graculus

Well, it had to happen eventually. I lost my tolerance and posted on the subject of the Golden Age of Fandom - for those not on the list in question, here's my comments so you'll know why I'm jumping up and down over being chargrilled... *g*

This post came out of a thread on betas and editors and why such things are good/bad/unnecessary/evil newfangled nonsense yadda yadda yadda.

My main concern about this kind of topic is that it often seems to be the result of a Golden Age of Fandom view of the world. I don't believe that, way back when, all zines were perfect and all stories wonderful and everyone was nice to one another - I've seen some of those zines and stories and heard the tales of people's behaviour in fandom and it ain't so.

Those of us who've come to fandom since the 'Net was invented are often arbitrarily labelled as a variety of things (mostly negative): we're supposed to care less about characterisation and quality of writing, we're lazy and desperate for feedback, we're thoughtless and impulsive, etc etc. I think that it's only that fandom is so much bigger now, communication is much faster and the morons are less easy to avoid - not that the morons haven't always been with us.

Personally, I'm pretty sick of being labelled this way by default (and the whole nostalgic BS).

And now the flames... *eg*