Signal boost: Intergenerational Fandom Survey!

[thenewbuzwuzz]

Genuflectx over on Pillowfort is researching fannish drift, and they're particularly interested in getting more responses from older fans. I'm told the results will be compiled onto Fanlore and the poll answers will also be viewable eventually, once the polls are closed. Let me copy their whole post.

The Fannish Drift Survey seeks to gather data from fans of various age and time in fandom to help define fandom words. If the definition of certain words has changed over time, or is seen differently among different fans, then this survey will hopefully make that clear. There are two identical forms, each covering two generations.

The information you provide will be compiled and later made public, so do not complete the form if that makes you uncomfortable. No personal identifying information will be collected, such as name or email. Please share the forms with your friends and make sure you take the one that relates to your age group!

Birth Year 1981 - 2020  https://forms.gle/ETXjbNaaTPWfV6ys5
Birth Year 1943 - 1980 https://forms.gle/yK6juPMkzNPGfinD6

For more information on “fannish drift,”  you can check out the Fanlore article on it.

Comments

[gingicat]

Interesting!

[thenewbuzwuzz]

Yay! :)

[sabotabby]

Ooh, that was FUN. I'm looking forward to reading the results.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

Yay! :) Me too.

[fabrisse]

Thank you.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

:)

[krait]

I filled it out, but I was hoping there would be an "any further comments" option at the end; unfortunately, there wasn't.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

Yeah. :/ If you want, you might *sort of* be able to send further comments to the poll-maker on tumblr if you use tumblr, or on the post I linked above if you do Pillowfort. Or I could ask them to come look here.

[mllesatine]

I'm very bad at answering questions with a definite year. When did I join fandom? I guess when I was 12 or 13. I didn't mark it in my calendar.

And I had no idea what some of those abbreviations meant.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

Honestly, same!

[mllesatine]

I'm just not sure if this means I'm too young or too old. Is all this new shit happening at whatpad then? I don't like this feeling of being left out. :P

[thenewbuzwuzz]

Wellll, the terms that I did recognize seemed pretty old? And I think the idea was to research how meanings have changed, so they'd have to be terms that have been in use for a while, if I understand correctly.

[firecat]

what does it mean to join fandom anyway? I didn't join it so much as soak in it for decades until I became increasingly saturated.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

That's beautiful :D

[mllesatine]

Like I remember reading in an anime magazine (bought at a newsstand) about yaoi/boy's love mangas (which I was already aware of at the time since I bought the magazine because of the article) and they listed a few links for websites with fannish content.

So had I joined the fandom when I visited these sites for the first time? I had already developed an interest in queer narratives way before and had consumed anything even remotely related to it (books, movies etc) without calling that fannish. But looking back I would have posted pic spams on tumblr or livejournal about the movies I saw if I had the technical abilities.

[author_by_night]

I only remember because it was my freshman year of high school.

[silveradept]

Certainly an interesting survey. I hope that when the results are published, the person or group creating the survey explains their methodological decisions about why they chose the concepts and terms they did, because it seemed to be more like an examination of whether a person had done research into fannish history, rather than selecting terms that may or may not have had multiple meanings, depending on when a person entered the fannish arena.

I would have expected "slash" to show up in the terms asking to be defined, for example, as what slash means has had serious drift over time.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

I, too, wondered why they didn't include "slash".

[melannen]

They seem to be coming from a much more art/rp centered community, based on the terms they chose, than where I've spent most of my time. Interesting!

[thenewbuzwuzz]

Huh! What a fun observation. :)

[franzeska]

I think it has drifted so much that they probably don't see it as relevant anymore.

[silveradept]

Given that they're asking for birthdays going back to the 1940s, I would think "slash" would have been a central term to track drift with over time.

[franzeska]

Oh yes. I agree that in a well designed survey, that's what ought to have been there. I'm just not surprised that the same person who spelled out "Big Name Fan" but left "MAP" as an abbreviation didn't think of it. Common wisdom on Tumblr ranges from "What's that?" to "That term has been 100% dead for ages".

[silveradept]

I'm having a little trouble following which thing is the dead or the unknown term. Is it supposed to be "slash" or one of "Big Name Fan" or "MAP"?

[franzeska]

'Slash'. My guess is that it didn't occur to them to look at its evolution over time because a lot of people on tumblr think it isn't around anymore. (My point about the usage of BNF and MAP is that it shows the survey maker's youth.)

[silveradept]

Ah, I follow now. Thank you for explaining. That probably also explains the decision on where to split the birthdays.

[falena]

Very interesting. I'm now going to look up all the answers I didn't know. :D

[thenewbuzwuzz]

Have fun! :)

[copracat]

Thank you for sharing the link here.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

<3

[vulgarweed]

Done, and circulated on Twitter. I can't wait to see the results, this should be interesting.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

Awesome!

[redbird]

I got three questions in and am puzzled by the "what is your gender?" question. I know which answer applies to me, but I wonder why there are five non-binary options, but only "cisgender" or "transgender" if your answer is "female" or "male."

[thenewbuzwuzz]

Right. Someone pointed this out on the Pillowfort post, so the poll author knows. I find it pretty amusing that I didn't notice myself.

[sasha_feather]

The demographics question on this poll are very, very bad. I realize they are optional, but these questions don't inspire confidence in the rest of the survey.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

Fair enough! I admit I didn't really pay attention to those before signal boosting the survey.