Portfolio #8
Diana Floegel’s guest lecture on fandom and participatory culture examined some issues in online fandom spaces, and it was disappointing to learn about the toxicity that can exist. I have always thought that fandom spaces were inclusive and did not take into account factors such as them being skewed towards the English language or the formation of cliques. In Rosalind Hanmer’s “Xenasubtexttalk,” it was interesting to learn about online fandom spaces and their impact at an earlier time than what I am used to. It was interesting to read about how the television series encouraged the lesbian online fandom and took them into consideration in some of their decisions. Women were able to discover and explore their lesbian identities as well as find a community that supported and empowered each other.
On the Fansplaining podcast, I liked their discussion of the Barnes and Noble diverse book covers controversy. They offered deep explanations of why changing the race of the protagonists in classic stories is ineffective in promoting diversity. It is not just about how characters physically look, but also their experiences. People of color would not have been able to see themselves in these “new” characters because they are still unable to relate to what the characters go through. Fanfiction or fan work does not only say that a character has a different identity, but they also change the narrative and weave in aspects of having that identity in their experiences.
The readings and documentary for the topics of trolling, anonymity, and online abuse were very insightful to me. Sarah Sobieraj’s ‘Bitch, slut, skank, cunt: patterned resistance to women’s visibility in digital publics’ discussed how women often feel a sense of danger in public spaces due to the gender-based attacks and threats that can be made towards them. It really illustrated how scary some of these threats can get and why a lot of women constrain their behaviors due to prior experiences or fear of harassment. Lindy West’s “What happened when I confronted my cruelest troll” also showed how mean trolls can be, where they try to use really personal information to make people feel bad. The troll’s reason for harassing her was surprising to me because I thought it would have stemmed from her stance on rape jokes rather than her happiness with herself. I have never been trolled online, but I definitely come across it online for celebrities or influencers. Usually when the trolls are confronted, they just continue their harassment and do not seem to think that they are doing anything wrong. I am glad that West was able to receive an apology from her troll and give some insight into why people troll online.
Watching the ‘GTFO’ documentary was very eye-opening for me, especially to witness the threats made to those women and seeing how normalized some of their horrible language was. I was aware that there was disrespect towards women in the gaming community, but I did not know the extent of it until I watched the documentary. It blew my mind how people could say such disgusting things and not even think twice about saying them. However, I enjoyed learning about the ways in which women in the gaming community have been bringing awareness to these issues and supporting other women in the community. I was not surprised to hear that there were such few females working in the industry though, considering the stigma around gaming as a masculine activity and the ways that women are made to feel excluded in the community.
In the lecture when Diana Floegel was talking about the insider and outsider dynamics of fanfiction communities, I was reminded of a scandal that happened at Coachella in 2019. A fashion app called Dote sent a group of influencers to Coachella with all expenses paid and provided a house for them to stay at. After the trip, two influencers who were women of color came out with videos talking about how they felt excluded during the trip. One of the big controversies from the scandal was that the influencers of color were assigned to one side of the house and the white influencers were assigned to the other side. Further, the influencers of color had couches as beds while the white influencers had actual beds and nicer accommodations. Daniella Perkins, one of the influencers who posted a video about her experience at Coachella, was seen crying in it because she felt uncomfortable in the house. She said that she felt like she was back in school, where she felt like she did not belong. This also led people to point out how there are “main” Dote girls who are friends with each other and have more followers, and they were more favored on the trip than the newcomers or smaller influencers. While Dote denied that they intentionally separated the people of color to one side of the house, the same situations happened on their previous influencer trips as well.
This trip exemplified some of Floegel’s points about the toxicity that can occur in communities, especially for people of color. Although this group of influencers was not a chosen family, there is meant to be a sense of community on the trip, where they are encouraged to spend time together and have fun. However, the formation of cliques or insider-outsider dynamics can make people feel like they are not a part of this “community.” Whether Dote intentionally separated the influencers or not, their actions made the influencers who were women of color feel excluded in the group.
