I've been two days at orientation activities for new students in our program, including today's epic campus tour of York (which, as
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
piratefanatic and extrathursday can attest) is more performance than information-delivery. It's a massive campus. We were out for a solid hour, and there were only four buildings on the tour. I'm tired.So, in response to the surveyfail thing: I live at the intersection of fandom and academia. Posts like this make me proud to be a fan, to be a grad student, and perhaps (perhaps) to become a fully-fledged academifan.
More than anything, I am a lurker: but by the gods, I can squee with the best of them.
I've picked that particular thread to link to because I'm in love with the comment-macro.
EDIT: if you'd like to know more, please check out linkspam posts.
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And lollipops? Bah. ...we bought them beer.
First against the wall when the revolution comes: people with no imagination or curiosity. It shall be a glorious revolution.
Glorious and well catered, methinks.
Glorius and well-catered, naturally. What do you take us for?
One of the especially moronic munchkins chased a squirrel. The squirrel was having none of his nonsense, so turned 'round and bit the stinker.
I was just gearing up you ask if you had any thoughts about surveyfail. I keep trying to formulate what's in my head, but lots of other people have said it already, and better than I could right now. So I'll stick with the lurking and quietly cheering fandom on from behind my computer.
**for another 2 days at least.
GIANT SCHOOL IS GIANT.
The surveyfail thing I heard about through my supervisor, and we talked about monetizing subcultures. What I'm finding interesting in this is that, unlike punk or similar youth-identified subcultures (grunge, skateboarding, whatever), fandom has a disproportionate number of folks who are used to being Others. The post I linked to repeats the women/queers/kinky folk triad, but their method of engaging with the problem is directly informed by sophisticated understandings of identity politics. And not just struggling with the, like, angst of suburbia.
It's past my bedtime: there's more to say and a more direct way to say it. Mostly I think it's cool that fandom and academifans are so well-equipped to identify and fight off those who want to perpetuate a discourse of exploitation.
They went after a group of people who practically or actually revel in being Us Others instead of We Individual Others All Alone And Apart, didn't take the hint that they were dealing with an empowered mass of Us Others on their own personal safe-space turf, and were apparently taken aback when told to 'go away or we shall taunt you a second time'.
And then got to find out what 'taunt you a second time' means to fandom.