all I know about fandom I learned from you guys...

[flea]

Here's a silly thing that's been preying on my brain lately: mediafandom? Stupid name. I mean, what does "media" mean? I have read enough of y'all's meta to know it isn't the NEWS media, which is what the non-fannish first thought goes to. As I see it, mediafandom seems to describe people who entered fandom through television shows (especially Xfiles, among my acquaintance), in contrast to people who were attending scifi cons and in the zine scene before this dang newfangled technology came along. Am I wrong? But then, where does Harry Potter fit in, since that seems to be in mediafandom but he's a book? Or wasn't he fannish before there were movies? I'm so confused.

Anyway, why not simply call it television-fandom, not mediafandom, and keep me from flashing to Dan Rather all the time? Also, the pedant in me wishes to observe that every mode of communication is a medium - print, television, etc.

Who made up this name?

Your mundane friend,
flea

Comments

[noradeirdre.livejournal.com]

I am also mundane because it makes really no sense to me, no matter how hard I try to make it so in my head. Also, what's BNF?

[cindywrites.livejournal.com]

BNF = Big Name Fan.

I am with you two. I mean, I understand (now, after the discussion in Lightbulb) what some of them mean (although I've been in the Boxed Set thread for months, and couldn't discern any differences between the culture there and the culture in the other TV/lit/film/music threads), but I don't get the name itself.

So glad you asked, flea. I'll await answers in this thread with bated breath.

[noradeirdre.livejournal.com]

I think I got what the actual words are from the Natter context, but what exactly IS a Big Name Fan? Like a celebrity? Someone who uh, does... stuff?

Man, I am caffiene free so bear with me.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

I think BNF refers to really popular people in the fandom - normally popular because they write a lot of/good fic, or write interesting comments on a show, - but sometimes people are just popular for no reason. (Like, ahem, me, she said modestly. Okay, that was a joke.) I would guess, not knowing anything about it, that Polter-Cow is a BNF for Veronica Mars.

[ste-noni.livejournal.com]

Right, because he *knows* stuff. And people. But we still love him.

[minim_calibre]

Yes and no? Like, he totally is for Veronica Mars *viewing* fandom, but less so for, say, Veronica Mars creative fandom, as he's not involved as either a producer or consumer of fic, so if you have a section of VM fandom who don't really care about any of the fourth wall breaking stuff, he'd fly under the radar there. (Fandom's like that. One person's BNF is another's who the hell is that?)

And it's not so much popular as well-known, usually through production of something, be it fic or commentary or vids or meta.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

BNF is half a term of "yes of course I will know who you mean when you mention that name" and half a term of "oh the bitchy girls in highschool." So it is context-bound, whether it is just a reference to the overall fame/namecheck of a person, or a reference to that person's Cruel Suffocation Of Exciting New Voices in fandom.

(Ironically, SF has a similiar acronym, SMOF, which is short for Secret Master of Fandom. Over the years, it has lost its bitchiness quotient, and is now used as a verb to mean "organize" or "be on a committee.")

[gchick.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. Is it pronounced spelled-out or mushed-together? IOW, "I'm smoffing a panel on BNF-dom at WhatsisCon", or "I'm Ess-Emm-Oh-Effing..."?

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Smof, like cough with an SM. You can be a smof, or be busy smoffing, or if you're really smoffy you can go to Smofcon, which is a con for people who organize cons.

Smoffy smoffy smoffy. Sounds like a six-foot blue furry beast, doesn't it? Something the toddlers adore and their parents abominate.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Oh god, there really is a smofcon. I thought you HAD to be joking.

I also think there should be a Whatsiscon.

[minim_calibre]

I think the term's lifted from academia. http://metafandom.livejournal.com actually had a bunch of links to discussion of What Is It We Mean By Fandom, Anyway? yesterday.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Media fandom hasn't been all television, and it predates the web too; but those two things have been big in its history. It really got started when all those icky WIMMIN arrived at SF cons, thanks especially to Star Trek, in the late 1960s, early 70s. The WIMMIN did not tend to feel welcome in SF's male-dominated space, in which science and theory were very big (and emotions were often considered something icky and outdated, like an appendix).

The WIMMIN and their cabana boys allies decamped to Other Parts, and organized their own cons and social practices, and since they mostly hewed to TV and movies -- multimedia before that word was cool --, as opposed to the primacy of the book in traditional SF circles, the WIMMIN fandom took on the name media fandom.

(Rememeber, once upon a time, this shit was slow. Star Trek got cancelled in 1969, and didn't have a movie till 1980, and in between there was Star Wars, and Brit TV series, and (shudder) Starsky and Hutch. So the ur-texts of media fandom are evenly split between TV and movies; it's just that the TV end of the fandom, having something to react to every week, tends to be bigger and more fulminating, especially in the fast-paced online world.)

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Just tell me there is not Luke/Han, and all will be well. Han/Chewie I think I can handle.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

I am pretty sure there is Luke/Han, although I cannot fathom why. Any more than I can fathom having sex with an eight-foot-tall bathmat, unless you also are an eight-foot-tall bathmat. I draw the line at interspecies nooky!!

The fact that you don't suggests you are a great match for media fandom.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Don't the puppets have sex on Farscape? Or do they only have sex with other puppets?

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Other puppets, you perv.

(There is a fair amount of interspecies sex, come to think, but the puppets do not have sex with the people-shaped species. That way lies crush injury.)

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Also, many giggle-takes on the part of the actors during filming. I mean, imagine you were being asked to fake intimacy with an 8-foot bathmat.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Also, multimediafandom abbreviated to mediafandom makes my semantic headache end, though I still don't like it. I think you, as a BNF, should make a push to resurrect/begin the name WIMMINfandom.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Pfft. I am no BNF. At the very best I qualify as medium-sized, and my inactivity for years (to say nothing of my loathing several very popular fannish texts) is a big hole in my fannish resume.

Also, I think that media fandom is like a gigantic women's college in this way: if you attempt to label us all as WIMMIN, the eight-foot-tall bathmats, to say nothing of the self-described girl, gurls, gurlzzz, trannies, males, hermaphrodites, and "none of the above," will all object to the formalized exclusion of their types.

So we go with a mushy, meaningless name, so as not to offend/exclude anybody with a name that might be meaningful. This is why eye-rolling is such a powerful skill in fandom.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

P.S. -- "Mundane" as a term is an SF culture thing, and media fandom mostly doesn't have a name for "people not like us."

It is kind of freaky to me that people really do use the term "mundane" as an insult word, meaning "those people not smart enough to see the Blazing Intelligence and Forwardlooking Excitement of SF" -- like, I thought it was ironic for a long, long time. For some (SF) people, not ironic.

Which is why I am glad that there is no common-use term for not-media-fen among the media fannish. I can only cross my eyes so many times before they stick that way.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

For the record, I was using it ironically, above.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Far be it from me to recognize irony when I see it!!

That way lies a sad lack of kerfuffling, and where would media fandom be without kerfuffling? I ask you!

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Also, while we're being linguistic, can you find me the origins of "fen"? I think it's a fun one.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

I can give you a cite when I get home, but it is one of many language-modifications that evolved as a "we're different from those other people" thing, along with a lot of descriptive vocabulary. Instead of fans, fen. No, it makes no sense to me either, and yet I use it alla time.

[gingerk.livejournal.com]

BNF had been around a long time when I started in SF fandom in the '70s. In that era, most BNFs had popular fanzines or ran major APAs; were major players in SF clubs; ran major conventions; and/or had been around since Hugo Gernsback. If you were into fanzines, you knew those BNFs, but might not know who was who in filking.(Pause to shake my cane.) Fans were accusing other fans of getting much attention than they deserved or thinking too much of themselves pretty much since there were 10 fans.

[gchick.livejournal.com]

Being old and grumpy, I'd be happy if it would just stay "media fandom" rather than "mediafandom".