[fandom] That Is The Ugliest Effing Storyfinders Post I've Ever Seen

[whyareyoulikethis]

So less than 48 hours after we somewhat incoherently tried to talk about fandom's insufferable desire to acknowledge and self-flagellate for every Boolean iteration of *ism, we have an object lesson in the boundary between behavior that's unacceptable to you, personally, and behavior that's basically just unacceptable, period.

For reasons not entirely clear, toft decided, after years of keeping this secret, to reveal that for ages she's been trolling the SGA Storyfinders Community with fake, engineered questions for her own entertainment:

I don't know, it was something between a hobby and a compulsion. I liked to make people laugh and go, "wtf?" with the requests, and I just found recreating the style so compelling and fun. I kept enjoying SGA fandom through this hobby long after I stopped reading or writing fic. Anyhow. It was a thing I did. The great thing going over them is that it's making up a fantastic crack SGA recs list; this is bat country, you guys.

On its face, this seems immediately banal. Who cares? Storyfinders comms, especially the one dedicated to an infamously crack-ridden fandom like SGA, are funny. We've even poked fun at them before ourselves, and toft certainly isn't the first person to do something that plays on the way fandom interacts when they're looking for that fic with that thing and then he got turned into a koala, I think? (Though for the record, linabean did it first, and better.) So what's the big deal?

Except then you remember that every story you're requesting, every hilarious little crack summary you're writing, is referring directly to someone else's fannish efforts. In addition to that, you're also drawing from the time and good-natured help provided by fans who participate in that community, who see something you might be searching for and then dive through their own bookmarks, sort through their memories, dig around on Google because they think they might have seen it before. One of the best things about fandom is that everybody seems to have a knee-jerk reaction to try and help their fellow fan.

The commenters in toft's post put it better than I do:

I understand you did this out of humour and I am maybe being a bit of a killjoy, but as the author of one of the stories I feel mocked. SGA is a big fandom and I was quietly pleased when one of my fics was asked for, as it felt like I'd made a bit of an impact, or at least that people remembered me. Now, it's like I'm being laughed at.

Thanks so much for wasting my time. I search for fics as a courtesy to the fandom, not to be a source of amusement because I bought into your 'joke.'

And my personal favorite:

I don't feel betrayed or anything, but I do hope they ban you 'cause what you did sorta sucked on a molecular level while still being humorous.

But possibly the most important comment is this one:

You've definitely changed how I am going to think about requests from this day forward. Up until today, my thought process has been something like this:
-Oh, I recognize that. I read that $time ago.
-What is the likelihood that I bookmarked it?
-Do I have enough energy to search all my bookmarks for it?

Now, it's going to look something like this:
-Oh, I recognize that.
-Do I have the energy to waste on fulfilling a potentially disingenuous request? (Hint: That answer will probably always be "no" until I stop even asking myself the question.)

So way to be a bad person and pee in everybody's cheerios at once.

The FG staff had a pow-wow this afternoon, trying to figure out why we all had such a reflexively ugly reaction to this story, like a lot of people on this post. After all, we spend so much of our time complaining everybody in fandom should shut the hell up and chill the fuck out. It wasn't until about half an hour into the discussion that it all slotted into place and made perfect sense.

You can disagree with fandom, or a segment of fandom, or find what we do humorous or ridiculous or completely ludicrous, but your disagreement is passive. Someone is doing something, and you think it's silly; fair enough. You weren't forcing their hand, they were going to do it anyway; you may sit on the sidelines and roll your eyes, but that's your business, not ours. That's what being alive is about.

But this entire episode left a horrible taste in everybody's mouth because this isn't just a case of laughing at a ridiculous storyfinders post -- this is tricking people into participating, people who aren't in on the joke, and leveraging their goodwill (and, let's face it, your relative popularity in that fandom) for your own amusement.

This is the apogee of that unclear line of acceptable fannish behavior; sure, you can do this, but be aware: people are going to justifiably call you on your bullshit, especially if you make a self-congratulatory post so everyone can see how funny you are. Because why the hell else would you ever think that sharing your high school bully tendencies with the class was a good idea?

toft's fake requests may be funny- Rodney McKay as an OB-GYN fic would be comedy gold if it actually existed- but she seems to have forgotten that Fandom got picked on in High School, which means we have a very finely tuned sense of when people are laughing with us and when people are laughing at us. She may have intended to just share the lulz, but her post came off instead like a stand up comedian singling out members of the audience to heckle, and not realizing until the second page of comments that some people weren't laughing anymore.

So yes, I hate having to do a take-back so quickly, but if you'll excuse me, I'm going to round up the other FGers so they can help me wrest the Ur Doin It Wrong award from the SGA Kink Meme and pass it on to its new rightful owner.

Comments

[seperis]

...wait, there's an award? That would explain the strong competition going on.

[asitor]

lol seriously

[laura0414]

You explained it perfectly. That is exactly why I was a bit angry and very...disappointed, I guess.

There's an award? There's a kink meme? Where have I been?

[patk]

>>this is tricking people into participating, people who aren't in on the joke,

Yeah. It's manipulation for her own entertainment, plain and simple, and most people do not react kindly to learn they've been manipulated without knowing about it.

It's not a fandom-exclusive reaction.

[katikat]

What makes me angry - besides all the points you listed - is that she knowingly broke the comm's rules for her own amusement and some people still find it funny. There are many comms where she could've went with requests like these, but she decided to troll the one comm that explicitly forbids it. Yes, it's one big joke.

[lamardeuse]

But this entire episode left a horrible taste in everybody's mouth because this isn't just a case of laughing at a ridiculous storyfinders post -- this is tricking people into participating, people who aren't in on the joke, and leveraging their goodwill (and, let's face it, your relative popularity in that fandom) for your own amusement.

Hunh, very interesting. I was wondering why this pissed me off so much as well, considering I usually have a fairly live and let live attitude in fandom (or at least try to).

[davincis_girl]

Here from metafandom. I had not heard about this, but I think you have summarized the issue and the reactions very intelligently. Although I don't read it very much anymore, SGA storyfinders is the reason I got my LJ account years ago, and more than any other storyfinder site, it is fun to read. Your bully analogy is dead on.

[polly_bywater]

Here via metafandom. Yes, you have iterated several of my own thoughts (it's almost like we're related! *g*).

I found this so hurtful on all the levels you mentioned and particularly to the storyfinder responders who are certainly a bunch of hard-working folks who are doing favors by replying. I worry that responders will slack off trying. I also hate the fact that when I read a post asking for a story by a poster I don't happen to recognize I start to wonder if it's real, as in, that's my first thought. At my age, I really resent those last little bits of innocence being torn from me, yanno?

*shakes head* What she did feels mean to me, too.

Here via metafandom...

[reading-is-in.livejournal.com]

...thanks for posting this. It's food for thought. I'm an active fan and fic writer, and I'm also doing my Phd on fanfic and fan communities. Obviously, by and large, I think fandom is awesome. I love it. I love that there are communities which operate succesfully on an ethos of goodwill and sharing - gift cultures which don't depend on the exchange of money. But stuff likes this reminds me not to over-generalize or idealize (which as someone working for the better appreciation of fandom in academia, it's always tempting to do). Every community, I think, has faultlines, failures in communications, conflicts of value.
If I found someone had done this in one of my fic communities, I would be upset and hurt as many have said, by the manipulative aspect. But I guess its an example of people having different expectations of a community, different ideas of what participation in it means to them, which when you have an online community that has basically an open-door policy, is going to happen at some point.

[karmageddon]

Thanks for posting the more people stand up and say "no" to this kind of behavior, the better.

[ingridmatthews]

Word.

The impression of a member of the aristocracy crying down to the serfs "Let them find fic!" was far too easy to extrapolate from this entire episode. The explosion looked way OOT if the underlying tensions and resentments aren't taken into account.