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Where to Go from Here
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Other Projects
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On Fandom
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If you think I'm bitter about the cult of fandom, you're right. While my longtime (and, until creating Mount Poseidon, lonely) obsession with The Poseidon Adventure has resulted in some friendships I will always cherish, the ugly side of fandom, of any kind, always has a way of creeping up on the most beloved of institutions. And, in the end, people get hurt.
Bear in mind, the folks you'll find at Mount Poseidon today are a fine, upstanding group of people. But it wasn't always that way.
Someday, I may just blow the lid off everything that went on behind the scenes over the course of nearly ten years of the evolution — and de-evolution — of the TPA fan community. Today, however, is not that day.
Instead, I want to leave you with some thoughts from other people who have been deeply involved — and subsequently burned (often beyond recognition) — by their own fan communities... which, like the TPA cult, started out as nothing more than a the coming-together of a few fans who thought they were all alone, overwhelmed by the joy and relief at learning they weren't "weird".
I'm not trying to turn you off to indulging in anything you love. But my conscience tells me to tell you not to let your own overwhelming joy bring your defenses down. If you've ever spent any time in Internet chatrooms, I don't have to tell you that half the "talk, dark, and handsome" types you meet are in reality short, fat, bald, unemployed, and live in their mother's basements.
In other words, accept nothing at face value. Treat every fan community as if it were a chatroom — or a minefield. Eventually, you'll weed out those with true friend potential from the scammers and opportunists.
Just be careful out there.
— JR
May 12, 2006
Fandom is a political monster — there's a lot of infighting, favoritism and abuse.
[Young fanfiction writers] can enter into online discussions, join mailing lists... Close friendships can spring up without regard to age, appearance, or geographical location, and the fanfiction community can become almost a surrogate family for some participants. ...
Of course, every community has its drawbacks... maintaining the community and your place in it requires time and vigilance: participating in discussions and regularly trolling key sites to stay in the know. Frustrations, jealousies, and infighting can arise, sometimes to the point of destroying one's interest or welcome in the fandom. BNF's (Big Name Fans, the fandom stars) can dictate an irritating conformity...
The Natural Life Cycle of Mailing Lists
by Kat Nagel
Every list seems to go through the same cycle:
1. Initial enthusiasm (people introduce themselves, and gush a lot about how wonderful it is to find kindred souls).
2. Evangelism (people moan about how few folks are posting to the list, and brainstorm recruitment strategies).
3. Growth (more and more people join, more and more lengthy threads develop, occasional off-topic threads pop up).
4. Community (lots of threads, some more relevant than others; lots of information and advice is exchanged; experts help other experts as well as less experienced colleagues; friendships develop; people tease each other; newcomers are welcomed with generosity and patience; everyone -- newbie and expert alike -- feels comfortable asking questions, suggesting answers, and sharing opinions).
5. Discomfort with diversity (the number of messages increases dramatically; not every thread is fascinating to every reader; people start complaining about the signal-to-noise ratio; person 1 threatens to quit if *other* people don't limit discussion to person 1's pet topic; person 2 agrees with person 1; person 3 tells 1 & 2 to lighten up; more bandwidth is wasted complaining about off-topic threads than is used for the threads themselves; everyone gets annoyed).
6a. Smug complacency and stagnation (the purists flame everyone who asks an 'old' question or responds with humor to a serious post; newbies are rebuffed; traffic drops to a doze-producing level of a few minor issues; all interesting discussions happen by private email and are limited to a few participants; the purists spend lots of time self-righteously congratulating each other on keeping off-topic threads off the list).
OR
6b. Maturity (a few people quit in a huff; the rest of the participants stay near stage 4, with stage 5 popping up briefly every few weeks; many people wear out their second or third 'delete' key, but the list lives contentedly ever after).
JR notes: The above has been circulating on the Internet at least since the 1980s, and sums up the metamorphosis of Mount Poseidon quite accurately.
A fan elite is a mentality popular in many genre fandom subcultures where self styled inner circles are inevitable. The term may have seen its origins in the comic book fandom where letters pages in the back of comics were once popular.
Fan elitists do not call themselves elitists and most don't really separate themselves from the majority of fandom but in fact enjoy showing off to whom they perceive as lesser fans. They are generally recognizable by their behavior. ...
These kinds of fans are often very proprietary and possessive of their interest and often adopt very conservative attitudes. They have been known to be openly hostile towards writers and producers who take an alternate stand on an issue. Most notorious in recent years, was the hostility of many hardcore anime fans toward Carl Macek of Streamline Pictures. Macek promoted anime as being accessible to general audiences and often upon translating anime, heavily rewrote dialogue to this effect. This upset purists, and Macek even found himself the recipient of death threats. ...
Elitist fans are often noticeably hostile to the idea of their interest becoming mainstream and will often drop it at the hint of it happening. Or they will go back underground. ... In becoming mainstream, they feel that the genres are being taken away from them.
The fan elite is mostly unpopular among the general fandom and are highly criticized as taking the enjoyment out of the genre fandom. Many wish they would simply relax and enjoy the many works instead of telling writers creators what they should create. Many leave the fandom due to the mentality of such individuals. ...
What most clubs of any size have in common is a structure and hierarchy. In almost every case, the hierarchy is copied from that of the race on which the club is based. I came across very few clubs that weren't based on a Star Trek race. A club usually has the name of a ship, for example USS Bounty NCC 75960, and is run as such. The president is called Captain or Admiral in Federation clubs, and in clubs based on alien races the equivalent in the fleet of that race. (Curiously, all militarily inclined Star Trek races use the same command structure.) Newcomers to the club start with the rank of crewman, cadet or something similar, and by accumulating points (which you earn by participating in various club events, or by achieving something notable in the club), he or she is promoted to the next rank. People don't take this too seriously; a joke I often heard was "My rank, uniform and two dollars will get me a cup of Starbucks coffee."
JR notes: In the early days of Mount Poseidon, the title of "Captain" was bestowed on me. In short order, the original members of the group were given (or requested) various "ranks," from First Officer and Concierge to Galley Wench and Cabin Boy. (And yes, in a nod to "The Love Boat," we even had a "Julie, Your Cruise Director".) New members were simply "Passengers," and moved up the "ranks" from there.
In 1972, the first ever Star Trek convention was held in a New York hotel, featuring speakers such as Isaac Asimov along with Gene Roddenberry. Unlike nowadays, it wasn't held to make money — the profit was tiny — but purely for fun and to celebrate Star Trek. ...
Up to now, conventions had been organised by the same group of people, who did it for the fans, not for profit. But after the first great successes, conventions, or "cons" as they are called by fans, started being held all over America, usually with a healthy profit in mind. The New York ones were no longer unique, and fans who lived far away preferred to go to conventions that were a bit closer to their home. The attendance numbers declined, and eventually, the organisers decided that it was no longer worth it. The last one was held in 1976. Star Trek was becoming commercialized.
Sensing profits to be made, Paramount was considering another live-action Star Trek. ...
Something I have read about is the rivalry among fans who maintain a Trek WebPage. Very few fans mentioned this, as the ones I interviewed usually weren't involved with creating WebPages (except their club's page). Everyone wants to have the best page, so as to attract many visitors, which in turn attracts advertisers, and the fan makes a nice profit. That wouldn't be a problem, but unfortunately fans resort to stealing other's ideas, and the site owners compete for visitors, often using dubious methods to ensure that the visitors go to their site and not to another one.
JR notes: Before Mount Poseidon, there were no "live," organized Poseidon Adventure events. Now there are. And it's no small coincidence that 1) the price of original Poseidon Adventure memorabilia has skyrocketed, and 2) two remakes have been made.
[Fandom] is dividing itself into two groups: those who are spending the money and those who are earning it. Some of the people who I talked to mentioned this as well. The fans who managed to get into the convention or merchandising business are doing rather well, while the fans who are not interested in this side of fandom dislike being exploited. Robert Phillips adds: "Unscrupulous people are beginning to realize that there is easy money to be made out of unsuspecting Star Trek fans."
[The Cartoon/Fantasy Organization] began to show signs of stress by the late 1980s. In late 1988, established chapters refused to trade or communicate with one another due to a great deal of politicking: if a group had a mightier number or had something of value, they would withhold it from another group to get what they wanted. After awhile, many of the chapters fell into a prisoner's dilemma: a "well, we're not going to talk to those guys since they have nothing of value to us" stalemate, in the words of one fan.
[T]hose who enter Star Trek fandom seeking the fellowship of a small group are in for a rude awakening indeed. While Sentinel fans seem at least initially content simply to find others who enjoy a now-defunct show that's popularity never actually rivaled, say, The Cosby Show, new Trekkers are quick to learn that there's quite a difference between a DS9 lover and a TOS Trekkie, or a TNG die-hard and someone else who just loves All Things Trek.
...
[T]o be a "sub-culture," the "sub" part is essential. Star Trek's reputation and folklore have become so mainstream that there is no sense of danger, no sense of the underdog, little "us versus them," and very little appearance of adventure. The road is so well-traveled, the chatrooms already over-flowing with empty cans and cigarette butts, to encourage exploration.
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