fears of a wankish world

[kaigou]

Recently, sevilemar left a comment on the posts I did on the dynamics of fandom. One part of the comment leapt out at me:

I think preserving earlier posts (or texts) and naming your sources like you did with obsession_inc's post are tremendously helpful when a reader wants to know more about the thing discussed. It creates a sense of tradition, and tradition is a tool of organization ... Also, earlier posts, texts and discussions can be used to demonstrate patterns or recurring themes, structures etc. if one is so inclined.

All very true, and the internet-casual "I was reading __ and it made me think of __" or the more direct, "this is in response to __'s post on __" definitely act as shorthand citations. I await the day when we develop a pattern, or an assumption of, inline notations (journalname, 2010). Unlike the footnotes and endnotes in printed text -- highly annoying, if you ask me, because of the requirement of skipping to the end of the book and searching minuscule text for that one line, only to have it say ibid (and who the hell is ibid anyway and can I shoot him now?) -- but I digress.

What that comment-bit actually made me think of was this: there have been times, many more times than I think I'd even like to admit, where I have not linked to, nor identified, who or what prompted the post. And that's because of one reason: because the text can be searched, found, and wanked.

As I've discussed before, discussions are digressive in their organic form, going this way, and back again. When I was in college, it would be a handful or so of us, at the local bar, covering all the permutations of a topic. Between us, we'd move from here, to there, and back again, sometimes arguing against ourselves as a way to make sure we'd left no conversational stone unturned. (Yes, it's called Being A Philosophy Major.) In the internet discussions, past and current, it's the same thing, except multiple voices are doing that digression, all at the same time. Hyper, I'll give you hyper -- compared to the rather languid pace of pre-internet.

However, that overlapping means the digression may no longer be organic, but cacophonous. The various link-roundups and link-spams on any given hot topic definitely give the impression of chaos, and someone out there is gonna want to force it into Proper Order. The link-roundups and link-spams (especially when accompanied by editorial commentary such as "privilege in comments" or "triggers for __") act as forces of order against a chaotic, near-post-modern discussion frenzy. And where you have the drive for organization, for order, you're going to have to determine what's in, and what's out, and as I've mentioned before, that's where you get the Proper Order's private wish that everyone would speak in turn, because all this talking out of turn is giving some folks the chance to derail -- or just digress, which is sometimes bad enough anyway -- and that, we just can't have.

Hence, wank -- and wank, when you think about it, is pretty damn meta in a bizarre way. A lot of the worst wank in the various fails isn't always only and entirely because someone was privileged; that's usually just the starting-point. The rest of the wank is wank over whether or not that critical-post was wank: in this chaotic crazy everyone-talks-at-once discussion, it's pretty much inevitable in that any decent-sized fail, there'll be an argument over the unspoken community rules of how one goes about having an argument.

Citing any of that, linking to any of that -- no matter how thought-provoking -- means getting dragged into it. Internet discussions as the ultimate tarbaby: you link, you are connected, you can be found, and your citation can be used against you. While this would be true regardless of whether link-roundups existed -- no matter how useful, overall, as historical records of a discussion's progress -- a link-roundup still creates an easy path for others to follow to your door, and thence to holler at you.

While I'm certainly not going to advocate Civility Lessons for everyone -- there are still people writing in all-caps, for crying out loud, and such advocacy would just be another opportunity for wank, anyway -- I do think that any metatastic discussions of internet conversations must take into account the pressures created by those link round-ups and their very public dispersal. From an academic or historical point, couldn't this potentially warp one's perception of a discussion, in one direction or another, if many are speaking but only in an undertone, unlinked? Or many are speaking but with self-censored neutrality when linking?

If fear of wank -- public shaming, really -- overrides the OP's investment in the actual topic, how do you know you've actually collected the discussion? What if your introduction is an unlinked post, giving the impression it starts and stops here, what does that do to how we see the post? Is a post more valuable -- or more credible -- if it risks the wank by linking? Or is it more valuable (to those within its discussion-borders) if its unlinked state means it's a safe space for the conversation-participants? Wouldn't that, in turn, make it as valuable and valid as any public, wank-risking posts, if for different reasons?


Sometimes I hate my brain.

Comments

hi! thankyou!

[nagasvoice]

Came over on a reccie from dharma_slut, who's been involved in some big wankfests herself, and I find this delightful analysis of the problem of citation when you talk about something that's turning into FAIL.
Civility!
Which is really nice, since I've been mad for two days, having just got myself all wrapped round the axle getting ticked at somebody whose opinions normally provoke conversation but not fury. Yep, they've provoked wank bigtime, too, getting all breezy and privileged and exclusive and stuff.
Notice I'm not using pronouns, either.
There's often a perception that if you link to somebody's cyclone of fail, or even an explanatory post which further cites chapter and verse, you're encouraging dogpiling.
And it really doesn't take much to start feeling like you're getting dogpiled if negative comments come back round to you, either.
Plenty of people are too cautious about all of that to commit themselves to the point of pointing out actual wording.
At the same time, if you come in later on, how do you ever find out what it was really all about, and whether it was blown out of scale in the echo chamber, or it really was a problem.
I love your remark here that it's inevitable (at some point) that people will digress to tussle over appropriate community standards for the discussion, too. When in doubt about what to do, argue over the rules!

[eatsscissors]

This is an incredibly interesting post. There is a massive amount of information as to one side of a story or another that either never gets told because people don't want to enter the fray (or, interestingly, gets told on anonmemes, but sorting good argument from "Whee, I'm naked, look at my ass!" on anonmemes can be fucking exhausting) or because the linkspam roundups pass it over. (Best example of the latter being the h/c imbroglio of the last summer: it turned out that a lot of people were arguing in favor of it and against the thesis that it was inherently ablist, but Metafandom wasn't linking them.)

(Yes, it's called Being A Philosophy Major.)

*snerk* And then after you graduate, you have to relearn how to communicate with normal people. Been there, done that.

[branchandroot]

*wry* Yeah, any Ordering adds its own layer of shape to the chaos. And, chaos being chaos, I have to doubt whether that Ordered shape is actually germane. It certainly influences the people who follow a given link-comm to feel as though there's an actual discussion (with people reading each other and responding to each other) going on. And that's dead wrong at least half the time, and there you are with more wank over the implicit assumptions of a unified community that can actually /have/ consensus rules--instead of, as it often is, people from separate communities all thinking/talking based on their own community's rules, which may be very different from each other, all being linked through a third party community (the link-comm) which, of course, has its own rules and may or may not be an actual link (be read) by some of the people talking... yeah.

[sevilemar]

Not so short after all, ey? ;)

you link, you are connected, you can be found, and your citation can be used against you
Very true, and I hadn't thought of that. I guess you have to decide time and again while posting which is more valuable to you, being recognized as part of a larger discussion and potentially encounter wank and other opinions that frustrate you to no end, or posting your equivalent of "Why are they carrying that stupid rainbow flag?" to a more closely knitted group of friends who might explain more patiently.

But let me just say, I really appreciate that in fandom, we have at least some kind of choice in the matter. In university, especially in first and second year, when my knowledge was little and my circle of friends even more so, I have often found myself at the recieving end of pitying/angry/dissapointed etc. looks and comments (academia's version of public shaming and dogpiling) just because I asked a question out of curious ignorance. But if you want to know, mostly, you have no choice, especially if your friends study other things than you do.

So yes, I think both forms of discussions have equal value, or rather, what is more valuable should be decided anew with every post. From an aca-fan perspective, link round-ups are very helpful and finding the silent parts of a discussion can be a pain in the arse, but that doesn't make them any less valuable for analysis once you've found them.

how do you know you've actually collected the discussion?
In my opinion, we should never delude ourselves that we can read all aspects of any given discussion, know all perspectives on a given topic; online fandom is just too vast for that. Even if you do a halfway decent job of collecting English meta, what about non-English meta on the same topic? What about related discussions on related topics on non-fannish blogs? etc.

What if your introduction is an unlinked post, giving the impression it starts and stops here, what does that do to how we see the post?
To me? I might see it as an unconnected opportunity for discussion; far more likely: When I'm through with it, I'd google keywords or take a look at recent metafandom posts if the topic interests me and I have the time^^