'Ware the Boojum Snark!

[furtech]

Ever since discovering science fiction fandom I've been bothered by a question: what causes people to "grow up"? This particular fandom-- like many others-- have members with a wide range of ages (though skewed towards the college-aged).

Before science fiction, I just assumed that you were allowed to screw around until you graduated college (or grad school), then got married, had a few kids and settled into being near-copies of one's own parents. Not so bad.

But...I had too much fun. I did notice some people gradually leave fandom, but subtly-- like victims of a Boojum Snark: "You will softly and suddenly vanish away. And never be met with again!" The ones who leave with loud protests and fanfare are back in days or weeks (and I learned to ignore attention-craving stunts). The ones who, after a gradual decline in attendance at meetings and cons, just stop showing up disturbed me quite a bit more. People who, a year or two later have you wonder, "What ever happened to 'What-was-his-name!'?"


Recent Journal posts by several friends and acquaintences have me noticing similar progressions. Subtle changes in thought, words, decisions. People I couldn't imagine leaving fandom are using phrases that nag at me: speaking of losing interest in what they love to do (costume, art, write) and talk more and more about jobs and settling down in a beaten-horse kind of tone. Or feeling awkward because most members of their fandom are so comparatively young. Or just talking like parents. I've noticed this in a half-dozen journals and a similar number of RL friends.

Sometimes it's a matter of necessity: conventions and hobbies are a luxury and responsible people sacrifice that temporarily when times are tough. The trouble is, one you leave it's easy to not come back. Is that what happened to many of them?

Others just sound like they've decided to hang it up: they had fun, now it's time to settle down. What scares me is that in any case they make a transition not unlike Wendy in "Peter Pan". Those last few pages, where she had completely forgotten what Neverland was like, and-- seeing Peter again-- suddenly longs to return, only to be told she can never go back. That last part was sad...but it was that she had so completely forgotten what it was like to have a child's sense of fun and wonder that troubled me. And it's not just forgetting fannish lives: how can one forget how much fun one had as a child? All the wonder, the excitement and anticipation?

And it's not just jobs or even having kids: my older sister loved having kids because it gave her an excuse to collect toys and comics and go to Disney films and have fun. She's more playful now than before she got married and had two really neat children.


So tell me: have any of you felt this way lately? What are your feelings about leaving "Never-never-land"? *Why* do see yourself leaving?

Comments

[ruggels.livejournal.com]

Surfing in from iisaw's journal. Hope you don't mind. I see a lot of the parallels between the fandom involvement, and the re-enactor hobby. The exits from either seem very similar. In the Re-enactment hobby, it's often a hobby for the young, but there is a problem in that it's a very expensive hobby compared to the fandom, so re-enactors have to have a serious comitment to it to play. 19 -25 year olds tend not to have enough income other than to support one or two impressions. When they reach their early thirties they are usually at their peak of involvemnt,but as fitness declines, or other factors impinge such as kids, involvement tapers off, and declines. So for older re-enactors that do WW2, they either buy or crew a vehicle, so they no longer have to walk, or they sell of their combat gear, and keep one or two "Dress Uniforms" for holiday parties or ceremonies, until they finally don't come out any more. However when visited, they still have their huge libraries, their Movie Collections, and often their photo albums. They still have their interest, but their situation or priorities changed.

For me I always held most of furry fandom at a bit of a distance, because I did not like the people in charge at the time, nor the themes they promoted. Before they arrrived there was a brief time, whern the fandom was optomistic, and looking outward, with early Albedo, Michroney's "Space Ark", and before Mike Kazaleh turned into the bitterest pill in the universe,, that I loved the stuff, and found the fandom fascinating, but then the fandom turned inward, and pessimistic and fearful, a den of victims, that it became. The stories ceased to be about exploration and logic, and became about relationships and emotion. It wasn't "fun", though some of the folks I met were. Though now the demographics are changing, and it's slightly more interesting, though the exploratory, and outward look is long gone.

The only reason I go to cons is to have good coversation with a few cool folks at the con, either in rooms or over meals, and very rarely buy items I could not obtain elsewhere, though that is rarer and rarer these days.

Scott

[furtech.livejournal.com]

Interesting observances on re-enactment fans: the high cost of the hobby tending to discourage what is usually the prime demographic of media fandoms (college-aged people). And that fitness can create an upper limit to members.

I'm forever discouraged to find that politics isn't limited by age or intelligence.

I think the beginning of the end was when "Anthropomorphic" lost out to "Furry" and the fandom's tag.