fandom-free
I ditched my fandom1 a year ago and while my mental health and online experience had vastly improved, a part of me still misses the few friends I made along the way. However, experience has taught me that reaching out always lures me back into the cesspit, and I’ve done a well enough job these past few months from jumping back in.
This isn’t the first time I’ve gone and disappeared from fandom. I’ve deactivated several times over the years on Twitter and popped back in after missing some fandom people I’ve had genuine connections with. My disappearances have become a running joke to the point that I get pissed when my occasional rants and threats to leave social media are laughed off, as if it isn't apparent how toxic fandom spaces have become.
Things only changed when Bluesky took off and I started using it more often than Twitter. I never told anyone about my account except for my IRL best friend, and for once I got used to living a fandom-free life. I realized that I didn’t have to leave social media per se but I had to leave bad habits behind, such as tolerating being in an online community that pisses me off more than it nourishes me. Fandom was supposed to be mindless fun, a space to interact with others who had equal fervor towards a thing or hobby – not about turf wars and cliques. What was once a source of joy and humor in the middle of the pandemic became a metastatic tumor that I was desperate to get rid of.
Oh, the horrors of being in a fandom. Somehow it turned me into a person I didn’t think I would become. The sheer amount of morons in fandom spaces brought out a bully I never knew was festering inside. It felt impossible not to join the mudslinging. In the end, I felt like Walter White.
Fandoms lose their spark when they become less about shared enjoyment and more about winning thought competitions. I was sick of the whole thing. It soured me on the things I once loved. I was never a BNF but was once an active part of the community, producing fanworks and helping organize little fan events for fellow creators, which I’ll always be proud of. But I’ve also been part of awful things in the vicinity of the chronically online. Nothing major like doxxing but I did participate in dogpiles and have definitely hurt people’s feelings. It made me question whether this was truly who I am or just a product of pandemic-induced psychosis. It was never that serious in the first place.
Everyday I log in to Mastodon and Bluesky and think of reconnecting with old fandom friends. But I’m worried that building that bridge would reanimate the corpse that I buried a few months back. I do miss creating fanworks though and plan to do it again. I met genuinely great people that don’t deserve to be ghosted by whom they thought was a friend. I am still that friend, only that I needed some time and space to recalibrate so I can engage with fandom in a healthier way. Or not. Maybe being a cringe-llennial normie with no attachments on social media suits me better.
I have no doubts that my fandom friends and I would cross paths again someday. Our common interest binds us in perpetuity. Maybe doing fanworks again would bridge the gap and rekindle a few friendships. The thing about fandom is that it's a web of brain-zapped critters held together by that which we're a fan of. You unknowingly become part of something as soon as you express zeal over it in social spaces. Unless the thing you love was Eternal Sunshine-d out of your mind, your place in fandom is etched permanently. The choices we made as an active part of the community ultimately decides whether it was all worth it or not.
It was never just one fandom. Fandom in this case is an amalgamation of all the different fandoms I’ve been part of from over the past decade. However the ones that were borne out of the pandemic are the ones I am mostly referring to in this piece.↩