To wank or not to wank?
Dec. 3rd, 2002 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebratqueenSo, do we like ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fandom_wank or don't we?
It seems the thing to do these days is point and laugh at the community dedicated to pointing and laughing. I'll admit when fandom_wank first started up I was amongst those who wondered what the Hell it was hoping to accomplish. Sure, we all like laughing at the various stupidities of fandom, but OTOH the only thing that the first few posts seemed to do was give the morons a greater audience. Uh - thanks?
But FW seemed to mellow and find a groove, much as something like this can, and basically turned into its mission statement, which is to find the weirdness of fandom, point to it, and laugh at it.
For some reason, this has inspired a host of people writing in their LJs for the sole purpose of saying "All fandom_wank does is point at things and laugh at them!"
Yes, and?
Guys, you can't fault them for lacking truth in advertising here. They're not claiming to be the cure for cancer, they're claiming to be a place where they can be immature and therefore match much of the wankery at its own level.
Decrying the lack of biting social commentary on a community that uses "Ha HA" for a rallying cry says more about your inability to read for content than it does about FW as a whole.
Granted, I realize that's not the intended point of this rash of LJ entries that look at FW and cry "But what! About! The children!" but really that's what it all boils down to. Fandom's fine, guys. Pointing and laughing isn't going to hurt it any. God knows FW isn't the first to try.
I suppose I sympathize with those who at least want biting social commentary out of the whole thing. Plus it wouldn't hurt if FW had a better irony dectector. I've had more than a few moments of thinking that FW, much like the No Cookie For You! Bad Buffy Fic board, really needs to double check to make sure the thing they're mocking wasn't purposefully written to be mock-worthy, (thus making the whole thing not unlike those posts that point out spelling errors only to have a typo in them themselves) but who cares? It's a hobby. Let's move on. Or, if you care that much about doing it "right", start your own LJ community. Call it fandom_wank_wank_wank and do whatever the heck you want with it. Nobody's stopping you.
While I get a small twitch over "You write gay porn" as a qualifier for "get over it" (b/c what's wrong with writing gay porn? - but that's a separate issue), really FW is right on the money when it takes the position that nothing should be taken so seriously up to and including FW itself.
This is, again, our hobby. We're not saving lives here, we're having fun while typing. If we want something to have heart attacks over we could try, I dunno,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
sos_usa or something. But fandom? Not that important. Really.
fandom_wank or don't we? It seems the thing to do these days is point and laugh at the community dedicated to pointing and laughing. I'll admit when fandom_wank first started up I was amongst those who wondered what the Hell it was hoping to accomplish. Sure, we all like laughing at the various stupidities of fandom, but OTOH the only thing that the first few posts seemed to do was give the morons a greater audience. Uh - thanks?
But FW seemed to mellow and find a groove, much as something like this can, and basically turned into its mission statement, which is to find the weirdness of fandom, point to it, and laugh at it.
For some reason, this has inspired a host of people writing in their LJs for the sole purpose of saying "All fandom_wank does is point at things and laugh at them!"
Yes, and?
Guys, you can't fault them for lacking truth in advertising here. They're not claiming to be the cure for cancer, they're claiming to be a place where they can be immature and therefore match much of the wankery at its own level.
Decrying the lack of biting social commentary on a community that uses "Ha HA" for a rallying cry says more about your inability to read for content than it does about FW as a whole.
Granted, I realize that's not the intended point of this rash of LJ entries that look at FW and cry "But what! About! The children!" but really that's what it all boils down to. Fandom's fine, guys. Pointing and laughing isn't going to hurt it any. God knows FW isn't the first to try.
I suppose I sympathize with those who at least want biting social commentary out of the whole thing. Plus it wouldn't hurt if FW had a better irony dectector. I've had more than a few moments of thinking that FW, much like the No Cookie For You! Bad Buffy Fic board, really needs to double check to make sure the thing they're mocking wasn't purposefully written to be mock-worthy, (thus making the whole thing not unlike those posts that point out spelling errors only to have a typo in them themselves) but who cares? It's a hobby. Let's move on. Or, if you care that much about doing it "right", start your own LJ community. Call it fandom_wank_wank_wank and do whatever the heck you want with it. Nobody's stopping you.
While I get a small twitch over "You write gay porn" as a qualifier for "get over it" (b/c what's wrong with writing gay porn? - but that's a separate issue), really FW is right on the money when it takes the position that nothing should be taken so seriously up to and including FW itself.
This is, again, our hobby. We're not saving lives here, we're having fun while typing. If we want something to have heart attacks over we could try, I dunno,
sos_usa or something. But fandom? Not that important. Really.