a historical note
I have exactly zero desire to get involved with the current imbroglio flaring in certain parts of Tumblr but I do want to correct some erroneous information floating around out there that The X-Files was originally marketed as a show for teenagers and that the fandom during the airing of the show was primarily teens. Unlike some posters, I was actually there at that time and I was an adult.
When the X-Files debuted it was hailed as a very adult show. It was one of the first adult dramas on FOX and quite a feather in the still-fledgling network’s cap. Which doesn’t mean that teenagers didn’t watch it. Of course they did. But XF was marketed as a serious drama for adult viewers and the show saw success in the prized (by advertisers) 18-49 demographic.
The X-Files fandom was similarly skewed adult during the airing of the show. There was a heavy teen presence but in my (admittedly unscientific) experience, the vast majority of fandom members were in their twenties and thirties, at least when I was active between 1998-2001. I knew people in fandom as young as 14 and as old as 58 but most were what is best described as young adults.
The “older” fanbase makes sense, given the time period of 1993-2002. The world wide web was born during the orginial airing of X-Files. Not everyone had a personal computer and a (dial-up) Internet connection at home yet, although those numbers were rising every year. There was no such thing as smartphones or tablets or wireless internet. A sizeable amount of fandom members participated in fandom at work or school only because they weren’t yet able to get Internet at home. I know, I was one of those for a little while. There were a lot of college student participants, because universities were among the first to have widespread Internet access, but there was a relatively small (but definitely growing) contingent of fans who were high school age and younger. Once again, this information is anecdotal but I was very active in fandom, participating in the alt.tv.x-files and alt.tv.x-files.creative Usenet newsgroups, many mailing lists, and message boards. But one of the things I did like about the fandom then was that all were welcome.
Listen, the main thing is that this fandom, to this very day, remains a place for everyone, whether you’re 13 or 78. Some of us are brand new to the X-Files, some of us have been hanging around, on and off, for sixteen years or more. Older and more experienced fans should be welcoming to younger and newer fans and vice-versa. Like it or not, we’re a community and while we’re not always going to get along (trust, I survived more flame wars than I can count), we all have a place here.
As one of the 12 teens in X-Files fandom in the late ‘90s, I can verify this. (Okay, there were more than 12 of us. There was even a teen listserv, which I think spun off from Scullyfic. It had like eight people on it! But the vast majority of fans were either in college or older, for the obvious reasons Dasha explains above–it wasn’t a kids’ show and nobody had the internet back then–or at least they were very, very good at faking it.)
And for wee teenaged me, that was the coolest thing ever. For the first time in my life, I could socialize with adults and be treated like a fellow adult–at least when I was acting like one and not being a snot-nosed little shit, which I absolutely was on several occasions, and which earned me some well-deserved smackdowns. I could interact with a community of people who shared my weirdo interests and didn’t condescend to me on the basis of my age (on the basis of my being an idiot, on the other hand …). I could engage with and learn from people who were smarter, better educated, and more experienced than me, based on ideas and words, and not be dismissed simply because I was young. I got to see and participate in things that simply weren’t available to me elsewhere. I had my first real exposure to so many “adult” things in XF fandom–yes, obviously porn, but also academia, literature, politics, serious illness, complex family dynamics, how to behave appropriately in “grownup” spaces–concepts that blew my tiny teen mind. I learned to code because of XF fandom. I made friends of all ages, across the world. I learned and matured so much in that fandom. I grew up in that fandom. It was fucking awesome!
And I was able to do it because of the infrastructure and community built and maintained by older/adult fans, for older/adult fans. Because adults with internet access, technical skills, and experience (not to mention leisure time) had come before me, and had started the listservs and the USENET communities, had built the archives and websites, had written the stories and made the videos, had established community standards and guidelines–in other words, had built this amazing community from scratch, so that I could enjoy it as well.
I was so, so lucky to be a part of that. It was a privilege, and nearly 20 years on, I’m still grateful for it.
So true! It’s hard for people to remember now just how different the internet was back then. I got into X-Files fandom during the first season. I was 13. That was incredibly unusual, not because it was fandom but because a 13-year-old having privacy and time online were incredibly unusual.
Most teenagers had, at best, a family computer with hovering parents and siblings that connected to AOL via dial up, which tied up the family phone line (grouchy parents) and was charged by the minute (really grouchy parents). Most families didn’t even have that much. Smart phones did not exist. Cell phones were expensive and the size of Scully’s shoulderpads–as we all remember from watching Mulder and Scully talk into those bricks. Libraries didn’t yet have good access. Most modern web browsers did not exist. Google did not exist. The internet places that had fan activity were often confusing and technically complex to access compared to modern, web-based forums designed for the general public.
The people who were online in the early 90s were university students and IT professionals. E-mail addresses were mostly through jobs or school and had real names in them. It was a very different world. Teenagers in fandom online did not become normal until the end of the 90s or the early 00s. And, even then, they tended to be in anime, Harry Potter, Buffy, and other things aimed at younger demographics. The X-Files was a dark, adult show that nobody expected teens to be watching, at least when it started. (I know. I was there. I remember the pearl-clutching over somebody my age watching it at all. Forget porny fanfic: it was me watching the canon that was surprising.) For perspective:
1993: X-Files premieres
1994: Netscape Navigator debuts
1995: Internet Explorer debuts
1997: Google search engine debuts
I’ve been through a lot of fandoms since then and I haven’t been in X-Files fandom since like 1997. It’s both surprising and heartening to know it has lots of young fans today. That’s fantastic. But don’t go rewriting history, people! It was a show aimed at adults with a fandom of adults and fannish infrastructure built by adults. Those few teenagers who were into it are now in our 30s.
