Has this ever happened to you? I was strolling through the recs page of someone I trust, humming along, mainlining Psych fic like it was my overworked/unpaid job, and then I was linked to a story that instantly made me hit the back button.
Did it have a
terrible manip banner? Or, worse, hideously formatted bright pink text on a neon yellow background? Was it written by someone whose fic always makes me want to claw my face off and scream, "WHY IN THE NAME OF GOD IS THIS STORY HAPPENING?"
Nope. The fic was- prepare to shudder- hosted on ff.net. Yeah, I practically broke a finger clicking the hell away.
Fanfiction.net occupies an bizarre place in Fandom. Despite being
the largest fanfiction archive on the internet, the site is generally regarded as mediocre fic magnet at best, a
Pit of Voles at worst. FF.net's
infamous history of purging and censoring is certainly a matter of public record. It even has a number of
hate communities devoted to it. But is fanfiction.net's reputation as a Fandom wasteland really deserved?
Like many people, I hadn't logged serious hours on ff.net in years and years. But in an effort to answer this question, I took a trip back down memory lane to see what had changed, and if my (negative) impressions of the site still held water. What I found surprised me.
( Cover me, ladies. I'm going in. )But regardless of what we think of fanfiction.net- or why- it's not like it needs our stamp of approval anyway. According to 2009 figures, there are currently
2.2 million users on ff.net; god only knows how many new fics were added just while you were reading this. A 2007 article listed it as the
fourth highest site in terms of average time spent on the
entire freaking web. (I would say this just proves
the internet is for porn, but that's so ironically not true in this case.) It even has a
facebook fan page; we all know that means it's not going away.
I'm willing to bet, long after we've moved on from Livejournal and Dreamwidth to whatever is coming next, ff.net will still be happily chugging along as a Fandom gateway and House of Dreck.
As for me? I'm perfectly content to let it. And while I will never go there on a regular basis, I might be less likely now to automatically hit the back button.