xiaq:
Academics are the pettiest assholes you will ever meet and I say that with a lot of love and affection because I am one. Let me give you an example:
First some context: Back in 2007, I was a sophomore in high school and I was minding my own business, trying to get my Harry Potter fan fic fix, when a Whole Bunch of Drama started about fan archives and the OTW and the folks proposing the archive that is now the AO3.
I thought the OTW folks had the right idea. After strikethrough and boldthrough and the FF.net purges, they were willing to not only make us a free archive that promised no censorship or deletions or trying to profit off fan work, but they were also willing to put their real-life professional selves at risk to defend transformative work as protected by fair use. These ladies were #goals to my 15-yr-old self.
Except obviously there were detractors. They were a minority, but they were vocal. And I recall reading multiple LJ posts from “anti-OTW” blogs and being So Angry because if a 15-yr-old like me could go study up on copyright law and agree with the OTW (with, you know, actual lawyers and law professors on their board) how were these adults getting things So Wrong? In some cases, it seemed they were even blatantly spreading misinformation. Why?? Except when I tried to point this out I was treated… let’s go with “badly.”
Ok flash forward a decade and change: I’m now writing my dissertation about digital fandom with a focus on the AO3. It’s the most-trafficked fan archive in the world and the second-most-trafficked digital archive full stop. It just won a Hugo. I’m having a lovely time interviewing all my teenage heroes. I’m living the dream. And then it came time to write about criticisms or detractors in the archive’s history. Some concerns are very valid, and I have over a dozen pages talking about these serious, often complex, criticisms. But you wanna know what else I did?
I went back and I found my journal from 2007.
I found the names of those posters on LJ who had such derogatory things to say about the OTW and the AO3, who took so much pleasure in bashing a 15-yr-old who didn’t understand why they were spreading misinformation. I found the old LJ posts (I had to use the Wayback Machine for those that had been taken down). I referenced some of those posts in my dissertation. I illustrated that every legal complaint, every fear (and fear-mongering tactic they used) was proven unfounded. I spent probably more time than I should going through their archives to discover that nearly all of them migrated to AO3 within 2 years of, often vitriolic, condemnations of the AO3. I footnoted this fact with a degree of euphoric malevolence that frightens even me.
Why?
Because academics are petty assholes.
amhrancas 