The Fandom Snowflake Challenge: Day 12

Day 12

In your own space, talk about what you think the future holds for fandom. What are your hopes and dreams for fandom? Do you have any predictions about what the next five years holds for fandom?

Well, this is an interesting one! Fandom has certainly become more accepted and diverse than I ever expected it to be when I first started way back in high school. We've gone from being limited to people you could find in your area and snail-mail 'zines, to plain-text fic and discussion on newsgroups, to blogs and comms, and now there are podfics, fanvids, and social media sites like Twitter and Tumblr. You can geek out over something with someone from the other side of the world. You can buy geeky paraphernalia from online stores like ThinkGeek or fanmade things on Etsy. There are even physical stores in places, like Geek Chic. When you say "I like 'x'" to people you're more likely to be asked "have you see 'y' too?" instead of being made fun of for being a nerd. People take their kids to conventions and the comic book store, where there are fannish activities aimed at children. This is relatively new, and it's wonderful to see parents sharing their enthusiasms with their kids, and kids being given a place that says 'yes, it's OK for you to be a little different and crazy about this'.

Fandom is as old as the human need to create. Some of the later additions to the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest surviving works of literature, bring Enkidu back from the dead and are very clearly fix-it fic for the original ending! Mythology develops as one person or group of people create a story to explain their world, and others take the events and characters and spin them into new tales. Fandom is a creation of humanity's need for interaction and commonality.

When IRC became available, we created chat rooms. When blogging platforms arrived, we used them to create communities and share our works and the works of others. Social media let us do that even faster. 3D modeling and video editing software let us create fanvids. With recording software came podfics and vlogs. As new technology becomes available, fans immediately seek to adapt it to expressing and sharing their love of fandom. The future of fandom lies in the technology that is to come, the tools we will have and how we use them to expand and express the works of our imagination.