fandoms are fascinating things

[smg01]

A couple of people on my flist have linked to the Ms.Scribe Story which I've started reading. It is indeed engrossing. datawhorevoyeur have you come across this yet? It seems like something right up your alley.

One of the things that's interesting to me is that there seems to be an inevitability to the life cycles of online communities. It begins, everyone is excited, fresh, "young." It's the best community ever. We all love each other and will be BFF. We're the bestest of the best. Then come the disputes, the fractures, the cliques. Subcommunities form. Offences are taken. Charges of elitism are made. Power positions--real or more likely imagined--are identitied. Frauds, the obnoxious, and the just plain weird come onto the scene. Everyone laments the good old days, which may or may not have been as golden as memory makes them. And eventually people start moving on to new communities that are fresh and exciting, where everyone is the coolest person ever and we'll all be BFF. The cycle begins anew.

It's been interesting reading other friend's comments about the evolutions of various communities and thinking, "yup, been there. the next step will probably be X."

Looking back, as trying as times could be at the Bronze--particularly around posting board party time--we were a pretty healthy community. Passionate and fighty and touchy sometimes, but somehow there was also a lot of humor and wit to take us through many of the dark times. Or maybe I'm just looking back through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia.

Comments

[suzannemarie.livejournal.com]

But also, I think a lot of us have not necessarily moved on to a new community cycle per se, or if we have, we've not necessarily abandoned the old community ties. We still, I think, carry the Bronzer identity, and we still maintain a network if not a community

Yeah, I would agree with that. Almost every online community that I'm associated with is an outgrowth of the Bronze. It seems like at the least, there's a spririt of the bronze that lives on. I suppose everyone feels this way about their communities, but I think there was/is something special about the Bronze. (Maybe it's just because it was my first. And because it literally changed my life. At least my social life changed.)

A lot of the things about online community cycles? I think are true about communities in general -- especially the nostalgia for the good old days...

Plus there's also the question of just when were the good old days. I was a relative late-comer so I missed the color wars, the topic wars, the early posting board parties, and the early bonding when Buffy was a show that no one had ever heard of. So of course for me the golden age was when I joined. It was a remarkably open and accepting community for newcomers. Provided you followed the few rules, played nice with others, and were generally respectful of the traditions and proceedings, it was pretty easy to find a place there.

I'm also working my way through all of my Buffy dvds. I think it's fueling my fond memories of things Bronze-related.