Honestly, I think younger fen are the problem. They're in our yahoo groups, they go to our cons, they introduce their ideas into our forums, and they constantly try to bully us older people by telling us that things have changed and there are more modern ways and platforms to do them. We have been going to cons since before they were born, and writing zines for 30-40 years. (and don't YOU try bragging about how old you are. You're still in your 30s. Most of us fanosaurs are in our 60s!)
True: on tumblr, I get taken for a suspect old person, while on Zinelist, I’m a mewling infant.
But if we’re talking about Zinelist–and I assume we are because the only other yahoo group I’ve said anything in in years is the sedate Me & Thee–then there’s a piece of context missing from this criticism.
There’s hardly anyone below their 30′s anywhere on yahoo groups, and precious few even of those on Zinelist. “The Youth” by and large are not there and don’t care whether those spaces change their ways or not.
The reason people keep talking about Tumblr or keeping up with “modern” fannish spaces is simple: Zine editors keep asking “How can I sell my zine?” or complaining that they find it difficult these days. They hypothesize that young people don’t read books or never like paper copies of anything and that it is fundamentally impossible to make a successful zine these days. Other list members complain that they used to love fandom, but they feel lonely now and can’t figure out where the action is. The “bullying”, such as it is, is in direct response to these questions and laments.
I had to force myself to learn tumblr (and facebook!) just like I once had to force myself to learn livejournal. I was the crankiest about LJ. It was when I was in college, and it annoyed me that people were trying to replace the perfectly good mailing lists with this newfangled thing. Later, that attitude embarrassed me, not because LJ was better but just because it’s a self-defeating behavior that was shameful in a person in their early 20′s. That’s why I promised myself that, next time, I would give it a proper try and not wait till everyone else had already made the switch. Tumblr took me many tries, and it was not a pleasant adjustment. But having made that adjustment, I can say that it’s just as possible to be tl;dr as anywhere else, and it’s perfectly possible to have discussions if you want to. Witness the vast scrolling mass of text that is my tumblr most days.
I don’t think that tumblr is better or that change is fun or easy. I do think that “Where have the majority of the fen gone?” has a clear answer, and “Nobody cares about paper copies of anything anymore,” is patently false. Anybody who is happy getting their fannish conversation on Zinelist and who does their zines as a labor of love and a fun project between friends is doing fine. There is zero reason for them to listen to my advice.
Anybody who is doing their zine more like a business, on the other hand, desperately needs new buyers and, therefore, needs to change with the times. That goes for most people on Zinelist who are vocal about their zinemaking. Questions about what there’s a market for and what people want to see point to that type of zine press. It has nothing to do with a new way being better and everything to do with a new way netting more potential audience because you’re not financially able or not content to make zines for your current one.
The same thing happens with cons. Escapade was once the hot new thing. Now, it isn’t. It consistently runs smaller than our current attendance cap. It consistently can’t pay for the function space we want, and this is only getting worse. The way to fix that is to get new people to want to attend. They don’t have to be younger people, but in practice, they often are. We do reach out to past attendees and older fans who’ve never come before, but many of these people already know about the con and already know they aren’t interested in coming. We reach out to young people not because they are better but because, without them, the con will cease to exist.
(Speaking of which, for anybody else reading, Escapade is a fun slash con in L.A. coming up this March. We’re heavy on meta discussion and vidding. This year’s theme is OT3s. You should come!)
If you’re happy where you are, great! But if you ask “How can I sell more zines?” be prepared to hear answers you don’t like. It’s not bullying: it’s people trying to give you the help you asked for.