I’ve seen discussions sometimes about how fanfiction-based fandom culture is heavily influenced and dominated by people who are not cis men.
One thing I haven’t seen discussed as much though is how much of fandom in general is shaped by neurodivergent people.
I mean, you have autistic and ADHD people with special interests or hyperfixations collecting information and writing detailed meta, connecting very strongly with characters and fandoms. I would not be surprised if the percentage of autistics in fandom communities was significantly higher than in the general public.
And that’s not even getting into other types of neurodivergencies and how they influence fandom culture.
I sometimes see people try to divorce fandom culture from the idea of being a “geek”, and I understand that this is sometimes because of the association with the sexist geek stereotype, but I also know that there is a connection between the two concepts, and it’s probably us neurodivergent people.
I also think this is why at first I was like “my fandoms can’t be special interests, that’s just how fandom is”
Yeah, because a lot of people in fandom have special interests
I’ll go slightly further here, and say this (well. this plus ableism) is the root of a lot of current issues in fandom.
Back when I started being in fandom, a couple decades ago, I’d argue that damn near every single person in fandom was autistic or ADHD. You’d only join fandom if you were obsessive and were chill with doing things that weren’t socially acceptable. (Because being a fan absolutely was not socially acceptable at the time! We went to ridiculous amounts of effort to hide that we were fans!)
And fandom culture was absolutely shaped by this. The standard behaviors in fandom were those of happy autistics. That’s how you were expected to act. You remember “squeeing”? The visual image of it is generally someone so happy and excited they can’t physically contain it so they make a high-pitched noise and flap their hands and - a squee is literally just a happy stim. And so many fans at the time did happy stims that we gave it a special fandom name! So even if a neurotypical person happened to stumble in, they’d learn that the “social norm” in a fandom space is basically just “act autistic/ADHD” and assimilate.
But then… fandom got mainstreamed. It became socially acceptable. And then the neurotypicals started showing up in large numbers. And instead of assimilating like they did before, when they were the minority, now that there were a lot of them they started going “what the heck is this! why are people here acting so weird! this is embarrassing!”
…and then we got cringe culture within fandom.
No one says “squee” anymore not because fans don’t squee anymore - happy stims don’t just go away - but because the neurotypicals showed up and told us “squee” is a cringy word and concept. Which they had ALWAYS told us out in public, but we used to have fandom as an insular autistic/ADHD-dominated space where we were safe and free to be ourselves.
You know how everybody talks about how cringy and embarrassing 2012 tumblr was? Dude. We were literally just acting like happy autistics, because that’s what we were. It’s just that - like you always have - you think autistic/ADHD behavior is cringy and embarrassing.
This isn’t new. “Cringe culture” isn’t new. It’s just a new euphemism for the exact same ableism that’s always existed, with the only difference that now it’s coming from insidefandom.
All those posts saying “if these people were bullied more they wouldn’t act like this”? They’re not just bizarrely tasteless jokes. They’re because the people making those posts werebullies. Are bullies. Fandom used to be where the sort of people who were victims of peer abuse went - where we went to be safe from bullies and be openly ourselves - but now the bullies are in here with us.
On the happier side, while mainstreaming has resulted in a lot of neurotypicals showing up, autistic/ADHD people are absolutely still the backbone of fandom. We’re the ones collecting tiny bits of info and connecting the dots to write galaxy brain meta. We’re the ones churning out new content every single day, rain or shine. We’re the hyper-verbal ones writing 250k fics and the ones who hyper-relate with the characters and make incorrect quote posts so spot-on they sound canon. They may think we’re embarrassing - but they still need us.
SO MUCH THIS!!!
Fandom would be nothingwithout neurodivergent people. Because there’s nothing on this earth that can rival the white-hot intensity of an Autistic or ADHD person in full-blown hyperfocus or special interest mode.
I could have written all of this. Thanks, shared brains!
okay legit though, I never understood why hand flapping was considered an autistic thing because, like, I did it and everyone I knew on the internet did it so it had to be normal, right? and honestly it’s only just now reading this that I’m like “oh shit that explains so much”
Writers: Spends an undetermined amount of time building world’s, creating characters, developing relationships, making plot, and writing thousands upon thousands of words.
Also writers: You want me to name my character? Are you out of your mind? How the fuck am I supposed to do that?
it’s so intense reading all these rules people have for giving kudos like, “I never leave kudos on the first chapter”/”the story really has to stand out for me to give kudos”/”I only give kudos to stories that are incredible”
meanwhile I’m over here like “yeah, this is kind of a neat idea” KUDOS “I really liked that one joke in the middle” KUDOS “idk it was pretty good I guess” KUDOS like
My standard rule is: did you read enough to see the kudos button on the bottom of the page? Hit it.
Hit. The damn. Button. If it was good enough for you to get that far, it is more than good enough for you to press a button and validate the author and their efforts. Kudos aren’t the Oscars, you’re not giving them an Emmy, okay, whatever you’re reading doesn’t have to be good enough to be critically acclaimed. It’s just to say, “hey, I read this and I liked it enough to get to the bottom of the page, and now you know that someone’s still reading your stuff even if I’m too shy to comment.” That’s it.
Kudos cost zero dollars, and they make an authors day.
i can’t stress this enough, but i feel like some of my mutuals are too scared to rb stuff about palestine even though it’s pretty clear cut and dry because israel’s main propaganda tactic is to make the issue more complicated than it seems. people use the excuse that it’s complex to avoid talking about it all together which is exactly what this sort of propaganda aims to do, avoid conversations; because having a conversation about this “conflict” would make it very clear that it’s anything but a conflict and more accurate words to use would be ethnic cleansing,apartheidandgenocide. and they use this specific type of propaganda for good fucking reason. it’s effective.
i am begging you, go read about what’s happening in palestine. stop using complexity as an excuse to turn a blind eye to literal genocide. hell, if you’re a mutual and you need me to explain things to you, fucking ask. i don’t care what you do, just don’t sit there and watch children get arrested and murdered on the daily and comfort yourself with the phrase “its complex”
hate it when a new marvel movie comes out and people are like “i know you aren’t into marvel but i promise this movie is different” they’re all the same
if you ever mess up at work don’t feel too bad at least you’re not the guy whose task it was to protect a child butended up individually killing the childs mother, father and brother by mistake
I swear to gods, if the Star Wars dudebros begin to pull the same shit they did with Jake Lloyd on the actress that’s playing young Leia I’m gonna flip my shit. Literally going out of their way to harass and attempt to harm a child because they didn’t like how they portrayed a certain character. The toxic Star Wars fans really need to fuck off.
do you remember when middle school started and all the white kids started going through their “racist phase?” when i started using swear words, white kids started using racial slurs. when i started referencing memes, white kids started making nazi jokes.
everyone likes to joke about how horrible middle school is, but no one is willing to acknowledge how traumatic it is for kids of color. we understand what racism is from the time we are little kids,–i knew what racism was before i understood what race and ethnicity were–and we understand how it feels to experience, but when white kids start to find out about racism, it’s a joke to them.
i didn’t know any white kids in middle school who weren’t racist. the ones who didn’t use slurs or make racist jokes or find nazis and nazi propaganda funny hung out with those kids. they segregated their friend groups to the point where even white kids who were friends with kids of color wouldn’t have black friends or dark skinned friends. i experienced tokenization and microagressions and outright being called slurs and mocked for not being white the whole time i was in middle school from both other students and the school’s faculty.
i need to clarify here that i did not grow up in the south. i did not grow up in a conservative place. i did not grow up in a predominantly white place. i grew up in a racially diverse and liberal city in southern california. racism still existed there. i heard the same horrifically racist slurs and jokes and preachings as kids of color who grow up in texas do. the kids saying this shit had democrats for parents and teachers, but they were not told they were wrong for being racist. any time a teacher overheard a kid being racist,–even when a white gentile wrote an ode to hitler for our poetry unit–the kids who suffered because of their racism were told that these racists in the making would grow out of it. we had to forgive them. the authority figures were just as racist as our classmates even though our principal wasn’t white and we lived in a progressive area.
the most painful part of this experience was that i didn’t have the words to explain what was happening to me. i didn’t know it was a collective experience that other kids of color were having. i didn’t know what was so wrong with me that i was being made fun of for not looking white or for acknowledging my culture. it wasn’t until i was in the 8th grade that i finally felt seen by anyone else when i got seated with a bunch of other kids of color in algebra and they would comment on the racism they experienced and noticed in our school. that was the first time in this whole experience–in my whole life even–that i felt like i wasn’t crazy. i was right. none of us had the vocabulary that we all must have now to explain what we were experiencing, but we were all experiencing the same thing.
the white kids i was friends with back then are all around 19 now. i see some of them post about racial injustices in the world. i see some of them wear maga hats. none of them have ever apologized to me or any of the other people of color they hurt with their racism. their activism is performative at best and nonexistent at worst. what’s the point of this post? racism isn’t a phase. racism isn’t a character flaw. racism infects every aspect of our lives. racism exists everywhere. i want the white people i grew up with to understand that the internet didn’t radicalize me, you did. i was not radicalized by learning what racism is when i was 17 or by learning that racism still exists when trump was elected. i was radicalized by growing up a girl of color.
white people read this and evaluate your behavior as a kid and how it affects your behavior now but do not use this or me as a way to absolve your guilt. i do not care if you are sad that you were a racist kid.
