The world online
Nostalgia is dangerous. And yet I can’t help but frame the state of the internet as it is now in terms of something having been lost since the era of forums and myriads of sites was replaced by that of a handful of social media…
Isolation and convergence: fandom
In mainstream discourses, when they don’t have moral panics about teens being on tiktok too much, the internet is often heralded as the great connector, and us online too like to think so. In some sense it’s true, of course.
But currently “the internet” means social media, and all the big platforms are essentially blogs. You might think they aren’t but deep down it’s all microblogging. That, or discord et al. – closed spaces beyond any offsite interaction.
I can’t say if that structure is the source of this tendency, but surely it assits.
That is – aren’t things very insular? Take the discursive space (a term I don’t know if I am using properly) of video games, online. How many people are interested in games as such, and participate in what one might call “generalist” communities? And how many are essentially fans of one game, or one intellectual property franchise?
How many are “singular” fans of FNAF, Undertale/Deltarune, Fortnite, pokemon, fifa, etc, etc? It seems like a lot, I think? See also: Swifties, fans of one piece (and only one piece), etc.
Online, you can find vast numbers of fans of your favourite media property – deep lakes of fandom to dive into. But narrow lakes, maybe?
Is that a bad thing? Maybe, even probably, not. But it’s somewhat foreign to me. More interesting (to me) – does the current structure of the internet encourage such communities?
***
As I said, it’s all blogging. If you make an account on bluesky and you mostly (only?) post umamusume fan content, will you still have a community if you expand your blogging? What if you change interests to other games or anime? That is, since your user account is a blog always blasted into the total feed of your followers, what happens when you, the blog, shifts focus? People, your mutuals and followers, get a part of you they didn’t know or ask for.
Of course, people change fandoms all the time, and yet. It seems to me that this becomes akin to diving into a separate lake of people, or moving countries. Despite the in some sense hyper-connectedness of being on a Very Large Online Platform, something about the structure allows for isolation around one topic… I think?
That is – how do you “naturally” transition the conversation based in your common interest in FNAF (or whatever) into video games more broadly speaking? (I realise I am here assuming people *do* have a broader interest in the art form. That might not be true.) The IP is what lead you together – in the vast algorithmic ocean of Content, this is the single force holding you together. But how you expand from one IP to the art form itself… suddenly interests may diverge? And the fragmentation will separate you into separate lakes of fandom, again.
***
Forums were, on the face of it, like this. Often created for fans of one thing, a game, webcomic ,etc. But fans inevitably go off-topic, and the nature of forums allows for this variation beyond the reason for being in the same place to coexist with that reason, in the off-topic section (often the most lively place on a forum). There was not the same incessant dissipation into the wider online atmosphere.
But most forums (beyond the really big ones) always died off in the end, of course. But not then, in quete the same way as the as the social media “community”.
***
I don’t think I ever truly felt at home in spaces which were singularly focused on only one IP. At least, not for long. I’m not sure this has any explanation beyond me just not being made for it – I’m more inclined to be interested in many things, in a sense. (and in some ways can envy that singular focus, but in others I am quite content with my life of variation.) It seems to me that the internet as it is, is more made for these clumps of deep narrow fandom than a common affinity for a wider topic.
That is. It’s easier to find a big “community” of Deltarune fans, than there is to find a “fandom space” of people interested in games “per se”. Except in the spaces of game developers and of people who approach these things more “traditionally” (like me, maybe) through writing, etc.
***
I think I’m trying to grasp at a wider point here (and in some previous posts). The internet used to be different. Many people are saying this, but what we’re missing sometimes seems hard to grasp.
I think to me it’s something like this – the predominance (or so it seems) of “IP” fandoms reveals something like an underlying dynamic that allows for that, but not “wider” interest – you stay connected to your fandom, instead of being pushed/pulled to, through social dynamics, an expanded interest in the medium itself. The world beyond Pikachu seems more closed off.
Maybe this is reflected in artists online who face the incessant pressure to focus on franchises, vs. their own things? Maybe.
Despite the benefits when it comes to discoveries you can make on platforms (or so we like to think) etc, it seems to me that the rise of (algorithmic) social media means some things are worse, and some things have been lost. But what?
Prism, mirror lens (Bellona, online)
In fair Bellona we lay our scene, following Samuel Delany’s Dhalgren (1975). In Dhalgren, Bellona is in utter chaos, constantly on fire somewhere, all government structures are gone. The city is isolated from the outside world, except those who decide to come and go, which is entirely possible. People can’t even tell the time. Here, all manner of deviant groups exist in the anarchic chaos that the city has become. Hippies, gangs, sexual deviants, racist people with guns, upper class people sequestering themselves, etc. They’re all there, all from the real world “outside”, but they’re also on their own.
Was not the earlier internet, say 20 years ago, much like this? A primordial soup of all manner of groups – deviant or not so deviant.
It wasn’t all good, of course – all you know I know: grooming in private messages and IRC chatrooms, flamewars breaking apart forums, shock porn sent to whoever, ascendant nazi propaganda, a free-for-all without control, laws or decorum.
Yet this is where the freedom from the ravages of polite society lay. Bellona online was also where there was no borders (if you could get in, that is), and so anything could bounce into anything. No central algorithmic authority, instead thousands of petty websites which you could wander to and fro, and which in some sense resulted in in a seemingly endless diversity of idiosyncracy.
Take the humble deviantart anime artist, uploading their – in the eyes of most – terrible drawings. This world held all from the most unskilled amateurs and the already well-trained professionals. Now it’s more like this – you put your art on Instagram, and the void says nothing unless you are permitted virality. As I’ve seen people complain – with today’s landscape artist “have” to aim for a slick excessively palatable style to appease the algorithm. The space for the extremely unpolished, which generated all manner of wonders, is lost.
Deviancy has become more difficult, I think (and this is without considering harassment/bullying etc, which the algorithm amplifies). At least in some senses.
I never fully took part in this world, being ever the lurker (here we are back to my mental problems). And perhaps that’s part of why I feel the loss of this version of the internet. I never really got to be more than a spectator to it, I think (and still posting – a form of really existing online – is a struggle).
But still, I think something is really lost. And I think the internet as is, is partial to produce (cultural) stagnation. At least it’s not so apparent that “weirdness” (for lack of a better word) has the same place it once had. Maybe.
At the same time the regulatory machine is rolling over the internet, both governments and capital are in action. This is not just about banning the porn on tumblr, but the law and order demanded by the entry of both profit and state into what was chaos, for good and bad.
Maybe it’s also like Bellona in this way: Dhalgren reflected the upheavals of the 1960s and early 1970s, and the city if Bellona is a reflection of all this; a moment in time – so singular that time doesn’t really flow, and where all the old rules are left by the wayside. And ultimately law and order returned, historically. And maybe this too is the (inevitable?) trajectory of the internet. Instead of what it was, a free state where you both brought in whatever form the “real world”, but where you could also leave such things behind – your name, opinions, gender, sexuality, nation etc, the internet will be violently inserted into its “proper” place, in congruence with the rest of the world that it always was a part of, but didn’t want to countenance. And the endless fields of chaos and networks ends, to be replaced by the (inter)national legal and economic order. (which it was never “really” outside of, and yet.)
***
I fear being hagiographic. Am I not describing a land of endless wonder which was really beholden to those with the means to get online – a select group – and which had it’s plagues of violence and exploitation? Maybe.
Still. Something has been lost. There’s no point in trying to get back the past, so there must be some other point to this, for me.
Let me try this line of thought: Understanding what’s been lost helps explain my discomfort with the internet in the present. Both variation and interconnectedness – in some ways – are gone, or at least much less present.
What to do about it? I don’t know. I don’t have it in me to abandon social media. I don’t think I can follow the path of solely entering the world of personal websites. I think. But it might be pertinent to reconsider in what way the space for the less algorithm-friendly ways of being and of (cultural) expression might be eked out. In some way that will probably mean more obscurity. Which might not be bad, but I’m not sure how good it would be. And well, you can’t be fully obscure if there is to be interconnection.
For me I guess I also have to figure out what I want (with difficulty, with my mental problems), but beyond my interest, I don’t know if there are any solutions to be had. Maybe the current trends of social media and AI slop will force a large change, which will allow for something different. Or maybe there are no solutions there. In which case we – or someone that’s not me, will have to do something, come up with something. Good luck.
Lake(s) of darkness
The deep seas of the internet used to be isolated from the outside world. Up until recently a den of strange beings. Now, not so much. Beyond my personal un-affinity, the dominance of IP-fandom to me signals a level of commercialisation that in the end reflects the “real world”, in the end. The horrid light of capital sears away the darkness where variation lay – the underground, if you will.
Ultimately, I too am a consumer, and I find this state of affairs boring.
There is only so much a snob like me can gain from the world that always tells artists and people in general to cater to the maximal level of universal popularity – this files off the edges, leaving only smooth marbles of content. I think I prefer to see a million drawings made by unskilled amateurs, because some of those, with an internet that permits them, grow into highly particular artists. Which is more interesting art for me to consume, the content I want.
As well: Is it possible to have good communities when everything is always potentially on display, by will of the algorithm? As such, maybe an endless deluge of slop, legislation and (inshallah) collapsing social media will create a new lake of darkness, or a new Bellona.