Featured Article: Guestbook
“Sign my guestbook!” This week’s Featured Article is all about Guestbooks, or “dreambooks”.
This was an element of older websites and blogs, where fans could leave feedback and comments, and operated as a message board. Although it wasn’t fannish in origin, people used it to interact with fandom and to promote their own fanworks and sites, as guestbooks predated online journals with comment sections.
They could be hard to navigate, and even harder to edit. As there was only one per website, it meant that messages could be hard to decipher if they weren’t specific.
Guestbooks were susceptible to spam, and the editing and censoring the owners of guestbooks practiced appears to be minimal, but for fans newly online, they offered the ability to read instantaneous feedback, try to message a celebrity, or was a place to make friends. Some guestbooks were also created as a memorial to a deceased fan.
Have you heard about them or remember commenting on one? Check out our Fanlore page to read more!
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