parthenia | (no subject)

You know, guys, I'm totally not feeling the love at the moment. So, I'm thinking:

...Take a little LJ break

All my frieeeeeeeeeends are here. Tempting though, it's just raising my blood pressure just now.

...Unsubscribe from

metafandom

OOoooh. Mind you it's not the subscribing is it? It's the looking.

...Leave Harry Potter LJ fandom.

Hmmm. Tempting. Also, do not wish to be spoiled.

Perhaps supernatural would be far less wanky. *looks around hopefully*

...Post yet another deeply unpopular opinion.

Hasn't worked yet, although I am beginning to realise that my default reaction is 'unpopular opinion.'

I like corporations. Sometimes. I don't always like not-for-profit; well, that's not quite correct but I do not see that not-for-profit is necessarily a way of avoiding the stuff that people don't like when Six Apart do it.

Mind you I can't be the only person who thinks: gosh, if no-one's going to buy a Permanent Account...

Of course, I'd look a bit tragic all by myself.

...Flee to another provider.

WHY? WHY WHY WHY, server collapse apart?

Of course 'parthenia' at greatestjournal is already bloody taken. Sodding typical.

Is this just a phase, oh wise ones?

Things I am deeply loving: Ugly Betty OMG. Also, Doctor Who.

Ugly Betty has some of the best lines ever though:

'I'm totally out of this house by the time I'm 40.'
'You can be my seeing-eye gay.'

I just watched the Guadalajara episode, and I just loved Marc/Amanda. Also Betty. and Justin. And Hilda. And Henry. and Wilhelmina.

In which case, oh all-powerful f-list: can anyone point to some general communities, especially those that make the nice icons?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Uh-oh, I think you are the one who will push me across the line into meta.

It's probably a complete coincidence that all this censorship business came so closely on the heels of the FanLib/boy/girl/money/co-op flap, but I think it's a continuum. A big part of what has come out of the

cathexys/Jenkins stuff is fundamental discussion about fandom as a grassroots, cooperative, non-monetarized community that remains free ideologically because it remains free economically. Flying under the radar is what keeps fandom from becoming beholden to TPTB; it's essentially a chaotic/entropic open source ethos.

So all the LJ/6A IPA stuff and should fans buy shares, etc., is fundamentally antithetical to that open source model. Fans as shareholders essentially creates a hierarchy that has not previously existed between older, wealthier fans and younger entry-level fans. It suggests the need for an organization to govern proxy voting and represent disparate fandoms as a bloc. It's all about The Man, and fandom is so not about The Man. (And the initial proposal came from my best friend, which just shows that opposites attract, I guess.)

So, erm, I agree with you that there is not much point switching service providers, since fans cannot control the media without giving up some intrinsic aspects of their fannish souls. Let's all be lazy and stick with LJ.

(Yup, this was the meta post. Thank goodness most of this flap took place while I was on vacation.)

Everything I have read makes me supect that fans would be nightmarish as owners - ok for small scale niche stuff, but not for a giant archive project. Equally, lots of fans are loud but poor, which isn't a lot of use in buying stock.

I'd rather that fans' loudness got used to participate or contribute to discussions.

What worries me about some of this is a sense of biting the hand that feeds. Six Apart seems like a reasonably corporate overlord that occasionally makes crap decisions; but in spite of what I'm reading everywhere, they're coming over to me at least, as fairly supportive of fans' activities.

Oh yay! We can sit together on the Middle-Aged Sell-Outs Bench. I have spent enough time being something like The Man to appreciate how much work it is, and I think Six Apart could do a lot worse.