What was your first experience with internet fandom and subculture?
I have a short answer and a long answer.
Short answer: My friend used to print off fanfics for me in middle school and I'd read them.
Long answer: For a long, long while I just didn't have internet access. Fanfics got passed to me through friends, and as far as I was aware that's where fandom ended. People posted fics, others read them, and friends irl talked about them. That's what I knew for several years.
It wasn't until I was on AO3 in maybe 2014 or 2015 and stumbled across people mentioning their tumblrs that I learned about fandom culture beyond that (which is funny, considering I'd studied and done research papers in college on Vocaloid, which is driven by fandom. I really just didn't know fanfiction and fanart could create a community, despite the fact that it drives marketing for those voice programs). I made a tumblr, I followed a bunch of people in the Naruto fandom, and then tried posting about my writing on here.
So, really, I count tumblr as my first real experience. Fanfiction gave me a taste, but it was just like perusing a library and picking out books, not like going to a book club and really discussing it with people. I started to share my writing, I made friends, I've met friends even.
I don't really think I was into fandom when I was just reading printed off fanfics that my friend thought I might like. I was into the stories, I was into learning what my friend(s) loved, but fandom was this vast space I knew nothing about. I really do think that sharing my writing and following fellow writers here on tumblr was my real first experience (and very quickly meeting @raendown and becoming friends with her shortly after). The connection is what I consider the real first experience, what really made the subculture real.
Something something, fandom is the friends you make along the way, something something
