it, discussion was based on it – you could tell when someone wasn’t a dedicated fan right off the bat from the most minute things – someone getting a favorite drink or old pets name wrong. watching a liveshow for me was a lot less about entertainment than just obtaining information to paint a richer image of them from so little we had.
and seeing a lot less of analysis for the sake we don’t have to have any anymore is letting it die out, for better or for worse. i knew a lot but i sure as heck didn’t know the most, i didn’t run a blog helping map out a timeline or collect old liveshow oddities, and knowing how many of those blogs and people are gone now is really freaking weird. i don’t remember have as much as i did a year ago and know other are probably losing it too but it feels like a language that isn’t getting passed down anymore because of some linguistic barrier to modernity. the hundred of “important” moments are no longer relevant to any sort of discussion because the backbones of our discussions are no longer relevant. i feel as if the discussions we could be having today aren’t being done because of the lack of background knowledge needed to support them and that’s just a snowball effect of there being none.
i often think about how my experience would differ if i got into the phandom today and i think it would be a lot less demanding, a lot less intense, a lot less elitist, but also a shade less spectacular. there was something about amassing knowledge to pass onto others and having to fill in the holes of their relationship from analyzing incidents for hours, gaining respect among the phandom for knowing your shit, and being scared as hell to put these theories to light because of the complete mix of opinions on the pair. i suppose it’s freeing for the two, knowing that all that documentation of their life will disappear, but having so little to document the reality of the phandom because everything was passed ephemeraly online goes to show the power in physical documentation. i think tabinof is a great reminder of them but only scratched the surface of us – and it wasn’t supposed to. if anyone ever decides to write some paper 50 years from now on online communities when they transform hmu because i feel like the phandom’s shift is completely fascinating.
annaxmalina
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