Ghost of fandom pasts

[matilda36]

I have left the MSP fandom 2 years ago, but once in a while I like to remember myself why I did it. I still love the band and Nicky Wire is still the sexiest man in a miniskirt, but the fandom has given them a bad name, and rightly so.
Recently on FD, somebody started a tread asking people to post iconic pictures. Very soon, we had 5 pages of people hurt, dying or dead. War, cruelty and the humming of evil all represented.
On page 5, Perdita ( one of the few people I miss) asks why people seems to identify iconic status with violence, and the only answer was because violence is iconic. If I had still been in the fandom I would have answered her: because this is an MSP forum.

I can see why in my then fandom naivety I got involved, so quickly and so deep, producing and participating in enough wank to keep F_W in business for a year. I was low, heading for a fall, angry and desperate. For a while FD filled my hole. It all ended in an horrible wank that left me shattered, and still the general wankery makes me angry,

BUT

visiting today, I realised that I could not do the same now, for the simple reason that I am not that person anymore. I am more centred in my self and my killer rage is being eroded, bit by bit.

Thanks the Goddess and Broccoli.

And after 15 minutes in MSP sploodge, the Stargate fandom is a peaceful lake with no fish in comparison.

Comments

[moonshayde.livejournal.com]

*blinks* I did not understand a thing you said, but I'll take your word for it.

Sorry, rambling on...

[matilda36.livejournal.com]

Sorry, late night and reading too much Fandom_Wank:

I used to be quite involved in the fandom of a Welsh band called the Manic Street Preachers. Their fans are notorious in the UK as being snotty, full of intellectual pretense, obsessive, depressive and argumentative. And this is all true.
I joined the fandom (my first one) and ended up moderating one of the biggest forum. Not even 6 months later, I completely left the fandom, on the verge of a mental breakdown.
Yesterday I visited the forum (first time in ages) and it was some sort of reality check for me: it had a typically Manics tread, asking pwople to put up an image that they described as "Iconic" (MSP fans love words like that). I think the person starting the tread intended picture that had stuck in the collective imagery. The idea was interesting, but I found myself staring a page after page of pictures taken during the Spanish Civil War, in Nazis camps, during the Vietnam war and in general pictures of violence and death.

So I posted here saying that I was glad that I had left the fandom and that looking inside me as I am today, I would have never got so involved, because there's a lot of negativity out there. It makes the worst of Stargate shipper/noromos war seems like kid play. And has made me glad I have switched fandoms. Here people tends to be more positive, even when they bitch. They tend to do something with their lives other than mope and blame Margaret Tatcher.

Is the translation any better :-)?

Re: Sorry, rambling on...

[moonshayde.livejournal.com]

Very much ;) Thanks