When I asked you to give me your email address, it was just as twitter was starting to circle the drain. I promised you I wasn’t starting a newsletter, so much as finding a way to continue to share what I was thinking and reading and writing about once that platform no longer existed. It’s certainly true that twitter still (technically) exists, but it doesn’t work in any meaningful way anymore – no tweet achieves any kind of reach, and the bots and nazis make it a horrible place to visit even briefly.
Honestly I’m still grieving that on some level. Yes, I can discover new things on TikTok and share my Eras Tour costume on Instagram and (shudder) network on LinkedIn. But nothing has replaced the learning and discovery and serendipity and fun. Where am I supposed to do my annual announcement that it’s marshmallow egg season?
Anyway, as promised – here are the things I’ve written lately that you might enjoy reading:
Public Passions/Private Spaces for The Pantograph Punch’s Carving Space issue – thinking about how we make thriving neighbourhoods online.
A Long Time Coming for Letterboxd’s Journal on The Eras Tour movie – and what it means to experience concerts in the livestreaming era.
The hierarchy of cool for culture vulture – SYSCA’s fab culture newsletter. This came about as I was forced to reckon with ACOTAR events all over my fyp so if you larp as a fairy, this one is for you.
Many of you know that I’m taking a career break at the moment to work on a non-fiction book that’s a history of the internet and the fans who’ve made it their home. It’s been so fun to get back in touch with old fandom friends and reminisce but it’s also led me to ask everyone I meet now the same question: “Where did you first hang out online?” Most people answer with a tool (MSN Messenger, AIM, MySpace), and when I press further and ask, “but who were you hanging out with? Who did you go looking for when you had the world at your doorstep? Music you loved, movies you were into?” The most common answer is “I can’t remember”.
The reality is that the internet we knew and loved and loathed is already gone. Venture capital-funded platforms have pushed us all together in monolithic social platforms and given us fewer and fewer ways to hang out in small, niche spaces. What used to be a way for us to connect with kindred spirits, build passionate little communities, has become an algorithmic firehose driving engagement. There are fewer and fewer places for us to just be our weird little selves any more.
This is exactly the sort of question I would have asked on twitter and gotten hundreds of wonderful answers to. So make me feel better by sending me your answer. Or forward it to a friend who you think has a cool and colourful internet past I’d love to hear about.
Where were you first your weird little self online?
As I work on the book, here’s some recent things I’ve been reading and pondering:
This good summary of the current conflict about bookbinders selling bound copies of fanfiction on market sites like Etsy without permission. If you’re not familiar with fanbinding, Fansplaining did a great episode about it this week. Fanbinders are artists and I keep resolving to learn how to do this myself. Several have asked permission to bind my work in the past and I’ve always said yes. It makes me furious that a TikTok obsession with getting their hands on a copy of Manacled has led to people once again trying to make money off of fans like this.
This great overview from Al Jazeera on the work Finland is doing in schools to teach resilience to misinformation. One of the things I’m constantly thinking about is how we teach young people to “question everything” but not use that as a rationale to “believe nothing” and get sucked down conspiracy rabbit holes. Finland seems to be one of the few countries making progress.
This piece about our obsessive surveillance of celebrities. Those of you who remember Gawker Stalker will know this is not exactly new, but thinking about Taylor Swift’s fans swarming Jack Antonoff’s wedding rehearsal has me focussing again on the tension between fame and privacy in the digital era.
This incredible search engine for what’s left of the early web – Oldavista. The heartbreaking thing about researching early fandom is how much of it is gone. This is a nostalgia hit.
But yeah, the good old days were dark and involved horses.
I’ll continue to erratically and infrequently share the things with you like this that I once would have tweeted. Until next time.
S
